For a variety of reasons I haven’t had a lot of time to work on a theme this week. So here’s a themeless collection of tunes for your dining and dancing pleasure.

Taut French Joel “We Will Rock You” (Queen)
I’m a Queen fan from back when I was in grade school but I’ve always hated the brain-dead fratboy stomp of this song. It just seemed so transparently calculated to be played at sporting events. So it does my heart good to hear this rootsy acoustic version.

Mel Torme “Happy Together” (The Turtles)
For a long time I thought Mr. Torme’s nickname was the Velvet Frog. I was a little disappointed to find out that he was really known as the Velvet Fog. Sure it made more sense but it just isn’t as cool of a nickname. Speaking of cool, this swinging take on the Turtles has it in spades.

16 Horsepower “Wayfaring Stranger” (Burl Ives)
One of my biggest musical regrets is that I never got to hear 16 Horsepower play live. I think it’s because they were happening when my daughter was very young and I wasn’t going to as many live shows as I usually do. I just love these guys, the singer sounds like a tortured Old Testament prophet.

Christopher Scott “I Say A Little Prayer” (Dionne Warwick)
In Mr. Scott’s defense this is from the days when the Moog synthesizer was a new instrument and this stuff probably sounded modern and contemporary to him. As opposed to how dated and cheesy it sounds now.

Mark Lizotte “I Write The Songs” (Barry Manilow)
I never thought there was anything good inside any Barry Manilow song until I heard this. Who knew there was a slide guitar blues song hiding inside this schmaltz?

A couple of weeks ago I was at a showcase for gay and lesbian musicians called Alt Q. Like any show of that type the performances were uneven. There was too much poetry for my taste, the angry lesbian poetry in particular didn’t do much for me. But there was some fantastic music that night as well, and it made me think that Cover Freak should do a little showcase of music by homosexuals.

Husker Du “Eight Miles High” (The Byrds)
Husker Du’s singer and guitarist Bob Mould is a gay man and that surprised me when I found that out. At the time I was kinda young and stupid and never even considered that a gay man would play such aggressive guitar-driven music.

Judas Priest “Diamonds And Rust” (Joan Baez)
I wasn’t all that surprised to learn that Judas Priest singer Rob Halford is gay. I had already had my horizons broadened by Bob Mould and let’s face it, Mr. Halford does dress like he’s competing in the International Mr. Leather contest.

Marc Almond “Paint It Black” (Rolling Stones)
When I’m in the mood for some overwrought singing Marc Almond is my go-to artist. You can always count on him to go all drama queen on any song he gets his hands on. He’s done a couple of albums of French cabaret music that are truly amazing if you’re into that sort of thing.

k.d. lang “The Air That I Breathe” (The Hollies)
I’m sure that being a lesbian in a small town on the Canadian prairie was not easy for k.d. lang. But I’m convinced that being a vegetarian in the middle of cattle country was a bigger challenge. At any rate this song comes from her 1997 album Drag, a wonderful collections of songs about smoking.

Scissor Sisters “Take Me Out” (Franz Ferdinand)
The three guys in the Scissor Sisters are gay and they get bonus gay points for going all Elton John on this cover.

Tomorrow is Memorial Day, when we pay tribute to those who have given their lives in service to their country. The thing about war is that anybody who has ever been in one never wants to be in another and doesn’t want his children to experience it either. The best way to pay tribute to fallen soldiers is to work to end war.

So this week Cover Freak presents songs to remind you of why war should be avoided if at all possible.

Ian Whitcomb “I Didn’t Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier” (The Peerless Quartet)
This song was written during World War I. That war was such a horrific meat grinder that there was quite a bit of opposition to it in the U.S, probably more so than any U.S. war until the Vietnam War.

I like how this song advocates for nations to arbitrate their differences. And I wholeheartedly agree that there would be no war today if mothers all would say “I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier.”

Sparklehorse “Galveston” (Glen Campbell)
When this song came out people thought that Jimmy Webb wrote it to protest the Vietnam War. In fact he wrote it about a soldier in the Spanish-American War. He did a good job of capturing the emotional uncertainty of war, as a soldier prepares for battle and thinks of his hometown and the girl waiting there for him.

DOA “Eve Of Destruction” (Barry McGuire)
The specific threats have changed, but the overall threat of global conflagration is still there. Maybe it always has been that way and always will be. But at least now they let you vote when you’re old enough to enlist.

Joan Osborne “War” (Edwin Starr)
The original is one of the most pissed-off songs ever written. Joan Osborne’s version is much sadder, and I think it has a much stronger emotional impact because of it.

Maura O’Connell “Shipbuilding” (Robert Wyatt)
The horrible contradictions of war are spelled out in this one. It was written during England’s Falklands War, when England’s depressed shipbuilding towns became prosperous building ships to replace the ones being blown up in Argentina. But at the same time those towns were sending their children off to die on those very ships they were building.

People are most familiar with Elvis Costello’s version of this song. He cowrote the song but his recording came out a year after Robert Wyatt’s. This a capella version is just incredible.

Boy, Mister Death has been busy lately whacking legendary musicians. Last week it was Donna Summer taking a dirt nap.

I’ve never been much into disco. I grew up a rocker and was part of the whole anti-disco movement when I was young. Disco Demolition Night is one of my fondest memories from that time. But I certainly appreciate the influence disco had musically and culturally and I also appreciate Ms. Summer’s position as one of the giants of the musical form. And so we bid her farewell.

Miss Fish “Love To Love You Baby” (Donna Summer)
When people talk of the coarsening of the American culture they rarely mention this song. Which is odd because it is still one of the most blatantly sexual songs I’ve ever heard.

This version keeps the original rhythms but includes some pretty twisted vocal stylings that at times sound like a cheesy “adult” audio loop from the Fifties.

London Gay Men’s Chorus “Last Dance” (Donna Summer)
I’ve never really gone out looking for covers of disco songs before and I didn’t realize how challenging it would be. It seems like disco music is very popular with the karaoke, workout, and stripper markets, all of whom want something that sounds just like the original without the need to pay all those messy licensing fees to use the music.

This is a refreshing exception, all the more fitting since Ms. Summer was such a gay icon. The choral arrangement works with the throbbing disco beat and the call-and-response between the chorus and the oversinging diva is pretty funny.

Hitboutique “She Works Hard For The Money” (Donna Summer)
Now here’s somebody doing something imaginative with a Donna Summer song. It’s a strange song for a languorous samba, since it sounds like she’s done working and is just going to chill on the beach with a cold drink.

Orquestra D’Soul “Bad Girls” (Donna Summer)
I knew a guy in college who was obsessed with the fact that Donna Summer recored a concept album about prostitution. I must admit that it’s one of the more unique concept albums out there.

I really like the salsa arrangement on this one.

Donna Summer “MacArthur Park” (Richard Harris)
This being Cover Freak I had to include the cover that Ms. Summer had a number 1 hit with. It starts out sounding every bit as ponderous as Richard Harris’ version, but then they whip out the disco rhythm section. Lyrically speaking it’s still one of the dumbest songs ever written though.

Easter Sunday was a tough day around Casa de Freak. The day began with Freakette discovering that there is no Easter Bunny and they day ended with our dog dying very suddenly.

Perry was a wonderful dog and a loving, committed member of our family. I miss him every day and I’m getting choked up writing this, but a great guy like that deserves his due on Cover Freak.

Randy California “Walking The Dog” (Rufus Thomas)
Walking the dog was a daily duty for the seven years Perry was with us. It wasn’t so much fun when it was raining or below zero, but it was part of his routine. Dogs are creatures of habit, after all. So it was part of my routine as well. I still get the feeling that I’m forgetting to do something when I don’t walk him after dinner.

White Man Kamikaze “Hound Dog” (Carl Perkins)
Perry wasn’t a hound dog, he was a Wheaten terrier. He was much higher maintenance than a hound dog would have been for several reasons. He didn’t shed, which meant that he had to be taken to the groomer for expensive haircuts. He was bred at a puppy farm and was seriously inbred. He came to us through a rescue program because he was too high-strung for his original owners to cope with. But with patience and love we found the gentle soul behind his cross-wired brain.

The Gourds “Gin And Juice” (Snoop Dogg)
Perry became ill in the late afternoon just as we were going over to our neighbor’s house for Easter dinner. I was worried about him and went back to our house to check on him a couple of times. By the time I realized how sick he was it was too late. Perry died in the car on the way to the emergency vet two hours after he started acting ill. I never got Easter dinner, I had no appetite. I’m not a big fan of gin, but I did need a stiff drink after it was all said and done.

Wilson Pickett “Mama Told Me Not To Come” (Randy Newman/Three Dog Night)
Perry was always up for a party. He loved people and a party was an excuse for him to go from person to person getting his head scratched all night long. He didn’t care how strange the party got or whether anybody told him not to come. If there was a party, he was there.

This song was of course written by Randy Newman but by far the most popular version was recorded by Three Dog Night, which is why it’s included here.

The Supernaturals “You’re My Best Friend” (Queen)
A dog is a loyal and devoted friend. It doesn’t matter what the rest of the world thinks about you, or what kind of day you’ve had. When you come home your dog is always so happy to see you it’s like you’ve risen from the dead. It’s so weird to come home and not have Perry jumping on me. It makes me a little sad every day.