Cover Freak

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.

Masturbation has been much on my mind lately. No wait, that didn’t come out right. I’ve been thinking about masturbation a lot lately. No, that’s not what I meant either. Oh hell, there’s just no way to gracefully introduce this subject.

I bought Freakette the entire Monty Python DVD set. One of the many hilarious skits on those disks was the Summarize Proust Competition. The most notable thing about that sketch is that the BBC censored it. One of the game show contestants was asked what his hobbies were and he responded with “strangling animals, golf, and masturbating.” That last word was deleted from the broadcast, although you can see Graham Chapman’s lips move.

That bit of history is mentioned in the DVD extras. The DVD set also included a TV special in which the Pythons were interviewed and there was a long discussion about the controversy and the universal nature of masturbation. I of course was watching this with Freakette and thought that I’d have to have The Discussion with her about self-pleasure, but she just let it slide. Much to my relief.

But then when the Nouvelle Vague cover below popped up on my iPod, this week’s theme was sealed.

Nouvelle Vague “Dancing With Myself” (Billy Idol)
I’ve always thought that this song wouldn’t have been so popular if more people realized what it was about. But then again, it was pretty obvious what Billy’s “love vibration” was. I love pretty much anything Nouvelle Vague do, but this swinging tune is one of my favorites.

Foo Fighters “Darling Nikki” (Prince)
Ah, the song that so horrified Tipper Gore that she decided that she needed the government’s help to save her kids from Prince. Seems almost quaint given the lyrical content of rap music, doesn’t it? The Foo Fighters showcase some very crunchy guitars on this one.

Scala Choir “I Touch Myself” (The Divinyls)
There’s an admirable lack of subtlety here. It’s as if the Divinyls decided to write a song about masturbation and it never occurred to them to use metaphors. The choral treatment is just fantastic.

One Fine Day “She Bop” (Cyndi Lauper)
It’s really a pity that “danger zone” never caught on as a metaphor for the female genitalia. It would have made “Highway To The Danger Zone” a much more interesting song. One Fine Day turns the New Wave classic into a driving rock song with great success.

Marina Celeste ”Orgasm Addict” (The Buzzcocks)
The original was all twitchy and in your face, which is why I find this languid bossa nova version so amusing.

My daughter Freakette turned ten years old last week. As part of the celebration I wanted to pay tribute to her time on the planet so I decided to look for covers of songs that were in the Top 10 the week she was born. That was kind of limiting, as was the Top 40 for that week. So I’ve widened my net and am drawing this week’s covers from the Billboard Hot 100 singles of 2002.

Stretch Arm Strong “Get The Party Started” (Pink)
The original was a kickstart for a fun yet wholesome party. This version sounds like the start of the kind of party where the guests have sex in your parents’ bed and set the furniture on fire.

Captain Ahab “Sk8er Boi” (Avril Lavigne)
Avril Levigne has always bothered me. She was so transparently an attempt by a major record company to sell safe sanitized “rebellion” to a sea of mallrats. I like this bouncy synthesizer take on it because it seems more true to the frothy inoffensiveness the underlied the original.

Breaker 19 “Hot In Herre” (Nelly)
I don’t listen to much rap/hip-hop. Being a middle-aged suburban white guy I find that the musical style as a whole doesn’t speak to me. But then again I’m not the target demographic for that kinda stuff. So I wasn’t real familiar with this song until I started putting this post together. And I’ve gotta say that it’s one of the dumbest songs I’ve ever heard. Which makes it work so well as a stupid country-fried song.

Daniel Ho “Soak Up The Sun” (Sheryl Crow)
Cheryl Crow attended the University of Missouri at the same time I was there working as a college radio disk jockey. I never met her, but I like to think that she listened to my show regularly and that I directly influenced her musical direction. Don’t look at me like that, you can’t prove that I didn’t.

This is a breezy, more acoustic version than the original that sounds more appropriate to me for laying in the sun with a cold beverage.

Flaming Lips “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” (Kylie Minogue)
I saw the Flaming Lips at the Pitchfork Festival a couple of years ago and was blown away by their live show. They also do the most interesting covers. Here they take a happy disco song and turn it into one of contemplative obsession. It sounds like Wayne Coyne is mooning over the object of his affection at 3 a.m. next to an overflowing ashtray.

I received a piece of hate mail last week. Maybe hate mail is too strong a description, it told me how bad the blog is. It was weirdly generic and didn’t mention any specific examples about what was so terribly wrong with Cover Freak. It was the first email of its kind that I’ve received in the six years I’ve been doing this. I’m sure the writer’s intent was to hurt my feelings but instead he left me perplexed.

He had to go through a little effort to send me the email. He had to go to the contact page, fill out the form and the anti-spam captcha. Which seems like a silly thing to do to complain about a free blog. It would have been easier to just leave a comment but he was probably afraid that if he did that he’d get verbally abused by regular readers who enjoy the blog. All in all it seems to me that if he didn’t like Cover Freak he could just go away. I’m quite certain that of all the people who read Cover Freak once the majority never come back, and I’m fine with that. I’ve never tried to be all things to all people.

In the end I just don’t understand this guy’s motivation or intent. He seems to just be a very small person with a heart full of hate. But still we can all thank him for prompting this week’s meditation on hate and love.

Reel Big Fish “We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful” (The Smiths)
The easy way to view the hater is that he’s jealous. But it would be weird for somebody to be jealous of the modest success I’ve enjoyed with Cover Freak. The Sweedes Please guy influences the scope of popular music in Sweden from his nerve center in my suburban Chicago hometown. That’s somebody to be jealous of. Me, not so much.

Richard Cheese “She Hates Me” (Puddle Of Mudd)
The hater’s love note wasn’t overtly personal, it just criticized the content of the blog. But since I’m the one who puts this blog together it really was a personal attack. So I guess you could say he freakin’ hates me. But when I listen to this swanky Richard Cheese cover I smile and just don’t care.

Joan Jett “Love Is All Around” (From The Mary Tyler Moore Show)
My original intent was to post at least four songs about hate this week. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any covers at all for my two favorite hate-filled songs (by Manowar and Tonio K). And besides, how much hate does anybody really want to deal with?

The cure for hate, of course, is love. Love is all around and you don’t even need to throw your hat in the air to find it. I like one spunky woman singing the theme song from a TV show about another spunky woman.

Leonard Nimoy “Put A Little Love In Your Heart” (Jackie DeShannon)
I kinda hope the hater comes back because based on his email this song would make his head explode. It’s really an awful cover, but Mr. Nimoy’s heart was in the right place. I understand that he was something of a hippie back in the day and really felt like he was using his celebrity to promote a positive, socially useful message. It’s just a damn shame that he couldn’t sing a lick.

Joan Osborne “Love’s In Need Of Love Today” (Stevie Wonder)
This is another twee hippie-dippie kinda song, but on this one Joan Osborne sings the hell out of it. Like she does with every song she sings.

I had my fantasy baseball draft last week, which means that I was too busy preparing for it to spend a lot of time on this week’s post. So here’s a quick selection of random stuff.

Lydia Lunch “Heartattack And Vine” (Tom Waits)
I really like the thought that there’s no devil, only God when he’s drunk. I find it very comforting.

Sally Timms “Cry, Cry, Cry” (Johnny Cash)
Ms. Timms has an incredible voice and I’m quite fortunate that she lives in my hometown. I just wish she’d perform more often around town.

D’Nash “Stand By Me” (Ben E. King)
This one starts out sounding much like the original and then takes a sharp left turn.

Eric Hutchinson “When You Were Mine” (Prince)
I adore this song, particularly the line about how she didn’t have the decency to change the sheets. The original sounds hopelessly cheesy and dated nowadays, but there are so many fine covers of it out there.

Amboy Dukes “Let’s Go Get Stoned” (Ray Charles)
Poor straight-arrow Ted Nugent, being forced to play all those songs about getting drunk and doing drugs because he was so young and innocent. At least according to Ted. I can almost feel sorry for him until I realize that he couldn’t have possibly been so stupid to not know what those songs were about.