One of my consulting clients is a bakery. They had a good-sized bakery and shop in Chicago’s northern suburbs. Their products were very high-end, very artistically decorated, and incredibly tasty. Then they decided to open a very large factory-style facility in southern Wisconsin to bake stuff by the pallet load for large retailers like Whole Foods.

The owners abruptly shut down the business in December, giving no notice to their employees or anybody else. I understand that the company is being sued by the employees who were fired with no advanced warning. I’m sure that there are suppliers and customers lining up at the courthouse as well.

Floyd, the company owner, called me last week for some technical advice. After a bit of chit-chat I mentioned that I had heard about his company going out of business and he replied that he had quite simply gotten in over his head.

I’m somewhat stunned about the whole turn of events and have turned to Cover Freak to work out my feelings about it.

Barb Jungr “Things Have Changed” (Bob Dylan)
Yeah, things have changed. Especially for the employees who showed up for work to find the doors locked. Finding yourself with no livelihood two weeks before Christmas changes things in a hurry.

But things didn’t change abruptly for Floyd. The business expansion he was planning was a large, high-stakes venture. When a project like that has problems you see them far in advance if you’re paying any attention at all. A wise and prudent businessman cuts his losses in such a situation and preserves his core business. Floyd didn’t. He let his business keep hemorrhaging money and didn’t tell anybody until it was too late for anybody to not get screwed by his bad management decisions. I find Floyd’s conduct both sad and appalling.

I’m not a Bob Dylan fan, but every once in a while he comes up with a song that’s just pure brilliance. This is one of those songs. I like the musical arrangement but I find the singing to be a little too “jazzy.” Others might beg to differ.

Hem “(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes” (Elvis Costello)
I’m sure that everybody that Floyd left holding the bag is disgusted and I can only hope that they eventually try to be amused. There’s also a line in this song about what happens when you go chasing after vengeance. I hope that everybody gets what they’re owed by the company and I hope that Floyd gets what he deserves for screwing so many people. That would be justice, not vengeance.

Hem does a great job slowing this song down and bringing on the mandolin and pedal steel guitar.

The Sodamen “Blink Of An Eye” (The Waco Brothers)
It was all gone in the blink of an eye. The bakery’s web site announced that they were closing “effective immediately.” And that’s the most shocking part. No attempt was made to let people make plans and find another job.

I love the Waco Brothers. They’re a fantastic live band and this punk rock two-step never fails to get the crowd riled up. The Sodamen deliver a competent cover, nothing revelatory but they get the attitude right.

Holly Wilson “In Too Deep” (Genesis)
There’s a saying that when you find yourself in a hole the first thing you should do is stop digging. Floyd got in too deep but he just kept digging, apparently thinking that if he just got all the way down to China everything would be okay. It didn’t quite work out that way.

The original version of this song is one of the most horrible Adult Contemporary songs Genesis ever did. But this bossa nova version almost redeems it.

A Day To Remember “Over My Head” (The Fray)
Floyd’s comment about getting in over his head originally struck me as a bit flip, but on further reflection I at least have to give him credit for being honest. He didn’t try to sugar coat it, he didn’t make excuses, he took responsibility for what happened. It doesn’t make the way he treated the people who depended on him any less awful, but maybe he’s not beyond redemption.

Somehow I managed to be blissfully unaware of The Fray before putting this post together. This version’s way better than the original.

Tomorrow marks the first time I’ve every had the day off for Martin Luther King day. It didn’t become an official holiday until after I got out of school and started my own business. Being self-employed I took work where I could find it and there were plenty of people to work for who didn’t take that day off. Now that I’m working for a school district I get the holiday off and I’m here to provide some appropriate music for the occasion.

Warrior King “What’s Going On” (Marvin Gaye)
Marvin Gaye’s concept album is about a Viet Nam war vet who returns home to a country he doesn’t understand. The title track deals with the upheaval of the 60s in general, including the civil rights movement. And it sounds good as a reggae song.

Vanilla Fudge “People Get Ready” (The Impressions)
This song really captured the excitement and optimism of the civil rights movement. Here we have a bunch of white guys from Long Island giving it the baroque psychedelic treatment.

Bruce Springsteen “We Shall Overcome” (Pete Seeger)
Pete Seeger’s song was written for the labor movement back when striking workers were getting their heads cracked open by Pinkerton goons hired by the factory owners. But its idea that the rightness of the cause would result in an inevitable victory translated well to the civil rights era and it became an unofficial anthem of that movement as well. I’m not a big fan of Bruce Springsteen but he does a good job with this one.

Ted Lennon “The Times They Are A-Changin'” (Bob Dylan)
Another song dealing with the turmoil of the 60s. It’s one of those Classic Rock staples that has become musical wallpaper over the years, but Ted Lennon plays it in a way that’s hard to ignore.

Afro Blue “A Change Is Gonna Come” (Sam Cooke)
Sam Cooke was hopeful but also acknowledged the struggle and adversity that went along with the struggle for change. This tasty a capella version apparently comes from a TV program called The Sing-Off that I had never heard of before now. I might need to start watching that one.

I’ve had experiences recently working in offices that have made me think about the state of our American consumer society. Let me preface all this by saying that I’m a capitalist. I have no problem working for a living, I have no problem with other people making crap and trying to sell it to me. The specific crap they make and the ways in which they try to sell it to me are another matter.

When I was working for the Large Soulless Corporation I worked in an ugly gray cubicle in an ugly gray office with no closet. There was no place to put my coat and I hate sitting on my coat all day so I went in search of one of those things that hooks over your cubicle wall and gives you a hook on which to hang your coat. Thinking that this would be something an office supply store would have I made the rounds of the local big box office supply stores. None of them had this relatively simple and inexpensive thing in their stores. They would be happy to sell it to me through their web site, forcing me to wait for it to be delivered and pay for the privilege of waiting for it to be delivered. Or I could order it online for in-store pickup in a day or two. But there was no way to just walk into a store and walk out with what I wanted.

In my new job with an elementary school district my office is in an unused classroom which also lacks a closet, since the kids all have lockers. The walls are concrete block so it’s difficult to put a hook into the wall to hold your coat. So I went looking for a coat rack. There aren’t any furniture stores near my house so I started visiting the local big box stores like Target, KMart, and Wal*Mart (even though Wal*Mart is evil). Once again such a simple and seemingly common object was only available through the stores’ web sites.

The retail landscape has changed radically in the last decade or two. You used to be able to go to a locally-owned store near your home and buy stuff. You might need to check a couple of stores or perhaps call around to find a store that had what you wanted. But you could usually walk into a nearby store and walk out with what you wanted. Then the big box stores started opening up on the outskirts of town, offering everything you could possibly want at incredibly low prices. People started shopping there even if the location was inconvenient and the service substandard compared to the local shop, and the local shops fell on hard times. Now the big box stores don’t want to stock anything except the highest-volume items and you can’t just walk into a store and walk out with a simple utilitarian item. Now you get that stuff on the internet, where there is no customer service at all, and those simple items aren’t quite so cheap after you pay for shipping.

Maybe I’m just a cranky old man, but I don’t think this is exactly progress. Anyway, here are some songs that kinda sorta are related to this week’s rant. And get off my lawn you damn kids!

The Torero Band “Can’t Buy Me Love” (The Beatles)
Money can’t buy me love but it can buy me someplace to hang my coat, if I’m willing to buy it online. Are coat racks completely out of fashion nowadays? Do people not wear coats? Do they just throw them on the floor instead of hanging them up? It makes me wonder how somebody without internet access buys a coat rack in this day and age. I don’t think we’re quite at the point where everybody is wired yet.

This is from a wonderful album of cheeseball mariachi Beatles covers. It’s long been a favorite of mine.

Mark Ronson “Pretty Green” (The Jam)
The frustrating thing is that I had my pocket full of pretty green and I wanted to give it to the man behind the counter but he didn’t have food and water to sell me. But listening to this polyrhythmic take on the Jam’s jaundiced view of consumer society takes some of the edge off.

General Store “Hold Me Now” (Thompson Twins)
Having grown up in a big city during the second half of the 20th century I’ve never seen a real live general store like they had on Green Acres. I don’t know if they exist anywhere anymore or if Wal*Mart has killed them all off.

Regardless of all that, this General Store does a really nice job on this 80s chestnut. I pretty much like any song with a pedal steel guitar and an accordion.

Clara Luzia “It’s A Sin” (Pet Shop Boys)
There’s a little pet shop a couple of blocks from my house that hasn’t been put out of business by Petco. I think it’s because he specializes in selling snakes, lizards, and the critters you feed to them. It looks like a good niche to be in.

This song sounds much more organic than the original, which I realize isn’t that difficult. But it does sound very good to me.

Petty Booka “Lost In The Supermarket” (The Clash)
Whenever I start turning into a cranky old man I listen to my favorite adorable Japanese duo. Petty Booka usually plays Chicago as part of a package tour of Japanese bands in the spring, as they work their way north after South By Southwest in Austin. I haven’t seen them play live in a couple of years so I’m hoping that they’ll be back again this year.

It’s a new year. And with the new year comes the latest internet-enabled apocalyptic hysteria. This time around the world’s going to end because the Mayan calendar runs out in December. While the Mayans had an advanced civilization and were astronomers of great renown, I just don’t know why anybody thinks they had any inside info on when the world is going to end. I mean, if they were so smart wouldn’t they have kicked the Spaniards’ asses?

Anyway, in case this really is our last collective trip around the Sun, here’s some appropriate music to get it all started.

Link Wray “Begin The Beguine” (comp. Cole Porter)
If it really is the end let’s begin with this twangy romantic instrumental from the immortal Link Wray.

I was fortunate enough to see Mr. Wray perform a couple of weeks before he died. His son brought out his guitar and hung it around his neck. And then he was off, playing like he was twenty years old. His wife was playing percussion and they spent the whole show flirting with each other. It was quite a memorable evening.

New Found Glory “Never Ending Story” (Limahl and Beth Anderson)
There are alternative explanations about why the Mayan calendar ends in 2012. My favorite is that the end of the calendar only represents the end of a cycle, not the end of the world. In other words, this year will be the end of one chapter and the start of another in the Never Ending Story of our little blue planet.

I hadn’t listened to the original version of this song for quite some time before I started putting together this post. I had forgotten what a piece of crap it is. New Found Glory does a real great job with some terrible source material on this one.

OV7 “Calendario de Amor (Calendar Girl)” (Neil Sedaka)
And here we have a tribute to the Mayan calendar itself, or at least one of the virgins sacrificed on the dates it specified. This is such a cheesy song I thought that at least Me First and the Gimme Gimmes would have done a cover of it. They’ve covered every other song that’s ever been recorded after all. But everything out there sounded like Neil Sedaka, which to me is the very definition of pointless.

But just as I was beginning to despair I found this electronic Spanish dance version. I feel much better now.

Turisas “Those Were The Days” (Mary Hopkins)
If it really does start raining frogs or whatever the Mayans said happens when the world ends, people will no doubt become nostalgic. They’ll start looking back on their lives and hopefully liking what they see.

I dearly love this Cossack death-metal version of this song. It sounds like they’re looking back longingly on the days when they rode across the steppes trampling their enemies under their horses’ hooves.

Saint Eve “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It” (R.E.M.)
But this is a fun song, particularly this arrangement. Even if the world isn’t really ending. It’s slow enough that you can understand the lyrics but it still has a bouncy synthesized beat.

Last week I went to the best bar in the world (The Hideout in Chicago, if you’re interested) to see the fabulous Flat Five perform. They’re a band of local musical luminaries and friends who only perform once a year at the Hideout. The Flat Five includes two incredible singers in Kelly Hogan and Nora O’Connor and Scott Ligon (of NRBQ) on guitar and keyboards.

It was a truly wonderful show and my favorite part came when they performed three songs from Harry Nilsson’s The Point! If you’re not familiar with The Point, it’s a cartoon about the adventures of Oblio and his dog Arrow in the Land of Point. The song “Me And My Arrow” was a minor hit and came from the soundtrack to that program.

I have a special love of The Point! My grade school purchased a 16mm print of it and herded the whole school down into the basement once a year (usually when they were using the gym as a polling place) and showed us the film. I guess they bought the film because of its message that we’re all the same despite our superficial differences and that we should all live together in harmony. I just loved the music and the animation.

At any rate I’ve had songs from The Point! running through my head all week so I’ve got to do something about it.

In 2009 an album came out called Songs From The Point! which featured wonderful covers of the songs from the soundtrack. In a way it’s a little disappointing since I’d dearly love to put together a cover tribute to The Point! since I had so much fun doing the Zappa tribute. Maybe I can still do that if enough artists are willing to contribute. In the meantime enjoy these songs from the 2009 tribute album.

Devotchka “Everything’s Got ‘Em” (Harry Nilsson)
One of the cool things about the soundtrack of The Point is that there’s a melodic theme that ties all the songs together. The folks in Devotchka keep a faint echo of that melody but then start layering on exotic instruments to give the song a feel somewhere between a Turkish bazaar and a Bollywood musical.

Sex Mob and Catherine Russell “Poli High” (Harry Nilsson)
Here we have the story of Oblio and his dog Arrow playing Triangle Toss (the national game of the Land of Point) against the son of the Evil Count. The Flat Five absolutely rocked on this song. They had me jumping up and down and making a fool of myself. You probably don’t want to be next to me when a band plays a song I love. This is a pretty danceable version right here.

Andrew Bird “Think About Your Troubles” (Harry Nilsson)
In true Andrew Bird fashion this song starts off very slow and quiet and then builds up a decent head of steam. I always liked this song because of the way it tells us that the ocean is salty because of all the tears that have have washed into it.

Dawn Landes “Lifeline” (Harry Nilsson)
Ms. Hogan and Ms. O’Connor broke out some heartbreakingly beautiful harmonies on this one at the Flat Five show. The pedal steel guitar is so very sad on this version it makes me want to weep.

Nathaniel Rateliff and The Wheel “Are You Sleeping” (Harry Nilsson)
This is my very favorite song from The Point! You really didn’t want to be next to me when they played this one. This version is a little low-key for my taste. To my ear it seems to emphasize the sadness and nostalgia of the song at the expense of the love, hope and commitment.