I grew up in the far northwest corner of Chicago, a couple of blocks from the city limits. Just across the border was (and still is) a suburb called Niles. It’s a weird little village with no downtown. The closest thing they’ve got is a gargantuan shopping mall. Beyond that it’s ranch houses and the occasional strip mall. They’re also famous for having the same mayor for forty-odd years. He finally lost his job when it came to light that he’d been shaking down local businesses for decades.

When I was growing up there was another outdoor shopping center in Niles called Lawrencewood. It was always kind of a low-rent place, the anchor store was a Goldblatt’s for cryin’ out loud. When Goldblatt’s went out of business things really started going down hill. The other businesses moved or went belly-up themselves and the shopping center owners stopped doing any kind of repairs or maintenance on the place. It was like that TV show where they show you what cities would look like if humans suddenly ceased to exist. I think the owners were either using Lawrencewood as a tax dodge or for money laundering.

Eventually the only business left was a biker bar with a 4 a.m. liquor license. Large, rowdy people would get hammered and then wander out of the bar to urinate in the fresh air and smash the occasional plate glass window on one of the storefronts. The shopping center had speakers in the public areas and for some reason they didn’t fall apart with everything else. So every holiday season they would pipe Christmas music out 24/7. I used to like going there in the wee small hours of the morning, especially when it was snowing, to wander around the wreckage and listen to the bikers argue drunkenly while Bing Crosby and Andy Williams crooned about chestnuts roasting on an open fire.

As you might guess, that experience has forever warped my relationship with Christmas music. I’ve tried to post songs this week that are as normal as possible, but there’s only so much I’m capable of doing.

The Blues Magoos “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” (Eddie Cantor)
This bit of garage rock fun comes from an EP that I think was done for the Blues Magoos’ fan club. Given what I imagine the size of the Blues Magoos Fan Club to be, this is probably a pretty rare song.

Paul Di’Anno “White Christmas” (Bing Crosby)
I’ve got this CD called Metal Christmas, and it’s exactly what you’d expect. There’s one twist though. Everybody on the record used to be kinda famous. Like Paul Di’Anno here. He used to be the singer for Iron Maiden before some ego-driven snit fit caused him to quit the band. They replaced him and became a huge international sensation. And Paul Di’Anno? Well, he did record a song for the Metal Christmas album.

John Dissed “Christmas With The Devil” (Spinal Tap)
Speaking of heavy metal, here’s the definitive metal Christmas song performed as a contemplative acoustic tune. This is from the sublime Spinal Tap tribute album put together by Brian Ibbott over at Coverville.

Weezer “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” (Traditional)
They want their figgy pudding, dammit!

Charles Angle “Let It Snow” (Vaughn Monroe)
It may shock you to learn that I have friends who collect unusual music. One of the greatest weirdo music hounds I know is my friend John. He likes to scour resale shops for records that were only sold by the performers in the restaurants and cocktail lounges at which they played.

And one of John’s most amazing finds is this track from an album of Wurlitzer organ lounge music by the incomparable Charles Angle. He gets the words wrong, loses his place, and has sickening pauses where you wonder if he’s going to get back on track or just say the hell with it and quit. Something about it brings me back to those magic nights in the decaying shopping center.

Merry Christmas everybody!

In any business you constantly need to find new customers. Your current customers will inevitably grow old and drop dead. Or perhaps their taste will change and they’ll favor some other product, and they need to be replaced if your business is to survive and grow. The same is true of popular singers, and they’re more susceptible than most to the fickle nature of public taste and trends.

There are a few ways for a more mature singer to make himself relevant to a more youthful audience. You can go the Frank Sinatra route and record duets of your biggest hits with popular young musicians. You could just completely change your musical style and start playing whatever’s trendy at the time. The most frequently used approach is to record the hits of the day in your own style. Sometimes it works and sometimes, well, you be the judge.

Paul Anka “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (Nirvana)
The original is one of those songs that changed everything. It led to the strip-mining of the Seattle music scene and clueless record execs unleashing a horde of awful bands in flannel shirts upon the land.

The mark of a great song is that it stands up to reinterpretation in pretty much any musical style. I’ve got 20 covers of “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” arranged as everything from a techno rave-up to a tango. Then there’s this. Mr. Anka has no feel for this song at all, to him it’s just another schmaltzy Vegas lounge number. Who thought that young people (or old people for that matter) would want to hear this?

Pat Boone “You Got Another Thing Comin'” (Judas Priest)
Maybe I just have more affection for Mr. Boone, but this schmaltzy Vegas lounge number is more convincing. I get the feeling that he actually read the lyrics. And I love the sax solo. This is from his album In A Metal Mood, which featured him covering (mostly) metal songs.

Muddy Waters “Let’s Spend The Night Together” (Rolling Stones)
Muddy Waters was much beloved by the psychedelic guitar gods of the 60s. So some record exec decided that he could sell Muddy’s records to the kids buying all those records by Cream and Jimi Hendrix. But he didn’t think that those kids would want to hear electrified Chicago blues. So this record exec got a bunch of anonymous studio musicians to wank away at some “psychedelic” blues while Muddy sang his hits. And a Stones tune for some reason. Listening to the record I get the impression that the musicians never met Muddy, let alone performed with him.

The album Electric Mud might have justifiably been forgotten if not for its bizarre popularity as a source of samples in the hip-hop world.

Ethel Merman “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” (comp. Irving Berlin)
The Ethel Merman Disco Album. There can be only one. I admire that title for its simplicity and truth in advertising. I hope that poor Ethel got paid well for this hot mess. She really puts her back into it, belting out the lyrics over a throbbing disco beat. This one is particularly weird for its attempt to keep a Dixieland flavor to the song.

The Art Of Noise Featuring Tom Jones “Kiss” (Prince)
But sometimes it works. This was released as an Art Of Noise record, but it marks the point in time where the incomparable Tom Jones became relevant to a generation of young hipsters. He attacks the song and makes it completely his own. Whenever I listen to the original version it sounds hopelessly lame and dated.

I heard John Doe play last week. The fact that he’s still alive and performing puts him far ahead of many of his contemporaries from the 80s Los Angeles punk scene. Over the years he’s shown himself to be a wonderful songwriter and soulful singer with a deep love of American music. It was a great show and it made me want to hear more of his music. So here it is.

X “Breathless” (Jerry Lee Lewis)
Mr. Doe’s first band showed more affection for rock and roll’s origins than most punk bands. They really do take your breath away with this mile-a-minute rave-up. The harmonies between Mr. Doe and Exene Cervenka were a trademark of X. When I saw him perform he didn’t have Exene with him but he did have a chick singer who sounded an awful lot like her. The harmonies on the old X songs were perfect.

Giant Sand “Johnny Hit And Run Paulene” (X)
This is from a wonderful album of covers Giant Sand did called Cover Magazine. On it Howe Gelb takes on songs from everybody from X to Frank Sinatra, and makes them all his own. This version sounds even more desperate than the original.

The Knitters “Rock Island Line” (Johnny Cash)
In 1982 X got together with Dave Alvin of the Blasters and put out a country record as the Knitters. It was mostly covers with a couple of original songs. It was a pretty radical thing for that band to do at that time, and it rocked a lot of people’s worlds. Folks who never would have considered listening to country music figured it must be cool if X was playing it.

Johnny, ain’t you got no rhythm pigs?

Robbie Fulks “The Call Of The Wreckin’ Ball” (The Knitters)
The folks at Bloodshot Records considered that Knitters album to be so earth-shaking that they put together a tribute album featuring a different artist covering each song on the album. Famous smartass Robbie Fulks tackles this Knitters original about a sleazeball who enjoys stomping on chickens. And he sounds like he’s having just a little too much fun singing it.

John Doe & The Sadies “Take These Chains From My Heart” (Hank Williams)
The Sadies are a Canadian band that has a wonderful way with American roots music. They seem to back up just about everybody these days who records a roots record. Here they deliver a swinging version of Hank’s heartbroken plea.

Last Thursday was Thanksgiving, that most American of holidays. It’s a day when you gather together with your family, give thanks for what you have, and remember those not as fortunate as yourself. And stuff yourself with food until you stagger from the table in a daze.

I probably should have done a Thanksgiving post last week so folks could listen to these songs during the meal, but it honestly didn’t occur to me to do a Thanksgiving post until I was in my post-feast coma. Our meal was pretty traditional, in fact here’s what the menu looked like.

Cor Mutsers & Patrick van Gerven “Lumpy Gravy” (Frank Zappa)
I insist on gravy with my turkey and mashed potatoes. It’s non-negotiable. Mrs. Freak doesn’t eat gravy and has in the past tried to accommodate my desire with bottled gravy from the store, which is only marginally better than no gravy at all. But this year our neighbor (the same one who provided the mashed potatoes noted below) made some delicious gravy and all was good with the world.

Beyond the sublime doo-wop cover by the Persuasions, most covers of this song are either jazz arrangements or surf guitar workouts. But this fiddle arrangement is pretty tasty.

The Emotions “Mashed Potatoes” (James Brown/Nat Kendrick and the Swans)
Mrs. Freak does many things well, but making mashed potatoes is not among them. This year they were provided by our neighbors and they were wonderful.

“(Do The) Mashed Potatoes” was in instrumental by James Brown that was released under an alias for contractual reasons. This version owes a heavy debt to Link Wray.

Railcars “Dreams” (The Cranberries)
I grew up eating the cranberry sauce that slides out of a can. So did Mrs. Freak, even though her mother took pride in making elaborate meals. Go figure. But since we’ve been hosting Thanksgiving dinner Mrs. Freak has been whipping up a delightful cranberry sauce from scratch. And for that I’m mighty thankful.

This sure isn’t an inoffensive pop song like the original. It’s all distortion and feedback. Quite the improvement in my book.

Bob Gallo “Turkey In The Straw” (Traditional)
We had turkey. Vast amounts of turkey. We’ll be eating turkey sandwiches for weeks. But everybody had their fill, which was the point.

There is a metric crapload of bluegrass/fiddle covers of this tune. This one stands out because of the cheesy synthesizers and hollow sounding drum machines. It’s a robot hoedown!

Humble Pie “Hallelujah, I Love Her So” (Ray Charles)
Pie is a featured dessert at Thanksgiving, probably more so than any other holiday. Some parts of the country favor pecan pie, but we had my mom’s otherworldly pumpkin pie.

Humble Pie’s version of the Ray Charles classic is fun, loose, and a little sloppy. Good attributes for a song, not so much for a pie.

The title of last week’s post referred to the Arab Spring which has brought freedom (or at least its possibility) to millions of people throughout the Arab world. Last week I also received a large stack of memos that my uncle the spy wrote during the siege of the Dominican Embassy in Bogota in 1980, thanks to the Freedom Of Information Act. Perhaps the newly-liberated Arab countries can enact a similar law to bring some transparency to their new governments. I’ve been thinking about freedom lately and  I decided to devote this week’s post to the idea.

The Amboy Dukes “I Feel Free” (Cream)
For the most part this song doesn’t stray very far from the original, but that guitar solo is pure Ted.

Lea Roberts “All Right Now” (Free)
I always assumed that the band Free intended their name to mean “free” as in freedom, not “free” as in beer. If I ever run into Paul Rodgers I’ll have to ask him about that.

Lea Roberts really brings the funk on this one.

Queen Mariachillout “I Want To Break Free” (Queen)
Yeah, it’s another Queen song. When I was in high school they were one of my favorite bands, which led to no small amount of grief from my classmates. Funny how after Freddy Mercury died all these popular musicians came out of the closet as Queen fans. Anyway, I just can’t stop laughing at this accordion-fueled Mexican polka take on Queen.

Porter Block “Breaking Free” (From High School Musical)
This comes from the very excellent Guilt By Association compilation album, which featured “alternative” artists covering their favorite guilty-pleasure songs. Somehow this version seems to carry much more emotional weight than the original.

Doveman “I’m Free (Heaven Helps The Man)” (Kenny Loggins)
Doveman (at least in this case) is Thomas Bartlett. For some reason he decided to cover the entire soundtrack album from the movie Footloose. Most of the covers on the album are rather slow and meditative, bringing a whole new meaning to the lyrics.