For a variety of reasons I haven’t had much time this week to lovingly craft a theme. So here’s some random goodness.

Thea Gilmore “Ever Fallen In Love” (The Buzzcocks)
When I think of heartfelt songs about love and regret I don’t generally think of the Buzzcocks. Maybe I need to reconsider.

Conjunto 3D “See You In September” (The Tempos)
I think I got this one from the very excellent Brazilian retro blog Sabadabada, which seems to be down at the moment. Hopefully they’ll be back soon, but in the meantime enjoy this tasty samba.

Dolapdere Big Gang “Faith” (George Michael)
The Big Gang is my absolute favorite Turkish Gypsy disco band. This is the arrangement of the song that George Michael intended to record.

Poi Dog Pondering “Lay My Love” (Brian Eno and John Cale)
The album Wrong Way Up that Eno and Cale released in the early 90s is surprisingly warm and whimsical. Poi Dog takes a song from that album and gives it a glorious percussive Up With People treatment.

Porno For Pyros “Satellite Of Love” (Lou Reed)
The original version is a stately ballad. So’s the famous U2 cover. But those wacky Pyros give it a swinging piano lounge spin that I like much better.

Libyan rebels are poking round in Moammar Gaddafi’s compound and finding weird scrapbooks dedicated to Condeleezza Rice. That’s not too surprising, I remember when Idi Amin was deposed in Uganda they found reels and reels of 16mm Tom and Jerry cartoons in his bedroom. And who can forget Imelda Marcos’ shoes? When you’re a ruthless dictator nobody tries to talk you out of indulging your bizarre whims.

Beyond the mountains of comedy gold, we’ve got rebellion of various flavors happening from Libya to Syria to England. All around the world people are rising up against injustice. Here’s what it sounds like.

Nouvelle Vague “Guns Of Brixton” (The Clash)
Somebody who “works with” Jimmy Cliff sent me an email. It would have been cool to get an email from Jimmy Cliff, but I’m sure he’s a very busy man so he had his people contact my people. The email contained a link to a page on Soundcloud with a stream of a new cover he did of “Guns Of Brixton” with one of the guys from Rancid. It’s a good song and I wanted to post it so I asked for an mp3. I didn’t hear back from Mr. Cliff’s people before the deadline for this post passed. Which is too bad because it was that song that provided this week’s theme.

But I’m just as happy, maybe even happier, to post this version from Nouvelle Vague. The original version was all bluster and defiance but this lounge version is all coolly-considered threat. I find it much more harrowing than the original.

The Swingle Singers “Star Wars Theme” (John Williams)
Yes, it’s the theme from everybody’s favorite family-friendly tale of violent revolution. I’ve always wanted to make a version of Star Wars from the perspective of the Empire, with Darth Vader bravely struggling to win a civil war and preserve the Empire. He’d be Abe Lincoln in a cape.

Anyway, the Swingle Singers do a great job here of replicating the sweeping orchestration of the original using only their voices.

Eli Radish “Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition” (comp. Frank Loesser)
In the late 60s antiwar hippies Eli Radish wanted to protest the Vietnam War. So they put out an album of sarcastically-performed patriotic songs called I Didn’t Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier. Unfortunately the irony of the record was lost on the hippies and the patriotic war supporters didn’t like the idea of dirty hippies singing their favorite ditties. The album sank without a trace. Too bad, because the music’s pretty good.

Vains Of Jenna “I’d Love To Change The World” (Ten Years After)
I’d love to change the world but I don’t know what to do. That’s often the problem with revolutions. People come together to topple an oppressive government but then can’t agree among themselves on what to do next. All too often you end up with a new government that’s no better than the old one. Let’s hope that the Libyans get it right.

Violent Femmes “Children Of The Revolution” (T. Rex)
The title makes you think that it’s the lesson plan of the Cuban Public School System, but it’s really about good old-fashioned teen rebellion.

New Coat Of Paint: Faithful readers will notice that I’ve spiffed up Cover Freak with a new theme. There are also handy new buttons at the bottom of each post so you can easily share the posts on Facebook, StumbleUpon, Google+, and Twitter. I’ll probably be tweaking things over the next couple of weeks, so feel free leave comments to let me know what you think of the new look.

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Once again we have a Republican presidential candidate who doesn’t believe in science. It probably won’t be long before all the other Republican candidates will feel compelled to to agree with him. I don’t understand the aversion to science that seems to be common among the religious fundamentalists the Republicans have been pandering to over the last few elections. In Catholic school they taught us about evolution and told us that it was just the way God decided to do things. A pretty nifty way of resolving faith and science if you ask me.

At any rate, it seems like a good time to celebrate science in song.

They Might Be Giants “Why Does The Sun Shine?” (Tom Glazer)
TMBG’s first hit was this cover song that they learned from a children’s album. The guy who wrote it was not a scientist, he was a Tin Pan Alley tunesmith who cowrote “Unchained Melody.” So there are some factual errors, for instance the Sun is actually a mass of incandescent plasma. Eventually TMBG wrote a song called “Why Does The Sun Really Shine” to get all the facts straight.

The Bobs “Particle Man” (They Might Be Giants)
Of course TMBG have written many original songs about science. This song definitely has scientific themes (subatomic physics, the nature of time, the size of the universe), but how they fit together is a little obscure. The Bobs do a wonderful, weird a capella version.

Bill Parsons “She Blinded Me With Science” (Thomas Dolby)
The original version of this song famously featured Magnus Pyke (sort of the British version of Bill Nye the Science Guy) shouting “Science!” I heard Thomas Dolby tell the story that when they started recording the song Mr. Pyke told Mr. Dolby that he didn’t think that the woman in the song could blind him with science. At which point Mr. Dolby had to explain to him that that was exactly the joke.

I just love what Bill Parsons does with his cover. The acoustic guitar and bongos give it a much more organic feel than the original. Then he whips out the Peter Frampton-style talk box.

The Chemistry Set “See Emily Play” (Pink Floyd)
Do they even still sell chemistry sets anymore? I would think not, what with the companies selling them being open to lawsuits if little Johnny poisons little Susie or himself. And then there’s the problem of disposing of the toxic waste. I had a small one as a kid but I didn’t follow the experiments that came with it. I just mixed stuff together at random to see what would happen. Hard as I tried I never came up with anything explosive or interesting in any other way. If only my parents had gotten me the big honkin’ version.

This is one of those covers you have to stick with. At first it sounds pretty much like the original but it starts getting weird around the middle.

The Easy Star All-Stars “Paranoid Android” (Radiohead)
I know that androids are really more the domain of science fiction than real-world science. But robotics is a growing scientific discipline that will ultimately lead to all of us working in the titanium mines for our android masters.

But in the meantime enjoy this reggae-fied version of the Radiohead hit. The horns are very nice.

Ever wonder what lands in my inbox? I mean besides the occasional death threat or plea for help from a wealthy Ethopian prince? People send me music and it’s often quite good. Here’s a sample.

Anna Laube “Marry The Night” (Lady Gaga)
Anna Laube didn’t actually send me any of her music. Some other guy was trying to send me a link to a YouTube video of his cover of “Marry The Night” and sent me a link to Ms. Laube’s version instead. I feel sorta bad for the guy, but this song is way better than anything that other guy has done. I’m always in favor of turning overblown disco songs into quiet acoustic songs, and besides she’s got a lovely voice.

Walt Ribeiro “Seven Nation Army” (The White Stripes)
Walt Ribeiro arranges orchestral covers of popular music. And he does a very good job of it. I love the concept of arranging an intentionally low-fi song for a full orchestra. And the percussion is way better than on the original. I find the tubular bells highly amusing for some reason.

Bent Knee “Since I’ve Been Loving You” (Led Zeppelin)
Bent Knee is a band out of Boston that sent along this Zeppelin cover after they noticed that I had posted Moog Cookbook covering “Whole Lotta Love.” It’s always a treat when a band has a reason to send me something relevant. Not that there’s anything wrong with just getting stuff out of the blue (except when it’s not a cover and some lame publicist is just sending something to every music blog he can find). This version is less macho than Zeppelin’s. And how could it not be what with the 55 gallon drums of testosterone Led Zep used to bring bring with them on tour? But this version is every bit as passionate.

Algebro “I Just Called To Say I Love You” (Stevie Wonder)
The original is a favorite at wedding receptions because of its easy sentimentality. Algebro gives it a slowed-down kinda-samba treatment and there’s something about his quivering voice that makes me think that he’s drunk-dialing the girlfriend that just broke things off after several years together.

Glitter Freeze “A Girl Like You” (Edwyn Collins)
Glitter Freeze does a nice job of adding synthesizers to the guitar-driven original without turning it into a disco-tronic nightmare.

My house was built in 1918. It’s a very solidly constructed Chicago style bungalow, but over time things wear out. All of the rain we’ve been getting lately has caused a hole to form in my kitchen ceiling. The roofer is coming over to look at it tomorrow but over the phone he said it sounds like a problem with one of the vents, which would be considerably less expensive than a new roof. But on the bright side it provides fodder for a Cover Freak theme.

Joe Fournier “Goin’ Out West” (Tom Waits)
The title of this week’s post comes from this song. It’s just one line in the song, but this is the tune that started running through my head as soon as I saw the hole in the ceiling.

Acoustic Hits “Hole In The Sky” (Black Sabbath)
The original version of this song is one of the all time great headbanging songs. I played it countless times when I was in high school, cranking up the volume so I could feel the bass line whap me in the breastbone like a rubber mallet.

This version is another example of people trying to exploit the musical accomplishments of an artist by hiring a bunch of nameless hack studio musicians to record acoustic/bluegrass/classical versions of their hits. All the same this song isn’t bad for exploitative studio hackery. It’s slow enough that you can really appreciate what gibberish the lyrics are.

The Wood Brothers “Fixing A Hole” (The Beatles)
The covers of this song that don’t just ape the Beatles tend to be jazz arrangements for some reason. Most of the jazz covers are a bit too clever for their own good, featuring women doing terrible things to the cadence of the lyrics to make them fit a musical bed that could be any jazz song. This version’s still jazzy but doesn’t have all that over-singing going on.

Hole “Gold Dust Woman” (Fleetwood Mac)
I always liked how Courtney Love used to wear those short babydoll dresses and play her guitar with her foot propped up on her stage monitor. It was a nice bonus for the guys who managed to get into the first couple of rows. Sadly Hole doesn’t seem to be happening these days as Ms. Love is busy being Kurt Cobain’s Psycho Widow, which seems to be a full time job.

Tre Lux “Black Hole Sun” (Soundgarden)
I truly and deeply love the cover of this song that Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme did, but it did have the unintended consequence of spawning many less-inspired lounge covers of the same song. Tre Lux finds a new path by keeping the lounge vibe but doing it with synthesizers and electronic percussion.