Let’s Talk: I’ve upgraded my blog software and installed yet another plugin to control spam. I’ve enabled comments again in the hope that we can all chat with each other without having to wade through endless ads for v1@gra. So far it’s deleted five spam comments so I’m encouraged.

New Coat Of Paint: The site template that I’ve been using works with the new version of WordPress (the software running this blog) but it’s not optimized for the latest version and it hasn’t been updated since 2009. So I’m trying out a spiffy new theme that’s at least been written with the latest version of WordPress in mind. There are a lot of things I like about it, I’m still trying to figure out how to make the left column a little more narrow so it’s more readable. I’ll keep tweaking it as my time allows, let me know what you think in the comments section.

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I start my new job tomorrow. It will be the first time I’ve worked full-time for a paycheck since 1993. I’ve spent several posts dealing with this sea change in my life and you’re all probably sick of hearing about it by now. Since this has obviously been much on my mind lately I’ll finish up with one more post about the nature of employment. And then I’ll shut up about it.

Leonard Nimoy “Proud Mary” (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
Everybody wants to be a professional singer. Kim Kardashian apparently has a song out and she has no discernible talent. Occasionally you get somebody like Frank Sinatra who has gifts in multiple fields like acting and singing. Most of the time you’re reminded why singing is that person’s second (or third) career.

I have no idea who thought it would be a good idea to release a record of Mister Spock singing. His voice is terribly thin and he sounds just plain silly when he tries to sound like John Fogerty singing about how those big wheels keep on toinin’. As much as I try to suspend disbelief I just can’t imagine Mr. Nimoy working on the river.

Sparks “Sixteen Tons” (Tennessee Ernie Ford)
This is my very favorite take on this song. It’s very spare and it packs a huge emotional wallop of anger and despair. Hopefully my new job won’t leave me with an attitude like this.

The Meat Purveyors “Working On A Building” (Traditional)
Here’s somebody who’s much happier to be working. It’s all about the motivation.

Karoshi Lovers “Birth School Work Death” (The Godfathers)
Speaking of bad attitudes. Remember the nihilists from The Big Lebowski? They were posers. The Godfathers are the real deal.

David Bowie “Friday On My Mind” (The Easybeats)
I’ve talked to several people over the years who absolutely despise Bowie’s Pinups album. I think it’s quite charming. He’s having a great time singing songs that he clearly loves. And he puts his own spin on every one of them.

This is one of the all time great clock punching songs. It expresses so well the motivation that gets so many people through another week of soul-crushing work.

The Terrorists Won: The tide of spam comments has been steadily rising. Since Cover Freak is my hobby I’m not inclined to spend a whole lot of time and effort on combating spam. That would make it too much like a job. So I’ve turned off the comments on posts. I’m sorry to have to do that and perhaps at some future time I’ll turn them back on if I can find effective counter measures. I enjoy having conversations with my readers and to that end the contact form is still available.

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My birthday was last Wednesday. It was low-key and relaxing like any birthday should be. And in a continuation of my celebration of my birth I’m going to post whatever I feel like. So there.

David Bromberg “Save The Last Dance For Me” (The Drifters)
David Bromberg is an amazing musician. He can play pretty much any stringed instrument and play it in any musical style. He used to live in Chicago and I spent many happy hours listening to him play with a backing band made up of session players who made their living recording advertising jingles. It was great to see them cut loose. Here Mr. Bromberg plays a slide guitar duet with David Lindley.

Gunnar Madsen “This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)” (Talking Heads)
Gunnar Madsen was a founding member of the fantastically weird a capella band The Bobs. This is from his first solo album and the vocals are just amazing.

Jaymz Bee & The Royal Jelly Orchestra “Safety Dance” (Men Without Hats)
Oh, how I hated this song when it came out. It just distilled for me everything that was wrong with MTV and the music industry in general. But I love this Swinging Sixties version. Shagadelic, baby!

Joey Ramone “Wonderful World” (Louis Armstrong)
The fact that this cover was released shortly after Joey Ramone’s death makes it rather poignant but the song rocks ferociously in its own right.

Red Star Belgrade “Highway To Hell” (AC/DC)
I never thought AC/DC’s songs would work as country music. How wrong I was.

That’s Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: I’ve had a CAPTCHA on the post comments for awhile now to prevent spam. That’s the thing that makes you type a combination of letters and numbers in a box to prove that you’re human before you can post a comment. In the last week I’ve gotten a bunch of spam comments. Either somebody’s found a way to defeat the spam protection or somebody’s been chained to a keyboard to type in the required text and post the spam. Either way, I’m not going to spend much more of my time policing this. I’ve installed some new software to keep the spammers at bay, but if comments get turned off in the near future you’ll know why.

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I’ve made my decision and I’m taking a day job with another consulting company. It’s a fantastic opportunity and it’s the right thing to do for myself and my family. But it means that I’ll be shutting down my business after seventeen years. That’s a long time to do anything and as I’ve spent this week contacting clients and business partners and lining up people to take care of my clients I’ve been looking back nostalgically at my career as a small businessman.

Lizzy Parks “It Was A Very Good Year” (Frank Sinatra)
The mighty Hammond B3 organ sounds great on this tune. It’s way groovier than Sinatra. I also like the way that Ms. Parks sings this song in an age-appropriate way. She tells us that when she’s thirty-five she will have “a gas of a year.” You’ve gotta admire her confidence.

Me First And The Gimme Gimmes “Seasons In The Sun” (Terry Jacks)
It’s good that there are so many covers of this song that give the maudlin original a righteous kick in the ass. This one’s a happy romp by the always chipper Gimme Gimmes.

Ray Charles “Yesterday” (The Beatles)
I’m not a big Beatles fan and this may well be the Beatles song I hate more than any other. Maybe because it’s every bit as self-pitying as “Seasons In The Sun” and even more musically boring. Maybe because it was the theme song of a Hallmark Channel-type TV movie about alcoholism starring Dick Van Dyke that I remember from my childhood. Whenever I hear this song I have mental images of Rob Petrie having the DTs.

Anyway, Brother Ray almost redeems this song for me and for that I’m grateful.

Dolly Parton “Those Were The Days” (Mary Hopkins)
Normally this song is sung as a somber look back by a bitter old drunk as he contemplates his wasted life. Dolly, God bless her, makes it a celebration of a life fully lived.

Marc Almond “Yesterday When I Was Young” (Charles Azvenour)
Marc Almond is without doubt my favorite over-emoting gay torch singer. And here he pours his entire skinny little heart into each and every word of this great French song of regret. This comes from an album Mr. Almond did called Absinthe, which is all French songs. I had some problems finding it but it’s well worth the effort if you’re into this sort of thing.

I have a lot on my mind right now. I have a big decision before me. It’s not a stretch to say that regardless of what I choose my life will change dramatically. While I’m brooding, here are some songs about thinking.

Anna Fermin’s Trigger Gospel “Trouble In Mind” (Thelma La Vizzo)
Anna Fermin is one of my favorite singers, and as a bonus she lives here in Chicago. She’s got a beautiful, powerful voice and she’s a very charismatic performer. She deserves to be more widely heard than she is.

Bob Dylan “I Can’t Get You Off My Mind” (Hank Williams)
Ol’ Bob is not famous for his singing but his performance on the Grammys has convinced me that he should just shut the hell up. You can’t say that his voice is shot because he never really had a voice to begin with, but he sounds like radio static these days.

Nada Surf “Where Is My Mind?” (The Pixies)
The Pixies became college radio darlings right around the time that I got out of college, so I never had the profound Pixies experience in my formative years. I relate much more to the solo work of Frank Black. But this is a very nice cover of the classic tune.

Lou Rawls “Gentle On My Mind” (Glen Campbell)
Speaking of great singers, I’d pay to listen to Lou Rawls sing the phone book. Hearing this you’d never guess that it wasn’t originally a Motown song.

Train “If I Can’t Change Your Mind” (Sugar)
There are two versions of this song by Sugar, both of them are pretty pissed off. The acoustic version is a particularly raw indictment of a toxically jealous lover. The song came out when I was in the same situation and that acoustic version has always moved me very deeply.

At any rate, this version is nowhere near as emotionally charged as the original but the lyrics are still there.

Valentine’s Day is upon us once again. I’ve always felt this to be the most vile of the Hallmark Holidays, an exercise in using guilt and the fear of dying alone to sell cards, chocolate, flowers and jewelry. But beyond my cynical sarcastic exterior is a chewy center of warm romantic sentimentality. So here are some songs to help you more fully appreciate the one you love.

Grizzly Bear “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)” (The Crystals)
There’s not a lot of tradition involved in what I do at Cover Freak. In fact I like to find songs that are nontraditional in their approach. But one tradition that I hold dear to my heart is posting this song for Valentine’s Day. Carole King and Gerry Goffin wrote it after talking to Little Eva after her boyfriend had slapped her around. She allegedly said that as long as he beat her she knew that he cared.

My understanding was that this song was a protest against spousal abuse gone horribly wrong, but I have since heard that Phil Spector commissioned it as a song with no commercial potential in order to screw his former business partner out of publishing royalties. It makes sense to me since Spector is, by all accounts, a huge dick and this song certainly didn’t sell many copies.

So why do I post this song every year? Partly because it’s so wildly inappropriate. In fact that was my original motivation. Now I do it mostly to annoy Mrs. Freak, who hates this song with a passion hotter than a million suns.

Nick Cave “Knoxville Girl” (Traditional)
I loves me a good murder ballad. Around Valentine’s Day you don’t hear a whole lot of music about the less-romantic aspects of love. Like when you beat your girlfriend with a stick and throw her into the river to drown. Think of this as a public service to help you starry-eyed souls keep your sense of perspective.

Amanda Palmer “Creep” (Radiohead)
Mrs. Freak gives me plenty of grief about my love of murder ballads. But one of her favorite songs is this ballad of self-loathing and unhealthy obsession. Should I be worried?

Mrs. Freak also plays ukulele so this reminds me of many evenings around Casa de Freak as she practices on her uke. But I think Mrs. Freak is a better singer.

The Lounge-O-Leers “I Will Follow You” (Little Peggy March)
If there isn’t a ocean so deep or a mountain so high it will keep him away, a restraining order probably won’t help either.

Union Avenue “Mexican Blackbird” (ZZ Top)
Aside from Charlie Sheen there probably aren’t too many folks who send a Valentine’s Day card to their favorite prostitute. Which is too bad since they give so much to so many.

This is one of my favorite songs. It’s so unabashedly crass. It’s like it was written by the world’s worst Chamber of Commerce. “If you’re bored, we’ve got this great hooker in town that you should check out.” The original version was a blues shuffle but this version gets the full-on Johnny Cash treatment and sounds like an outtake from the Live At San Quentin album.