A friend pointed me at this rant about why year-end top ten music lists are bad. It’s an amusing read whether or not you agree with the author. But I view something like that as a challenge. I’m not going to do a top ten list, instead I’m going to post number songs. You can put them in whatever order you like.

Stacy Phillips and Paul Howard “If 6 Was 9” (Jimi Hendrix)
In last week’s widely-ignored Captain Beefheart tribute I included a song that emphasized the good Captain’s strong blues influence. Jimi Hendrix is another artist who took blues musical forms and warped them almost beyond recognition. Here we have a country blues version that brings Jimi back to his roots.

Pacific Ocean “16 Tons” (Tennessee Ernie Ford)
I was originally drawn to this album because actor Edward James Olmos sings on it. But I’ve gotta admit that it’s pretty good heavy organ-based rock.

Goldfinger “99 Red Balloons” (Nena)
I must have not been paying attention in 2006 when VH1 Classic let folks make contributions to Hurricane Katrina relief for the chance to program the station. Some guy gave them $35,000 for the rights to choose the videos they’d play for an hour. He decided that he wanted the German and English versions of this song played continuously for an hour. He could have made the programming easier by just requesting this bilingual version be played on a loop for an hour.

Jason And The Scorchers “19th Nervous Breakdown” (Rolling Stones)
The differences between this version and the original are a little subtle. The Scorchers feature a slightly more aggressive guitar sound and a slightly more swinging backbeat. All in all, a very nice effort.

Ford Blues Band “59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)” (Simon and Garfunkel)
Earnest folk songs always sound better when they’re played as smooth blues numbers. There’s some real nice guitar work on this one.

Last week I had the release of Conceptual Continuity in the pipeline so I wasn’t able to do a proper tribute to the late Captain Beefheart, even though I did have a version of “Willie The Pimp” lined up. I intend to make up for that this week.

When I was in high school and started getting into Frank Zappa I became aware of Captain Beefheart. So I went out and got a copy of Trout Mask Replica, probably not the most accessible introduction to the man’s music. Most of it went sailing over my head and I sold the CD to the local used record store. It stayed in their bin for a very long time.

I was working as a college radio disk jockey when Ice Cream For Crow came out, and at that time I was more prepared for that kind of music. I circled back to the earlier Capt. Beefheart albums, found that I liked some of the music and still didn’t like some of it. I’ve never been a huge fan, but I can certainly recognize somebody with an uncompromising musical vision. I can also understand why he was so influential to such a wide variety of musicians.

Everything But The Girl “My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains” (Captain Beefheart)
You don’t think of Capt. Beefheart as somebody who wrote middle of the road love songs, but EBTG managed to delve deep into the song and come up with this smooth version.

Azalia Snail “Abba Zaba” (Captain Beefheart)
In this song Beefheart was working much more with rhythm than melody. Even the lyrics are more rhythmic devices than words. Azalia Snail remain true to that purpose while reworking the rhythms. This comes from the fine Capt. Beefheart tribute album Neon Meate Dream of a Octafish.

Eugene Chadbourne & Jimmy Carl Black “Sure Nuff ‘N’ Yes I Do” (Captain Beefheart)
Much of Beefheart’s music is firmly rooted in the blues. When he first started releasing records his record label tried to sell him as the next great white blues singer. Boy, were they barking up the wrong tree. Here famously eccentric guitarist Eugene Chadbourne teams up with ex-Mother Jimmy Carl Black for a rollicking blues workout on one of Beefheart’s finest. They did a whole album of Beefheart covers called Pachuco Cadaver.

Magazine “I Love You You Big Dummy” (Captain Beefheart)
Howard Devoto formed Magazine to play music that was a little more adventurous than the stuff he played with the Buzzcocks. But they weren’t above having a good punk rock raveup with a Beefheart song that was also a favorite of the Buzzcocks.

Albert Kuvezin & Yat-Kha “Her Eyes Are A Blue Million Miles” (Captain Beefheart)
If Beefheart knew how to throat sing I’m sure he would have. Albert Kuvezin brings his distinctive voice and exotic Tuvan rhythms to bear on this song, with fantastic results.

I’ve been a huge Frank Zappa fan since high school. I’ve enjoyed his music tremendously and his outlook on life has been an ongoing influence on me.

I became aware of Zappadan, the worldwide cultural festival that runs from the date of Frank Zappa’s death (December 4) to the date of his birth (December 21), last year. And so I wondered what I could do to celebrate FZ’s life and work. It was obvious: round up a bunch of independent musicians to record covers of Zappa songs.

I’m proud to announce the release of Conceptual Continuity: A Cover Freak Tribute To Frank Zappa. It’s been a year in the making and it’s been worth the wait. Here’s a sample of what you’ll get when you download it.

Lumpy “Willie The Pimp” (Frank Zappa)
I’ve featured Lumpy‘s music before on Cover Freak because I think he’s a wonderful arranger. I was very glad that he was one of the first to step up and volunteer for this project. I was even happier when he sent me this dub-reggae version of the Zappa/Beefheart collaboration. I believe it’s the only song I have with a flugelhorn solo.

This one is more appropriate than ever with the recent passing of Captain Beefheart.

John Dissed “Dirty Love” (Frank Zappa)
The original version of this song is very macho. You can almost smell the man-musk seeping out of your speakers when you play it. John Dissed finds tenderness and longing in it that I never would have imagined.

Butt-Out “Don’t Eat The Yellow Snow” (Frank Zappa)
The Yellow Snow Medley jumps seamlessly between musical styles, as is the case with most of FZ’s extended compositions. Butt-Out takes the blues undertones and places them front and center in this version.

Mitch McNeil “You’re Probably Wondering Why I’m Here” (Frank Zappa)
While FZ clearly had a love of surf music, he isn’t known for his surf tunes. Mitch McNeil helps rectify that with this smoking little surf instrumental.

Acoustic Ross “What’s The Ugliest Part Of Your Body?” (Frank Zappa)
Acoustic Ross takes FZ’s cheesy little doo-wop song and reworks it as a low-fi acoustic number. I really like his megaphone work.

The other day my iPod coughed up a Motown cover and I thought that it would be a good idea to post a bunch of Motown covers. But then I got to thinking about all the great covers that Motown artists have recorded over the years and thought that might make a better theme. I never could come to a decision, so I present to you both kinds of Motown covers.

The Four Tops “The Fool On The Hill” (Beatles)
This is one of the most soulful Beatles covers you’ll ever hear. It’s great to hear a song that’s so familiar reinvented so completely.

Isley Brothers “Hello It’s Me” (Todd Rundgren)
A fantastic slow jam, sung with more conviction than Todd Rundgren could muster.

The Slits “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” (Marvin Gaye)
An all-girl British punk band is about as far as you can get from Marvin Gaye, but the universal themes of this song still work well.

Martin Sexton “Will It Go Round In Circles” (Billy Preston)
Billy Preston’s chipper funk takes on a whole new meaning just by being slowed down a half-step.

Mary Wells “Satisfaction” (Rolling Stones)
There are a lot of covers of “Satisfaction” with horn sections, but it actually works on this version.

I appreciate how hard it is to write a good song lyric. Because of my love of a good lyric I also love the hopeless lyrical dreck that sometimes gets foisted on an unsuspecting public. It’s been a couple of years since Cover Freak has provided a survey of lame lyrics, so it’s high time to do it again.

Dunghill “A Horse With No Name” (America)
This song gets a lot of attention for the timeless observation that the “heat was hot.” And rightly so, but the rest of the song doesn’t make sense either. My personal favorite is the description of the glories of nature as being “plants and birds and rocks and things.” That could describe a national park or a strip mall in Hoboken. It’s brilliant in its complete artlessness.

This version is incredibly schizophrenic. It starts out out as a breezy, twangy jog and then takes a hard left turn into death metal. And back again.

The Fargone Beauties “Stairway To Heaven” (Led Zeppelin)
This song stands as an everlasting monument to the golden era of radio payola. The song is way too long, and nobody knows what the hell it’s about. The only way it became a classic rock staple is because radio programmers and disc jockeys got huge amounts of cocaine and hookers from Atlantic Records.

A lot of people have heard Dolly Parton’s cover of this song, but I prefer the Fargone Beauties when I’m looking for a bluegrass rendition, mainly because it’s shorter.

Hybrid Kids “MacArthur Park” (Richard Harris)
Another song that aspires to pretentious poetry and ends up being pure gibberish. Why is the park melting? Why won’t he have that cake recipe again? And what’s with the pronunciation of the word “striped?”

This song is a great period 80s piece with its ska/spy guitars and cockney attitude. You can almost see the skinny ties.

Sally Anne Marsh “Windmills Of Your Mind” (Noel Harrison)
It just boggles my mind that this steaming turd of a song won an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1968. Granted it was competing against “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” but can 1968 really have been that bad a year for movie music? I realize that “Windmills” was originally written in French and then translated into English. I just can’t imagine that the translation was that bad. The source material had to have been pretty horrid.

For reasons I can’t comprehend this song has been covered way too often, mostly as a slowly trudging endurance test for the listener. This time around it’s an energetic disco-tronic dance tune. And when people are dancing they’re too busy to listen to the lyrics.

Pomplamoose “My Favorite Things” (from The Sound Of Music)
This is an example of why you should never give a rhyming dictionary to a lyricist. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, brown paper packages tied up with string are nobody’s favorite thing. Couldn’t they have at least come up with a better way to work the word “string” into the lyrics? And you can think about your favorite things all you want when a dog bites you, but you should also think about getting a rabies shot.

I’ve really been digging Pomplamoose lately. They always make me smile.