I always thought my Uncle Jack was a spy. He worked for the State Department but he never said what exactly he did. Nobody in the family had a phone number or address for him, everybody had to write to him in care of the embassy of the country where he was posted. He never talked about his job or his personal life.

Uncle Jack died last December and last weekend I got a suitcase full of his papers from his diplomatic career. The most notable thing was a class picture from a 1962 class in counterterrorism officer training at the U.S. Army Special Warfare School at Fort Bragg. There are 58 guys in the photo, he’s the only one in a suit. His classmates include a number of the Shah’s junior military officers from Iran. Yep, I’m pretty sure now that he was a spy.

And being the kind of guy I am that knowledge has inspired me to post a collection of spy-related music.

The Toasters “Secret Agent Man” (Johnny Rivers)
A lot of the spy shows on TV in the 50s and 60s used some pretty hip music, this song being a prime example. Here we have a swinging ska version that I think I like even better than the original.

Art Of Noise Feat. Duane Eddy “Peter Gunn Theme” (Henry Mancini)
Duane Eddy has one of the most distinctive guitar sounds ever. He dominates the beginning of this song before giving way to the sort of percussion and synthesizers that we’ve come to expect from Art Of Noise.

Lizzy Mercier Descloux “Mission Impossible” (Lalo Schifrin)
There aren’t many popular songs written in 5/4 time. Try to name one besides “Mission Impossible.” Go ahead, I dare you. This version features some tasty hand drumming and finger cymbals.

The Skatalites “James Bond Theme” (John Barry)
What is it with ska bands and spy songs? This song goes on a little long, as the main theme takes a back seat to some really long solos. But the horns are great and it’s a fun groove so I’ll cut them some slack

Ten Masked Men “Diamonds Are Forever” (Shirley Bassey)
I’ve always wondered why there has never been an official death metal James Bond theme song. This song proves that it would work perfectly with a Bond movie.

Tomorrow is Memorial Day. My wife is out of town, working at a meeting called by foreigners who don’t give a toss about American holidays. But every American should take a moment to acknowledge the brave sacrifices made by the members of our armed forces who have served their country. The best way we can honor them is by doing everything possible end all current wars and to keep war from happening again.

Eli Radish “I Didn’t Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier” (comp. Alfred Bryan and Al Piantadosi)
Eli Radish was a little ahead of their time. They were playing country-rock before the Byrds popularized it. They released their first album in 1969 and wanted to give voice to their leftist anti-war politics. So they recorded a collection of traditional patriotic songs about war and bravery, played in a loose-limbed, slightly loopy style. Unfortunately the record buying public didn’t quite understand the album and it sank without much notice.

This song was a rallying cry for the pacifist movement in the U.S. during the run-up to World War I. There’d be no war today if mothers all would say, “I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier.” Indeed.

Betty Dylan “Masters Of War” (Bob Dylan)
There have always been people who had other priorities than military service when they were eligible who then have no reservations sending other people’s sons and daughters to war. Bob Dylan matched the cynicism of such people with bitterness and cynicism of his own. Betty Dylan deliver a nice arrangement that’s slowed down and extremely venomous.

Cake “War Pigs” (Black Sabbath)
Where “Masters Of War” is bitter and cynical, this song is just pissed off. Ozzy has been so pathetic for so long that it’s easy to forget how powerful Black Sabbath were during their prime. I love the “Eve Of Destruction” style bass line on this version.

Sally Timms “When The Roses Bloom Again” (Burnett and Rutherford)
A soldier goes off to war but before he leaves he promises his sweetheart that he’ll be back before the roses bloom again. When he’s gravely injured he asks that he be returned to his sweetheart. It’s a lovely, sentimental song.

This is a slippery song to attribute. The Sally Timms record credits Jeff Tweedy as the songwriter, but Laura Cantrell recorded a version that credits A.P. Carter as the songwriter with an arrangement by Wilco. Johnny Cash recorded a song with the same name and very similar lyrics sometime in the late 50s or early 60s. So I’m just going to stop spending time chasing this down and give it to Johnny Cash. After all this is my hobby, not my job. If I’m wrong I’m sure somebody will tell me.

Update: Thanks to an alert yet anonymous reader we have this information on the song, posted oddly enough on a Marx Brothers fan page:

In 2002, artist Laura Cantrell released a CD called When The Roses Bloom Again. The title track is a cover of an out-take from the Wilco/Billy Bragg collaboration Mermaid Avenue, which was dropped from the album of Woody Guthrie-penned lyrics when it was discovered that the song was actually copyrighted by A.P. Carter of the Carter Family. Another source claimed that the words were “Traditional” and that the music was composed by Jeff Tweedy. Further research has found that the song was previously published in New York c 1901 by E. A. Mills and credited to writers Gus Edwards and Will D. Cobb under the aliases Will Whitemore and Harry Hilliard. Then there is a 1926 version by country/bluegrass singers Burnett and Rutherford, who sang the exact lyrics of this song to an entirely different melody. So, could Edwards and Cobb have put their own music to lyrics of a folk or traditional nature that THEY had found? On the album Mermaid Avenue Vol II there’s song called Blood Of The Lamb, which has the same melody as I’ll Be With You When The Roses Bloom Again. The key and chord arrangement are different but it is clearly the same song root, probably reworked when they discovered the lyric problem with …Roses….

Interestingly, Blood of the Lamb is credited to Bennett/Tweedy while …Roses.. was credited to Tweedy alone. Evan Edwards has even seen one website which has the credits “Words by Cobb and Edwards, Music by Jeff Tweedy”.

The Pogues “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda” (Eric Bogle)
This song is very difficult for me to listen to because it’s so terribly sad. It tells the story of the Australians who got slaughtered by the Turks at Gallipoli during World War I and what happened to the survivors when they went home. It points out the absurdity of war, as when a truce was negotiated so each side could bury their dead only to “start all over again.” It breaks my heart at the end when the old maimed soldier is watching a parade on Anzac Day. A young person asks him why they’re marching and he asks himself the same question. A question we should all be asking as we honor those who have sacrificed for their country.

I’m not a huge Pink Floyd fan. The Syd Barrett material has its trippy charms, but the later stuff has always struck me as a bit whiny. But when the dynamic Uncle Flakey let me know that the Flaming Lips teamed up with Henry Rollins to cover Dark Side Of The Moon, I just had to come up with an excuse to post something from that one.

Foo Fighters “Have A Cigar” (Pink Floyd)
By and large I don’t find Foo Fighters to be a real good cover band. They tend to pick songs that are very similar to their style and then don’t do much new with them. This time around they take Pink Floyd’s indictment of corporate America and give it a crunchy, muscular workout. I think this version’s arrangement suits the lyrics better than the original.

Wireless “See Emily Play” (Pink Floyd)
Most of the covers of this song hew pretty closely to the original. This one moves further afield and features a tasty Motown-style horn section.

Rasputina “Wish You Were Here” (Pink Floyd)
This isn’t some novelty “let’s get an orchestra to record Pink Floyd” kinda tune. Rasputina is a band that features two cellos and a percussionist. The write some very interesting original music and play some very creative covers.

The Flaming Lips, Stardeath and White Dwarfs w/Henry Rollins and Peaches “The Great Gig In The Sky” (Pink Floyd)
This is a really strong album. There’s not a real consistent sound from song to song, probably because so many people were involved. For me this is the song that sounds most like the Flaming Lips, probably because they’re playing it by themselves with the help of Henry and Peaches on vocals. I particularly like the middle section where Peaches starts wailing.

The Polka Floyd Show “Welcome To The Machine” (Pink Floyd)
Those “Pickin’ On” bluegrass tributes to every band under the sun are generally amusing as a concept but get tiresome after a couple of songs. Same with the endless classical tributes to heavy metal artists. On its surface you would think that a band that does polka versions of Pink Floyd songs would fall into the same category. But you’d be wrong. The Polka Floyd Show clearly love the source music and are still able to have fun with it in creative ways. This is from a live album they put out last year.

MLB Commissioner Bud Selig

The Philadelphia Phillies were scheduled to play a three-game series in Toronto during the G20 summit June 25-27. Last Wednesday Major League Baseball’s Supreme Ruler For Life, Bud Selig, declared that the series would be moved due to security concerns. Because those evil Canadian anarchists would just love a chance to disrupt a baseball game, something they could never do any other day during six-month-long MLB season. I’m guessing that they didn’t schedule the G20 summit a month before the event, so why the Dear Leader had to make this decision a month before the series was supposed to happen is beyond me. And because Uncle Bud can’t just make a simple stupid decision without compounding it he also decided that the games would be played in Philadelphia, thus giving them three extra home games for the season. That’s a big deal because the Phillies are a terrifying force of nature in their home ballpark.

At any rate Bud’s stupid, unfair response to an imaginary threat is definitely something I had to commemorate in a Cover Freak post.

Jason and the Scorchers “Take Me Home Country Roads” (John Denver)
The game will be played in Philadelphia but the Blue Jays will get to bat last and they’ll use the designated hitter like they would if they were playing in Toronto. They might even make the Phillies wear their road uniforms. So I guess Bud thinks that makes it a home game for the Blue Jays, in spite of the fact that the Phillies get to play in their home park. I’m sure that if the game really needed to be moved they could have found a neutral ballpark to use. Like maybe one of the ballparks in New York. But that would be the sensible thing to do, and Bud doesn’t do sensible.

Junior Walker and the All Stars “These Eyes” (The Guess Who)
I know that the Guess Who were from Winnipeg, but they’re still Canadian. And they are every bit as much of a threat to the Blue Jays-Phillies series as the G20 protesters.

Homesick Elephant “Danger Zone” (Kenny Loggins)
I don’t know why Bud thinks that Toronto qualifies as a Danger Zone. I don’t know of any threats that have been made against the Blue Jays and I don’t think it’s very likely that any of the international gasbags assembling for the meeting would want to take in a ballgame.

Pastel Vespa “Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick” (Ian Dury and the Blockheads)
The Phillies as a team hit extremely well. And they hit particularly well in their home ballpark. They mercilessly beat their opponents until they cry like little girls. And yes, they do that beating with their rhythm sticks.

Giant Drag “Wicked Game” (Chris Isaak)
Baseball is a mellow, family-friendly kind of game. It’s only when the people running the game make decisions like the one Bud made that it seems a wicked game. At least it does to the fans in Toronto.

The shuffle option on my iPod doesn’t really play a random selection of songs. It seems to pick a couple of dozen albums and play random songs from them for awhile and then move on to another selection of albums. As a result I’ve been listening to quite a bit of the Louvin Brothers’ Satan Is Real album lately. I also went to visit a client a couple of weeks ago and the song being piped into the lobby of their building was “Praise The Lord And Pass The Ammunition.” So it seems that God has been stalking me lately and the only reasonable options for me are ranting about Jesus on a streetcorner downtown or doing a Cover Freak post featuring religious music. My recent respiratory problems have made raving at the top of my lungs a little difficult, so I decided to go with the CF post.

The Young Norwegians “Plastic Jesus” (Goldcoast Singers)
This is my favorite gospel song. I never understood why somebody would want a plastic Jesus on the dashboard of their car until I realized that you could use him as a flask. Suddenly it seems like a good idea.

Johnny Cash “Personal Jesus” (Depeche Mode)
The American Recordings albums were wonderful things, filled with great music and giving Johnny Cash well-deserved recognition late in his life. The only problem is that the success of those records encouraged guys like Paul Anka and Glen Campbell to put out albums of terrible covers of contemporary hits in a pathetic attempt at relevance.

Tricky “Dear God” (XTC)
I just found out that there’s a guy who hired a bunch of atheists to care for the pets of people who are taken up to heaven in the Rapture. Apparently the trick is to convince prospective clients that his staff is godless enough to get left behind but kind enough to take good care of their pets. I think the owner of the company just needs to make sure that everybody on staff has this song on his or her iPod.

Bad Livers “Crying Holy Unto The Lord” (Traditional)
After becoming known for demented punk bluegrass, the Bad Livers confused everybody by releasing an album of traditional spirituals. When you consider that they grew up listening to and playing those songs it wasn’t really that much of a stretch for them.

Uncle Tupelo “Atomic Power” (The Louvin Brothers)
I may be the only person in Chicago who doesn’t like Wilco, but I loves me some Uncle Tupelo. The sentiment of this song always seemed a bit odd to me. I suppose it’s not a bad idea to get right with God if you live in fear of nuclear annihilation, but it would seem more productive to me to work for nuclear disarmament.