New Coat of Paint
I’ve been using the default WordPress theme for almost three years and now I’m ready for something different. I’m looking for something with two columns and a clean, easy to read look. I think this theme is pretty reasonable but I might change it again if I find something else I like. Feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think.

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My friend Migor used to play in a covers band. One night he had what alcoholics call a “moment of clarity” when somebody in the audience asked the band to play “Brown Eyed Girl.” He doesn’t play covers any more and has a tendency to go on a rant when you mention any of the standards of the bar band canon. And then the dynamic George Blowfish suggested that I build a Cover Freak theme around the discussion. And so it is with apologies to Migor that I present the songs that every bar band dreads playing.

Prozak for Lovers “Proud Mary” (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
They’re really covering the Ike and Tina Turner cover, but it’s still nice to hear the song completely stripped of any passion. It’s really quite relaxing.

Steve Madaio “Mustang Sally” (Wilson Pickett)
As longtime Cover Freak readers know, I have a thing for vibes.

Judas Priest “Johnny B Goode” (Chuck Berry)
I’ve never thought of this song as a metal anthem but Rob Halford and company have changed my mind. Chuck Berry doesn’t travel with a band, he just shows up and has the show’s promoter round up some guys to back him up. It would be great if some promoter booked Judas Priest to be Chuck’s band some time.

Greyhound “Unchained Melody” (Righteous Brothers)
The town I live in has free concerts in the park on Sunday evenings during the summer. Usually they have a reasonably competent bar band that cranks out inoffensive covers. Last week was the last one and it featured a terrible over-amplified reggae band. They did do a version of “Hotel California” that was so bad that I couldn’t stop giggling.

Those concerts never feature “find ’em and grind ’em time” as Mr. Blowfish calls it. They’re family-oriented events. Too bad because I’d love to hear how badly that reggae band could have mangled this song. No way they could have done as good a job as Greyhound.

Reel Big Fish “Brown Eyed Girl” (Van Morrison)
I’ve always wondered what Van Morrison thinks about this song. I saw the guy who wrote “Up Against The Wall Redneck Mother” at a bar near my house and he had a very long rap that he laid on us about the origin of the song and what it’s like to be condemned to sing it every night. He said that every three months when he gets his royalty check he feels just fine about it. He also said that if you’re going to have to sing a song every night for the rest of your life that you should be sure that it’s a good song. Mr. Morrison is prickly enough that I doubt that he shares that view.

Of all the musical icons of the 60s that have been forced down my throat over the years by Baby Boomer radio programmers, Bob Dylan is probably the one whose work I dislike the least. While I find much of the “poetry” of his song lyrics to be incoherent gibberish, he can sometimes turn a good phrase and occasionally even write a whole song that is good.

String Swing “Things Have Changed” (Bob Dylan)
For some reason there are lots of jazz covers of Bob Dylan songs and most of them are terrible. This one is great, it makes the song sound like it always was a New Orleans jazz standard.

Nicole Nordeman “Gotta Serve Somebody” (Bob Dylan)
I like a good gospel song but Christian rock leaves me cold. None of it makes me want to dance. Bob Dylan’s Christian music is some of the worst stuff he’s ever written, although it’s head and shoulders above most of the Christian rock music out there. It was when I came to that realization that I started to have some respect for Bob as a songwriter.

Pacific Ocean “Subterranean Homesick Blues” (Bob Dylan)
The singer on this one is none other than actor Edward James Olmos. I guess the music thing didn’t work out for him so he turned to acting. On the whole I think he made the right decision, but this is a pretty good organ-driven 70s arrangement. And his voice isn’t bad either.

Joan Osborne “The Man In The Long Black Coat” (Bob Dylan)
My neighbor used to be in a band with Ms. Osborne long before she found more widespread popularity. He’s lost touch with her, which is a damn shame. I’d love to have a drink with her sometime. Here she takes one of Dylan’s lesser-known songs on a creepy and disturbing journey.

Bob Dylan “Long Black Veil” (Lefty Frizzell)
This is a stately version of the old standard and it features some great pedal steel work. I just love how Bob’s garbled vocals have no relation to the rhythm or melody of the music he’s playing.

Before we got married my wife and I visited a friend of hers in Germany. During a discussion with our hostess I referred to something as “cheesy” and my wife and I had to struggle to explain the concept to her. I have since found a great definition at urbandictionary.com:

Trying too hard, unsubtle, and inauthentic.

Specifically that which is unsubtle or inauthentic in its way of trying to elicit a certain response from a viewer, listener, audience, etc. Celine Dion is cheesy because her lyrics, timbre, key changes, and swelling orchestral accompaniment telegraph ‘I want you to be moved’ instead of moving you. Gold chains on an exposed hairy chest are cheesy because they shout out: “I have money and I am manly” instead of impressing a woman in a more subtle way, or allowing a woman to form her own judgments. The excessive showing off suggests he’s compensating for what he does not have–i.e., he’s actually poor, insecure, or short with an inferiority complex. Cliches are often cheesy because they are an obvious and artless way of making a point. A movie might be cheesy if it contains ‘on the nose’ dialogue, like “I can’t live without you” or “You had me at hello.”

Cheesiness is subjective. What seems cheesy to me, may be a legitimate and attractive hairstyle to you. What seems cheesy to me, may cause you to weep and hug your girlfriend tight.

I mention this because a friend of mine has been asked to play her harp during brunch at a local cheese shop. So to help her out I’m providing some cheesy songs she can play for the occasion.

Zed “Una Paloma Blanca” (George Baker Selection)
This is such a relentlessly chipper song. He’s a bird in the sky smelling the new-mown hay and listening to the voice of God. All because he’s, you know, free.

Big Fish Ensemble “I Am Woman” (Helen Reddy)
Talk about your lack of subtlety. Helen Reddy wanted to record a song to inspire legions of women’s libbers, regardless of how artless or overblown the result. I love this cover because the singer doesn’t change the original lyrics and also does nothing to hide the fact that he’s a man. He sounds like he’s singing the theme song from a beer commercial.

Dead Kennedys “Take This Job And Shove It” (Johnny Paycheck)
There are plenty of sincere, heartfelt songs about the struggles of the working man. This is not one of them. It just takes the one thing everybody’s always wanted to say to their boss and turns it into a chorus.

Hybrid Kids “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” (Rod Stewart)
If you have to ask, you’re not. This is the aural equivalent of gold chains and a hairy chest.

Slim Whitman “Danny Boy” (comp. Frederick Weatherly)
Here’s a song seemingly written with the express purpose of inducing uncontrolled sobbing in rooms full of drunken Irishmen. It’s maudlin and sappy. And surprisingly enough when you add yodeling it gets even cheesier.

Much has been made of Barack Obama inviting Henry Gates and James Crowley to the White House for a beer. The weird thing is that everybody got to order their own beer. Steve Dahl recently had a column in the Chicago Tribune where he noted that when he has a party he buys the beer and you drink what he has. I can see maybe buying a couple of kinds of beer so your guests have a choice, but you don’t have a different beer for everybody.

When I have a party I pick the music and you listen to it. Like this soundtrack for my next beer summit.

Waco Brothers “White Lightning” (George Jones)
Henry Gates originally requested a Red Stripe but then changed his order to a Sam Adams. I’m not sure why. It’s not like there’s a trade embargo against Jamaica. Interestingly enough that Sam Adams was the only beer at the Beer Summit that was brewed by an American-owned brewery. The others were made by foreign conglomerates. Perhaps the White House leaned on Mr. Gates so that somebody would be drinking a truly American beer. If they were really interested in having everybody drink a distinctly American beverage they should have just served moonshine. I bet the conversation would have been quite interesting if they had.

Authority Zero “Drunken Sailor” (Traditional)
I just loves me a good sea chantey, especially when it’s played by a punk band.

Roy Clark and Buck Trent “Beer Barrel Polka” (Will Glahe and his Musette Orchestra)
You usually hear this song played on accordions. Occasionally you’ll hear a brass band version. This is probably the only time it’s ever been played on a banjo and fiddle. It just doesn’t sound all that Germanic anymore.

David Bowie “Alabama Song” (comp. Kurt Weill)
This a very weird arrangement. There’s something just a little off about the drumming, I can’t put my finger on it. The whole thing sounds like postindustrial circus music. And David Bowie sings in his famous “scary voice.” Talk about limited commercial potential. And the strangest thing is that this was released as a single in Europe.

Devil In A Woodpile “Keep On Drinkin'” (Big Bill Broonzy)
I just love listening to Rick “Cookin” Sherry sing. It sounds like he’s shouting from the bottom of a coal mine. I’ve pretty much given up drinking these days. My doctor only had to mention monkey glands once.

I was watching the Cubs game last week and it was time for the beer-sponsored Fan Cam. During each game the guys in the production truck pick a theme and a song to go with it and try to provide appropriate crowd shots. It’s not my favorite part of a broadcast but I do enjoy a well-executed theme.

Well, this time around the guys in the truck had a taste for some cheesecake so they cued up “Girls Girls Girls” by Mötley Crüe and went to town. The only problem is that the song is an ode to Nikki Sixx’s favorite strip clubs. The song was so wildly inappropriate that even the usually-oblivious TV announcers groaned about it.

Since Cover Freak is all about public service, this week I’m posting some other songs they can use the next time Beer Time Fan Cam features pretty women.

Cibo Matto “About A Girl” (Nirvana)
I’ve puzzled over this song for awhile. I know it’s about a girl because the title says so. I just can’t figure out whether he likes the girl or not. Or whether she likes him for that matter. Bonus points to the folks in Cibo Matto for covering a Nirvana song that’s not “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

Urge Overkill “Girl You’ll Be A Woman Soon” (Neil Diamond)
So they all say “the boy’s no good,” do they? I wonder why. Perhaps it’s because you’re a man sniffing around a girl who will be a woman “soon.” When she’s a woman she won’t necessarily need a man, but she will need a restraining order against you. The more you look at Neil Diamond’s lyrics the more you wonder about what kind of person he really is. I’m reminded of the Will Ferrell SNL skit where he was Neil Diamond on VH1’s Storytellers program. He started talking about how one song was about the time he killed a drifter in order to get an erection. I’m beginning to think that he wasn’t too far from the truth.

A. J. Marshall “Young Girl” (Gary Puckett and the Union Gap)
This song comes from one of the more bizarre albums I’ve ever come across. It came out in 1969 and features songs that were contemporary at the time, sung by an Al Jolson impersonator. I can’t imagine who bought this album, or who the intended audience was. You listen to this album and keep expecting him to break into “Mammy,” but he never does.

The Rhonda Harris “China Girl” (Iggy Pop)
On the whole it’s a good thing that David Bowie helped Iggy Pop get himself together in the late 70s. Iggy would probably be long dead otherwise. But I never thought much of the music they wrote together. This song didn’t impress me when Iggy recorded it and it impressed me even less when Bowie recorded it. That’s why I was amazed when I heard it done as an acoustic shuffle.

I don’t know if Rhonda Harris is a really butch sounding woman or a man with a “boy named Sue” thing going on, but either way I like it.

Update: Alert reader Steve Portigal tells me that The Rhonda Harris is a band from Copenhagen.

Dr. Calypso “Music To Watch Girls By” (Andy Williams)
A calypso/ska band from Barcelona that covers Andy Williams songs. We’re living in amazing times, people. About half of the covers of this song are instrumentals, but Dr. Calypso includes the extra-groovy lyrics. This would be a great song for the next Fan Cam, since the whole point of the exercise is girl watching.