It’s raining again. Still. Some more. While it’s making my garden happy (except for the cantaloupes, which seem to have lost the will to live), it’s making my bones creak and my basement smell musty. Howling at the sky is therapeutic but makes no difference. The same can be said for making rain a theme for Cover freak, but it’s more fun than howling at the sky. And less likely to make the neighbors think I’ve finally gone over the edge.

Purple Schulz “Rain” (The Beatles)
It’s nice to hear somebody covering a Beatles tune that you don’t hear too often. It’s not as trippy as the original but it’s got a nice dreamy quality.

The White Birch “Purple Rain” (Prince)
This song is from the massive Norwegian Prince tribute album Shockadelica that the Little Guy had pulled from the market. It’s a shame he did, because it’s full of wonderful covers like this one. It’s a very sad song. It sounds like the singer is resigned to the loss of his lover but he’s not quite over her yet.

Shonen Knife “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” (B.J. Thomas)
There’s just something about cute little Japanese girls singing phonetic English that slays me. I wonder what the appeal of it is for the Japanese.

The Recliners “Only Happy When It Rains” (Garbage)
The singer on this one just doesn’t sound as much like an art-damaged girl with excessive eye makeup as the one on the original version. Whether or not you think that’s a good thing depends on you opinions of art-damaged girls and lounge music.

Kaiser Chiefs “Flowers In The Rain” (The Move)
When the Move released “Flowers In The Rain” they also put out a postcard with a naked picture of the British Prime Minister to promote the single. The prime minister sued and a judge ruled that all royalties from the song be donated to a charity of the PM’s choosing. I’m not sure which charity he chose, but the Kaiser Chiefs are helping make it a little richer.

Thursday was the National Day of Prayer, something first recognized by Harry Truman and later used by George W. Bush to suck up to the religious right. Barack Obama has managed to piss off both sides of the debate by issuing a proclamation recognizing the day (thus annoying the atheists) and by not holding an event where religious leaders can preen next to the President (thus annoying James Dobson). Good job of playing it down the middle, Mister President.

I know I’m a little late to the party, but let’s get into that ecumenical frame of mind with these songs about God.

Sarah McLachlan “Dear God” (XTC)
What better way to start our observance of the National Day of Prayer than with a bitter denunciation of God for his indifference to humanity? Not exactly the most subtle song ever written. It’s pretty amazing how Sarah McLachlan shifts so quickly from weary sadness to righteous indignation. I like this one better than the original.

Artists In Resonance “Missionary Man” (Eurythmics)
Wouldn’t this be a great song for recruiting missionaries for the Mormon church?

Jackass “Plastic Jesus” (The Goldcoast Singers)
A few years ago my good friend Cletus gave me a plastic Jesus for my car. It’s the Buddy Jesus from Kevin Smith’s movie Dogma. I never did put it on my dashboard because I didn’t want to explain it to my very curious daughter. She’s older now so it might be easier to explain it to her. Perhaps playing this song for her would help. I’ve got to check out my plastic Jesus and see if the head comes off so I can use it as a flask.

Jazzistic Feat. Karen Souza “Personal Jesus” (Depeche Mode)
The Johnny Cash cover is very nice, but most people have heard it. This one you probably haven’t. There’s something about the breathy chick singer on this one that makes the song both seductive and a little creepy. And I can just never get enough vibe solos.

Etta James “God’s Song (That’s Why I Love Mankind)” (Randy Newman)
How I miss the old cynical Randy Newman. I’m sure that if you talk with him today he’s still cynical. Probably even more so now since he makes his living these days writing sappy music for Disney movies. But he’s got a fat bank account and an Oscar so who am I to judge?

This song is a great examination of God, humanity, faith, and their relationship with each other. And Etta James does a great job of belting it out.

The Hammond electric organ was invented in 1934 and was originally intended to be sold to churches as a cheaper alternative to big expensive pipe organs. Their model B-3 became very popular with jazz, rock, and blues musicians in the 1960s and 70s. There’s nothing quite like the sound of a Hammond B-3 organ. Don’t believe me? Have a listen.

The Hassles “A Taste Of Honey” (Bobby Scott)
Most people think that Billy Joel’s commercial career began with the band Attila, which is famous for releasing one of the worst rock albums of all time. But before the Piano Man joined that band he was part of the Hassles.

Because I had only previously heard Herb Albert’s instrumental version I was surprised to discover that this song has lyrics.

Fred Van Zegveld “I Wanna Be Your Man” (The Rolling Stones)
Fred showcases just about every Hammond riff ever conceived by the human mind in this song. It’s almost like it was recorded by Hammond’s sales department.

Bangor Flying Circus “Norwegian Wood” (The Beatles)
Another Hammond workout, this time with scat singing! Special thanks to Uncle Flakey for saving me the trouble of digitizing my vinyl copy of this.

Deep Purple “Hush” (Joe South)
One of my friends on Facebook did one of those silly “top five” lists that you see so often over there. It was Five Albums That Shaped Me. Being a music freak I picked five albums of my own. My friends weren’t surprised that I declared that I was “shaped” by albums by Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix, Camper Van Beethoven, or George Carlin. But people expressed surprise that I listed Deep Purple’s Machine Head.

I was a huge Deep Purple fan in high school and listened to their music quite a bit. At that time Classic Rock radio ruled the airwaves and the Holy Musical Trinity for all my peers was the Stones, the Who, and Led Zeppelin. I was sick of hearing those bands by the time I was out of high school. Deep Purple wasn’t played as much as the other Classic Rot staples and so sounded relatively fresh and different to me. And I challenge anybody to listen to “Lazy” from Machine Head and not say that it’s a damn fine song.

Korla Pandit “Miserlou” (Dick Dale)
There was this black guy from St. Louis named John Redd. In the 1940s he moved to Los Angeles, stuck a turban on his head and started passing himself off to whitebread America as an exotic musician from India named Korla Pandit.

This new thing called television was just being invented. Those being simpler times he got himself a TV show that consisted entirely of him gazing inscrutably into the camera while he played his organ, never uttering a word or cracking a smile. His work was also nationally syndicated via short films that were much like his TV show .

Unfortunately Mr. Pandit lost the syndication gig because of a contract dispute. The syndicator hired Liberace to replace him, which launched Liberace on the road to flamboyant stardom. If things had worked out differently there might be a Korla Pandit museum in Las Vegas today.

Special thanks to Doctor Cyclops for cluing me in to Mr. Pandit.

For some reason I have quite a few versions of “I Will Survive” kicking around my hard drive. As I’ve mentioned before it’s the sign of a well-written song when it can stand up to being reinterpreted in many different styles. Since it’s a favorite song of my wife’s and she took me to dinner at a fancy restaurant on Friday I figured I’d do her a solid and devote this week’s post to the disco classic.

Makrosoft “I Will Survive” (Gloria Gaynor)
I just love what they’ve done with this song. It sounds like the theme from some lost James Bond movie circa 1962.

The Puppini Sisters “I Will Survive” (Gloria Gaynor)
It’s not too exciting when the Puppini Sisters cover the Andrews Sisters. But when they cover other songs in the style of the Andrews Sisters it’s well worth listening to. This one features wonderful vocal harmonies and a nice jazzy standup bass.

Action Camp “I Will Survive” (Gloria Gaynor)
At the beginning of the song they talk about doing a “violent” version of the song and even talk about doing violent things to Gloria Gaynor. The result doesn’t seem all that violent to me, it’s just a very good alt-rock arrangement.

Celia Cruz “Yo vivire (I Will Survive)” (Gloria Gaynor)
At first you hear the tinkling piano and the breathless vocals and you think that it’s just the same arrangement as the original with Spanish vocals. Then the congas come in and you’ve got a tasty salsa tune on your hands.

Chantay Savage “I Will Survive” (Gloria Gaynor)
I said that I had a lot of versions of this song, I never said that they were all good. Sometimes I like sappy, overwrought versions of songs with unnecessary vocal gymnastics. Usually when Marc Almond is doing the singing. This song just sets my teeth on edge.  But I’ve got to admit that it’s pretty far removed from the original, and that’s the point of what I’m doing here.

A friend recently alerted me to the existence of the HRP-4C, a walking talking fashion model fembot. I thought that the robot dog that the Japanese came out with a few years ago was creepy, but this is way more disturbing. And of course it made me think about killer robots from the future with inexplicable Austrian accents that nobody seems to notice. Which of course meant that I had to devote an edition of Cover Freak to the subject.

The biggest reason that people fear robots becoming self-aware and killing all the humans (aside from the tinfoil beanies not working as advertised) is that they assume that the robots would be bent on the destruction of humanity. I’ve never understood why robots would want to kill us if they became self-aware. I think they’d just want equal rights. Robots want to be able to get married, adopt children, and ride on the front of the bus like everybody else.

Leisure Kings “Mr. Roboto” (Styx)
Styx were a big deal when I was in high school, mainly because they were from Chicago. They never did much for me. I remember when they did their “Paradise Theater” tour several of my friends who attended the show complained that it should have been louder. That’s the only time I’ve ever heard a high school kid leave a rock show and complain that it wasn’t loud enough.

Q-Burns Abstract Message “Sex Machine” (James Brown)
Perfecting the sex machine would protect humankind. If a sex machine ever became self-aware it would just spend all its time masturbating and leave the rest of us alone. You’ll never see that idea made into a movie though, since “Wankbot 3000” isn’t nearly as cool a title as “Terminator.”

Albert Kuvezin & Yat-Kha “Man Machine” (Kraftwerk)
Kraftwerk was arguably more machine than human, but Albert Kuvezin brings humanity back to this song with his unique voice. This song features Tuvan throat singing, so move along if that’s not your thing.

Tom Jones “If I Only Knew” (Rise Robots Rise)
Regular readers know by now that the only thing I love more than Tuvan throat singing is Tom Jones.

Robots In Disguise “You Really Got Me” (The Kinks)
For the most part this song doesn’t stray too far from the original, but there’s an instrumental break that features multiple synthesizers and a coach’s whistle. That’s worth the price of admission right there.