Popular music has long marketed performers to the youth market. The Monkees were different because the band was put together with the express purpose of being the center of an integrated marketing empire that included a television show as well as the standard records and concerts and lunch boxes.

Like the prepackaged pop stars of today, the Prefab Four had some great songwriters working for them. That’s why their music endures.

Atomic Kitten “Daydream Believer” (The Monkees)
It’s somehow appropriate that a prefab pop band would cover a song by an earlier prefab pop band. Andy McCluskey of Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark put this bunch of pop tarts together to move product in the European market. The result is this frothy and utterly nonthreatening synthesizer-heavy confection.

Cassandra Wilson “Last Train To Clarksville” (The Monkees)
I’ve never thought of this song (or any other Monkees song for that matter) as a jazz song. Cassandra Wilson really does a great job with it.

Code Of Ethics “Pleasant Valley Sunday” (The Monkees)
I stumbled across this song and liked the arrangement. Then I discovered that this band was a 90s New-Wave Christian band. It’s like they covered this song just so people could play “what thing is not like the others” with one of their albums.

The Sex Pistols “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone” (The Monkees)
This song was originally recorded by Paul Revere & The Raiders, but the Monkees cover is certainly the best-known version. The lyrics are pretty bitter, quite a departure from most of the rest of the Monkees canon. Which of course makes it a perfect song for everybody’s favorite snotty punk band.

Micky Dolenz “I Whistle A Happy Tune” (Rodgers and Hammerstein, from The King And I)
Micky Dolenz, kazoos, and a jaw harp. What more could you possibly want?

This comes from an album called Broadway Micky, which is apparently what Mr. Dolenz did between Monkees reunion tours in the 1980s. From the title you’d think that it was a collection of show tunes, but that’s not entirely true because it also includes a terrible cover of “Me And My Arrow” from Harry Nilsson’s wonderful animated TV special The Point! The album seems to be aimed more at children, with Mr. Dolenz trying way too hard to be wacky.

I had my fantasy baseball draft yesterday so I once again spent the week pondering the Cardinals infield and the Padres rotation instead of grooming a theme for this week. So here’s some random cool stuff.

Beck “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat” (Bob Dylan)
I first head this song during one of the montages during this year’s Oscar telecast. I was blown away and thrilled when I discovered that it was performed by Beck (thanks to Cletus for letting me know that). It’s probably inevitable that Beck would cover a Dylan song given the way the two of them approach their lyrics. It’s nice that Beck picked this tune, it’s a strong song and not one that gets played to death on classic rock radio.

H.P. Lovecraft “Wayfaring Stranger” (Traditional/Burl Ives)
The Les Turner ALS Foundation is a charity that raises money to find a cure for Lou Gehrig’s Disease. They used to operate the Mammoth Music Mart, where they pitched a huge tent in the parking lot of a suburban mall for two weeks and sold donated musical items like records and instruments. The folk section was always a little sparse. The charity and the event were both located in the heavily Jewish Chicago suburb of Skokie, and every year the folk section contained dozens of copies of Burl Ives Sings Yiddish and not much else. I can only assume that the album was a popular bar mitzvah gift.

Clover “Wade In The Water” (Traditional)
This acid-rock freakout is about as far as you can get from the original Negro spiritual.

The Mike Flowers Pops “Venus As A Boy” (Bjork)
I don’t get Bjork. I rank her right up there with Yoko Ono in terms of listenability. That said, I find this version quite listenable. It doesn’t make me want to go out and listen to more Bjork, but it’s still good.

Patricia Kass “Les Moulins De Mon Coeur (The Windmills Of Your Mind)” (Noel Harrison)
This song sounds much better if you can’t understand the lyrics. Too bad she lapses into English for the final verse. This is a nice arrangement, cool and smooth like a good daiquiri.

I was looking at the stats for Cover Freak and I noticed that I have more readers in Holland than I do in Canada. I wondered why, and eventually I figured out that it must be because I haven’t been posting enough Canadian content. Jamie over at Fong Songs is from Edmonton and he tells me that can-con just means that they play way too much Loverboy on the radio. But to be fair it also gave the world Bob and Doug MacKenzie.

So in order to help Cover Freak dominate the English-speaking world, here are some covers from the Great White North.

Emma Zunz “She’s A Lady” (Tom Jones)
I didn’t know that Paul Anka was born in Canada. I thought he sprang fully-formed from the sand outside Las Vegas. I also didn’t know that he wrote “She’s A Lady.” Wikipedia is a wonderful thing, ain’t it?

I’ve always loved this song, mainly for the line about he can leave her alone and know that “there’s no messing.” What kind of skeezy ho-bag does Mr. Anka usually date? To me that doesn’t mean that a woman is necessarily a lady, it just means that she’s less likely to give you the clap.

Cowboy Junkies “Walking After Midnight” (Patsy Cline)
Cowboy Junkies is a band that has grown on me over the years. They’re a great cover band, largely because they choose songs to cover that match their style very well. This is a great bluesy version of a song that seemed too cheerful for its lyrics when Patsy Cline did it. And I’m sure that I don’t need to mention that the Cowboy Junkies hail from Canada.

The Knitters “Born To Be Wild” (Steppenwolf)
This song was written by Mars Bonfire. I’ve always thought that was a pretty cool stage name, second only to Lux Interior. Now I learn that his real name is Dennis Edmonton. That’s a great stage name all by itself, especially since he’s from Ontario. Wait, Edmonton’s in Alberta. He should change his name to Dennis Toronto. If I ever become a famous musician I’m going to call myself Joe Chicago.

Screaming Jets “My Heart Will Go On” (Celine Dion)
Whenever I hear that Celine Dion will be on television I try to watch. Not because I like her music (I don’t) but because she makes me laugh whenever she speaks. There’s just something about a scrawny woman who talks like a hockey player that I find endlessly amusing.

The Bobs “Bird On A Wire” (Leonard Cohen)
Leonard Cohen is a truly great songwriter and poet and a tribute to Canada. It’s cool that he’s touring again even if the unfortunate reason is that he needs the cash. But most of his songs are kind of depressing. So are most of the covers of his songs. This is a rare upbeat Leonard Cohen cover.

I saw the Bobs perform a few years ago and they sang this tune. After the show I asked Richard Bob if Mr. Cohen knew what they had done to his song. He said that they had sent him a copy of the CD and hadn’t heard back from him, but that mutual acquaintances had assured him that Mr. Cohen does have a sense of humor.

Spring has officially started, it’s kinda warmish, and the garlic in my garden has started to sprout. It’s time to go out for a stroll.

The Mavises “Walk On By” (Dionne Warwick)
The original is a grandly swelling description of the wreckage of a broken relationship. This one is very upbeat and will put a spring in your step and you walk on by.

The Puppini Sisters “Walk Like An Egyptian” (The Bangles)
In some alternative universe the Andrews Sisters were an 80’s pop band. Or maybe the Bangles worked the USO circuit during World War II. Either way, this is what it would sound like.

Sheliyah “Walk This Way” (Aerosmith)
Aerosmith is another one of those popular bands that just never grabbed my interest. They did a couple of good songs but I just don’t get why they got so popular famous and rich that they became olympic-level heroin addicts. At any rate this swinging jazzy rendition really made me listen to the song in a new way.

Javier Alvarez “These Boots Are Made For Walking” (Nancy Sinatra)
I found this over at the very excellent Cover Vs. Original. The author says that it comes from a popular French television show. It’s mostly acoustic with very tasteful washes of distortion and a great breathy chick background singer.

Ghoti Hook “Walking On Sunshine” (Katrina And The Waves)
I’ve really been digging those ska horn sections lately.

The New Kid: If you check the links on the right side of the page you’ll see a new one for The Cover Story. This guy presents YouTube videos of covers as done by amateurs. He’s got some good stuff there, you should check it out.

And speaking of YouTube, you should also check out Thru You. This guy called Kuitman takes YouTube videos of original songs performed by amateurs and remixes them into new songs. The results are simply amazing. It’s one of the best things I’ve seen on YT in a long time.

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I don’t usually post Disney covers because Kurtis over at Covering The Mouse does such a good job of it. No need for me to reinvent the wheel. He’s probably posted all of this week’s songs at one point or another. In fact, I posted Heigh Ho on CTM as a guest blogger awhile back. But I just picked up a couple of albums of Disney covers and I enjoyed them so much that I felt inspired.

Tom Waits “Heigh Ho” (from Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs)
Mining is one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet. People don’t work as miners by choice. They do it because they have to, because they don’t have other options.

So even as a child I thought the dwarves seemed weirdly chipper about going to work in the mine. Especially when they had a hot chick with a dwarf fetish living with them. Tom Waits gets this. His song makes those little guys sound like they hate the mine and would rather be anywhere else. It’s one of the most harrowing Disney covers you’ll ever hear.

Gene Simmons “When You Wish Upon A Star” (from Pinocchio)
I always thought KISS was pretty lame, and that’s why I had to buy Gene Simmons’ solo album when I found it in the cutout bin. I had to find out how bad it was. It was worse than I thought possible. Just listen to him try to hit the high notes.

Bowling For Soup “The Bare Necessities” (from Jungle Book)
This song takes the joy of the original and puts it nicely in a more modern context. It’s not deep or particularly artsy, but it’s a whole lot of fun.

Asparagus “Winnie The Pooh” (from Winnie The Pooh)
The original version is pretty wistful, and so is this cover at first. Then the band finds another gear and turns it into quite the rockin’ ditty.

Smash Mouth “I Wanna Be Like You” (Louis Prima, from Jungle Book)
Smash Mouth is my guilty pleasure, my secret shame. There’s just something about them that I love. That troubles me because they really are the ultimate frat-party band. And I hate frats.