I was starting to work on next week’s Valentine’s Day post and I started to think about all the songs Hank Williams wrote about mean women and heartbreak. And it occurred to me that Cover Freak is almost two and a half years old and I hadn’t posted a tribute to Hank. I don’t know how that’s even possible, but that injustice ends today.

Beck “Your Cheatin’ Heart” (Hank Williams)
By Beck’s standards this song is quite straightforward and unadorned. It’s very dreamy and ethereal, almost completely detached as he contemplates his unfaithful lover. This comes from a pretty good tribute album that came out a couple of years ago.

Andre Williams And 2 Star Tabernacle “Ramblin’ Man” (Hank Williams)
I have a version of this song that features Tuvan throat singing, but I decided to go with a version that’s a bit more accessible. It starts out chugging along nicely and then devolves into something that sounds like the unholy love child of  Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and Joe Cocker.

Camper Van Beethoven “Six More Miles To The Graveyard” (Hank Williams)
Let’s do one more from CVB, shall we? This has gotta be the most cheerful song ever recorded about burying your dead lover. Get up and dance a frisky little two-step. You know you want to.

The Residents “Kaw-Liga” (Hank Williams)
The concept of the Residents covering Hank is weird enough. The execution is every bit as bizarre as you would expect.

Johnny Dowd “Pictures From Life’s Other Side” (Hank Williams)
This is what I imagine it would sound like if Tom Waits covered a Hank Williams song. Lots of low-fi skronk going on here. I love the drumming, it’s like repeatedly getting your head slapped.

Thore “Alone And Forsaken” (Hank Williams)
This is one of the most chilling songs ever written. It truly is the sound of hopeless desperate heartbreak. There’s something about the baritone vocals in this song that really increases the doom factor. Even if he does change the line “the whippoorwills cry” to “the whippets will cry.” Whippets have been known to bark, but never to cry.

There I was driving along with my iPod set to shuffle, when “Chevy Van” came on. It made me think of the very excellent book Get In The Van that Henry Rollins wrote about being on tour with Black Flag. I thought about doing a post with songs about being on tour but that would eliminate “Chevy Van.” I then realized that there are surprisingly few cover songs about Chevy vans or about vans in general. So instead I decided to go with a collection of songs loosely related by the word “van.”

The Jimmies “Chevy Van” (Sammy Johns)
I used to really like this song in those preadolescent days when I listened to Top 40 radio. The words apparently never sank in since it’s a song about picking up a hitchhiker, screwing her in the back of your van, and kicking her out in some anonymous small town. Not the sort of thing that has a lot of appeal to the tween crowd. I guess I just liked the inoffensive melody. The song does a nice job of capturing the vibe of that carefree pre-AIDS time of casual sex and cheap gas.

Now I’ve gone and made myself nostalgic for an era I never experienced.

Mary Lou Lord “Jump” (Van Halen)
As if Van Halen wasn’t bad enough already, they had to add a cheesy keyboard to this song. Because they knew they could make it even more awful. In a way I almost admire them for it. Fortunately there is nary a keyboard to be found on this nice acoustic version.

Camper Van Beethoven “I’m Not Like Everybody Else” (The Kinks)
According to the liner notes the guys in CVB learned this song from a Chocolate Watchband album. So it’s a cover of a cover. Most of the time that sort of thing doesn’t work too well. The good news is these guys are all great musicians who cast a wide musical net so they were able to do something interesting with the song.

Bran Van 3000 “Cum On Feel The Noize” (Slade)
No, Quiet Riot didn’t write this song. Despite the popularity of their version it’s a pretty terrible cover. It was all shtick and had none of the drunken goofiness of the original. This cover goes in a completely different direction, it’s sort of a bubblegum song backed by distorted guitars.

Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova “Into The Mystic” (Van Morrison)
Van Morrison’s appeal has largely eluded me over the years but I’ve got to say that this a lovely song with absolutely beautiful harmonies. Glen Hansard used to play at the Hideout before he won an Oscar and got all famous.

My wife had some minor surgery on her foot last week. After the surgery was over her surgeon shook my hand. Boy, was his hand soft and warm. Anyway, she’s got some pain that’s being mediated with drugs that make her loopy but she’s doing fine. So it seems like a good time for a tribute to the medical profession.

Dr. John “Good Night Irene” (Lead Belly)
There’s probably a great story about how Mac Rebennac became Dr. John The Night Tripper. I’m guessing that it probably didn’t involve a medical school in the Caribbean.

Whirling Dervishes “(You’re A Mean One) Mr. Grinch” (From How The Grinch Stole Christmas)
Yeah, Dr. Suess wasn’t really a doctor. He just played one when he was writing children’s books. I remember seeing somewhere that Dweezil Zappa recorded a version of this song but I couldn’t find it anywhere, so I went with this one from the Whirling Dervishes. My wife thinks it’s groovy, and this is her post after all.

Cassandra Wilson “St. James Infirmary” (Traditional)
This is an old English folk tune that changed a bit when it got to America. Originally the dead guy died from the clap, but in America he died from drinking and gambling. Louis Armstrong recorded a version that turned the song into something of a jazz standard. This version is still kinda jazzy but it has a real nice syncopated beat.

The Beatlesøns “Dear Doctor” (Rolling Stones)
You may not be familiar with this obscure song from the Beggar’s Banquet album. The original features Mick Jagger striving mightily (if unsuccessfully) to sing with an American accent. If you’re heartbroken why would you want the doctor to remove your heart and preserve it in a jar? Your heart hurts and you want the doctor to remove the painful thing. Fine. But would you then want to use it as a paperweight or something?

Jason Trachtenburg “Doctor Worm” (They Might Be Giants)
I love TMBG and I’ve always loved this song. I used to sing it to my daughter as a lullabye. She loves it too, she’s got good taste. Just remember that he’s not a real doctor but he is a real worm, so his medical advice might not be the best.

For Christmas my brother-in-law gave me the most excellent Rogue’s Gallery CD. It’s two CDs of traditional pirate ballads, sea songs and chanteys performed by people like Lou Reed, Nick Cave, and Stan Ridgway. The packaging is great and the liner notes are a hoot. Truly a triumph of the physical CD. I’ve always wanted to do a post of nothing but sea chanteys because I’m twisted like that. But there were a couple of killer songs on the CD that weren’t chanteys that I still felt compelled to share with my loyal readers.

Nick Cave “Fire Down Below” (Traditional)
A chantey (sometimes spelled shantey) is a work song sung by sailors to help them keep a rhythm while they were doing things like raising the sails or pumping out the bilge. Thus the chanting you hear in this song. If you’ve ever heard the phrase “cursing like a sailor” this is what they’re talking about. Most definitely not work safe.

Gavin Friday “Baltimore Whores” (Traditional)
Most of the chanteys that survive today were written down during Victorian times and because of that most of them were cleaned up so as not to offend the tender sensibilities of the time. This one somehow managed to get passed down through the years with its salty lyrics intact. And for the record “drag your nuts across my guts” ranks up there with any of the timeless poetry of Homer or Shakespeare.

Martin Carthy & Family “Hog-Eye Man” (Traditional)
A hog-eye was a type of barge used on the canals and rivers of America in the 1850s. The deepwater sailors looked down on the captains of the hog-eyes. So a woman who wanted a hog-eye man was pretty skanky by nautical standards. And if sailors think you’re skanky you’ve reached the pinnacle of skankitude, sister.

I was looking around for dulcimer tablature for this song because it seemed like it would be big fun to play at the next big family gathering and I found a version that was not only much more obscene than this one but also stunningly racist. Seems like piloting a hog-eye must have been a profession that attracted freed slaves.

Ralph Steadman “Little Boy Billee” (Traditional)
Ah, how I love a good song about cannibalism. Apparently before 1885 it was considered perfectly acceptable to eat the cabin boy if you ran out of food. I don’t know if that was spelled out when you took the job.

This song is a little hard to listen to because Mr. Steadman sings every stinkin’ line twice. You get to a point where you just want to shake him and shout “I heard it the first time, what happened next?”

Loudon Wainright III “Good Ship Venus” (Traditional)
Now here’s a wonderfully filthy sailing ditty. It’s the kind of song where everybody has their own favorite verse. For me it’s a tossup between the one about the cabin boy and the one about the captain’s daughter and the eels. I was on a cruise ship on my honeymoon and I would have gone on many more cruises if that first one had been like sailing on the good ship Venus.

I’m getting too predictable. I’ve done a Christmas post, a Year In Review post, and this week I’m presenting songs about the new year and new beginnings. Don’t worry, next week I’ll get back to themes that aren’t related to anything in particular.

On New Year’s Day 2008 my water heater exploded and flooded my basement and in December my car died and needed thousands of dollars worth of repairs. The rest of the year wasn’t quite that extreme but it wasn’t the best year I’ve ever had. On the whole I’m pretty happy to turn my back on 2008 and look forward.

Dump “1999” (Prince)
Does anybody know why we should party like it’s 1999 instead of, say, 1928? That was a good year, you had flappers drunk on bathtub gin looking for a good time in cities all across America. We could sure use more of that these days. That would be a change I could believe in.

Dump is James McNew of Yo La Tengo. This comes from a low-fi cassette of Prince covers that he put out. You can download the whole thing over at Psychotic Leisure Music.

Richard Cheese “Let’s Get It Started” (Black Eyed Peas)
I know I’m ready to get things started on the right foot this year. But I’d rather not get retarded if I can help it.

Esquivel “Begin The Beguine” (comp. Cole Porter)
Equivel’s bizarre arrangements are a great way to begin the new year. Try to listen to this one on headphones if you can so you can enjoy all the weird noises zipping around your skull.

Bedouin Soundclash “New Year’s Day” (U2)
It’s weird that most covers of U2 songs are either frantic dance numbers or sound like the original. So I’m happy that the wonderfully-named Bedouin Soundclash has delivered a reggae version of this tune. The way they work in part of “Guns Of Brixton” is also very nice.

DJ Frasier, Dj Marco, DJ’s Ess, Gee & The Mad Macs “Auld Lang Syne” (Traditional)
Did somebody say “frantic dance number?” If you’re looking for a version of this song that doesn’t include bagpipes or weepy sentimental piano (or both) your choices are surprisingly limited.