Vote Early Vote Often: Next week is the second anniversary of Cover Freak. There’s still time to let me know if there are any songs from the last twelve months that you’d like reposted. Let me be clear about that. I will only repost songs from the last twelve months. That means the oldest songs I will repost are ones originally posted in October 2007. I will not repost any songs that I originally posted over twelve months ago.

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There are several ways to view the career of the band Blondie: vehicle for Debbie Harry, genre-hopping musical opportunists, new-wave sellouts, creative visionaries. One thing that you can’t argue is that they covered a huge amount of musical ground.

The Puppini Sisters “Heart of Glass” (Blondie)
I have no affection for disco, especially as performed by former new-wave trendsetters. But I love the Puppini Sisters and this Andrews Sisters style take on the song makes me smile.

Lee Rocker “One Way Or Another” (Blondie)
This song is such an iconic new-wave anthem that everybody that covers it seems to be afraid to do anything new with it. So this roots-rock treatment is quite a treat. And needless to say, Lee Rocker is one of the best rock and roll stage names ever. It’s almost as good as Lux Interior.

The Box Tops “Call Me” (Blondie)
There’s something sleazy and seductive going on here. And when I think of the Box Tops (which honestly isn’t all that often) “sleazy” and “seductive” are not the words that come immediately to mind. This comes to us from the wonderful When Pigs Fly compilation.

Smashing Pumpkins “Dreaming” (Blondie)
The Pumpkins are really hit and miss as a cover band. About half of their covers just sound like a generic Smashing Pumpkins song. And then the other half are absolutely inspired like this one. It’s slower than the original with a fantastically insistent drumbeat and great washes of distorted guitar.

Blondie “The Tide Is High” (The Paragons)
Most people don’t know that this was originally an obscure reggae song before Blondie added the horns and turned it into a big hit. Now there are lots of versions of it out there, most of them covering Blondie’s cover.

It’s My Party: Two weeks from now I’ll be celebrating the second anniversary of Cover Freak. I’ll be marking the occasion with another best-of post. So feel free to browse the archives and let me know if there are any songs from the last twelve months that you’d like reposted.

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I’ve been really stressed out lately. I got a massage on Thursday and my longtime massage therapist told me that she’d never seen me that tense. So I need to listen to some smooth calming music to help take the edge off.

Eldissa “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” (Frankie Valli)
Empty out a pineapple, fill it with rum, and dig that bossa nova beat.

The Johnny Mann Singers “Heart Full Of Soul” (The Yardbirds)
Something about the whole sound of this song makes me think of the Dick Van Dyke Show. It’s what I think Rob and Laura would be listening to on their hi-fi while sipping highballs after Richie went to bed.

Karen Souza “Creep” (Radiohead)
A couple of weeks ago I posted a ska version of this tune. The fact that it works just as well as a cool jazz number is a testament to what an incredibly well-written song it is. My wife recently informed me that it’s one of her favorites. Given the lyrics I wonder if I need to be concerned.

Prozac For Lovers “Love Will Tear Us Apart” (Joy Division)
This is one of those covers that’s so perfect that you can’t imagine the song being done any other way. It’s always been a loungy bossa nova song. The guys in Joy Division just plain got the song wrong.

Don Costa “Nice Work If You Can Get It” (Fred Astaire)
Don Costa is best known as Frank Sinatra’s arranger and conductor during the late 60s and early 70s. He was apparently the person who convinced Sinatra to record “Bad Bad Leroy Brown.” I picked up the LP Echoing Voices And Trombones at the late great Record Roundup. I got it for my brother-in-law who plays the trombone. He said he liked it but I think he was just being polite.

Buy My Book: Hang The DJ is a book of alternative music lists. There’s lots of interesting and funny stuff in there. There’s also a list that I wrote. Buy several copies and give them to all your friends. Then maybe somebody else will pay me to write something.

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I realized that I’ve posted a couple of songs about losers recently. So I decided to go full-bore and post a whole bunch of songs about losers.

Vanilla Fudge “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” (Rod Stewart)
If you need to ask, you’re not. The drummer for Vanilla Fudge wrote this song so I guess this is what it’s supposed to sound like. Amazing that Rod Stewart got it so wrong.

Adam Brand “Teenage Dirtbag” (Wheatus)
It’s the age-old story of the high school loser pining for the hot cheerleader who doesn’t know who he is. But it’s got great lyrics. The singer refers to himself as a teenage dirtbag fer cryin’ out loud! And how many other songs can you think of that actually say “her boyfriend’s a dick?”

Sfuzzi East/West “I’m A Loser” (Beatles)
There are millions of Beatles covers but way too few of them bring anything new to the song being covered. This one loses the inexplicable chipper bounciness of the original and replaces it with a somber reflectiveness that suits the lyrics well.

Dave Alvin “Loser” (Grateful Dead)
I was never a big Grateful Dead fan before I went off to college. When I got there my assigned dorm roommate was a pretty severe alcoholic. He would drink a quart of rotgut vodka at a sitting. He would black out two or three times a week. I asked him if it bothered him that he blacked out two or three times a week. His response was “It used to bother me but I got used to it.” He was not the greatest person to be trapped with in a 12 x 12 room. I figure that by now he’s either sober, in jail, or dead.

He also claimed to be a Deadhead. What that meant to him was that he had two Grateful Dead albums. They were both greatest hits collections and about half of the songs on each record were also on the other. He played them incessantly. I came to despise the Dead and to associate them with hopeless loserly booziness.

It took me years to work my way back to being indifferent to the Dead. At least I’m to a point now where I can post this song.

Danny Barnes “Loser” (Beck)
The former Bad Livers banjo player loads this song up with so many weird sound effects that I’m sure Beck would approve.

Radblow Me: I got a note from the dynamic George Blowfish letting me know that the theme for this week’s Radblow is covers. That’s six hours of streaming internet radio goodness. Check it out. After you check out Cover Freak, of course.

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I’ve often made the snarky remark that any song can be a reggae song. Even though ska is really just double-time reggae I’ve always found it much more interesting than reggae. Probably because most ska bands have a horn section that gives them more to work with than the typical reggae instrumentation. And the guitar is often more aggressive. So let’s all put on our skinny ties and start jumping around.

The Skunks “YMCA” (Village People)
Disco songs are so simply constructed that they lend themselves to all sorts of different arrangements and musical styles. This version sounds joyous and not particularly gay. And once again I must ask if anybody can explain why an ode to anonymous gay sex at the YMCA is used as a crowd singalong at sporting events.

Hi-Standard “Pink Panther Theme” (Henry Mancini)
Update: I’ve been informed that this song is actually by a Japanese band called Hi-Standard. That’s what I get for believing everything that an mp3 tells me about itself.

The intro has a great slinky bass line. Then the rest of it blows by in under a minute.

SKAndalous All-Stars “Creep” (Radiohead)
Really nice horn arrangement on this one. It contains the whiny self pity of the original but also manages to bring some hope to the song. I may be a creep but I can change, baby.

Tommy McCook & The Skatalites “Lara’s Theme” (Dr. Zhivago soundtrack)
I got this from a CD of “original ska anthems” that I downloaded from Chocoreve a while back. This is probably my favorite version of this song. I can just see Lara in a dress with a tiny black and white checkerboard pattern.

Fifi “Mirror In The Bathroom” (English Beat)
This song starts out sounding like a pretty pedestrian cover of the original ska classic. Then it grabs you by the throat and starts screaming in your face. It also features one of the greatest lyrics ever written: “Can I take you to a restaurant?/It’s got glass tables/You can watch yourself while you are eating.” They just don’t write ’em like that anymore.

Sonseed “Jesus Is A Friend Of Mine”
This one isn’t a cover, but I just had to share. Thanks to Mr. Squid for bringing it to my attention.

Family concerns have left me without the time or inclination to come up with a theme this week. So here are five songs that have nothing in common.

Josh Joplin “Eye Of The Tiger” (Survivor)
Survivor was a Chicago band, so when Rocky came out this song was unavoidable on the local radio stations. It’s not a bad song but it’s not something you want to hear fourteen times a day either. This stripped down acoustic version is pretty listenable for me.

Helena Noguerra “I Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” (Kylie Minogue)
Summer’s gone but we can all still enjoy a languid bossa nova.

Joe Newman “Cracklin’ Rosie” (Neil Diamond)
Country and Western music, kazoos, and psychotic singing can all coexist peacefully in one song. Really.

Pete Shelley “Better Off Without A Wife” (Tom Waits)
The original version is a grand, weepy ballad from Mr. Waits’ boozy pianist period. The loser who’s singing is trying unsuccessfully to convince himself that he’s living the good life. This one is bouncy and pretty cheerful, a celebration of bachelorhood.

Waco Brothers “Wreck On The Highway” (Hank Williams)
He didn’t hear nobody pray, and he sounds like he’s gonna kick somebody’s ass because of it.