Last week marked the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War And Endless Occupation. I was reminded that when the U.S. invaded Iraq the first time, the first song played by Armed Forces Radio was “Rock The Casbah.” With that in mind let’s revisit the songs of those musical socialists, the Clash.

Petty Booka “Lost In The Supermarket”
Last Tuesday I went to Japan Nite at the Empty Bottle. Six Japanese bands, including one that featured four young women dressed like Japanese school girls playing power pop. It was a great night.

I went there to see Petty Booka and I picked up their new album Tokyo Bluegrass Honeys, which is where this song comes from. Petty and Booka autographed my CD but they don’t speak enough English to engage in conversation and I don’t speak Japanese. I just settled for letting them know I was very happy to see them. “Happy, happy!” was their response. They’re just adorable.

Dwight Yokam “Train In Vain”
Here we move from bluegrass to straight-up country and western. Clash songs are nothing if not flexible.

Mr. David Viner “Should I Stay Or Should I Go”
Even the Clash get the blues.

Nouvelle Vague “The Guns Of Brixton”
Yeah, Nouvelle Vague’s bossa nova arrangements of punk and New Wave songs are really just pure schtick. But they’re so good at it.

Ranchid Taha “Rock El Casbah”
This song is about the Iranian mullahs banning Western music from their country. Here’s some context for this song’s wartime popularity courtesy of Wikipedia:

The song became an unofficial anthem for U.S. forces during the first Gulf War, largely on the basis of the line about dropping “bombs between the minarets”. It was the first song played by Armed Forces Radio at the start of the war. This is ironic given the band’s well established left-wing stance.

It’s been a horribly long and snowy winter. It’s time for a little power pop to lift everybody’s spirits.

Palomar “I’ll Come Running” (Brian Eno)
Sometimes a song hits my iPod’s shuffle play and I like it so much that I build a theme around it just to have an excuse to post the song. That’s what happened with this one.

Holly and the Italians “Chapel Of Love” (Dixie Cups)
The original version featured a nice girl in a white dress. This time the bride’s wearing leather.

Liz Phair and Material Issue “The Tra La La Song (One Banana Two Banana)” (theme from The Banana Splits)
Let’s get one thing straight: Liz Phair is a no-talent bimbo whose career is built entirely on record-label hype and payola. But here she has the good sense to hook up with Chicago power pop gods Material Issue to cover the theme song from one of Sid and Marty Krofft’s oddball kid shows.

Lemonheads “Mrs. Robinson” (Simon and Garfunkle)
Not as sly as Simon and Garfunkle, but good nonetheless.

Trip Shakespeare “Dead Set On Destruction” (Husker Du)
Remove the menacing buzzy guitar from the original, add some cooing harmonies and you get a power pop song. Who knew?

You have to be very careful when you decide to add horns to your arrangement. A good horn section can bring a song to a whole new level. A bad horn section can singlehandedly kill a song.

The Toreno Brass “All My Loving” (The Beatles)
Easily one of the cheesiest mariachi brass bands you’ll ever hear.

Wilson Pickett “Fire And Water” (Free)
I recently read a blog that included this song in a list of the worst covers ever. What kind of alien do you need to be to not like Wilson Pickett? The horns give this version a punch that was completely lacking in the original.

The Dirty Dozen Brass Band feat. Dr. John “It’s All Over Now” (The Valentinos)
This song’s got the kind of lively New Orleans horns that make tourists want to stagger and vomit all over the French Quarter.

Paul Anka “Jump” (Van Halen)
The sad thing is that even though this sounds like Richard Cheese doing a parody of a schlocky Vegas lounge singer, Mr. Anka is serious. That’s either a tribute to Mr. Cheese or an indictment of Mr. Anka. Go ahead, knock yourself out.

Big Bad Voodoo Daddy “I Wanna Be Like You” (Louis Prima)
Here’s a spicy latin jazz treatment of the tune from Disney’s Jungle Book.

Special thanks to generous readers Jeff and Lou for collectively hooking me up with the Musical Challenge stuff I’ve been looking for. They are now officially my Favorite People In The World for the next two weeks. Hopefully they won’t let that go to their heads.

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Today is my birthday. I’ve known for some time that I share a birthday with Dr. Suess and Lou Reed, but when I checked the Wikipedia entry for today’s date I found that a whole bunch of musical types were born today. So here’s a selection of their work.

Ska Cubano “Babalu” (Desi Arnaz)
People sometimes forget that Desi Arnaz was a well-respected Afro-Cuban jazz musician before he became Mr. Lucille Ball. This was his signature tune.

Nick Cave “Mack The Knife” (comp. Kurt Weill)
Happy birthday, Kurt Weill! Nick Cave is such a dramatic singer that he’s perfectly suited to this favorite from the Threepenny Opera. Bobby Darin sounded pretty chipper when he sang this song. Nick Cave, not so much.

Porno for Pyros “Satellite of Love” (Lou Reed)
This was a fairly obscure Lou Reed song until U2 started playing it during their concerts. Now there are lots of covers of it, most sounding like either the original or U2’s cover. This weirdo lounge/karaoke version is refreshingly different.

Dishwalla “It’s Going To Take Some Time” (The Carpenters)
It’s Karen Carpenter’s birthday too.

This song comes from the wonderful tribute album If I Were A Carpenter. There are some great performances on there and it also functions as a who’s who of “alternative” music in the early 1990s. What the hell ever happened to Dishwalla, anyway?

Pastel Vespa “Living On A Prayer” (Bon Jovi)
The fifth position this week was a tossup between birthday boys Jon Bon Jovi and Eddie Money. I went with the Bon Jovi because I really like this swinging take on his big hit.

Administrative Note: Since Cover Freak has picked up some new readers recently I’ve been having a lot of people asking me the same question. So to clarify: the mp3 files that I post are available for four weeks and then they are removed. The only time I’ve ever reposted anything was for the Anniversary Special last October. So come back regularly to make sure you get to hear all the music.

And since many of the new readers are from Australia I wanted to make a personal appeal. If anybody can help me get a copy of Vol. 3 of the Andrew Denton Musical Challenge CDs you would be my favorite person in the whole world for at least a couple of weeks. If you can help me out please let me know.

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I had a couple of duets lined up for the Valentine’s Day post, but there were so many good non-duets that I decided to save the harmonies for this week.

UB40 “I Got You Babe” (Sonny And Cher)
I really wanted to post the David Bowie/Marianne Faithfull version of this song, but it’s just not as good as you would expect. It’s pretty much the Sonny and Cher arrangement. Ms. Faithfull does sound like she smoked a pack of cigarettes before recording the song, but it’s just not unique enough to post.

And once again we prove that any song can be a reggae song.

The Beautiful South “You’re The One That I Want” (from the musical Grease)
I’ve had this song hanging around on my hard drive for awhile. I had sort of forgotten about it until Kiwi Sue reminded me about it. This a very stately version of the song. It sounds a lot like something Elejandro Escovedo would write.

Deborah Harry and Iggy Pop “Well Did You Evah!” (Bing Crosby/Frank Sinatra)
What an odd pair to be engaging in witty repartee. I find the thought of Iggy Pop hanging out at Pia Zadora’s house highly amusing.

Moonshine Willy “Don’t You Want Me” (Human League)
There are boatloads of useless synthesizer covers of this song. Thank goodness Moonshine Willy provides a bracing alternative to that stuff. Bloodshot Records, their record label, describes Moonshine Willy’s sound as “mutant aggro-hillbilly punk.” That’s a great line.

Slowdive “Some Velvet Morning” (Nancy Sinatra/Lee Hazelwood)
The original version of this song is so weird that it never would have been released if Nancy’s dad hadn’t threatened to have somebody killed. Slowdive makes it an eerie, swooning delight.