Cover Freak

Vote For Pedro: Next week is the annual Cover Freak Anniversary Post. If there’s something from the last year you’d like for me to repost let me know. You can leave a comment or shoot me an email via the contact page.

…

Last week I had parent-teacher conferences at young Freakette’s school. She’s doing quite well and it’s always nice to hear people tell you good things about your kid. One of her teachers was running late and as I sat in a tiny chair at a tiny desk waiting for her some songs started running through my head…

Better Than Ezra “Conjunction Junction” (From Schoolhouse Rock)
Those of us of a certain age fondly remember Schoolhouse Rock, the series of short educational cartoons that aired between the regular Saturday morning cartoons. They featured catchy songs and cool animation and they taught you math, grammar, science, and civics. I can still recite the preamble of the U.S. Constitution thanks to Schoolhouse Rock. For some reason this song was always my favorite.

The Last Hard Man “School’s Out” (Alice Cooper)
Talk about your musical schizophrenia. We start with some finger poppin’, slide into a pretty straight cover of the chorus, and then morph into a pretty neat rhythmic arrangement.

Julie Doiron ”Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard” (Paul Simon)
I never really thought of Paul Simon as a lively fun guy until I heard this song. This fragile acoustic take on it takes away the infectious joy and replaces it with a quiet thoughtfulness that I’m not entirely sure works all that well. Maybe I’d like it better if I didn’t like the original quite so much.

Theo Bleckmann  and Fumio Yasuda ”Teacher’s Pet” (Doris Day)
Some wonderful cool jazz here. Great vocal harmonies.

Detholz! ”Hot For Teacher” (Van Halen)
I went to an all-boys Catholic high school that had very few female teachers. The ones that they did hire tended not to last too long in the sea of frustrated teenage testosterone. Consequently I didn’t have a whole lot of opportunities for the whole “hot for teacher” thing. There was this one time that I wrote about the last time I posted a cover of this song, but I won’t repeat myself here.

The original version of this song was sleazy but still pretty lighthearted. The folks in Deatholz! sound like they’d like to put their teacher in a rubber bondage outfit. Listening to this song makes me want to take a shower.

Vote Early Vote Often: The annual Cover Freak anniversary post is coming up in two weeks. As usual I’ll be posting the ten best songs from the past year. If there’s something you’d like me to repost from the past year (October 2010-September 2011) let me know by leaving a comment or using the contact form to send me an email.

…

One of my favorite movies is the sublime This Is Spinal Tap. Among the many hilarious bits is the story of Spinal Tap’s drummers, who have a habit of dying in unusual ways. Who can forget the cautionary tale of Eric “Stumpy Joe” Childs, who choked to death on somebody else’s vomit?

This comes to mind because the Large Soulless Corporation moved me to a new cubicle last Thursday. The cube they moved me into has been occupied by three other people in the seven months I’ve worked there, and the occupants keep vanishing. Since my time there ends on Wednesday (probably, I’ve asked for confirmation from the boss who hasn’t gotten back to me but has been telling other people that my last day is Wednesday), I’ve started encouraging people to call me Stumpy Joe. I’ll be on the lookout for suspicious vomit.

And on that note, let’s turn our musical attention to the humble but vital drummer.

Nguyên Lê “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” (Iron Butterfly)
When I was in high school I used to religiously read a British heavy-metal magazine called Kerrang. It was informative and snarky in that way the British have. Since Iron Butterfly apparently never hit it big in England, they included an article about “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.” The article talked about how the guitarist made sounds like a parrot getting its tail stepped on and described the drum solo as sounding like a drum solo by a drum machine. It was funny because it was true.

This instrumental version dispenses with the lyrical gibberish and features some sophisticated jazz drumming.

Carmine Appice “Paint It Black” (Rolling Stones)
The first time I heard this I thought something had gone horribly wrong with my stereo. I couldn’t hear anything but the drums. But no, this is what happens when a drummer is in charge of the mix.

Smashing Pumpkins “Jackie Blue” (Ozark Mountain Daredevils)
I just love the big booming drum sound on this one, it sounds like you’re trapped inside the kick drum.

Bow Wow Wow “Fools Rush In” (Glenn Miller)
These guys are famous for their cover of the Strangeloves’ “I Want Candy” and for having their jailbait lead singer appear naked on the cover of their first album. But they also gave us this over-caffeinated polyrhythmic take on the 1940s classic.

Tom Jones and the Pretenders “Lust For Life” (Iggy Pop)
This is one of the most distinctive drum lines in rock. Soupy Sales’ son Hunt actually stole it from two Motown songs (“You Can’t Hurry Love” and “Dancing In The Streets). This cover stays pretty true to the original rhythm but the duet between Chrissy Hynde and Tom Jones is delicious.

Chicago is located at the point where the Chicago River used to flow into Lake Michigan. As the city grew a small problem reared its head. The city used the river as an open sewer and used the lake for drinking water. As you might expect that was not good for the quality of the city’s drinking water. The city fathers could have decided to clean up the river and build a sewage treatment system to handle the waste. But for some reason they decided it would be easier to attempt a massive engineering feat that had never been done before, and so they reversed the flow of the river. That had the added benefit of making the sewage the suburbs’ problem.

I’ve been thinking about that lately and when I start thinking about something it usually ends with a Cover Freak post.

Potliquor “Old Man River” (from the musical Showboat)
This early-70s recording is definitely of its time. It’s melodramatic proto-Southern rock. I’ve edited out the solemn recitation of “Dixie” that begins this extravaganza on the original record. No need to thank me.

Buddy Miles “Down By The River” (Neil Young)
Neil Young’s music just sounds so cool with wah-wah guitars and cooing chick background singers.

Waco Brothers “Big River” (Johnny Cash)
The Wacos are one of my favorite live bands and here they give the Johnny Cash classic a muscular workout. We’ve all been in a relationship where at some point you realize that the other person isn’t into the relationship as much as you are. That can be tough to deal with, but it’s much harder when you realize that your woman loves a river more than you. How do you compete with a river? You can’t even beat it up to make yourself feel better.

An American Warewolf “Moon River” (Audrey Hepburn)
This tune features a very spare arrangement, just a slowly plucked guitar and a woman with a glorious voice. It has everything it needs and nothing that it doesn’t.

Man Chao Po Orchestra “A-Go-Go River Kwai” (Mitch Miller)
This song is a weird choice for a Chinese orchestra trying to work the Asian go-go thing. After all the song comes from a movie about British prisoners of war building a bridge for the Japanese in Thailand during World War II. And you generally don’t hear a lot of go-go bands playing marches. Non-Brits might be interested to know that this tune is popular in Britain as “Hitler Only Has One Ball.” Apparently the director wanted to include a vocal version in the movie Bridge On The River Kwai but was talked out of it. Damn shame if you ask me.

One of my passions outside of cover songs is baseball, and in particular fantasy baseball. I helped found a Rotisserie league over twenty years ago and last week I won my league championship. This is almost as good as when I won the championship the same year young Freakette was born. I’m very happy and very proud of myself and I’m going to shout it from the top of the tallest gasoline refinery in town. Hopefully things will work out better for me than they did for James Cagney.

Shonen Knife “Top Of The World” (The Carpenters)
The original version was happy enough but this one is positively joyous. The world’s greatest Japanese girl pop group sounds elated to be on top of the world. As am I.

Susanna And The Magical Orchestra “It’s A Long Way To The Top (If You Want To Rock And Roll)” (AC/DC)
Bon Scott almost bragged about being ripped off and abused by record labels, concert promoters and other lowlifes as he celebrated his ability to rise above those hardships and find success in the music business. Susanna Karolina Wallumrød takes a much more thoughtful approach, pondering every screwjob and wondering if it was all worth it in the end.

The Bobs “Lonely At The Top” (Randy Newman)
Randy Newman wrote this song for Frank Sinatra, who apparently lacked a sense of irony and refused to sing it. Too bad, because it would have been fun to hear the Bobs sing against his version. Check out the subsonic low notes Richard Bob hits. I feel sorry for his house pets when he sings in the shower.

The Oath “We Are The Champions” (Queen)
I was a big Queen fan when I was in high school, which wasn’t easy when all my peers were devoted to the Holy Trinity of the Who, the Stones, and Led Zeppelin. I never liked this song though. It always seemed very calculated to be played at sports venues to rack up royalty payments. The Oath completely deconstructs it into a barely-listenable noise soundscape. Somewhere Freddie Mercury is spinning in his grave.

Ksine “My Way” (Frank Sinatra)
Here’s a song that Sinatra didn’t like (he found it pretentious) but sang anyway. In terms of attitude and irony I prefer the Sid Vicious version but this one has a nice bouncy rhythm and beautiful washes of distorted electric guitars.

R.E.M. called it quits last week after roughly thirty years as a band. That’s a long life for a rock band, especially since three of the original four members were there for the duration. It’s been some time since they were musically interesting although they’ve still been commercially successful, sort of like a postpunk Eric Clapton. They certainly released a lot of interesting music over the years, some of which is covered in this post.

Liz Durrett “The One I Love” (R.E.M.)
You can learn the most interesting things on Wikipedia. For instance, did you know that the director of photography for this song’s video went on to be a chef on the Food Network? The same article also has a great quote from Michael Stipe that “it’s probably better that they just think it’s a love song at this point.”

This hushed lyrics and spacious arrangement really up the creepiness quotient. And I mean that in a good way.

Penn Shabbatones “Shiny Happy People” (R.E.M.)
One of R.E.M.’s big hits after they became more interested in traditional song structure and songcraft. Despite its popularity the song received a decidedly mixed reception. The irony of the lyrics was apparently lost on people on both sides of the the divide. It works well as an a capella song though.

Grant-Lee Phillips “So. Central Rain (I’m Sorry)” (R.E.M.)
There aren’t a lot of covers of songs from the first couple of R.E.M. albums, maybe because they weren’t big pop hits, maybe because of the strange way those albums were mixed. This song comes from Mr. Phillips’ album of 80s covers and it’s the first time I’ve ever been able to understand the lyrics.

The Shout Out Louds “Man On The Moon” (R.E.M.)
This is my second-favorite song about Andy Kaufman, my favorite being “Andy Always Dreamed Of Wrestling” by the Bobs. I really wish somebody would cover that one, but I digress. R.E.M.’s video for this song was one of the first that I ever saw on Pop Up Video, which I miss dearly. After seeing that I understood more about both the song and the video.

This version has absolutely wonderful percolating percussion throughout.

Bingo Hand Job “Tom’s Diner” (Suzanne Vega)
Bingo Hand Job is R.E.M. playing a supposedly secret show in London. The folks in R.E.M. had a good sense of humor that they didn’t exhibit as often as I might have liked. This wacky live version is from the album Tom’s Album which collected the original version, the famous remix by DNA, and other covers.