BROADCAST #12
AIR DATE: 03-20-07

Fanatics! This was the show for tonight. The first of 4 broadcasts of bands performing other band’s songs that we will do this year. The next one will be in about three months. I was told by Engineer X that Dinosaur JR. is doing three nights at the Troubadour in May. Stoked!!! I have a copy of their new album Beyond and it’s great. I will get some ore time with it this week. Next week’s show is all ready to go and it’s going to be a great one. The Stooges are coming to LA in April and it’s an Indie 103 show so do whatever it takes to get those tickets, it’s going to be a great one. My shows with Janeane Garofalo and Marc Maron will start in a couple of weeks in NYC and LA. Gramercy Theater in NYC 10-15 and in LA at the Silent Film Theater on Fairfax right below Melrose 24-29. Those two are amazing so it should be a good time.
My long time pal and one time fellow ice cream store employee Susie J will be in LA to show slides from her very cool book of back in the day photographs of the DC music scene called Punk Love. This is the book I was telling you about before. Susie J is the gal who took the pictures of the famous Minor Threat single cover and a lot of photos you have seen in books like Banned In DC and Get In The Van. You can check out info on her book here: www.punklovebook.com. Here’s info on the event: Book Soup on March 31 at 7pm., 8818 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood , CA (310) 659-3110. Free parking behind the store via Nellas St http://www.booksoup.com/about.html. I will be there along with Susie J. I have known her for almost 30 years and seeing those pictures really takes me back. I was at the opening for the book several weeks ago in DC. It was a great night, I saw people that I had not seen together in decades. So, I hope you all enjoyed the show and do hope you will tune in next week. STAY FANATIC!!! --Henry

For you Fanatics who can’t live without hearing this show again or if the original broadcast time is too hard on your sleep cycle here’s the re-broadcast schedule.
USA: Fridays: 0200 – 0400 hrs. PST
UK: Fridays: 1000 hrs. – 1200 hrs.
Continental Europe: Fridays 1100 hrs. – 1300 hrs.
Australia: Fridays 2100 hrs. – 2300 hrs.

Wesley Willis Fiasco – Jailbreak: We started tonight with one of the coolest covers I have ever heard, this is the amazing Wesley Willis and his Fiasco band and the track is found on the Vagabonds Of The Midwestern World Thin Lizzy tribute CD. It’s worth the whole record just for this track. The original version of this great rock song can be found on the Thin Lizzy album of the same name. Engineer X had to do some minor f-bomb removal on this one which is too bad because there’s few things in life that are better than hearing Wesley say, “Burger King, have it your own fucked up way!” Wesley Willis will never die!

The Fall – Strychnine: Luckily for this broadcast, The Fall has done a lot of covers. A lot of people know this Gerry Roslie (The Sonics) composition as a song The Cramps wrote and put on their first album Songs The Lord Taught Us. I have a lot of live shows of The Fall and the band did this song many times. We have never listened to The Sonics version of this song, I’ll dig that out one of these nights. I got this track from the Complete Peel Sessions of The Fall.

Minor Threat – Sometimes Good Guys Don’t Wear White: Minor Threat takes on this Standells classic. I only saw MT a few times after I left DC. Post DC, I saw them in NYC a couple of times and in California a few times and once in DC which was one of the best shows I have ever seen. I don’t remember if I saw them do this song. Minor Threat is perhaps better known for their covers of Wire’s 12XU and Stepping Stone (Boyce / Hart) more than this one. This song is most commonly found on the Complete Discography CD but some of us oldsters remember this from the 3 song 7” that also featured my favorite Minor Threat song, Salad Days. It has been one of the highpoints of my life, watching Ian play through the years. It kills me that I never saw his band Embrace. I know they only did a few shows and while they were around, I was on tour all the time but still, it pains me that I never saw that band play. I feel lucky that I got to see Ian’s first band, The Slinkees play their one show.

J. Mascis And The Fog - Leaving On A Jetplane: Written by John Denver, that’s right, John Denver. The version of the song I am most familiar with done by Peter Paul And Mary was always so heavy to listen to and I didn’t dig it all that much. Being a fan of everything J Mascis, I was interested to hear his version and it’s his version that makes me like the song. If you listen to the lyric, it’s a beautiful song. Forget that John Denver died in a plane crash. Wow! I got this track from the J. Mascis And The Fog’s Waistin CD single.

Iggy Pop - Sea Of Love: Iggy in croon mode. I love it! This is from the Party album. It was very tempting to play Tom Waits’ version of this song found on the Sea Of Love film soundtrack and his new Orphans box set but tonight we’re going with the King Of Rock And Roll’s version. This song was written by John Phillip Baptiste and George Khoury. The original version was recorded by Baptiste under the name Phil Phillips. I always like it when Iggy reached deep down for the vocal, he’s got it, he should use it more often.

The Birthday Party – Loose: Most bands who try and cover a Stooges song should not do that. Same for those who cover a Hendrix song. Some artists are so definitive that to even play their music with nothing but the best of intentions actually injures the band and shows their shortcomings that may not have been apparent when they played their own compositions. That being said, there are some bands that can actually pull it off because the band is just so great, they can take a song as peerless as a Stooges song and actually make it work. One of the bands who could do that, was The Birthday Party. In this Peel session from April of 1981, the band really let it rip and do this Fun House album track some justice.

Alan Vega - Be-Bop-A-Lula: From Vega’s Collision Drive album released in 1981. Everyone has heard Gene Vincent’s version, hell, it’s his song. I did some research on the song’s origins noticing that when a band covers an old song, it’s not always the band that made it famous actually wrote it. Being a fan of the Punk Rock and Independent music, you get used to people writing their own material but back in the 50’s, quite often it’s a different story. From what I’ve been able to understand, the song was written by Gene Vincent and Bill “Sheriff Tex” Davis but there’s also something I read that Vincent claims total authorship and also that he co-wrote it with a fellow named Donald Graves who then sold his share of the credit to Davis. I bet they’re all dead now. Anyway, even though we have played the very alive Alan Vega’s version before, I thought it was perfect for our show tonight.

Ozzy Osbourne & Type O Negative - Pictures Of Matchstick Men: I got this from the Private Parts soundtrack CD but it might be on that new Ozzy box set as well. I actually watched Ozzy do this vocal so it’s all the more interesting to me to hear the finished product. This is a Status Quo cover. Rick Rubin produced the session but when I was there, it sure looked like Dave Sardy was doing all the heavy lifting to me. I am very glad that Sardy is making his name as a producer. He’s always been a great engineer, his band Barkmarket was cool too.

Slayer - In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida: From the Less Than Zero soundtrack. Great film, great soundtrack. The genius of Rick Rubin knowing who to pick and what to do with the talent once he got it. Having Slayer do an Iron Butterfly song is just perfect. Just this track alone is worth the price of purchase but you also get Roy Orbison performing a song Glenn Danzig wrote called Life Fades Away, which we have played on our show before. What is interesting about this song to me is that it spent a year or so in the top ten. The album version is 17 minutes, I am sure they had a single edit version for radio and jukebox but still, you think about how that song would fare now and there’s no way it would get the time of day unless someone like Slayer covered it. I had this album when I was young and used to play this song all the time. It was the entire b-side of the album. Later on, I got the CD and have played a few times. I have to get it out again and listen to the A-side songs again, there might be something to bring on our show.

R.E.M - I Walked With A Zombie: Is this the first time we have played an R.E.M. track on our show? I believe it is. I have nothing against the band, actually when I saw them, they were great and have played some of their albums a lot. I don’t have all of them but I think they are a great band. This Roky Erickson track is from one of those tribute records that were almost falling out of the sky back when the music industry thought all the money hemorrhaging out of it was just cash flow and not the damn animal bleeding out. Where The Pyramid Meets The Eye is the name of it. I got it because of the ZZ Top version of Reverberation (Doubt) and some other bands on there like R.E.M. and the Butthole Surfers. So, what were we talking about? Oh yes, how Roky is one of the greatest songwriters ever to live in America. That’s true and I guess to prove that point, we’ll have to keep playing his music on our show.

DEVO - Are You Experienced?: Now you remember a few hundred words ago, we were discussing the dangers of a band covering songs by The Stooges or Hendrix. Well, here we are with one of the best bands covering one of the best songs by one of the best guitar players ever. What to do? Play it. DEVO have done a few covers in their time and to me, they always do something interesting with it because they themselves are so interesting. I am not all that much a fan of their cover of Working In A Coal Mine (or The Coal Mine depending on what CD you pick up) but only because I heard it too many times. Tonight’s track was taken from DEVO’s last album for Warner Bros. called Shout. It came out in 1984 but I didn’t hear it until 1986 when I got it while on tour at a record store that rocked my broke ass on a discount. I played this one to death and to this day, think it’s one of the band’s greatest albums. There’s a great moment during this track where the band takes the Hendrix lyric, “Not necessarily stoned but beautiful” and changed it to, “Not necessarily stoned but mutated” putting their own Devonian twist on the track. Well done, well done.

The Ramones - I Don't Want To Grow Up: A great song by the great Tom Waits and done a good deal of justice to it by The Ramones on their last album, Adios Amigos!. We have played this one before and it’s not the only song The Ramones covered but it’s perfect for tonight. One of the great things about covers is that it’s a way for one band or musician to pay tribute to another and that’s what this one is all about. The man and the band were friends and mutual fans.

The Lurkers – Pills: The Lurkers released this great Bo Diddley song as a b-side with I Don’t Need To Tell Her on the A-side. The New York Dolls have also covered this song. Many broadcasts ago, we listened to Mr. Diddley’s original version. We have listened to The Lurkers many times on the show.

Sham 69 - You're A Better Man Than I: Written by Mike and Brian Hugg, Mike was a co-founder of Manfred Mann along with Manfred Mann. The Yardbirds released this song as a single and Sham 69 covered it and put it on their The Adventures Of Hersham Boys album. This single had a great b-side called Give A Dog A Bone.

The Slits - I Heard It Through The Grapevine: The Slits did a great job on this track. All I knew about this band was what I had read in a Punk Rock book and from what the book said, the band didn’t seem like they had it together and then when their album Cut finally washed up on our shores and I played it, they sure didn’t seem to be lacking in good songs and the ability to play. It’s a great album, a standout. You Fanatics already know that. It’s a Whitfield / Strong composition that was actually worked on by more than a few Motown recording artists as Berry Gordy wanted to see which version would have the biggest hitting power, if you check out the Motown Sings Motown Classics album has Smokey Robinson singing the track. But back to The Slits. This song was not included on the band’s album but was a b-side of a 7 & 12” single with Typical Girls being the A-side. All their United Artists recordings are in print except for the A-side of the 12” which is Typical Girls (Brink Style) which to me is nothing to write home about although the song itself is great.

The Pixies - Head On: From the band’s Trompe Le Monde album. This is a great Jesus And The Mary Chain song done great by The Pixies. Their version is found on the band’s Automatic album, it was also a single. It sounds good when either band performs it.

Eater – Jeepster: I know that T Rex was cool for the early UK Punks and a lot of bands from that time reference the band and the man Marc Bolan. This track was the b-side of a single with the band’s very cool song Lock It Up as the A-side. Eater got their name from a T Rex lyric, “Tyrannosaurus Rex, the eater of cars.” You can get all the Eater you need from their Eater Chronicles 1976-2003 CD.

The Buzzcocks - I Love You, You Big Dummy: From the Time's Up album. First, something on the song, This is a Captain Beefheart song that is found on the Lick My Decals Off, Baby album. This is one of Beefheart’s bestest albums and it’s out of print on CD apparently. I bought mine when it was re-issued in 1989. I don’t know if it stayed in print all that long. The Time’s Up album was The Buzzcocks first proper recording session done in October 1976 in one afternoon at Revolution Studios in Stockport UK and was never planned for release at first. It was released as a bootleg and many years later, was released by Mute Records. It’s a great, early glimpse of The Buzzcocks with Howard Devoto on vocals. I don’t know what to tell you about the Beefheart record as to why it’s not in print. You would think someone would want that available. It could be tied up in some kind of wrangling.

Terrorvision + Die Cheerleader – The Model: A great version of this Kraftwerk song. I don’t know if this ever was released on CD. If it was, I can’t find a copy of it. I have a promo 12” on EMI that has this track. I don’t think we have to spend too much time talking about Kraftwerk as you Fanatics are already on that page and if you’re not, you know why you’re not, it’s not as if you need me to tell you who they are. For safety’s sake we might as well say here that The Model can be found on the band’s two albums The Man Machine as well as the version done in German, my favorite of the two, Die Mensch Maschine.

Henry Rollins / Chris Haskett - Ex Lion Tamer: From the Hot Animal Machine CD. This is a cover Wire song taken from the Pink Flag album. I know you know that. It’s a perfect album, Pink Flag and I always thought this song was really great and wanted to cover it for some time. I remember telling Michael Stipe I was going to cover this song and that night when I saw them play, he dedicated their cover of Wire’s Strange to me. The HAM record was my first post Black Flag effort. I think it was the only time I had fun making a record. It was a very liberating experience, being in the studio without Greg Ginn and always being in fear of failing our great leader!

The Minutemen – Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love: I always wonder what David Lee Roth would think of this. I don’t know if the man has ever heard it or not. For me, this was always a great moment for the band. I think it’s an interesting idea to take the middle part of the song and make that the song. Also, interesting the Minutemen picked this song at this time. Engineer X had to get a naughty word or two out of the track, which is too bad because when D Boon does it, it sounds great. This is on the The Blasting Concept Vol. II album and can be found with some internet snooping.

Doctor Mix And The Remix – Out Of The Question: This is a Seeds cover, written by Sky Saxon. I have hung out with the man a couple of times in my life and it’s always an interesting experience. The Seeds is are perhaps best known for their song Pushin’ Too Hard. Doctor Mix is a spilt off from Metal Urbain and all they did was covers. We have played a lot of the tracks on our show. I first heard this band when Ian got their version of No Fun on Rough Trade. All of their material can be found on the Wall Of Noise CD on the Acute label.

Kim Salmon And The Surrealists – Blue Velvet: From the album Hit Me With The Surreal Feel. I know nothing about the two song writers, Bernie Wayne and Lee Morris. They are also credited with a song called Satin that was recorded by Bobby Vinton. Kim’s version is incredible, it sounds like it’s melting. I was hoping to see him play the other night in Melbourne but I was there one night too early. I had my hopes up to see him play with his group called SALMON, which apparently is a Brancaesque assault of guitars with pulverizing drums. Dave Graney is involved?! That would have been a great night out. For more info on that endeavor: http://www.thedavegraneyshow.com/General/Salmon.html

Flipper – Super Freak / Elite Club SF CA 06-19-82 (live tape): I don’t think they have ever released this track anywhere. I had to forage through my live tapes to dig out a version. I think this was taped by Joe Carducci of SST Records fame. It was always a highpoint of the set for me. The disdain Bruce Loose sang it with was fantastic. There are going to be a lot of Flipper releases out this year if drummer Stephen DePace is correct, perhaps a better sounding version than this one will surface.

James Chance – I Got You (I Feel Good): By that Godfather of Soul, Mr. James Brown. James Chance put a lot of life into his JB covers, I think he capitalized on the hysterical intensity of the man and found it was a good fit. Chance will never get enough credit as far as I’m concerned. I think he’s a true music innovator. A lot of his stuff is back in print and you should at least check out Buy and Off White. This track was taken from the Live Aux Bain Douches album, back in print again on Ze Records