Caught in the Carousel

Make Out/Make Over (You Can Heckle, You Can Jeckle, But You Can't Hide)

By Chris Stroffolino

(Feeling ready for the "Bryan Ferry-like" [or call it Pin Ups if you must] Cover Album...)

Sittin' at the piano on a lazy sunny summer afternoon (it's early evening, but in summer that can be more like afternoon if you want it to be) half wishin' it was outside and in public, but that will happen and "in the meantime" doesn't have to be a mean time.

I read a friend's postcard poem about feeling all "Sunday Morning Coming Down" (or, perhaps, "The Other Side Of Nowhere,") which for me right now feels better, deeper.

Luckily, I managed to sleep through that today; the post-Grogg hangover (The Groggs played Ghost Town, Friday; hail!). The Grogg cleared with the Fog; around the crack of noon. Crawled onto bike for my endorphin/coffee cocktail; awake enough to want to need to play "Lazy Sunday Afternoon," in my best Steve Marriott artful dodger voice.

And now the song is a strong candidate for the covers album. It's not my favorite Small Faces song (if I could "have" just one), but it's probably the one most in my comfort range; and I've already been stretching the comfort zone with The Dells, Tower of Power and Rodger Collins-attempted white boy soul thing, and need to pull back into what I know I can do better; a snapshot of that, and then move on, or something....

And "Lazy Sunday Afternoon" can be that. It stretches me some, on the C section, but not as much as the more rockin'/soulful "Little Tin Soldier" does (besides, Todd Rundgren already has a fairly well-known cover of LTS)--but it's got a certain throw- away feel, yet with passion, a certain cocky rabble-rousing, more like early Pogues than "Simon Smith & His Dancing Bear...," the beautifully besmirched lust-for-life of the Staycation (or is it Sta-Cation; all I ever wanted....). Uh, it's fun; and even educational!

Charles at the Record Label (Happy Parts) is really into me releasing Double Sided MP3 Singles, with one side being a cover and the other an original. I had exactly that idea before we spoke. Synchronicity, yes, perhaps---but I refuse to cover any Sting songs for this project. All The Jung Dudes; maybe Bowie, or maybe baby. Charles says the more famous the better; and it's true that my silly dashed-off whiteface cover of "Must Let The Show Go On" has become something of a YouTube hit, but I don't see that making the cut for this first album.

Nor do I see many of the crowd-pleasers in my late night post-Ghost Town show drunken punk Rob Dibble cabaret (or my Left Curve socialist party Csaba Polony Jack Hirschman Agneta Falk oldies) covers repertoire making the cut. Sure, I'll probably perform the "comic relief" mosh up of "Happy Together/People Are Strange" (the two sides of the 'Summer Of Love') or one verse (tops!) of "Piano Man" as sung by Tom Waits, but they are more like Townes Van Zandt's jokes about taking penguins to zoos. Besides, I just had a huge row with a friend who wants to cover "Roadhouse Blues." No way, I say. So, yeah, I've got the snob in me.

I definitely want to include a late-1980's College Radio hit medley (still deciding on which songs to use; but I'm pretty sure one of them will be The Magnolias' "Reach Out"); and I'm working on trying to pull off a song from Willie Nelson's Crazy Demos. But more on that stuff later. Today I also tried out Graham Parker's "Protection," and that's also higher on the list. Singing the last verse of the song, just before he sings, "I'm not really laughing, honey," really cracked me up as I played it. It's angry-fun, or fun-angry; he gets compared to Elvis Costello a lot; I do, too. But even though I love Elvis Costello (and have been known to do a good "Miracle Man," "Pay It Back," etc), Graham Parker to me is better at that mock scorner-of-love posture Costello was more known for; I just feel he means it more. We mean it, man.

But "Protection," like "Pay It Back," don't start out as being about a specific relationship, but more about their self-conscious theatrical monologue, perhaps revealing and concealing simultaneously like in John Ashbery's "Self Portrait In A Convex Mirror," of the Brechtian alienation effect. The so-called Skeptical Generation, I mean, The Blank Generation. Whatever. "Protection" can feel 2010 as much as anything to me; it's a "Keep On Pushin'" anthem (should I cover Curtis? Hmmmm...he was a "mod" as much as Paul Weller and Weller's still on the list...).

I can see making the middle section of "Protection" closer to the way early Neil Diamond did gospel (the three Monkees songs; "Thank The Lord For The Nighttime," etc); this way I won't have to cover Diamond as well (or I could maybe even collage it into the "Pot Smoker's Song") maybe ending the piano riff to "All Sold Out" by The Rolling Stones as the coda of "Protection." Hmmm, think about what happened to The Verve when they ripped off that song the Stones ripped off (with better lawyers) from The Staple Singers, and so on...

Anyway, I think I could do "Protection" justice with just about any producer; partially because I think the late-1970's production is part of why the great songwriting on that album isn't reaching a lot of the younger folk--make it less sterile. If I do "We Got To Get You A Woman," Greg Ashley's still my first choice. How about combining The The's "This Will Be The Day" with The Dream Syndicate's "Tell Me When It's Over?" And, yes, I still want to try covering "Sheela Na-Gig," combining it perhaps with Laura Nyro's "Stony End." And Alan Hull's "Country Gentleman's Wife." And blues? "Fool's Paradise," or "But I Was Cool?" Or...And, crooner ballads: "Don't Make Me Over." or "Don't Say You Don't Remember."

Or "You can heckle, you can jeckle, but you can't hide" (in the words of Jane Ransom!)

I should check to see if the COVERVILLE PODCAST is still on KYOU (used to be AM-1550, but now abandoned AM for an oldies station...more on that crucial battleground for new indie music another time....

In the meantime!

Readers, feel free to heckle! Send requests of songs you'd like to hear cover versions of; we might choose yours! Send cover songs you hate and reasons why; cover songs you yourself may have already done, for our internationally broadcast all-covers podcast. Essays, spoken word pieces about covers, covers of Lenny Bruce or Chris Rock Routines, diatribes against Intellectual Property Laws, etc. The "cult of originality" vs. "the cult-of-mimesis"(in Rene Girard's terms)...We just wanna get musicians and listeners, performers and critics to interact here on the pros-and-cons of doing covers, and since I've been both musician, DJ and critic (and have played on some songs that are covered a lot in indie-rock circles), I know we could have a very intense discussion!