I was in North Carolina this weekend, so let's go with a song by a band from The Tarheel State.
Indie/alt rockers Archers of Loaf formed in Chapel Hill in 1991. They put our four studio albums between 1993 and 1998, before breaking up (and then reuniting decades later, putting out another album in 2002).
They're probably best known for their 1993 song "Web in Front," which was both released as a single and as a track on their debut album, Icky Mettle. It's a catchy alt rock song that was featured both in an episode of Beavis and Butthead and in one of my favorite movies of all-time, Mallrats. It's pure early '90s alternative with some new wave influences, and there's a smidgen of pop punk foreshadowing under all the '90s angst. The song didn't chart on any of the Billboard charts, but the video got decent play on MTV. Since its release, the song has been well regarded. In its 2010 list of the 200 best songs from the '90s, Pitchfork ranked "Web in Front" #77.
We're heading back to the Midwest for the eleventh song of this Rocktober. Chicago's Sincere Engineer has been putting out music for about ten years now. I've had the pleasure of seeing them four or five times, and they put on a great show. They always seem like they're (a) having fun and (b) grateful to be there -- which are two of the best qualities a band can have while onstage.
Musically, they straddle the line between punk, pop punk, and indie rock, whatever that means. I think I would classify their songs as being observational, introspective, and/or somewhat self-deprecating. And my selection probably falls within all everything I've just mentioned.
"Corn Dog Sonnet No. 7" is a song off the band's debut album, 2017's Rhombithian. It doesn't get more American or more Midwestern than encased meat encased in cornmeal and deep fried -- and then writing and recording a song about it. Well, more specifically, it's about lying on the couch all day and eating corn dogs. The video, which was made by lead singer Deanna Belos, has various scenes of the songs lyrics written on things in mustard -- and as the liner notes to the YouTube video say, "probably ruined a lot of stuff in the process." It doesn't get more Chicago than mustard and hot dogs. Frankly, people who put ketchup on hot dogs are untrustworthy as humans. There, I said it.
I'm going to be returning some videotapes tomorrow, but I'll be back on Monday for another exciting week of America 250 Rocktober.
With the thousands of bands and artists from California, it was tough figuring out which one would be my choice for the Golden State's inclusion in this Rocktober celebration of American music. But then I looked back though my detailed Rocktober records and realized I have never featured a song by Rage Against the Machine during Rocktober, and that made the choice easy.
Rage Against the Machine was formed in LA in the early '90s, and the band soon established itself as a unique force in the rock world. Melding politically tinged lyrics with music grounded in metal, funk, and rap, all from a multi-racial band, Rage's music is as American as apple pie, you dirty capitalist.
Of all the Rage songs out there, I decided to go with one I could have included in last year's Coverocktober: their 2000 cover of hip hop/rap pioneers Afrika Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force's 1983 song "Renegades of Funk." And my choice is somewhat timely, as Bambaataa died earlier this year at the age of 68.
The song is about "renegades" and revolutionary figures throughout history, in thought, politics, civil rights, and the like. So it was a perfect song for Rage to cover, and they did a hell of a job making it their own. Rage transformed the song from a electronic hip hop song into a raging (pun intended) funk/rap metal song. The video is also a nice homage to dozens of funk and hip-hop musicians, as well as the Civil Rights movement. This is a song that requires you to roll the windows down and crank it when it comes on the radio. And then jam, sucka.
I forgot to do an America 250 Rocktober-themed Tuesday Top Ten last week, and frankly, we both deserve better. But if I had done one last week, it would have been songs that contain the word "America" in the title, so let's do it now. To keep things in line with the America 250 Rocktober parameters, I'm only going with songs from American artists. I'm also going strictly with "America," rather than expanding it to "American," "Americana," "American't," etc.
And by Jove, remember, this is Rocktober, so this isn't mean to be some "best of" list of songs with "America" in the title, but rather ten songs that rock that have "America" in the title and are maybe from varying genres. I'm just going in alphabetical order by artist, and I'll put the state where they're from in parentheses after the name).
1. "New America" by Bad Religion (CA)
The title track to punk rockers Bad Religion's 2000 album has a nice sing-along chorus.
2. "In America" by Britny Fox (PA)
Britny Fox put out this screamy hair metal song on their self-titled 1988 album.
3. "Which Way to America" by Living Colour (NY)
Funk rockers Living Colour crush it on this frenetic funk rock song with a message.
4. "America" by Neil Diamond (NY)
This was the first song I thought of when I started making this list, and then I thought "does this song rock hard enough to be included in Rocktober?" The answer is yes, it does.
5. "(You Can Still) Rock in America" by Night Ranger (CA)
Though best known for their sublime power ballad "Sister Christian," Night Ranger could rock with the best of 'em.
6. "Little America" by REM (GA)
From their 1984 sophomore album, Reckoning, "Little America" is a great, fast-paced, new wavy college rock song.
7. "Son of An America" by The So So Glos (NY)
You may not have heard of New York punk band The So So Glos, but I saw them years ago at Lollapalooza and then again at a small club here in Chicago. "Son of An America" is a nice example of their catchy punk style.
8. "Miss America" by Styx (IL)
"Miss America" is off of Styx's 1977 Grand Illusion album. It starts out slow and orchestral, but then it kicks into the real song, a gritty rock song with some soulful vocals from James Young.
9. "Somewhere in America" by Survivor (IL)
"Somewhere in America" is a bluesy, snarly rock song from the western suburbs' own Survivor, kind of like a nod to The Faces.
10. "Surf Wax America" by Weezer (CA)
Among the many amazing songs on Weezer's iconic 1994 debut album ("The Blue Album"), perhaps "Surf Wax America" may get lost in the mix. But this is a
We're sticking in the Midwest for today's America 250 Rocktober selection. I also realized that all the songs so far have been from the '80s or later, with the exception of ZZ Top's "Just Got Paid." So I'm going even further back, to the nascent years of rock and roll.
Chuck Berry -- from St. Louis -- is, of course, one of the early stars of rock and roll and one of the most famous and influential musicians in rock history. His guitar playing and showmanship have influenced countless musicians, from George Harrison to Keith Richards to Angus Young to Marty McFly.
While Berry's catalog is vast and plentiful, I had to go with one of his classics, 1958's "Johnny B. Goode." We take it for granted by now, but what a hell of a song for the tail-end of the stodgy '50s. It was the first rock and roll song about being a rock and roll star. More importantly, it told a rags-to-riches tale of an illiterate country boy with an innate talent for playing the guitar -- telling us that anyone can be a rock star, regardless of socioeconomic backgrounds. Musically, the song kicks off with that famous opening riff, and it's all energy for the rest of the song.
"Johnny B. Goode" went to #8 on the pre-cursor to the Billboard Hot 100 and #2 on the Billboard R&B singles chart. In 1977, it was included as one of the 27 songs (and the only rock and roll song) on the Voyager Golden Record -- a record that was inserted into both the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecrafts, just in case aliens one day find either craft, figure out how to work the record player included in the craft, and then think, "man, that Earth place was super weird back at some point in time before it exploded several hundred thousand years ago."
My favorite sentence from the Wikipedia page about the Voyager Golden Record: "Although neither Voyager spacecraft is heading toward any particular star, Voyager 1 will pass within 1.6 light-years' distance of the star Gliese 445, currently in the constellation Camelopardalis, in about 40,000 years." So the closest we're gonna come to any potential alien lifeform discovering this record will be in 40,000 years when Voyager 1 comes within approximately 9.4 trillion miles of some star with a stupid name. To put that in perspective, you could go to and from Pluto over 1,200 times, and it still wouldn't be 1.6 light years.
But I digress. I'm embedding a fan video of the song that features the studio recording, but with some Berry TV performances.
First off, I want to wish you all a happy Canadian Thanksgiving. Second, there will be no Canadian music for you to hear, since we're celebrating American music this Rocktober. Our next song comes from the Crossroads of America. Formed in Indianapolis in 1980, Zero Boys were one of the few hardcore punk bands that wasn't from one of the coasts. I had the pleasure of seeing them at Riot Fest last year, and I'd be lying if I told you I had heard any of their music before making my Riot Fest playlists. But I liked what I heard!
They put out their self-released debut single, "Livin' in the '80s" in late 1980, and it was also later included on the band's first full-length album, 1981's Vicious Circle. It starts off with a nice fuzzy guitar riff, and the song is about not being dead in the penultimate decade of the last millennium. It has a nice sing-along call-and-response chorus, and it also packs in a nice little guitar solo into the two minutes and ten seconds of song.
The band continued to make music throughout the '80s, though most of their output was on compilations. They broke up in the late '80s, but then reunited shortly thereafter and released studio albums in 1991 and 1993, before breaking up again for another decade. They reunited in the mid aughts and put out another record in 2014. Apparently, lead singer Paul Mahern now lives in Bloomington, so that's cool.
For our second Hair Band Friday of this Rocktober celebrating American rock and roll, we're going to stay in the Pacific Northwest. Glam metal rockers Black 'N Blue formed in Portland, Oregon in the early '80s before moving to L.A., as was the style at the time.
They first received attention when their song "Chains Around Heaven" -- the very song I have embedded below -- was included on the now-legendary original Metal Massacre compilation in 1982. That compilation also featured then-unknown bands Metallica and Ratt, among others. After moving to L.A., they were soon signed by Geffen, and they put out four records between 1984 and 1988, though none cracked the top 100 of the Billboard album chart. Their third and fourth albums were produced by Gene Simmons.
The band broke up in 1989, but has gotten back together at various points and in various iterations over the decades. In 2002, lead guitarist Tommy Thayer became a member of his old producer's band, KISS, playing the role of Spaceman ever since.
But back to the song. "Chains Around Heaven" is a nice, hard-driving early '80s hard rock song with a catchy sing-along chorus -- a harbinger of what was to become of rock over the next decade.
We've dabbled in the South, the Northeast, and the Midwest, but I haven't yet featured a band or artist from the West Coast. The State of Washington has given us many great bands and artists over the years, including Jimi Hendrix, The Sonics, Heart, and many many grunge bands.
But grunge wasn't the only genre to come out of the state in the early '90s. A little more than an hour down I-5 from Seattle is the state capital, Olympia and Evergreen State College, a bastion of liberal thinking and creativity. Out of Olympia came the riot grrrl scene, a DIY feminist punk genre spearheaded by bands like Bikini Kill, Heavens to Betsy, Bratmobile, Excuse 17, and Sleater-Kinney.
I've already featured songs by Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney in prior Rocktobers, so I'm going with Bratmobile, who I just saw put on a great show at Riot Fest a few weeks ago. While two of the band's founding members, Allison Wolfe (who is from Olympia) and Molly Neuman met as students at the University of Oregon, the band played their first gig and recorded their first songs in Olympia. They also played at the now-legendary International Pop Underground Convention in Olympia in August 1991.
Between 1993 and 1994, the band released a full-length album, an EP, and a live album, but then broke up on stage at a show in New York in May 1994. They reunited just before the dawn of the new millennium and released two more albums, one in 2000 and another in 2002, before going their separate ways again. But they reunited again a few years ago, which means a new generation (or Gen Xers who didn't really know about them the first time around) get a chance to see them.
Anyway, I'm going with "Cool Schmool," off of the band's debut album, 1993's Pottymouth. It's a frantic, surf-rock-tinged punk song mostly about not being concerned about being cool, but also partly about hating dogs and loving cats. So they got that part wrong.
For out fifth America 250 Rocktober song, we travel to America's smallest state, Rhode Island. John Cafferty and The Beaver Brown Band formed in Narragansett -- which is not where Narragansett Brewing Company is located -- in the early '70s.
They achieved fame as the band behind the fictional band Eddie and The Cruisers in the 1983 film of the same name, where John Cafferty and The Beaver Brown Band played all of the original songs that were featured in the movie, though saxophonist Michael Antunes is the only member of the band who actually appears in the film.
John Cafferty and The Beaver Brown Band/Eddie and The Cruisers' biggest hit was "On the Dark Side," a bar band rocker that could have seamlessly fit onto any of Bruce Springsteen's albums in the '80s (other than maybe Nebraska). When the song was originally released in September 1983 (at the same time the movie was released), it didn't fare too well, only reaching #64 on the Billboard Hot 100. It probably didn't help that the movie was pulled from theaters after three weeks because of poor ticket sales.
However, the movie found new life a year later on HBO and through video sales. In fact, the movie did so well on HBO and in video sales that the studio re-released the soundtrack in 1984, and it reached #9 on the Billboard album chart and eventually went multi-platinum. "On the Dark Side" was re-released as well, in August 1984, and it shot up to #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #1 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart (where it stayed at the top for five weeks).
The band continued to put out music for the rest of the decade and had another four Top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100. John Cafferty also contributed a solo song, "Heart's On Fire," to the Rocky IV soundtrack. In April 2025, they released their first studio album in 36 years, though unfortunately, Antunes died a few months later at 85. Sorry, but I guess I just had to end on the -- wait for it -- dark side.
I've never featured a Slipknot song on Rocktober before, and now's as good a time as any, since I'm trying not to repeat bands/artists from the same state, and there aren't a ton of hard rock bands from Iowa.
Formed in 1995 in Des Moines -- which a lot of people don't realize is French for "the moines" -- Slipknot has like six dozen members, all of whom wear a unique creepy mask and jumpsuit. They also play heavy metal music, and quite successfully at that. Of the band's six studio albums, only their debut album didn't reach the Top 3 on the Billboard album chart, and three of their albums went to #1.
Released off of the band's third studio album, 2004's platinum-selling Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses), "Duality" was one of the band's biggest hits, reaching #5 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, #6 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart, #15 on the UK pop chart, and the Top 40 on the pop charts in Germany and Sweden.
The song is mostly a pretty hard metal song, with Corey Taylor kind of speed-talking the verses before the choruses explode with "I push my fingers into my EEEYYYYYEEEESSSS." But what I've always liked about the song is that behind the brutal riffs and general hardcore nature of the song, the chorus is pretty damn melodic and hooky. A duality, if you will.
Perhaps the coolest thing about the song is the video. It was filmed at a fan's house in West Des Moines. Apparently, the house was soon going to be renovated. The band plays inside the house, while dozens of fans descend upon the house in what looks like a scene from Cornheart. (I assume Cornheart would be the name of a Braveheart-style movie set in Iowa.) They basically destroy the house in the process, breaking windows, plowing through walls, bustin pipes, and the like. Hopefully, the renovations went swimmingly.
Thus far, we've had some blues rock and hair metal, so for song #3 on this celebration of American music, we'll go with some '80s alternative rock -- or as the kids used to call it, college rock.
Hailing from Wayne, New Jersey, Dramarama was formed in the early '80s in the basement of a record store owned by founding member and bassist Chris Carter. For those fellow SiriusXM subscribers, you'll recognize him as the calm-voiced DJ on The Underground Garage's "Chris Carter's British Invasion." But before he got into the disc jockeying game, his band Dramarama was making power pop and alternative rock in the mid '80s to early '90s. In the early 2000s, they were featured on VH1's Bands Reunited show, and they got back together and put out another album in 2005 (and then another one in 2020).
If you've heard only one song by Dramarama, it's probably "Anything, Anything (I'll Give You)." Originally released on the band's 1985 debut album Cinema Verite, the song was then re-released a few years later, when it was featured on the soundtrack to A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master.
I don't recall ever hearing this song until sometime in the last ten years, when I was watching VH1 Classic late at night and the video for this song came on (though it's a different video than the one embedded below, as there were apparently two videos made). I thought the song was awesome, even if the video I saw looked like it was recorded on a camcorder. Maybe that added to the song's mysterious charm. I remember thinking "what is this homemade video I'm seeing of this unknown band singing this fantastic song from a bygone era that I've somehow never heard before?" It's a frenetically paced song, written by lead singer John Easdale, inspired by his marriage that was falling apart. His desperation comes through in his impassioned vocals, over the top of a catchy repeating guitar riff. When I hear the term "college rock," this is exactly the kind of song I think of. It doesn't fit squarely into any genre that was popular in the late '80s, but it's catchy and it rocks.
Listening to the song, it was certainly ahead of its time. The song didn't chart in the U.S. (on any chart) either time it was released, and it was a very minor hit in Australia (#85) in 1989 after it was re-released. I feel like if this song had been released between 1992 and 1994, it would have been a massive hit.
Our first Hair Band Friday of this America 250 Rocktober comes from a band that I have only featured once previously during Rocktober -- way back in 2017, when the whole Rocktober was dedicated to hair bands. Man, that was a blurry month.
Poison was formed in Mechanicburg, Pennsylvania, before moving to Los Angeles in 1985. Despite their hair and makeup, I've always considered them a working-class band, which I very much mean as a compliment. If you've ever seen them live, they put on a great show, and they always come across as very down to earth and accessible -- well, maybe not CC DeVille, but every band needs a wild card.
Their 1986 debut album Look What the Cat Dragged In was a smash, reaching #3 on the Billboard album chart and eventually going triple platinum. There was no sophomore slump, as their follow-up, 1988's Open Up and Say . . . Ahh! hit #2 on the Billboard album chart and eventually went quintuple platinum. The original album cover featured a demonic cat woman with a super long pointy tongue sticking out of her mouth -- which you see on the YouTube video below. In the era of the PMRC and the "Satanic Panic," such an album cover drew the ire of parents' groups, so they had to change it to a redacted cover that only showed the woman's eyes. It doesn't get more American than censoring album covers for the sake of the children.
The album featured four songs that charted in the Top 12 of the Billboard Hot 100, including the band's only #1, the iconic power ballad "Every Rose Has Its Thorn." The others were "Nothin' But a Good Time" (#6), "Fallen Angel" (#12)," and their cover of Loggins & Messina's "Your Mama Don't Dance" (#10).
I'm going with a deep cut, but a good one: "Look But You Can't Touch." It's a balls-forward rocker that starts with a crunchy guitar riff, and the chorus is catchy as hell. But the song is not your usual Decade of Decadence fare about getting laid. It's quite the opposite. The girl is chaste, and she staves off the narrator's advances, saying "you can look, but you can't touch, 'cause the best things in life ain't cheap" implying she's not going to do a damn thing with him absent some sort of long-term meaningful relationship, even after she chugs a beer in Bret's hotel room.
The first song in this year's America 250 Rocktober is from a band that I have somehow never featured during Rocktober: the legendary Texas trio ZZ Top. It's somewhat bittersweet, as earlier this year, we lost drummer Frank Beard -- who was the only member of the band who didn't sport a beard -- leaving guitarist/singer Billy Gibbons as the only surviving member (bassist/singer Dusty Hill died in 2021).
"Just Got Paid" is the second song off of the band's sophomore album, 1972's Rio Grande Mud, and it is probably my favorite ZZ Top song. This is just a badass blues rock song that should be played at maximum volume with all the windows rolled down while cruising around town in your 1977 Trans Am. Or in your late-model minivan, for that matter. Gibbons's opening riff is infectious, Hill holds down the bottom with aplomb, and Beard gives us a few delicious fills.
I always imagine this song being played during a scene in a movie when our protagonist is triumphantly walking away from a situation where he or she crushed it when not expected to succeed, maybe throwing on a pair of sunglasses and cracking a wry "I can't believe I did it" smirk. And yes, Hollywood, I am very open to talking about positions for whatever you might call someone who picks music for movies and/or TV shows.
Dear readers, while I have admittedly shat the bed on posting for most of this year, there is one month that will bring me back into your lives: Rocktober!
A few months ago, America celebrated is 250th birthday. I was still dead and there were no blogs when the bicentennial came and went, and I probably won't still be blogging when the tricentennial comes along, so to celebrate the semiquincentennial, this year's Rocktober theme will be America 250.
All of the songs will be from American bands or artists. For band to qualify, more than 50% of the band must be American. For example, the Jimi Hendrix Experience doesn't count because of the three members, only Jimi Hendrix himself was American. And while Crosby, Stills & Nash would count (as Graham Nash was the only non-American), Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young would not count (because Neil Young is Canadian).
And just to make it significantly more difficult on myself, each band or artist I feature will be from a different state. That way, we can truly experience music from across our nation, rather than just a bunch of songs by bands or artists from California or New York. I'm not going to limit myself for any Tuesday Top Tens, as even I have limits.
As I do every October, I'm gonna give you a daily dose of rock, at least on the weekdays when I'm not out of town. There will be no repeated artists during the course of the month. I'm going to try my best not to repeat songs that I have featured in prior Rocktobers, but I make no promises. As always, the week leading up to Halloween will feature songs with dark, evil, or macabre themes. And my Friday choices will, of course, be from hair bands. Retro Video of the Week will be suspended during Rocktober (not that I've been posting those recently anyway), but Hair Band Friday will continue because Hair Band Friday cannot be killed.
As always, remember that this is Rocktober, so these will all be bands, artists, and songs that rock, even though they may not always be from genres or artists that you would consider "rocking" or "rockers." There will be popular songs, songs that you may never had heard before, and maybe even some bands and artists you've never heard of. But for the sake of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, everything will rock.
We've reached the end of Rocktober, but be sure to tune in Monday for Crowvember, a daily look at nature's most misunderstood avian animal.
But before then, we have one more Coverocktober song for you. It's Hair Band Friday, so our final selection will be Mötley Crüe's cover of The Beatles' "Helter Skelter."
"Helter Skelter" is one of my favorite Beatles songs, off of my favorite Beatles album, their self-titled 1968 four-sided masterpiece we know as The White Album.
As rock lore goes, Paul McCartney wrote "Helter Skelter" after hearing an interview with Pete Townshend, who described "I Can See For Miles" as the loudest and rawest song The Who had ever recorded. Being a Beatle, Paul thought "challenge accepted," so wrote a blistering (literally, if you believe Ringo's outburst at the end) rock song that is considered one of the first heavy metal songs.
A helter skelter is a British term for a large amusement park slide that spirals along a tower. So why is a cover of the song being included in Coverocktober on Halloween week -- and Halloween itself, at that? Well you see, there was this guy one time who thought this song about a slide (that even specifically refers to a slide) and a couple other songs on the White Album were actually coded songs that predicted an international race war. That guy's name was Charles Manson. "Helter Skelter" was part of his motivation for the Manson Family's horrific Tate-LaBianca murders in the LA area in 1969, and it ended up being the name of the best-selling book written by Vincent Bugliosi (the prosecutor in the Manson murder trial) about the murders and the subsequent trials (a chilling but worthwhile read), as well as the name of a 1976 made-for-TV movie based on the book. After Manson Family members murdered the LaBiancas, Patricia Krenwinkel wrote the misspelled "Healter Skelter" in all caps on the LaBiancas' refrigerator door in Rosemary LaBianca's blood. Cults, am I right?
Mötley Crüe's version was the last track on the first side of their epic 1983 album Shout at the Devil. It was the perfect cover song for an album that drew the ire of parents and the PMRC, alongside songs with "devil," "kill," "dead," "beast," and "danger" in the titles. Their version is an even more hard-rocking, but generally true-to-the-original, version of the song. Happy Halloween, piggies!
Yesterday we featured a cover medley of two Misfits songs, so today we're featuring a cover song by The Misfits -- their version of the Halloween classic "Monster Mash."
The now-iconic and enduring original version of the song was released by Bobby "Boris" Pickett and The Crypt-Kickers in 1962, and it went to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 that year, just before Halloween. It has reentered the Billboard Hot 100 five times over the years, reaching #10 in 1973 and the Top 30 within the last few years.
In the early '60s, Pickett was an aspiring actor who was also in a band. At a show one night, he started doing an impression of Boris Karloff, a horror movie icon best known for his portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in the original 1931 version of Frankenstein. The crowd loved Pickett's impression, so he decided to capitalize on it. He and his fellow band member Lenny Capizzi wrote "Monster Mash," with Pickett doing his Karloff impression as he sings about a mad scientist whose monster arises and starts dancing (a variation of the popular dance craze the Mashed Potato), and then he invites all of his monster friends. And then they fucking party.
In 1997, The Misfits recorded a cover of the song as part of a promotion relating to the DVD release of a 1967 Rankin Bass stop motion animation film called Mad Monster Party -- which starred, you guessed it, Boris Karloff. The Misfits then released their version of "Monster Mash" as a single in 1999 and rerecorded it for their 2003 album Project 1950. The song is notable because it was the first song on which bassist Jerry Only sang lead vocals. I'm posting the 2003 version because I like that version slightly better than the 1997/1999 version. Like the original, they use bubbling and chain sound effects at the beginning, before it turns into a punked-up, fast-paced version of the song, with sing-along backing vocals. All in all, a pretty damn fine cover that both pays homage to the original and makes it their own at the same time.
Our next selection in the darkness of the last week of Coverocktober comes courtesy of one of the best cover bands there's ever been, Metallica.
In 1987, the band released a five-song EP of covers called The $5.98 E.P. - Garage Days Re-Revisited, and then in 1998, they released Garage, Inc., which included a full album of new covers on disc one and then Garage Days (which had been unavailable since its original run in 1987) and some additional covers that had been B-sides to singles or were one-off recordings on disc two.
One of the covers from the 1987 Garage Days EP was a medley of two Misfits songs -- because it takes two Misfits songs to make one three and a half minute song -- "Last Caress/Green Hell." Then at the end of the song, there's a little wonky, out-of-tune version of the opening riff to Iron Maiden's "Run to the Hills." The Misfits songs are pretty true to the originals, but Metallicized.
"Last Caress" has been a standard at Metallica live shows over the years, though they usually leave "Green Hell" out of it. The song was also the centerpiece of a minor controversy. At the 1996 MTV Europe Music Awards, the band was supposed to perform "King Nothing," but MTV forbid the band from swearing or using pyrotechnics. So they did what any good metal band would do: they played a song about murder and rape, which got them banned from MTV for a few years.
"Green Hell" is a blistering hardcore song, originally released by The Misfits in 1983, but in my mind, that takes a backseat to "Last Caress." The original version of "Last Caress" (recorded in 1980) is one of my favorite Misfits songs, and it's widely considered one of their best songs and one of the best punk songs ever, for that matter. In a 2019 poll, it was voted by New Jersey residents -- New Jerseyeans? New Jersers? New Jerseyganders? New Jersies? -- as the best song ever released by a band or artist from New Jersey, beating out Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Skid Row, and other great Jersey bands and artists. That's crazy.
The lyrical content of the song is disturbing, purportedly the fictional confession of a killer and rapist. The opening stanza is about as brutal as it gets: "I got something to say / I killed a baby today / And it doesn't matter much to me / As long as it's dead." That's followed by a stanza about raping "your mother." Then the chorus is about longing for "sweet lovely death," though whether that's the killer wanting to die or talking about giving his victims "one last caress" before they die is unclear. But the way Glenn Danzig sings the song has a macabre beauty to it, where if you weren't listening to the lyrics, you might think it's a punk cover of a late '50s/early '60s teen tragedy song. It's a hell of a song, but certainly not for the faint of heart.
Back in 2013, Swedish metal band Ghost released a five-song EP called If You Have Ghost. It was produced by Dave Grohl, who also played on a couple of the tracks, and all but one of the songs on the EP were covers. But these weren't your standard metal covers of other hard rock or metals songs. The band covered ABBA's "I'm a Marionette," Depeche Mode's "Waiting for the Night," Swedish pop group Army of Lovers' "Crucified," and Roky Erickson's "If You Have Ghosts."
Their cover of "If You Have Ghosts" seems to fit with the band's mystique and, of course, fits very well with the band's name. Now if you're not familiar with Roky Erickson, I'll give you some background. Erickson was a co-founder, lead singer, and rhythm guitarist of the influential Austin-based psychedelic rock band The 13th Floor Elevators, whose 1966 song "You're Gonna Miss Me" -- with Erickson's howling vocals -- is considered a treasure of both the garage rock and psychedelic rock genres. Then in 1969, he got busted with a joint, and rather than face up to a decade in a Texas prison, he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, so he was sentenced to a state mental hospital, where he remained until 1972. In between electroconvulsive therapy treatments, Erickson wrote songs, many of which would end up on future albums.
After he was released, he formed a band that would become Roky Erickson & The Aliens, and Erickson's lyrics and music took more of a hard rock and horror-inspired turn. In 1978 and 1979, the band recorded songs that would end up on a self-titled EP in 1980 and a full-length album, The Evil One, in 1981. CCR bassist Stu Cook produced the songs, and the recording sessions were interrupted when Erickson got arrested while having a psychotic episode and then had to spend three months in a state hospital before returning to finish the songs. He also did a lot of drugs.
"If You Have Ghosts" was on The Evil One, and the original song is kind of a frenzied southern rock power pop song, with Erickson seeming to go off the rails a couple times. I'd say Ghost's cover version is far more polished, with staccato strings kicking the song off, crisp vocals from Papa Emeritus II, some nice guitar solos from some Nameless Ghoul, rhythm guitar from Grohl, and generally a more clean feel than the original. But they turned it into one of their anthems. Also, The Nameless Grohls would be a great name for a Ghost/Foo Fighters tribute band.
Well folks, we've reached the ultimate week of Rocktober, which means it's Halloween week! And that means the Coverocktober songs from here on out will be songs that feature dark, macabre, or creepy themes. So let's start with one of the all-time perfect Halloween week songs: "Black Sabbath."
This is one of the rare examples of an eponymous song off an eponymous album. As the title track and first track from Black Sabbath's 1970 debut album, "Black Sabbath" is just a creepy, badass song that announced a new genre of music. Can you imagine what this must have sounded like in 1970? Less than two months after the end of the '60s and flower power, heavy metal was born with this song. It starts off with rain and some distant church bells, perhaps in a quaint village in the English countryside. And then plunges into the devil's triad -- an inverted tritone (I have no idea what that means!) that was very rarely used in music because it was said to summon Satan. It doesn't get any more metal than that. But then it does. Ozzy's voice is chilling, and the lyrics are chilling, describing a figure in black pointing at the narrator, who tries to run away. Turns out it's Satan, and he's smiling. That's never a good sign. The lyrics were inspired by a now-infamous metal legend, experienced by bassist Geezer Butler a couple years earlier. He had painted his apartment black -- as one does when he is obsessed with the occult -- and he had, among other things, a black occult book that Ozzy had given him, which was written in Latin (obviously) and contained various pictures of Satan. Butler put the book on a shelf next to his bed before he went to bed one night. Then he wakes up in the middle of the night to see a giant figure in black standing at the end of his bed and pointing at him. After the figure disappeared, Butler got up and the book was gone. Now I would have immediately painted my room a different color and removed all occult books from my flat, but Butler wrote a song instead -- and we thank him for that.
The original is a classic, but I assure you, it's not as creepy as New York goth metal band Type O Negative's cover, which closed out the 1994 Black Sabbath tribute album, Nativity in Black. Type O Negative transforms the song with their cover, going full-on doom by ramping up the Satanic references, adding weird sound effects and chants, and slowing the song down to a snail's pace. Lead singer Peter Steele's deep voice is the stuff of nightmares on this song. Type O Negative's version makes you feel like you're trapped in a bog, trying to escape from some cannibalistic cult in the middle of the night, but you can barely move through the sludge, and they're closing in.
As seems to be the pattern, I failed to post a Coverocktober hair band song on Friday, so you get two songs/posts today.
As you may know, Def Leppard is one of my favorite bands. Not only is their original music great, but they can play a damn fine cover song. Back in 2006, they released their ninth studio album, Yeah!, which was a cover album paying tribute to the British rock-and-rollers of the '70s who influenced them. As I learned on a bonus CD I bought (containing several extra songs and a couple band interviews), the band chose nearly entirely songs by British bands and chose only songs that were released before Def Leppard signed their first record deal. It's quite different than any other cover album out there.
Most of the songs are not songs that you would normally hear on the radio, except maybe on a "deep cuts weekend." The band wanted to choose songs that were hits in the UK, but not necessarily huge hits. Hence, no Rolling Stones or Beatles songs. But what we do get is a great gathering of songs from the likes of T. Rex, David Bowie, The Kinks, ELO, Thin Lizzy, Roxy Music, Badfinger, Free, Mott the Hoople, and Faces, among others. Musically, they played the songs as closely to the originals as possible (which was their intent).
I love this album, not only because the songs are great, but also because it got me into (or more into) many of the bands they covered. There is no better example of that than their cover of Thin Lizzy's "Don't Believe a Word," which was originally released on Thin Lizzy's seventh studio album, 1976's Johnny the Fox. Of course, I knew of Thin Lizzy before Yeah!, but I hadn't delved into their catalog outside of the hits. I loved Def Leppard's version of the song, so I checked out the original, and then that snowballed into me getting every one of Thin Lizzy's albums. Now, Thin Lizzy is on my short list of favorite bands -- which, granted, is still like 25 bands. So, thanks Def Leppard!
At barely over two minutes long, "Don't Believe a Word" is short but sweet. The original is one of my favorite Thin Lizzy songs, thanks to Def Leppard's cover. I've always been taken by Phil Lynott's lyrics, and in this song, he's essentially telling a woman "don't believe anything I tell you, especially if I tell you that I love you." He's pouring his heart out to her, but hedging his bets, giving both of them an out. If he wants to ditch her, he can say, "I told you not to believe me when I told you I love you," or if she says she doesn't love him or isn't interested, he can say, "no big deal because, as I said, I was just kidding." And if she wants to ditch him, he can't protest because then she'll say "you told me not to believe a word you said." Classic!
Posts
