Hair Band Friday - 11/21/25

1.  "Falling In and Out of Love" by Femme Fatale

2.  "Let It Slide" by Hurricane

3.  "Hot and Bothered" by Cinderella

4.  "Born on the Sun" by Dio

5.  "Feel Like Makin' Love" by Dangerous Toys

6.  "Does She or Doesn't She" by Black 'N Blue

7.  "Hold On I'm Comin'" (live) by The Quireboys

8.  "Bed of Nails" by Alice Cooper

9.  "You're All I Need" by White Lion

10.  "The Sun Also Rises in Hell" by XYZ

Hair Band Friday - 11/14/25

1.  "Rhythm of Love" by Scorpions

2.  "Streetwalker" by EZO

3.  "Take Her" by Rough Cutt

4.  "Bad to Be Good" by Poison

5.  "Sweet Child O' Mine" (live) by Guns N' Roses

6.  "Hunger" by King Kobra

7.  "Tonight" by Twisted Sister

8.  "Rock On" by Vandenberg

9.  "I'll Fall in Love Again" by Sammy Hagar

10.  "Skyscraper" by David Lee Roth

Hair Band Friday - 11/7/25

1.  "Breaking All the Rules" by Ozzy Osbourne

2.  "Widowmaker" by W.A.S.P.

3.  "Kiss the Clown" by Enuff Z'Nuff

4.  "Hot Sex" by Spread Eagle

5.  "Don't Go" by Judas Priest

6.  "Jet City Woman" by Queensrÿche

7.  "It's So Easy" (live) by Guns N' Roses

8.  "Dreams" (live) by Van Halen

9.  "Complication" by Loudness

10.  "Arizona" by Scorpions

Coverocktober Song #20: "Helter Skelter" by Mötley Crüe

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!

Hair Band Friday - 10/31/25

1.  "Tease Me Please Me" by Scorpions

2.  "Yngwie is God (Guitar Solo from Hell)" by Steeler

3.  "Cross Me and See" by Bonham

4.  "Women in Love" by Van Halen

5.  "Speak" by Queensrÿche

6.  "School of Hard Knocks" by Black 'N Blue

7.  "Welcome to the Jungle" by Guns N' Roses

8.  "All Lips 'n' Hips" by Electric Boys

9.  "I Don't Love You Anymore" (live) by The Quireboys

10.  "Ez Come Ez Go" by Tesla

Coverocktober Song #19: "Monster Mash" by The Misfits

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.

Coverocktober Song #18: "Last Caress/Green Hell" by Metallica

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.

Coverocktober Song #17: "If You Have Ghosts" by Ghost

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.

Coverocktober Song #16: "Black Sabbath" by Type O Negative

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.

Coverocktober Song #15: "Don't Believe a Word" by Def Leppard

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!