For weeks now, the Ludic Log has presented to you, the loyal reader (HA HA, sorry, it just cracks me up every time I type that), a completely free mp3 blog.  Seven songs a week for which I risk my financial security and even my very physical freedom, just so you can have a couple of extra songs in your library.  All this I do for you, so I trust you'll indulge the lazy 'wacky cover songs' theme of this week's entry.  Cover collections are the most slothful possible mixes, but give me a break:  I've had a rough week.  Download the .zip file (approx. 25MB) here; notes below.

TRACK 01:  "Shame on a Nigga", System of a Down feat. the Wu-Tang Clan (from the Loud Rocks compilation).  Really, I should have a lot more of a problem with this song than I do.  I'm uncomfortable to the point of queasiness with the idea of white guys using the n-word; the metal-rap fusion always works better for rappers than it does for metal bands; and Serj Tankian has exactly the kind of voice that can ruin a hip-hop song if the rhythmic technique is forced into an overblown melodic framework.  But all that falls by the wayside when put up against the fact that this version just fucking rocks -- SOAD are tighter than tight musically, Tankian's often-hyperbolic vocals find a pretty playful way to approach the lyrics, and the RZA makes a scene-stealing vocal cameo that diffisues the racial iffiness. 

TRACK 02:  "Raining Blood", Tori Amos (from the Strange Little Girls EP).  Speaking of people who generally don't get covers right, the Defender of Faerietown has a long, sorry history of missing the point of the songs she chooses to interpret.  She didn't get that the main reason "I Don't Like Mondays" worked is because the grandiosity of the Boomtown Rats original was in a large way self-mocking; she didn't get that the main reason "Real Men" worked for Joe Jackson is that he was a gay man singing it, and the whole power of the thing gets lost when it's a straight woman.  Almost every cover of the many Tori Amos has done is a disasters, but somehow, here, in the most unlikely setting -- covering a fierce scorcher from Slayer's best album -- she hits the right tone, with rambling, unfocused keys and a stoned vocal presentation aligned perfectly with some unnameable effects to give the whole thing a creepy, house-of-horrors appeal.

TRACK 03:  "That's When Your Heartaches Begin", the Soft Boys (from the Soft Boys 1976-1981 anthology).  Recorded at a hotel gig early in the Soft Boys' career, this Elvis Presly cover not only obliterates any possibility of ever enjoying anyone else's take on the song half as much, but nicely establishes patterns that Robyn Hitchcock would display time and time again over the next 30 years.  After a charming false start, the boys -- uncharacteristically toning it down -- launch into a mutated doo-wop of the old classic, interrupted along the way by a hilariously funny little spoken-word break in the middle of the song, which, if the confused direction he gives to the audience is any indication, is as big a surprise to the band as it was to the crowd.  Delightful.

TRACK 04.  "House of the Rising Sun", Johnny Hallyday (from the Johnny Hallyday Master Series collection).  Technically, this isn't a cover -- it's a standard.  But I have 173 different version of "House of the Rising Sun" (don't ask), and I've got to get something out of them.  This is actually one of my favorites -- the arrangement is pretty lousy sub-karaoke stuff with the exception of the unexplained appearance of what seem to be French horns about two minutes in, but Hallyday's tortured vocal performance is what sells it.  Johnny Hallyday, often referred to as the French Elvis, has sold a hundred million records, and nobody in America has heard of him unless they happened to catch the dopey heist picture Crime Spree a couple of years ago; it's a pity -- he's no Bob Dylan, but he's a guy who's managed a nice 40-year career belting out tunes from the Great Franco-American Songbook with numbers just like this.

TRACK 05.  "Holidays in the Sun", Opium Jukebox (from the Never Mind the Sex Pistols Here's the Opium Jukebox album).  This one is a cover at least twice removed, since the Sex Pistols' bass player -- who'd already stolen riffs from ABBA (!) to use as the spines of their songs -- has admitted to cribbing this song's main figure from the Jam's "In the City".  The interesting thing about the Opium Jukebox cover, though, is that it's totally unrecognizable as being the Sex Pistols' original song, or any other song, for that matter.  Led by Pigface commandant Martin Atkins, the Opium Jukebox specialized in half-jokey sitar-jam "tribute" records of just this sort, and if you're able to discern a single element of this rambling, zooted subcontinental shoegazer that comes from the Sex Pistols, or the Jam, or even ABBA, you have a much keener ear than I do.

TRACK 06.  "Get Back", Laibach (from the Across the Universe EP).  For the uninitiated, Laibach are...you know what?  Go look it up on AllMusic, it's just far too confusing to explain.  In fact, the best way to appreciate this bizarre Frankenstein-joins-the-Nazi-Party take on the Beatles classic is to listen to it with virgin ears, knowing nothing about the band's hatred of the Fab Four, their performance-art background, their creepy anti-fascism that seems so much like actual fascism that you suspect they might be spelling the "anti" with a capital WINK -- just let it wash over you, let it surround you, let it make your brain explode with the panicky possibility that you have been transported to an alternate universe where the Germans have won the Second World War and Hitler has had his brain transplanted into Herman Munster and taken John Lennon's spot in the world's most popular singing group.

TRACK 07.  "By the Time I Get to Arizona (Remix)", the Evolution Control Committee (from the Plagiarhythm Nation collection).  Also not technically a cover, or a remix, or a mash-up, or even legal, for that matter.  But very useful in one regard:  the next time some shitbag tells you that rap isn't music, or that producers aren't musicians, play them this.  Let them hear how the simple act of removing the furious, terror-trimmed Bomb Squad production from behind one of Chuck D's most powerful vocals and replacing it with a minor instrumental fluffball by Herb Alpert & His Tijuana brass completely changes the dynamic.  Then play them the original, and grab them by the collar and say "Get it now, asshole?"

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