It only seemed fair to write this after writing something for my mom on Mother’s Day.  As I mentioned before, my father did not contribute much to my musical upbringing except to give me a vitriolic hatred for Rod Stewart. But he did give me moments.  They were little moments, seemingly inconsequential at the time but somehow stuck in my mind so later they became not just moments, but memories.  As is par for the course with me, those memories are attached to songs.

My father can not sing. I’ve obviously inherited my musical talent from him but the difference between is I’ve learned to not sing in front of people. My father has embraced his awful singing voice and has no fear about unleashing it on an unsuspecting victim.  Sometimes it’s funny (like when he makes up songs to my mother), sometimes it’s horrifying (any Sambuca-fueled rendition of a Frank Sinatra song) and sometimes it’s downright sweet.

From when I was very little,  my father sang “Daddy’s Little Girl” to me.  He subsequently sang it to both my sisters and then, with the words changed to “Grandpa’s Little Girl” to my daughter. No matter how off-key, no matter how monotone the singing was, it was always poignant and sweet to hear. I have wonderful memories of my father rocking my little sister to sleep while singing this song to her, softly.

There’s “Earth Angel” by the Penguins, a song that would make my parents stop what they were doing when it came on the oldies but goodies station. They’d dance – didn’t matter if they were in the kitchen, the front yard or at a company picnic – and my father would sing out loud, without a care that his voice could probably make the dead cover their ears and he would somehow, some way, make it sound sweet and charming.

I mentioned the Rolling Stones “Far Away Eyes” in my previous Father’s Day post. He sang this in front of my friends. He sang it in front of family, in polite company, at formal functions. He still sings it and when he does, it no longer makes me cringe like it did when I was a teenager because somewhere along the way, I learned to be proud of not only who my father is, but that he’s my father. One of the things I love most about him – and one of my favorite lessons learned from him  – is his unflinching enjoyment of life; if it feels good, do it, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone.  For him, singing out loud feels good. And what’s a few hurt eardrums between family, anyhow?

I think I’ll surprise him today by asking him to join me in a chorus of “Far Away Eyes.” And I’ll even sing out loud.

Father’s Day is fast approaching (What? It’s this weekend? Not next?) and as we (I) scurry to think of something to purchase for our fathers to let them know just how much we love and care about them (not a tie, I swear I won’t buy a tie), I’m reminded of Father’s Days of old when I’d wrap a carton of Lucky Strikes in a tin foil and hand it to Dad as if I was giving him his weight in gold.  I was young. Way too young to realize I was saying “Here Dad, I love you. Have some cancer sticks!” It didn’t get any better as I got older and gave him bottles of Old Spice. “I love you, Dad. I want you to smell like five dollar cologne.” Or razors. “Here, Dad. Joe Namath uses these. Can you be more like Joe Namath please?”  See, it’s so much harder to buy personal, meaningful gifts for Father’s Day than it is for Mother’s Day. Mothers are happy with picture frames stuffed with photos of their adorable, perfect grandchildren (hell no, not pictures of you, just your kids), or maybe we’re happy giving them that. But a Father’s Day gift, according to the media at large, has to be masculine. Something to do with golf or cars or power washing the back deck (Ok, so I bought my dad a power washer for Father’s Day. He wanted it. It’s better than cigarettes, right?).

One nice thing you can do for both moms and dads on their day is write nice words about them. Parents like that. They want it in writing that you actually like and appreciate them.  On Mother’s Day I wrote a nice little ode to my mom in which I thanked her for everything she taught me about appreciating music. Since this is supposed to be a music column, I thought I’d do the same for dad. But my father’s musical taste runs from Rod Stewart to Elton John and even though he throws some Rolling Stones songs in there there’s not much to say. Gee dad, thanks so much for that night you came home from a wedding a little tipsy and serenaded my friends with your acapella version of “Far Away Eyes.”

Well, even if I can’t give my father the gift of a music column dedicated to him, I can at least help you all out by assisting you in making a Father’s Day playlist. Which isn’t as easy as it sounds. There were thousands of mother songs to choose from for my Mother’s Day list (even if they weren’t all complimentary to mothers) but there just aren’t as many artists going out on a limb to praise fathers in song.  So I have stretched the Father’s Day theme here.

For your listening pleasure on Father’s Day, songs for dad. Sort of. You may or may not want to play these on Father’s Day as you sit down to dinner. Some of them, definitely not. Hey, I tried.

The Temptations – Papa Was a Rolling Stone

James Brown – Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag

Notorious B.I.G. -Big Poppa

George Michael – Father Figure

Violent Femmes – Gone Daddy Gone

Tragically Hip – Don’t Wake Daddy

Jane’s Addiction – Had a Dad

Was Not Was – Dad, I’m in Jail

Rolling Stones – Far Away Eyes (just because it’s my father’s favorite song)

Ok, so maybe this should be titled Songs To Not Play on Father’s Day. So much for presenting my father with a meaningful, personal playlist representing my love for him.

Sure hope he likes his power washer.

We were reminiscing about our youth the other day, as people my age tend to do, and we got to talking about concerts. We took turns telling tales of stadium and arena shows, stories straight out of Heavy Metal Parking Lot. Ah, the good old days. When tickets were sold in tiers of $7.50, &8.50 and $9.50 and you had to wait in line – not online - to get them.  A few people began lamenting the demise of arena shows when I said “Oh, arena and stadium concerts, even festivals are still alive. They’re just on life support.”  Not a day later someone sent me a link to this article, which lent proof to my theory that big, live shows are almost ready to flatline.

The article lists a lot of reasons why promoters are having a hard time selling out big name shows; namely, they’ve become too costly thanks to presales, resales, scalpers and the general greed of the music industry. It also lists a few ways promoters and artists could make their shows more appealing to the wallets of fans. But I, a veteran of arena and stadium shows, have a few other ideas on how concerts can be improved upon. I’m not even talking about the part before the show where  you have to figure out how to get tickets because the presale is only for people who have a certain credit card and the regular sale takes place online only during a time when you’re working and don’t have internet access and the only tickets left at the box office will be single seats with obstructed views. I’m talking about once you finally sell a kidney, the naming rights to your first born child and your soul to afford a single ticket, parking, a a beer and a t-shirt.

I’m looking at the concert schedule for this summer and I see that most of the bands doing the big shows are – let me put this kindly – old. A lot of reunion tours, a lot of shows by  bands who cut their teeth on the arena concert. Megadeth and Anthrax, Yes, Meatloaf, Rush, Kiss, Peter Frampton, Foreigner and the Scorpions. The summer tours are shaping up to look like a  Who’s Who of  Bands Your Parents Liked Before You Were Even Born. The problem with that is while the parents are at these shows, so are their kids. Kids who wear AC/DC t-shirts unironically, kids who act like they discovered Led Zeppelin, kids who think their parents are so cool for having been to the first Kiss tour but will never say so and will only say things like “Mom, isn’t 46 a little old to be listening to Anthrax?” To which you reply “Son, Scott Ian is 46 and he’s in Anthrax.”

So I’ve got a little primer for  you, bands who are playing arenas and stadiums this summer. Just a few necessary steps to take to ensure that your summer tour is the smash hit you want it to be with the adults and the kids. Really, these are things that have been bothering me for ages and I’m only now taking the opportunity to share them with you.

Let’s start with, well, the beginning. The start of the show is the form letter of rock and roll.Typically, it goes like this:

The house lights go down. The stage lights go up. The band takes the stage.  And then: “How you doing tonight (insert city here)?”  Wait for the crowd to respond. Then: “Are you ready to rock and roll tonight (insert city here)?”  Wait for response. Decided response isn’t loud enough. Repeat “I said, are you ready to rock and roll (insert city here)?”

We know where we are. We don’t need you to tell us three or four times what city we’re in. Unless that’s for your benefit because you’ve been on the road for weeks and you’re not sure what city you’re in and you’re waiting for the crowd reaction to tell you that you go it wrong. “What? This isn’t New York? Ok then, how you doing tonight, Boise?”  That intro is so cliche, anyhow. If you can’t think of anything fresh to say, just come out and start playing because, let’s face it. You really don’t give a shit how we’re doing tonight. You just care that the seats are filled and you’re just sober enough to get through the show and just high enough to not be bothered that the entire front row is taken up by people in suits who use terms like “grow your band’s brand” and spend the entire concert trying to get an AT&T signal.

And please, don’t  ask us if we are ready to rock and roll because, really, would we be standing shoulder to shoulder with sweaty strangers in a place that smells like vomit, beer sweat and mullets if we weren’t ready to rock?  Just once I’d like to see someone in the audience respond to that query by standing up and saying, “Hey no. I just realized I am not, indeed, ready to rock. I’d like go home now.” I would applaud that guy.

Once you’ve got a few songs under your belt and the crowd is, indeed, rocking and having a great time, don’t stop to have a little moment with us by telling the crowd they are the greatest audience you ever played for. “Really, you guys are spectacular. We’ve never played for a crowd like this. You make us feel so welcome, You’re the best audience ever. This one’s for you!” And then you launch into one of your Greatest Hits.  Well, half of us were at the show in Philly the night before and we know damn well you used the same line on them and dedicated the same song to them. Don’t lie to us and tell us we’re beautiful. We know you just want to fuck us and run. And we’re ok with this. This is a rock and roll show. It’s not a date. You don’t have to flatter us. You just have to rock the hell out.

Lastly, we have my pet peeve of concerts: the encore.

The encore is like a parlor trick. “Ok, watch while we say goodbye to the audience and thank them for a wonderful time and then PSYCH! we come back on stage and play again!” Except it’s an old parlor trick. Very old. Everyone knows how this is going to go. You play your last song, which will be your most current radio hit. For reunion tours and bands who haven’t put out an album this decade, it will be your best ballad. The crowd will sing along and everyone will feel good as the song ends and you say “Good night (insert city here)! Thanks for coming!  Get home safely! Buy a t-shirt, a poster and a mouse pad commemorating our time together on your way out!”   Then the ritual starts. It’s sort of like going to Catholic church where you stand, sit, stand, sit, kneel, sit, stand, kneel, run out the back door before everyone else.  The concert ritual goes like this:  you says goodnight, crowd applauds wildly as you  leave the stage, crowd gets louder after you disappear, feet stomp, hand clap, shouts of  “more, more more!”  Then – what a surprise! – you’re back on stage singing one of your Golden Hits of Yesterday. This goes on for the next 45 minutes or so, with you doing a song, saying goodnight, waiting for the crowd to get really loud then coming back out until finally, after maybe the fourth time of doing this you break out into whatever your band’s “Freebird” is and the audience goes wild.

Stop it, ok? All that time  you spend listening to the crowd scream your name and stomp their feet? Sure it’s good for your ego. But you could have spent that time playing another song instead of making us beg and plead like some musical BSDM game. And then you come out and play that song we all knew you were going to play anyhow. Think about it! Instead of all that empty time spent backstage throwing back a few more beers and grab-assing some groupies, you could have been playing. Instead of probably snickering to yourselves while the older people in the crowd flick their Bics and the kids turn on their iPhone Bic apps, you could have been playing of few your less popular songs. You know, the ones the old school fans like us know all the words to but you don’t play because the kids don’t know them.

These are just a few pointers for you, guys. Get this summer tour rolling right. If we’re going to pay the equivalent of a third world country’s GNP to see you, at least cut out the bullshit and just play us the music we love without all the pandering.

By the way, I hate your most popular song. I’m already in the parking lot by the time you hit the last note and the house lights go up. And I didn’t even buy a t-shirt.

I collect cover songs. There’s something about covers – when done right – that make them stand out among everything in my music collection. Perhaps it’s because I don’t like change and I’m so much more comfortable when things are familiar and routine that cover songs are like a little thrill or a burst of excitement, like the feeling I get when I venture to do something out of the ordinary.

This isn’t the case for all covers. I’ve always said, if you’re going to remake a song then really remake it. Don’t just re-record what the original artist put down. Take that song and make it your own. Turn it on its head. It’s even better when an artist takes a song completely out of their genre and does something spectacular with it. But it shouldn’t be done in an ironic way or for a little chuckle (see every punk band’s cover of any pop song); it needs to feel sincere.

While Johnny Cash’s cover of Nine Inch Nails’ Hurt has recently become the most common answer to “What is your favorite cover song?” that particular tune -while beautifully done – is not something I’d put on my own list simply because it is presented the same way as the original.  Same with Gary Jules’s Mad World (Tears for Fears). While the cover is well done, I think it’s popularity came more from the way it was used in Donnie Darko than from any originality brought to the tune.

The first cover song that left its mark on me was Vanilla Fudge’s rendition of  The Supremes” You Keep Me Hanging On. Released just one year after the original, the Vanilla Fudge version takes a dance oriented song and turns it onto a psychedelic trip. I remember being fascinated with the fact that someone could take something that belonged to someone else and completely make it their own. Remnants of the original were still there, but they took the emotions inherent in the lyrics and put their own passion into it.

And that’s – to me – what makes a remake of a song great – taking the guts of the original and putting it another form. Here are some of my favorites:

The way Cake adds bursts of quiet anger and bitterness to Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive that were only implied but not vocalized in the original give the song a new feel and the tongue in cheek way in which most of the song is presented adds an even further dimension to it; it becomes Cake’s song.

It takes guts to take a very popular song and do something else with it. Ted Leo makes a thing of beauty out of Kelly Clarkson’s Since You Been Gone.

The Queens of the Stone Age takes Billy Idol’s White Wedding and turns into something dark and ominous.

Rammstein turns Depeche’s Mode’s Stripped upside down, making it something far more sinister than the original ever intended.

Ben Folds makes Dre’s Bitches Ain’t Shit sound completely out of context.

The Dickies manage to make the Moody Blues Knights in White Satin actually sound interesting.

In Flames version of Depeche Mode’s Everything Counts does just about everything a good cover song should do.

Type O Negative doing a polar opposite version Neil Young’s Cinnamon Girl.

Aztec Camera’s cover of Van Halen’s Jump is possibly my favorite cover of all time. It was the b-side to the 12 inch version of their single Oblivious. I listened to Oblivious once, flipped the record over and then listened to this for about four hours straight.

I’d love to add to my collection of covers. What are your favorites?

(For more fabulous covers, check out the Cover Song Appreciation tumblr)

World Cup fever has hit the nation!  Well, not really. World Cup fever in America is more like a  hot flash.  People get all excited, pretend to know a little about football even though they still call it soccer, engage in some sporting nationalism and then forget about the World Cup once America is eliminated.  They’re not so much football fans as fans of chanting USA! USA!

But for some of us, World Cup is a big deal. We’re watching not just to cheer our own team on, but because we love the game. We’ll watch it through to the bitter end, with or without our country’s presence.   Although I have to admit, they hype about Saturday’s game pitting The United States against England just might make the rest of the matches seem anti-climatic.

I have a couple of links of interest for those of you following the  World Cup, but first we must rock out. What better way to prepare for the action with a playlist of songs to get you pumped up for all the rivalry, chants, insults and, yes, football.

Weezer – Represent
Rivers tweeted yesterday that the band came up with a new song to honor the US team. It’s available as a free download on iTunes as of this morning. Of course, someone already made a video for it.

We Are Scientists – Goal! England!
A Brooklyn band which admits to knowing very little about the World Cup wrote a song for England. Who knows. Maybe they have a lot of English fans.

Shakira – Waka Waka (Time for Africa)
Her official contribution to the World Cup. Waka Waka? No idea what Fozzy Bear has to do with football, but if you’re into a little ass shaking with your football matches, here you go.

R. Kelly – A Sign of Victory (the official FIFA World Cup Anthem for 2010)
R. Kelly knows how to play it. Two sports related, family friendly anthems – “I Believe I Can Fly” and now the World Cup anthem – are bookends to his rather sordid history. Who’s going to care about his epic anthems of midgets in closets or peeing on young girls when he can make people pump their fists in the air and believe?

Ricky Martin – La Copa de la Vida
From the 1998 World Cup. Say what you want about Ricky Martin, but he knows what a cup anthem is supposed to be about. Unlike his contemporaries Kelly and Shakira, he made a song that feels like a football song. You want to chant along with it. It makes you want to be in a stadium with thousands of people singing it.

The Bouncing Souls – Ole
One of the best things about football matches is the chants and songs from the fans. This is a feel good football song that encompasses that feel. I played this so much during the 2006 World Cup that my kids have nightmares about it.

The Business – Maradona
Nobody makes songs about football like The Business. They have a ton of them, but it’s Maradona that will win your heart if you  know your World Cup history. 1986 World Cup. Hand of God. Look it up. This song is a scathing indictment of Maradona. And it’s fun to sing.

Angelique Kidjo and John Legend – Move On Up
It features Bono because there’s some unwritten rule that Bono has to have a presence in everything.

Dizzee Rascal & James Corden – Shout For England
Rap, rhymes, chants and a sampling of Tears For Fears’ “Shout,” this official song for England has got everything a good stadium anthem should have.

Hopefully these songs will get some of you slackers into World Cup mode. We need the whole nation behind our team! Even if you hate that I have used the word football instead of soccer, or you think of this game as something little kids play at some ungodly hour on Saturday morning while their hungover parents sit on the sidelines wondering why the hell they had kids, you can find a way to feel like you’re part of the World Cup action.   Think of it as misplaced national pride. When else are you going to shout USA! USA! USA! these days without someone thinking Sarah Palin gave you a box of tea bags to say that?

See, World Cup is for everyone. It works out great for people who measure their patriotism by bumper stickers because they can drape themselves in a flag and just call it football frenzy. And it also works out for people who have been down on the state of the union because they can wave a flag and shout America, fuck yea! without feeling like they are betraying their ideals. It’s all about the soccer ball. No, the football.

Those links I promised you:

World Cup Online - the blog and the twitter.
2010 FIFa World Cup

Awesome interactive calendar of all the games

First game kicks off today at 9:30 (EST) – South Africa v. Mexico