Redd Kross Songbook

 

Redd Kross and Melvins are currently krossing the US on tour through September and October.  The two bands (which share drummer Dale Crover and bassist Steven McDonald) just completed a two month UK/EU summer tour. 

These two tours follow last year's release of The Redd Album (the band's self-titled double LP on In The Redd Records), the Redd Kross memoir Now You're One Of Us (which is now available as an ebook), and the documentary film Born Innocent: The Redd Kross Story (which is now available to stream at home). EDIT: DVD and Blu-Ray announced for January 2026 (just in time for your Christmas return credits!)

This blog has featured a Redd Kross jukebox, plus Tween Baes From Tostardo (a companion to Teen Babes from Monsanto) and a two disc set of Redd Kross b-sides and rarities.  

Today we have a Redd Kross Songbook --  over 30 cover versions of songs originally written and performed by Redd Kross.  But wait, there's also an additional 40+ versions of the six songs from their 1981 debut EP.  

ELSEWHERE ON THE WEB:  

A free Bandcamp download of a Redd Kross concert recorded during their 2024 US tour (which includes all of the songs from the 1981 EP, plus their klassic versions of "Deuce" and "Crazy Horses").

The Gotobeds (who have covered the entire Red Cross EP) recently released a great new album called Masterclass.  

It's OK (the band led by former RK lead guitarist Robert Hecker) has a new album called Product Of California, with Roy McDonald (Muffs, Redd Kross) on drums.  

RK's current lead guitarist Jason Shapiro used to be in the band Celebrity Skin, and you can hear their music at the Black Lodge Relics blog! If you ask nicely, Black Lodge Relics might repost the Lovedolls movies and their soundtracks.  And speaking of soundtracks, another former Redd Kross member (Brian Reitzell) is now a famous film and TV soundtrack composer!

Song Book Dury - Jankel

You wandered in upon my life
And haven't lost me yet
Said the turkey to the carving knife:
"What you give is what you get"
A fresh and lovely summer's day
We thought would never end
Said the bloodhound to the stag at bay:
"I thought you were my friend"

Glad To Know You (Chaz Jankel - Ian Dury)

After the Chaz Jankel post I decided to have a look at some of the songs he wrote with Ian Dury and that turned out to be very rewarding. Whereas the first collaborations of New Boots and Panties!! showed a clear division between words (Dury) and music (Jankel), this later became more ‘blurred’, especially with the non-Blockheads songs.

That first album has been rightly acknowledged as a classic and received a full cover treatment in 2001 as Brand New Boots And Panties: A Tribute To Ian Dury.  As far as tributes go, it’s definitely one of the better ones, but as this album is still easily available, I decided to ignore those covers. Instead, I plunged into a digital rabbit hole looking for obscure covers and forgotten Dury-Jankel compositions… The results were not bad, enough for an 18 song CD Song Book! It has to be said though that the focus is really on the first 2 Blockheads albums, plus a few songs that Dury and Jankel wrote for others.

As expected, covers of Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick, Sex & Drugs & Rock'n'Roll, and Wake Up And Make Love With Me are plenty, but I think I managed to select some of the more intriguing ones. Perhaps not surprising, everybody’s favorite Spasticus Autisticus gets seldom covered, but I found a decent one. The other Blockheads compositions include: What a Waste, Inbetweenies, and Lullaby For Frances.

Probably best known as the lead vocalist on Freeez’s classic hit single Southern Freeez, Ingrid Mansfield Allman was also involved in Ian Dury’s life. This resulted in a one-off single: The Jam Jar Song / Stop Wasting Your Time, both written by Dury-Jankel, released in 1981! Two years later Chaz recorded Stop Wasting Your Time again, but this time with a singer named Kitty Grant.  And the B-side was a cover of Glad To Know You from Jankel’s solo album Chasanova / Questionnaire!

As for this particular Song Book the lyrics of the songs are way above average I decided to include them all, but the covers do include 3 instrumentals as well! Special thanks to my friend The Dishonorable Edward Pastanga who helped me out with transcribing the lyrics of The Jam Jar Song / Stop Wasting Your Time.  Being British helps a lot I guess ;-)

Like with many songs most parts are easy enough to follow, but sometimes… Using youtube to text didn’t help much, these skipped the same parts I didn’t catch. Weirdest experience was using Grok, who replied correctly that those 2 songs are not on any lyrics site, but suggested me to add a youtube link which would enable it to transcribe those lyrics.  So I did and a few seconds later got the results, which were … interesting, apart from the title Stop Wasting Your Time, everything else was totally different! However I could see that those new lyrics followed the main melody…

Note that other covers can be found on the Stiff Records posts here!

p.s. In hindsight The Jam Jar Song would have been perfect for any of my previous car posts…

Song Book - Robert Palmer

We’ve had already a few Deluxe Edition posts of Robert Palmer here, but there is plenty of room for more!

Palmer was always passionate about music and explored it as much as he could.

From interviews he comes across as highly intelligent and knowledgeable about music, so it’s no surprise that he wrote quite a number of songs.

Interviewer: Addicted to Love literally came out of your dreams? 

 

RP: Yes. Not lyrically. I keep a tape recorder by my bed and a pen and a notepad. I have a dream diary that I've had for ages and that. So it's not unusual for me to wake up and hum a piece of music that I've been dreaming. But often it's not. When I listen back to it the next day, it's a nightmare. I listened back to that the following day and I knew I'd caught one, a big one.

And the lyric is to do with the fact that everybody has an addiction. So I thought to myself, what am I addicted to? And I thought, I'm addicted to emotion. And I thought, well, that's a bit tart, isn't it? How can we put it? Let's go ZZ Top. Let's trash the idea. Let's get funny. And so I did, and ended up with lines like, your heart sweats, your teeth grind, another kiss and you'll be fine. I make no apologies...

Island Records founder Chris Blackwell said of Robert that he was “dazzled by his voice” and “endlessly dazzled by his knowledge of music, which seemed to take in everything from obscure jazz to the most cutting edge soul and funk.”

 

Some of his songs became hits, others not, but a lot were covered by other artists, from the pre-solo days with Vinegar Joe (Circles) to his unfortunate end in 2003 with Carl Carlton on his last album Drive (Lucky).

The most covered one is (no surprise) Addicted To Love, with Johnny And Mary second.

Although most Addicted covers follow either the same pattern or are slowed down, I managed to find two very different approaches!

Same for Johnny And Mary; a Norwegian acoustic version and a slower, almost atmospheric, work-out

Looking For Clues is also featured twice and both not what you’d expected…

Note that some songs are associated with Robert Palmer because he performed them first, e.g. Every Kind Of People, but were not written by him and therefore not included.

 

Artists included: Dynamo's Rhythm Aces, Stella Bass, Mint Juleps, Keef Hartley Band, Birdie Thomson, James Armstrong, Ian Matthews, Sazerac, Kiki Dee, Mrs Hips, Carl Carlton & The Songdogs, Michael Ball, Dub Mentor, Hugh Harris, Susan Cattaneo, Todd Terje, Mathias Kellner, Brad Davis, & Derek Carvalho and Al Gomes... Enjoy!

Warning: More Robert Palmer posts coming...

Song Book Jonathan Richman

As most of you probably already know Jonathan Richman is an American singer, songwriter, guitarist, and founder of The Modern Lovers. However since the mid-1970s, Richman has worked either solo or with low-key acoustic and electric backing, releasing 20+ albums and even had a few minor hits.

I guess the first time I was exposed to Jonathan Richman’s quirky songs must have been in 1978 when he performed Egyptian Reggae and 6 others on Dutch TopPop tv special (*), which made a bit of an impact.

In 1986 I even saw Jonathan and 1 Modern Lover (on sax) at a a concert in Hilversum, good fun.

Over the years I bumped into his songs from time to time (There’s Something About Mary soundtrack!), had a greatest hits album, etc.

A few posts ago we got the request for a Jonathan Song Book, which seemed like a good idea, as he has written most of own songs.

One problem though, Jonathan has become a bit of a cult figure over the years and by now 7 (I’m not kidding!) tribute albums were released:

Baby We Are Richman: A Tribute To Jonathan Richman

Can You Talk to The Dude? Volume 1 & 2

If I Were a Richman - A Tribute to the Music of Jonathan Richman

Songs from The Astral Plane, Vol. 1 & 2: A Tribute to Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers

We, Jonathan (A Tribute To Jonathan Richman And The Modern Lovers)

However all songs (at least that I’m aware of) were specially recorded for these tributes, which left still plenty of other covers!

As usual there are some favorites that got covered a lot: Pablo Picasso, Road Runner, I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar, Fly Into the Mystery, She Cracked, That Summer Feeling, etc.

But I also found some tracks that aren’t covered often: Back In Your Life, Dancing Late At Night, Dodge Veg-O-Matic, Don't Let Our Youth Go to Waste, a.o.

The end results are 2 entertaining Jonathan Richman cover CDs, enjoy!

Artists include: John Cale, The Rubinoos, The Morells, Burning Sensations, The Jazz Butcher, Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, Galaxie 500, Echo And The Bunnymen,Tsunami, Noise Addict, Fred Thomas, The Rocks, a.m.o.

(*) TopPop was Dutch weekly pop TV show eagerly watched by many. Despite most of the artists just play-backed their latest hits, occasionally there were 'specials' with a few songs performed live in the studio. And this particular special shows Jonathan & The Modern Lovers in great shape playing 7 songs!  

As the quality of these TopPop videos was usually very good, do check out Jonathan's 22+ minutes mini set!

Song Book: Robbie van Leeuwen

Robbie van Leeuwen… “Robbie who?” is probably the reaction from most of you, but once you know he was the lead guitarist, sitarist, background vocalist, and songwriter of the Dutch band Shocking Blue… 

This post is courtesy of Richard who suggested it and helpfully sent me a zipfile with 30 covers! However I must admit that besides Shocking Blue my knowledge regarding Robbie was rather limited as well, consequently I started surfing the web and went down the digital rabbit hole...
In fact Robbie has had quite a musical history as he was active in various groups both before and after Shocking Blue, e.g. The Motions, Galaxy-Lin, and Mistral. 

The Motions were a Dutch band from The Hague and active from 1964 until 1970. Their Nederbeat sound brings back memories of listening daily to the radio… 

I remember Shocking Blue clearly as sexy lead singer Mariska Veres made quite an impression to put it mildly and they were active from 1967 to 1974 with several hits.
Their Venus was a monster hit all over the world and has seen countless covers over the years and even lesser known tracks like Love-Buzz got covered by Nirvana! 

The follow-up Galaxy-Lin was another Dutch pop rock band founded in 1973 by Robbie van Leeuwen in which electric mandolins played a central role. Unfortunately after only 2 albums Robbie pulled the plug out of Galaxy-Lin, but their hit Long Hot Summer (1975) is definitely still worth listening to. 

Together with Rick van der Linden, Robbie founded Mistral in 1977, a completely different kind of musical beast; synth pop anyone?
I needed to check them on YouTube and indeed Starship 109 gave me one of those OMG moments, at the time I don’t even think I was aware that Robbie was part of that ‘weird’ synthesizer band.
I never was a fan of Mistral, but must admit that their performance of Jamie was pretty off the wall! 

In the early 1990s Robbie gave up on the music business and moved to Luxembourg.

What’s fascinating are the relatively large number of covers released in other languages; Finnish, Swedish, Spanish, Czech, Italian, Japanese, French, and even Cambodian!

Main songs that were covered at the time included: Venus, Never Marry A Railroad Man, & Send Me A Postcard.

Love Buzz was completely ignored until Nirvana got famous and fans discovered their 1988 cover.

Therefore the first CD focuses on covers from the beginning until 1988.

Since then lots of artists and groups have rediscovered Robbie’s songs and tackled them in various ways.

The second CD has more recent covers and although most covers follow the originals closely we do have some exceptions, incl. Italian Brass & Roll, electronic, & Indonesian dub reggae versions of Love Buzz!

Besides the covers I also added a few originals, incl. one song each by: The Motions, Shocking Blue (pre Mariska Veres), Galaxy-Lin, Mistral (with Mariska!), & Cat's Eye (Robbie's last band). 

Song Book: Arthur Alexander

After our first Song Book compilation post one of the candidates mentioned by a commenter for a follow-up was Arthur Alexander.

In brief, he was a classic soul singer with quite a few ups and downs, his best known song probably being You Better Move On.

Despite a few hits during the 1960s he never really broke through and left the music business for many years. In 1990, he was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame and began to perform again in 1993 due to renewed interest shown in his back catalogue.

His last album, Lonely Just Like Me, was his first in 21 years and received good reviews.

Unfortunately he suffered a fatal heart attack on June 9, 1993, three days after performing there with his new band, what a bummer… 

Considering that his songs have been covered by a wide range of artists and groups, from The Beatles and the Stones to Marshall Crenshaw and Nick Lowe, it made a lot of sense.

Even more so considering there’s been no official release showcasing his songs’ impact over the years, only a few newly recorded tribute collections; Adios Amigo: A Tribute To Arthur Alexander (1994), Alan Merrill’s Double Shot Rocks (2003), and Donnie Fritts’ June – A Tribute To Arthur Alexander (2018).

Granted, these 3 albums contain some neat and respectful versions, but our focus here is on covers from the past.

One problem though was that some Arthur Alexander songs that are pretty well known were actually not written by him, he just recorded them first!

As a result classics like A Shot Of Rhythm And Blues and Burning Love are not included, sorry…

Even so, we got 12 cool tracks in 2 versions:

Anna (Go To Him, Every Day I Have To Cry, Genie In The Jug, Go Home Girl, If It's Really Got To Be This Way, In The Middle Of It All, Johnny's Heartbreak, Lonely Just Like Me, Sally Sue Brown, Soldier of Love, We're Gonna Hate Ourselves In The Morning, and You Better Move On

 

Recorded by the following artists:

The Beatles, C. J. Chenier And The Red Hot Louisiana Band, JD Fox & Sunset Travellers, Ry Cooder, Marcia Ball, Nalle & His Crazy Ivans, Arthur Alexander & Ben Vaughn, Nick Lowe, Bob Dylan, Little Steven & The Disciples Of Soul, Clifford Curry, The Rolling Stones, Humble Pie, BZN, Dave Berry, The Derailers, Irma Thomas, Otis Redding, Donnie Fritts, Sugar Ray & The Blue Tones, Nursery Rhymes, and The Leaves

Song Book: John Cale

His name is Cale, but you can call him John.

He never wrote a song called Cocaine, and he never wrote a song called After Midnight…

He rose to fame as a member of The Velvet Underground where his writings were often overshadowed by the obvious giant.

Nevertheless, he has made music with numerous artists, producing albums for The Stooges, Nico, Siouxsie & The Banshees, The Modern Lovers, Happy Mondays, Squeeze, Jennifer, Chunky Novi & Ernie, Modern Guy and a lot more.

For this songbook we selected only Non-Velvet songs, but occasional collaborations with Eno or Riley were allowed.

 

Thus wrote our regular visitor and commentator Richard!

Earlier this month he contacted Jonder with the proposal of doing a John Cale Song Book, which after some checking seemed like a great idea as it turns out that his songs have been covered by loads of bands and artists, but no attempt was ever made to gather some of these for a Tribute or Cale Covered album!

As I started the Song Book series we decided it would make sense (if that’s the right word!) that I would work this out with him and make a selection out of the 80+ songs he’d shared with us!

Not an easy task, but the results (spread across 2 CDs) speak for themselves.

Artists include:  

Rob de Nijs, Hackney Five-O, Chris Spedding, Mathilde Santing, Yo La Tengo, SF Seals, Sally Timms, Peter Whitehead, Alejandro Escovedo, My Friend The Chocolate Cake, Roddy Frame, CCC, Extra Virgin Mary, The Teardrop Explodes, The Heliocentrics, Okkervil River, Mark Lanegan, AJ Lambert, Alex Rex
Ja, Panik, Genya Ravan, The Dolphins, Dom Dummaste, David J, Barkmarket, Sol Invictus, Sugar Ray, The Wave Pictures, Dar Nahmias, The Ladybug Transistor, Experimental Products, Cheap Time, Aisha Orazbayeva, Dark Blue, Superchunk, Ratso, Chicken Snake, Allá

Song Book: J.J. Cale

J.J. Cale’s first album Naturally was released in 1971 and attracted a lot of attention in the Netherlands, no hits, but an artist worth paying attention to.

It would have been cool perhaps to say that I was a Cale fan from the beginning, but truth to be told he was nowhere on my musical radar at the time.

I guess it was several years later when I received his ’5’ album as a birthday present that turned me onto his laid back guitar playing and singing style right away. 

As a result I started backtracking, bought his earlier albums (all on Shelter Records), and started following his career.

His last album I bought was 1982’s Grasshopper, his first one for Mercury Records, but not much difference in style, except perhaps for the 2 instrumentals; Grasshopper and Dr. Jive.

Due to my move from Netherlands to Thailand, I lost track a bit of Cale, but still found a few new albums (on bootleg cassettes) occasionally.

Cale passed away in 2013 and Eric Clapton paid respect 1 year later by recording a tribute album: The Breeze: An Appreciation of JJ Cale

Cale was more than happy to see what other artists could make of his music. "I kind of write songs hoping that musicians will take them and make them better and more accessible," he said.

Clapton changed Cale’s career massively by turning his After Midnight and Cocaine into rock standards.

"I'd probably be selling shoes today if it wasn't for Eric," Cale said in 2006.

Despite the Clapton Appreciation and 2 volumes of Tribute to J.J. Cale (2010) no compilation has been released of his earlier covered work…

This seemed a good reason for JOKONKY to jump in again and rectify this poor state of affairs.

Cale’s songs were covered as soon as he released Naturally and this got repeated which each succeeding album for a while.

Whereas Cale liked to keep his songs as laid back as possible, the cover versions usually added quite a bit of instrumentation on top.

Even so several hits were the results, besides the already mentioned Clapton covers, Lynyrd Skynyrd was successful with Call Me The Breeze and Santana didn’t do too bad either with The Sensitive Kind.

While researching possible covers I was very surprised by digging up a few Dutch ones, I knew already about Rob Hoeke & Alan Price covering Cale, but new were both Liesbeth List and Herman Brood & His Wild Romance to me!

Even weirder, Dutch singer Cornelis Vreeswijk spent considerable time playing in Sweden and recorded After Midnight and Clyde in Swedish…

Oh, we got a French version of After as well, complete with Cale on guitar!

Also intriguing, in Jamaica The Pioneers recorded a track called Let It All Hang Out in 1971, supposedly written by someone named Cunningham, but it’s obviously a reggaefied version of After Midnight!

Indian singer Asha Puthli recorded 2 covers (Lies and Right Down Here) in 1973 which add a new twist to Cale songs, not to mention the wild Psychemagik Remix of Right Down Here!

Most Cocaine covers follow the Clapton one which is a shame really, but I did manage to dig up 3 very different versions; Nazareth live, an Italian disco band called Eric’s Friends, and Earl 16 does it reggae.

Spread out across 2 volumes you’ll find a wide variety of Cale covers that should make it clear once and for all that he was a cool song writer as well!

Song Book: Tony Joe White

I don’t really remember when I first heard Tony Joe White, but probably sometime during the 1970s as he appeared on Dutch television in 1977 with Soulful Eyes.

Definitely I heard Elvis singing his Polk Salad Annie and much later some version of Rainy Night in Georgia…

But what really set me off were his 2 Meter Sessions performances, lean and mean solo performances of Tunica Motel and (You're Gonna Look) Good In Blues.

Over the years I bought several ‘swamp fox’ albums and downloaded more, he certainly was a prolific recording artist.

Between 1969 and 2018 he released 30 albums, not to mention various live albums and multiple ‘best of’ collections.

In 2021 a posthumous Smoke from the Chimney (Easy Eye Sound) came out as well, thanks to the smart production of Dan Auerbach.

As his son Jody discovered boxes of reel-to-reel tapes filled with hundreds of demos that no one had ever heard, expect more to come I guess.

His career has had ups and downs, he recorded 3 albums in 1969-70 (produced by Billy Swan) and had a surprise hit with Polk Salad Annie.

During 1976 - 1983 more albums were released but without much success, combining his classic swamp rock sound with disco didn’t do the trick.

1989 was a turning point due to his contributions (4 songs, incl. Steamy Windows & Undercover Agent for the Blues!) to Tina Turner’s Foreign Affair album, both as a songwriter and guitar player.

After that his career started picking up, his 1991 album Closer to the Truth I still consider a must-have!

However what many people don’t realize is the huge number of songs he wrote and a significant number of those were covered by loads of more well-known artists (besides Elvis and Tina) such as Ray Charles, Dusty Springfield, Rory Gallagher, etc.

A thorough check on the Net revealed that surprisingly enough there never has been a Tony Joe White Songs Covered collection released officially, and to the best of my knowledge, nothing similar appeared on any music blog either…

Lo and behold, another candidate for the full JOKONKY treatment had appeared.

However, selecting a varied collection of covers wasn’t easy, Rainy Night in Georgia alone has been covered over a hundred of times!

Therefore I opted for a 2 Volume Song Book which at least tackles most of the classic covers, plus quite a few not that well-known ones…

In the end I settled for these artists covering 36 tracks:

Brook Benton, Clarence Carter, Elvis Presley, Link Wray, Rory Gallagher, Roy Head, Wilson Pickett, Joe Dassin & Tony Joe White, Johnny Adams, The Celibate Rifles, Tina Turner, John Mayall, Sleepy LaBeef, Buddy Guy, Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood, Elkie Brooks, Robert Cray, Johnny Ray Jones, Dusty Springfield, Carmen McRae, Christine Perfect, Ray Charles, Joe Dassin & Tony Joe White, The Cruel Sea, Luke Walter Jr, B.B. King, Greg "Fingers" Taylor, Jimmie Van Zant, Ten Cats Laughing, Ana & Milton Popovic, Chuck Berry, Willie Nelson with Tony Joe White, Leon Russell & Jamey Johnson, Colin James, & Tom Jones.