Weekend Listomania: Special You Can Call Me Ray Edition

Well, it's Friday and you know what that means. Yes, my Oriental Zous Bisou Bisou, the lovely Fah Lo Suee, and I are off to downtown Dakota Dunes, South Dakota to do a little consulting work for Beef Products, Inc., the good folks who make that pink slime beef additive you've been hearing about lately.

Our mission: To get pink slime into the American heartstream!

Which means that, barring the unforseen, things will probably be a little quiet around here for a couple of days.

That being the case, here's a fun little project that should help us wile away the idle hours until the premiere of that new Three Stooges movie (which actually looks pretty damned funny).

Best/Worst Extant Cover of a Kinks Song and/or One That Hasn't Actually Been Done Yet But That You'd Really Like to Hear!!!

And my totally top of my head Top Five is/are:

5. Mott the Hoople -- You Really Got Me



Re-imagined as an instrumental, for heaven's sake, which still strikes me as a hilarious and brilliant masterstroke. Of course these guys had a genius for oddball covers, as the same album's deadpan reading of Sonny Bono's "Laugh at Me" as an outtake from Blonde on Blonde made abundantly clear.

4. Herman's Hermits -- Dandy



Peter Noone and company may have been lightweights, but on record they did total justice to this gem from Face to Face, aka the Kinks first great album. This non lip-synched TV version doesn't make a case for them as a great live band, however.

3. Van Halen -- You Really Got Me



Bloated, smarmy and (for me) unlistenable, and don't give me that Edward Van Halen shit, because I don't want to know. Really, it makes me physically ill that an entire generation grew up thinking these putzes wrote the song.

2. Mark Lanegan -- Nothin' in the World Can Stop Me Worryin' About That Girl




The Screaming Trees frontman's sepulchral take on the great nervous bohemian blues tune (originally from the Kinks third album in 1965) as heard on that 2006 MOJO tribute sampler I remarked on yesterday. Incidentally, I'd forgotten how much I loved this song until I saw Ray do it in concert earlier this year, but of course that show is a story unto itself.

And the all time Dedicated-Follower-of-Fashion recording ever simply has to be...

1. The Pretenders -- Stop Your Sobbing



C'mon, it's not even close. Seriously -- there are times I think the way Chrissie sings "Each little tear/that falls from your eye" is the single most spine-tingling moment in the history of rock 'n' roll.

Alrighty then -- what would YOUR choices be?