Late last year I joined the ranks of the unemployed and in keeping with this glorious new state of affairs, my partner and I took 20 of our friends out to celebrate what we called my E.I. Party (E.I. meaning “Employment Insurance”). After a lot of dancing and drinking we all wound up in our living room listening to music (by the way, you know your friends are writers and artists if they regard your loss of job as good news. Some may even say “welcome back”). I found myself thinking about all those “unemployment songs.” There’s a myriad of them, especially from the 1930s. And so, I present here a brief selection of tunes in praise of that most shiftless, anti-Protestant condition.

Peggy Lee, “Manana” (1950)

This is so casually and gloriously un-PC. They might as well have had Speedy Gonzales running around her feet while she was singing. You would never see this sort of thing in this day and age: a blond, blue-eyed chanteuse singing from the point of view of a lazy Mexican. Remember kids, it’s not a window, it’s a weeeeendow.

The Rolling Stones, “Hang Fire” (1982)

I’ve never been able to figure this one out. By the time Mick Jagger (that’s Sir Mick Jagger to you by the way) and Keith Richards recorded this for the Rolling Stones’ 1982 album “Tattoo You,” they’d been stars for over 20 years and presumably not short of money, so why write a terminally catchy ode to England’s welfare state? Because it was under attack by the newly minted Tory government of Margaret Thatcher?

The Stones have always had a peculiarly ambivalent attitude about money. All the way back on “Sticky Fingers,” Jagger chastises a woman for leaving him out in the cold while she’s “talking to some rich folks that you know.” As much as I love pre-1980 Rolling Stones, this affection for poverty has always rubbed me the wrong way (see also “Sittin’ on a Fence” or “Luxury”). Decadence is Jagger’s authentic pose. He’s a lot more honest on money-fuelled tunes like “Shattered” or “It’s Only Rock N Roll (But I Like It).”

For your E.I. Jukebox, this spirited version of “Bang on the Drum All Day” is essential:

Todd Rundgren, “Bang On The Drum All Day” (1983)

When I think of Todd Rundgren the last thing that comes to mind is reggae. Sure, a number of English musicians have incorporated (or appropriated depending on your politics) reggae into their sound, from Eric Clapton (“I Shot The Sherrif”) to the mish mash of reggae and punk that was The Clash (leading to ska). Todd Rundgren is however the least likely candidate to glom onto to this variety of cool…

And because it’s me, I couldn’t let you go without some heavy metal.

Mordred, “Every Day’s A Holiday” (1989)

Even in the annals of obscure metal, this is pretty obscure. In fact, you’ve probably never heard of this band unless one of these guys is your cousin. San Francisco’s Mordred positioned themselves in the brief funk-metal movement of the early 1990s, spearheaded largely by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Faith No More. They produced a couple of albums and faded into anonymity.

I like to sleep all day
Go to work? Ha, no way
I see you work so hard
To pay your credit card

I see you bust your ass
To buy a new bus pass
So you can go to work
Like every other jerk

Every day’s a holiday
Do you know what I mean?
Every day’s a holiday
Don’t you wish you were just like me?

I see you bust your ass
So I think I’d rather pass
You buy the things you need
It’s all stuff I get for free

Every day’s a holiday
Why work up a sweat?
Every day’s a holiday
Don’t you wish you were just like me?

One presumes they are now living the lifestyle they brazenly mock in this tune.

- Christopher Doda

“And there’s no bloody singer on it!”
-- Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson introducing ‘Losfer Words’ live

The Ventures, “Walk Don’t Run” (1964)

I come here today to praise the rock instrumental, not to bury it, even though it is, in my opinion, a dead art.

Not to say that there isn’t quality instrumental music out there these days but the time when a band like The Ventures could chart 38 albums and sell over 100 million records without a singer is long gone. In other words, the days when a teenager might flip on mainstream radio and hear instrumental music are over. Hell, it’s exceedingly rare for songs to even have long instrumental breaks à la “Freebird,” “Layla,” “Paradise City,” “One,” or “Halo of Flies” at this point.

The Golden Age of the mainstream instrumental spanned from the late 1950s to the late 1960s when The Ventures, The Shadows, Dick Dale, and Link Wray among others carved out careers of varying levels of success. Here’s The Ventures laying down a smoking version of The Surfaris’ “Wipe Out” with special guest drummer The E Street Band’s Max Weinberg alongside Mel Taylor.

The Ventures, “Wipe Out”

Obviously the original is better known at beach parties but I think The Ventures could eat The Surfaris for lunch and have room left over for dessert.

Of all the American instrumental bands, The Ventures were the best and most successful. They released a string of popular records but are still likely best remembered for the theme from the long-running TV series “Hawaii Five-O.”

Better then any other North American band of the time, they understood the essential key to the instrumental: the guitar does double duty. For the most part in a rock song, the rhythm section supplies the backbone, the beat, and the lead guitarist and singer are responsible for the melody. Remove the vocals and the guitar player must provide something for the listener to hum along to, effectively providing the vocal phrasing. As such, instrumental bands often had more than one lead guitarist, a circumstance we’ve already seen with The Ventures. Same goes for their English counterparts The Shadows, once the backup band for Cliff Richards.

The Shadows, “Apache” (1960)

The Shadows had a successful (and very long) career but were always more influential than popular. Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi has cited their hand in some of his techniques, as has Queen’s Brian May. Deep Purple took their name from a Shadows tune.

By the early 1970s, the instrumental had largely become the province of newly emerged progressive rock bands, eager to show off their considerable musical talents at an extremely high technical level.

Emerson, Lake, & Palmer, “Barbarian” (1971)

Apparently this was written when Greg Lake heard Keith Emerson practicing a piano piece by the brilliant Hungarian composer Béla Bartók (1881-1945) and suggested that they work on it with some fuzz bass. The song was completed and released on their debut album in 1970.

Not long after they got a call at their offices (headquarters? I always imagined that ELP would have headquarters) from Bartók’s widow, who blithely informed them that their piece of music was written by her husband. It didn’t occur to them that a classical composition wouldn’t be in the public domain. I gather everything was settled quickly and amicably but the band felt like they’d been called out by Mrs. Mozart.

Focus, “Hocus Pocus” (1973)

This one by Dutch art-rock band Focus has it all: great riff, throbbing bass, fast drumming, flute, whistling, yodelling, what ?!?!? Released in 1971, it charted in the Top Ten in 1973. That bit of rondo-inspired weirdness was a hit single. Imagine that happening today. (Those of you familiar with the Steve Coogan BBC series “Saxondale” will recognize it as the music over the closing credits, by the way.)

And just for some CanCon, here’s Rush at their kimono-wearing best performing “La Villa Strangiato” from 1978’s “Hemispheres.”

Rush, “La Villa Strangiato” (1979)

Around this time, the first blow to the mainstream rock instrumental was delivered in the form of punk rock. The first wave of punk, with its three chord song structures, English class consciousness and spit-snarling attitude had little use for the art school graduates who created progressive rock.

For me the tipping point that ensured punk had to happen was when Yes’ Rick Wakeman committed the greatest of prog rock travesties: his recording of “The Six Wives of Henry VIII.” Showing off one’s musical prowess in the form of lengthy instrumentals was very much against punk rock aesthetic. Though I do recall (and someone can correct me if I have misremembered) that The Plasmatics once recorded one where each member of the band played for a few minutes on his own in the studio and they overlaid the tracks for a complete bit of utter cacophony.

With the general streamlining of pop/rock music in the 1980s, the instrumental became mostly the territory of guitar virtuosos and speed metal bands. After Eddie Van Halen recorded “Eruption” in 1978, it set the tone for hard rock guitar playing that would dominate much of the 1980s; a style divorced from the amplified blues of Jimmy Page and Joe Perry. Van Halen and Randy Rhoads played a faster, cleaner style born of classical training.

This gave rise to a caste of solo guitar players who would become the last artists to have moderate mainstream success performing instrumentals — people like Joe Satriani, Erik Johnson (along with a platoon of second-rate ‘shredders’) and Frank Zappa protégé Steve Vai.

Steve Vai, “The Audience is Listening” (2005)

I prefer this live recording to the studio version for two reasons: a) it is unencumbered by the chatter over the original, and b) around the 4:50 mark, it shows off the absurd level of coordination between Vai and his longtime bassist Billy Sheehan (their partnership dates back to 1986 when they were recruited for David Lee Roth’s first solo band).

Of this lot, I always thought Vai was the most talented in terms of musical breadth and imagination: he once recorded his wife’s labour pains and crafted a piece of music around them for God’s sake.

Around the same time speed metal bands were applying that level of proficiency to a type of music that was based on (initially anyway) sheer aggression. In the process they created some very impressive instrumentals like Anthrax’ “Intro to Reality,” MegaDeth’s “Into the Lungs of Hell” and the criminally underrated Wrathchild America’s “Prego” (so named because there’s a little of every musical style in there).

I will go to my grave maintaining that the best thing Metallica ever recorded was “The Call of Ktulu.” Though I know from old bootlegs that that the band used to perform it, I could not unearth any vintage video, which is a shame because it was such a showcase for the late Cliff Burton’s distinctive distorted bass style. Here though is another fine example from the title track of Death Angel’s 1987 debut album, “The Ultra Violence.”

Death Angel, “The Ultra Violence” (2007)

This is a shortened version (the original clocks in at over 10 minutes) and fairly recent footage but it sounds largely the same as it ever did. Bear in mind that when it was recorded no one in the band was over 19 and drummer Andy Galeon was a mere 14 years old.

In the intervening decades I’ve noticed that I go back to these pieces often, perhaps because heavy metal lyrics can be (at times) pretty hokey, so the pure music dates better. That said, I’ll listen to good music with bad lyrics over good lyrics with bad music any day of the week — the main reason I prefer Judas Priest to Bob Dylan.

Since the early 1990s, I’d argue that three changes in the music industry signalled the end of the mainstream instrumental. The first was grunge; the Seattle scene took aim not only at the showy and excessive façade of glam rock but also at heavy metal’s more baroque tendencies, particularly around guitar playing. Even the guitar solo, once a staple of any rock song, has mostly disappeared.

The second is the near wholesale takeover of mainstream music by rap and subsequently hip-hop, urban music rooted primarily in rhythm with less use for melody. As predominantly electronic music, what little instrumentation its proponents use is often borrowed/stolen/sampled from other artists, alongside a degree of visual posturing that would embarrass Poison.

The final (and certainly most odious) factor has been the rise of “American Idol” winner types. Because these ‘talent’ shows the world over are totally focused (as is hip-hop) on the cult of the vocalist, it’s rare for any of their songs to run eight bars without words. These are factories for solo singers in the Whitney Houston mode: they win their contests in front of anonymous TV network house bands, record with unknown session players, and tour with hired musicians that are barely seen by an audience that could hardly care if they were real or taped anyway.

Thank you very much, Simon Cowell.

- Christopher Doda

Aerosmith, “I’m Down” (1988)

There’s a million good reasons why musicians do cover versions, ranging from the commercial to the aesthetic to the practical. A band might want to display their influences, might be pushed by a record label to piggyback off another band’s success or simply need to beef out their live set.

When bands get to certain level of influence they are able to record whole albums of cover tunes, something we’ve seen from artists as disparate as Aerosmith, Guns N’ Roses, Skid Row, Slayer, Metallica, Rush, Tori Amos (more on her later), Overkill, Peter Gabriel, Scarlett Johansson (!), and Rod Stewart.

Often the best cover versions come when a band offers a radical reinterpretation of the song in question, pulls it from one musical genre to another. Should you find the Black Sabbath boxed set, titled appropriately enough, “Black Box,” the bonus dvd contains footage of a very young Black Sabbath cranking out “Blue Suede Shoes.” Who knew that Black Sabbath had any boogie in them?

Cake’s version of “I Will Survive” works precisely because the style of music goes against the song. While Gloria Gaynor sang her little heart out, as they say, on the original, John McCrea’s laconic vocals make it sound like he could barely survive dropping his ice cream much less having his heart stomped on.

Cake, “I Will Survive” (2004)

Sometimes the cover even becomes the definitive version. One thinks of The Who’s thunderous version of “Summertime Blues” or Sid Vicious’ doing “My Way.” And only the most devoted Dylan chauvinist would think that the original of “All Along the Watchtower” surpasses Jimi Hendrix’s take on the song.

As a lifelong listener of heavy metal, I’ve often noticed how well metal bands do covers from outside of their musical sphere. Many songs have been given the metal treatment, the contrast between the original and the reinterpretation made all the more apparent through the shift in musical styles.

One thinks of Celtic Frost doing “Mexican Radio” or Anthrax doing “Got the Time” or Exodus doing “Pump it Up” or Marilyn Manson’s various takes on 1980s synth rock. Or Nazareth’s thumping version of Joni Mitchell’s “This Flight Tonight.” Or Megadeth’s blistering take on “These Boots Are Made for Walking.”

As an example, I offer that when Joan Baez wrote “Diamonds and Rust” I’m pretty sure she never envisioned it sounding like this:

Judas Priest, “Diamonds and Rust” (1982)

Personally, I am pissed that Velvet Revolver split up. They were a) a far more viable band than Axl Rose’s solo efforts under the G’N’R name and b) the last bastion of sleaze rock out here. And do we ever need more of that! Their second album “Libertad” was brilliant (funny enough the only false moment on it was a cover of ELO’s “Can’t Get it Out of My Head” but I don’t think any band could save that song). In their early going they did covers to flesh out their live set including “Psycho Killer.”

Velvet Revolver, “Psycho Killer” (Download Festival, 2006)

Not only does this version have some serious swing and swagger, something not associated with the art rock darlings The Talking Heads, it shows off a side of Slash’s guitar playing that is not often seen–that is his ability with a slide, an underused implement for contemporary six-stringers.

Leave it to a metal/funk/rock/tribal/classical band like Faith No More (amazing as it is to recall but there was a time around 1989 where it seemed that this was going to be the band of 1990s, but then Nirvana came along) to resurrect this chestnut from the 1970s disco-prog group Sparks, allowing Mike Patton to show off his little-used falsetto:

Faith No More, “This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both of Us” (1998)

While hard rock and metal bands have pulled songs into their fold, rarely does the favour flow in the other direction except in novelty form, like Dread Zeppelin (reggae covers of Led Zeppelin sung by an Elvis Presley impersonator), Apocolyptica (Finnish chamber quartet doing Metallica) or Hayseed Dixie (AC/DC done as bluegrass).

An exception is Tori Amos. A prolific cover artist, the chanteuse has released a full album of them, an EP, and participated in numerous tribute records, recording everyone from The Smiths to the Rolling Stones to the Boomtown Rats to Neil Young to Nirvana to Leonard Cohen. Here is some grainy footage of her transforming Slayer’s “Raining Blood,” the punishing closer to 1986’s “Reign in Blood,” into a dirge:

Tori Amos, “Raining Blood” (2006)

Needless to say, it is considerably slower than the original; it is in fact more than twice as long. It’s also worth noting that for a singer whose audience is largely women and is as invested in covers as she is, she has never (to my knowledge) recorded a song by another female artist.

Sometimes things just come right out of left field. According to their website the Scala Choir from Belgium is composed of 60 teenage girls under the direction of the brothers Steven and Stijn Kolacny. Starting out as a classical choir, they switched to singing pop artists like U2, Nirvana, Depeche Mode, Rammstein, and Radiohead, among others. Somewhere along the line, an inspired choice of musical programming led to a cover of the DiVinyls:

Scala & Kolacny Brothers, “I Touch Myself” (from album “Dream On,” 2004)

This is so wrong on so many levels (and if I have to explain what they are, get some help perv) and yet so funny. The difference between simply listening to this (which would be hilarious enough) and watching it, comes down to the choirmaster who comes off as just a little too… enthusiastic about the whole proceedings as far as I’m concerned.

Slang vocabulary can be a tricky thing. It constantly updates itself and failure to keep current can lead to many an embarrassing misunderstanding. I had never seen such an embarrassment set to music until I discovered this:

Gail and Dale, “One Toke Over the Line” (1971)

I should mention that this episode of Lawrence Welk aired in 1971, right on the heels of the release of Brewer and Shipley’s hippie folk drug anthem. Presumably, all the references to Mary and Jesus were behind the idea to do this song as an evangelical spiritual. Unfortunately, there was no Google search around to help them figure out what a toke was. I’m certain that these two fresh-faced youngsters never had one toke period, much less gone one over the line.

Looking back on it from this day and age, what I love about this version is that it is performed utterly, completely and truly without a hint of irony. Its unintentional humour is a result of Gail and Dale’s (wonder what they’re up to?) totally sincere earnestness. Watching and enjoying it in 2010 is absolutely another matter though.

- Christopher Doda