(Playlist for this post available here)
In this post I am going to talk about 10 great cover versions of popular songs by Killdozer, an independent rock band from Wisconsin that existed from ’83-96. Killdozer covered disco, Britpop, old hippy songs, Neil Diamond, and classic rock icons Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Their covers ran the musical gamut, and nothing was sacred. And as listeners, we are all much better for The Dozer’s efforts.
- What makes a Killdozer cover special?
- 10. Disco Inferno by The Trammps
- 9 Unbelievable by EMF
- 8 Nasty by Janet Jackson
- 7 Take the Money and Run by Steve Miller Band
- 6 Hush by Deep Purple
- 5 One Tin Soldier by The Original Caste
- 4 American Pie by Don McLean
- 3 Cinnamon Girl by Neil Young
- The truth about Neil Young is…
- Only Killdozer could expose Neil Young for what he is
- 2 I Am… I Said by Neil Diamond
- 1 Sweet Home Alabama by Lynyrd Skynyrd
- Killdozer’s version is tactile, it affects the listener
- Again, Neil Young is to blame
- Killdozer’s aces up their sleeves
- But wait, there is more! And it is Zeppelin!
What makes a Killdozer cover special?
Killdozer did “fact checking” with their covers before fact checking was a thing. A Killdozer cover is what happens to a song after it has been discussed at several high-level roundtable discussions, “kicked up a notch” by Emeril Legasse, re-engineered by NASA, and then given back to the people. Killdozer restores sound artefacts, and by doing so they make history authentic again. The ‘Dozer does all that and more with their covers. Probably less, too. I hope you enjoy listening to them.
10. Disco Inferno by The Trammps
I recently watched a 3-part PBS documentary entitled Disco: Soundtrack of a Revolution. It is excellent and you should watch it. You should watch more PBS, too. Disco was initially the music of The People. The poor, the people of colour, people of non-binary sexual persuasions. Disco had the same roots as Hip Hop.
Disco was destroyed by Big Corporate Money. John Travolta will have to answer for Saturday Night Fever someday, as will all those cigar chomping CEO vacuum cleaners at RSO and the other record companies.
9 Unbelievable by EMF
A lot of people think there is a “WTF” in the lyrics of the original. I wish there were, but I personally can not hear it. Those words were likely PINE-SOL®‘d out by concerned Washington PMRC wives. Killdozer “takes one for the team” and re-adds those filthy but accurate words.
The number of copies of this cover that Killdozer sold is confidential, but EMF did quite well with this song, going gold in Australia, Canada, and the United States. The UK could only offer up siler. Combined sales in those 4 capitalist countries was at least 785,000. Rico Suave!
8 Nasty by Janet Jackson
Killdozer had Janet’s back, 15 years before “the nipple slip”. Janet knew all about standing up to The Man, even if two men wrote this song.
Sing it loud and proud, Janet. ALL people are created EQUAL.
‘Cause privacy is my middle name
“Janet Jackson”
My last name is control
No, my first name ain’t baby
It’s Janet… Ms. Jackson, if you’re nasty
7 Take the Money and Run by Steve Miller Band
The Steve Miller Band has sold more than 30 million albums. Personally, I find Steve Miller’s music to be audio anesthesia – it just puts me to sleep. My favourite thing about Steve Miller’s music has little to do with their music at all.
My favourite thing about The Steve Miller Band was when filmmaker Michael Moore was trying to bring tobacco company Philip Morris to task. Moore couldn’t get in to interview the CEO of the legalized drug pusher in person.
In response, the Roger & Me director stood on the sidewalk with a bullhorn and pleaded to the CEO:
Mr. CEO of Philip Morris!
Please come down and explain the line “I’m a joker, I’m a smoker, I’m a midnight toker!”
– Michael Moore
6 Hush by Deep Purple
In the Killdozer version, the lyrics “I gotta gotta have it” remind me of the drill instructor from Full Metal Jacket leading his Marines as they jog. The DI was training his recruits to be killers. Killdozer was training us all to be good Communists.
Kubrick may have been a genius, but he brought in $120 million for those Hollywood/Harvey Weinstein fat cats. Talk about Strangelove!
Fun fact for proletarians keeping score: Deep Purple has released 43 live albums.
5 One Tin Soldier by The Original Caste
This antiwar song appears to have been conceived in Canada by a group of hippies in Alberta who called themselves The Original Caste. That makes sense – Canada was run by draft dodgers. It is also preachy, juvenile, and sounds like something suburban women used to indoctrinate their children with back in the 1970s. Most episodes of The Smurfs were not only more complex, but also more rewarding on a humanist level.
If you like your politics and antiwar points of view to be thinner and flimsier than a wet sheet of paper, you have two choices:
- Watch Family Ties reruns and wish you could have a group hug with Alex P. Keaton’s parents
- Move to Canada
4 American Pie by Don McLean
Schlock sells. Soulless, sugar-coated, white bread wrapped up in the flag sells really well. Witness Forrest Gump. The original version of this song went 5X platinum in Canada, 2X platinum in the UK, and 3X platinum in the USA. Sales were probably north of 5 million.
Madonna even sold over a million copies of American Pie with her creepy/cringy “CliffsNotes/TED Talk” version, 30 years after the original made the Western World a whole lot more mayonnaise.
The song is basically “Nostalgia for an Age That Never Existed”, sonic MAGA, pablum for the masses who don’t even need opiates anymore.
Killdozer attacks American Pie like they attack all songs they cover. First goes the photoshopping, then goes the Botox, next comes the fact checking, then finally, when they get to the heart of the matter, if indeed there is a heart, “The Dozer” gets all Dr. Frankenstein on the song and gives it a soul. A dirty, real-life soul.
Useful idiot translation: To be clear, Killdozer were always non-fungible. They were singular, historic, and sustainable.
3 Cinnamon Girl by Neil Young
More CanCon for the igloo dwellers living north of the 49th parallel.
Back in 1985, Killdozer did their “thing” to Cinnamon Girl, a song originally released by Neil Young in 1969, Neil was down on his luck in those lean years, pretty much just an oddity. People referred to Neail as “that hippy weirdo who does something interesting every couple of decades”, mostly just that thing he did with Devo that was interesting for about 3 seconds.
Neil Young is still treated like a national treasure in Canada. He is a totem pole that can not be touched. He is sacred. The nationally sanctioned thinking goes: “Nobody could sum up Kent State like Neil. 32 “la’s” and repeating “Four dead in Ohio” 32 times”. Something in the maple syrup, I guess
The truth about Neil Young is…
Neil Young songs are like a trainwreck that never ends. You could have a nightmare that lasts all night long, get through the waking day, fall asleep, pick up the same nightmare still going on, and still the same Neil Young song would be playing. La-la-la-la, la-la-la-la.
I once read that Neil Young was the 2nd largest landowner in California. Only Ronald Reagan owned more Golden State property. So Mr. Soul is all about the environment, so long as he owns it.
There’s also a pretty substantiated story that Neil is so land rich that he turned a couple of barns into speakers. That’s Elon Musk/Jeff Bezos crazy. I doubt Mythbusters could have gotten financing to confirm that story as plausible or not.
Nowadays Neil is just a hardcore nut. From his Pono nonsense to “taking his songs of Spotify and going home” to “only touring when it is sustainable”, one could write a book or three.
The fact of the matter is, Neil Young is no different than a televangelist who fills an arena with suckers he wants to fleece. It is ONE person performing, 10,000 idolizing, and nothing, NOTHING changes in the end. Except Neil, or The Preacher Man, gets a whole lot richer.
In retrospect, Neil Young seems like he might be one of the easiest “artists” for Killdozer to cover.
Only Killdozer could expose Neil Young for what he is
Who else but Killdozer could strip down the pomposity of Neil Young? Who else but Killdozer could take that ridiculous hippy hubris and turn it into something actually worthwhile? Flipper wouldn’t touch Neil Young with a 40 meter fishing pole!
Killdozer covered Cinnamon Girl in 1985. I would venture hard-earned cash that Neil got wind of it and that is the reason why Mr. Young invited Sonic Youth to open for him on the Ragged Glory Tour in 1991.
2 I Am… I Said by Neil Diamond
Neil Diamond is about as big as you can get as a musician. 130 million record sold, 10 #1 songs in the USA, 38 top 10s… His success and accolades are endless, and well-deserved.
Shane MacGowan covered Cracklin’ Rosie and made it his own, yet you could still “feel” Neil as Shane slurred and stumbled his way through it. I don’t think that there is any doubt that Shane added Cracklin’ Rosie to his repertoire with genuine love.
I also believe that Killdozer covered I Am… I Said with the same authenticity. Just listen to those Killdozer vocals. Listen to that crying guitar. The bass that carries on like a good soldier, even if lost between the coasts. The drums, the inner self, forcing the storyteller to move on and go forward with their life, because there can be NO other way.
Just listen to Killdozer bring I Am… I Said to life!
The gut-wrenching, soul-searching pain of leaving your past and not feeling like you belong to your present can be felt in the feral Killdozer version. The “emptiness deep inside” is on full display, almost as like a mural for the driver of a car about to smash into it at 75 mph.
I remember walking down the beach in Cancun one time, laughing and holding hands with my late wife. For some reason the Killdozer version of I Am… I Said popped into my head, and I started singing it. I sang it loudly, proudly. It was a very different lost, a happy lost. Killdozer has a way of pulling your heartstrings when you least expect it.
1 Sweet Home Alabama by Lynyrd Skynyrd
The grandaddy of them all, the Rose Bowl of Killdozer covers.
The Lynyrd Skynyrd version is the equivalent of a neatly trimmed pork chop you happily buy from your local butcher. You bring it home, cook it for your family, and it is all very clean. Almost as sterile as getting one’s teeth cleaned at the dentist.
The Killdozer version cuts to the bone, pun intended. In the hands of Killdozer, Sweet Home Alabama is the equivalent of a hog recently slaughtered, its skull caved in. The hog’s carcass lays on the floor of the abattoir, its guts slowly oozing from its body. The hog bleeds slowly, yet determinedly, a Crimson Tide oozing towards the drain.
Life is gone, the deed has been done. There is only a red stained floor now, and Killdozer.
Killdozer’s version is tactile, it affects the listener
In Killdozer’s version of Sweet Home Alabama, the listener can see, feel, and even smell the Spanish moss hanging from the tall trees that serve as curtains for the swamps and other nastiness of The South.
When you listen to the Killdozer version you can feel the intense, overpowering grief that comes with seeing or having someone you know, perhaps a family member, become “strange fruit“. There are no words for that grief. It is the pain persists through generations, through centuries. The listener can feel that sort of inhumanity, that sort of cruelty, when listening to the Killdozer version of Sweet Home Alabama.
Again, Neil Young is to blame
Skynyrd’s version of Sweet Home Alabama, at its core, is just a well-crafted song, a bunch of guys jamming. It is interesting to note that none of the writers of Sweet Home Alabama were actually from Alabama. Also, the lyrics are a response to Neil Young’s songs Southern Man and Alabama.
Neil knew about as much as Alabama as he did about hygiene at the time. Isn’t that the Canadian way? Point your finger at America and pretend to be “above all that”.
Without Neil Young, Skynard might have very well have called the some “I Love Deep Sea Fishing”.
Neither Young nor Lynyrd Skynyrd had any real skin in the game, no real personal involvement in Alabama. They were just rich, spoiled rock stars behaving like rich, spoiled politicians in Washington.
Killdozer’s aces up their sleeves
Killdozer’s slow, prodding style of play is perfect for Sweet Home Alabama. It makes the listener feel like they are trudging through a swamp. There is no hope. It is terrible, it is a hell that Canadians can not even fathom. Progress is next to impossible, and there is no end or help in sight. Still, we must trudge on.
ONLY Killdozer could reveal Sweet Home Alabama for what it truly is.
But wait, there is more! And it is Zeppelin!
At the end of Killdozer’s version of Sweet Home Alabama, they take a swipe at Led Zeppelin by including a whiny, self-absorbed copy of Robert Plant’s nonsensical lyric “And she’s buying a stairway… …to hea-hea- ven.” That little nugget alone makes Killdozer’s version priceless and necessary.
Zeppelin, a band of white English men, became very rich and very famous by literally stealing the works of black American blues musicians. Once again, ripping off people who had been dragged across an ocean and forced into slavery by white men from what is now the UK.
Those first couple of Led Zeppelin albums are total theft, and only Killdozer, a band of proletarians from Wisconsin, has the courage to call out the English Aristocracy.
All in all, I doubt Killdozer could have been more American at all.
Killdozer playlist: here
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