I have this vague memory. My girlfriend, later to be my wife, worked at Rolling Stone. In the copy department.

Which got us invited to the Rolling Stone Christmas Party, which was a big deal then. Maybe it still is, but we’re no longer invited. I don’t know the year. There were a few.

In the year I’m thinking of the party was in a space in the Financial District that was part penthouse and part terrace, and we had a fabulous time eating all the giant shrimp cocktail and whatever else they had going then. It was December but there was outdoor space, all the better for keeping the vodka bottles encased in ice from melting. And smoking. Back then we all smoked.

There was also the night’s band, who (or which) was Marshall Crenshaw. And his band.

This was the 80s, when all of us were avoiding hair metal and everything that Moyer disliked. That was easy. Crenshaw was not a power pop artist, exactly, but he was a songmeister. A guy who relied on his catchy melodies and clever lyrics to catch flies.

I know this song because Billy C. Farlow sang it on the first Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen album, Lost in the Ozone. It’s pretty close to perfect (if you don’t watch the “video” part of this clip).

But 20 Flight Rock is an old rockabilly tune, half written by rock legend Eddie Cochran, who recorded it in 1957. And who died at age 21, so there is that.

I got into the Eddie Cochran catalog because of Commander Cody, and there’s lots there to like. And lots of historical interest, but Cochran’s performances have mostly been superseded by covers. This is the original 20 Flight Rock.

And this is an improbable, to me, cover of the song, performed by Jack White and Conan O’Brien on Conan’s first TNT show after he was paid to leave NBC. I have to say that Conan as rock guitarist and vocalist was incredible to me, until I saw this. Jack White and Conan are plenty weird, and this is plenty good.

Let’s thank Eddie Cochran and Ned Fairchild for this tune. Unless we’re too tired.

Driving around the other day, listening to WFMU, there was a set that started with Nico singing in German, continued into a German version of Send in the Clowns, and then turned to Nina Hagen’s version of White Punks on Dope, which was called TV Glotzer. Also in German.

TV Glotzer was featured here back in February, when I couldn’t find a clip of the Tubes’ version of the song. But now I can.

I first heard the Tubes’ original version of the song while living in a dorm at Harvard with my friend Peter S. (he was going to summer school, I was freeloading) in the summer of 1975. It was mind-blowing, a melding of Bowie and Queen and Cooper with a wicked stupid sense of humor that seemed (I know, this is dum) mindblowing. Lest I build it up too much:

Good morning!

I didn’t like this song when I first heard it. It was my first Squeeze tune, I think, and it was too jittery for my taste. But of course I liked a lot of the band’s songs, which are always clever and often surprisingly moving.

I happened upon a Squeeze album today called Spot the Difference, which looked like a greatest hits album, but turns out to be the late aughts version of Squeeze rerecording their greatest hits. Kind of like Michael Haneke remaking Funny Games.

But I liked this version of Cool for Cats. Was it me, had 30 years changed me? Or was the music different. Here we find out.

Here’s the original version from the second Squeeze album, called Cool for Cats of all things. (Did you know the band’s first album was produced by John Cale? And that they took their name from that Velvet Underground album? I didn’t.)

The 2010 version, rerecorded, sounds like this:

I don’t know. Pretty close and most of the advantage goes to the original, I think. Which, it turns out, is a pretty weird and excellent song. Weird but not a novelty, exactly, and yet there isn’t really anything else like it. Is there?

I’ve been listening to a lot of PJ Harvey the last few days. Her early albums are full of crazy explosive rock songs that don’t conform to the regular rock forms, but respect them enough to be recognizable. I remember reading a paired review of one of her early elpees with Liz Phair’s latest (at that time) in Esquire. The writer’s point was these crazy neurotic women could make some compelling music, which at the time seemed a little stupid, as if it wasn’t crazy neurotic men making most of the compelling music.

Rid of Me is the title song from Harvey’s first album, which was somewhat distinguished by being followed some months later by a release of the demos for the first album’s song. Which is the comparison we’re raising here.

The demo is a little different. Simpler, more direct, though the same ideas are there. This album became my go to PJ Harvey album. Until the next one came out.

And then later, she was established, a performer. Different, but the same, too.