The hour of the apocalypse came quietly and went the same way — leaving those who believed that Saturday evening would mark the world’s end confused, or more faithful, or just philosophical.

Some had given away earthly belongings, [and] others drained their savings accounts.

“I had some skepticism but I was trying to push the skepticism away because I believe in God,” said Keith Bauer — who hopped in his minivan in Maryland and drove his family 3,000 miles to California for the Rapture.

“I was hoping for it because I think heaven would be a lot better than this earth,” said Bauer…

Richard Dawkins (from Fresh Air, March 28 2007):

…said Bauer, a tractor-trailer driver who began the voyage west last week, figuring that if he “worked last week, I wouldn’t have gotten paid anyway, if the Rapture did happen.”

I hear a little buyer’s remorse in there, but who hasn’t felt some of that before? Of course, walking away from your job and piling the family in the minivan for a cross-country “Rapture-or-bust” road trip doesn’t sound like the behavior of a skeptic. I’ll give the guy the benefit of the doubt, since I’m not inside his head. Maybe he really was “trying to push skepticism away,” and if so, he sure gave it a hell of a push.

Now our buddy Keith needs a job, and I fear for him at his next job interview: “So, Mr. Bauer, why did you decide to leave your previous job?”

[They had responded to the] May 21 doomsday message by Harold Camping, an 89-year-old retired civil engineer who has built a multi-million-dollar Christian media empire that publicizes his prediction [of the world's end].

The Onion’s “American Voices”:
According to Harold Camping, the founder of Family Radio, the world will come to an end on Saturday. What do you think?

That’s funny because it might even be true — as of this posting, Camping still has not been seen since big non-event.

Camping had been projecting the apocalyptic prediction for years far and wide via broadcasts and websites. He has said that his earlier apocalyptic prediction in 1994 didn’t come true because of a mathematical error.

“I’m not embarrassed about it,” he told The Associated Press last month. This time, he said, “there is …no possibility that it will not happen.”

Well, “no possibility” could be interpreted in a lot of ways… if you happen to think one is a lot. He could always take a play from this week’s Newt Gingrich playbook and say that anyone who quotes his earlier statements is a liar.

Many followers said the delay was a further test from God to persevere in their faith.

“It’s still May 21 and God’s going to bring it,” said Family Radio’s special projects coordinator Michael Garcia, who spent Saturday morning praying and drinking two last cups of coffee with his wife at home in Alameda.

If Christianity were baseball these guys would be Cubs fans. Fortunately, Christianity is not baseball. I can understand being a Cubs fan and having faith that the Cubs will eventually win a championship, because it could happen.

As Saturday drew nearer, followers reported that donations grew, allowing Family Radio to spend millions on more than 5,000 billboards and 20 RVs plastered with the doomsday message. In 2009, the nonprofit reported in IRS filings that it received $18.3 million in donations, and had assets of more than $104 million, including $34 million in stocks or other publicly traded securities.

The end of “Interview with Jesus” from George Carlin’s A Place for My Stuff!, 1980:

Members of a local church, concerned [Camping's] followers could slip into a deep depression come Sunday were part of the crowd outside Family Radio International. They held signs declaring Camping a false prophet as motorists drove by.

Nothing says compassion and concern like a big “YOU FOLLOWED A FALSE PROPHET” sign.

“The cold, hard reality is going to hit them that they did this, and it was false and they basically emptied out everything to follow a false teacher,” the Rev. Jacob Denys, of the Milpitas-based Calvary Bible Church, said earlier. “We’re not all about doom and gloom. Our message is a message of salvation and of hope.”

Salvation and hope, and marketing!

Like just about all of the songs in my Got You Covered series, “Nobody Does It Better” has been covered more times than a 90-year-old exhibitionist. Before I highlight my favorite version, I would be remiss if I didn’t address the rendition by Radiohead. A taste:

Thom Yorke of Radiohead
(photo: Flickr/Tim Cochrane)

Let me preface this by affirming that Radiohead is a very popular, respected, and influential band, and deservedly so. I like them. Their rendition of this song just doesn’t work for me. I like the arrangement fine, particularly the heavy, distorted guitar in the broad sections. The problem I have is frontman Thom Yorke’s vocal: simply put, he’s working too hard. The vocal line sits at the upper reaches of his range, and I can’t help but wonder what might be possible if Radiohead had taken it down about a whole step. As it stands, the foregoing clip shows a few of the instances where Yorke gets a bit, shall we say, approximate with regard to pitch. I’m aware that this quavering, sliding-between-notes quality is sometimes part of his style as a singer, but in this instance it undercuts the intention of the song. On one live recording Yorke intros the song by calling it “the sexiest song that was ever written,” and he’d get little argument from me — but that’s precisely why the song should be sung with ease. Or at least without hints of anguish.

The possible hues of ease range well beyond just the warm, soft-focus palette of Carly Simon’s original single. The rendition I stumbled across is from an album called Shaken & Stirred: The David Arnold James Bond Project and is performed by indie singer-songwriter Aimee Mann.² Get a load of this (OK, not a load, but a clip):

Aimee Mann
(photo: Flickr/6tee-zeven)

Like the Carly Simon version’s voice-and-piano opening, Mann’s cover starts off small: a monaural accordion overlaid by the soft dust-pops of a phonograph needle. The big, reverberating chords that enter with the top of the first verse set things rolling toward the grand second chorus, by which time I’m well and truly hooked. This recording of the song finds an element of fantasy not explored by other versions: a girl alone in her room, listening to a phonograph record, imagining herself with James Bond. There is a poignancy to Mann’s airy, almost uninflected delivery of the first lines, and when she opens up her tone in the later sections she does so without “cutting the string,” as one of my old vocal coaches used to say.³

Normally I end these posts with links to places where you can buy mp3 downloads of the song in question. Unfortunately, despite my considerable googling skills I have been unable to find a site where you can legally download either the Aimee Mann or the Radiohead version of “Nobody Does It Better.”⁴ The David Arnold album containing the Aimee Mann cover is on Amazon, but only on CD. The Radiohead version is even more elusive; according to Last.fm it is included on recordings called B-Sides, Rarities, Uncut, A Total Waste of Time, and Painkiller, all of which appear to be bootlegs. Allmusic.com lists it on another bootleg recording, Ground Control to Major Thom. Lastly, there are currently several videos on YouTube of Radiohead playing the song.

If you want to get the original Carly Simon version, that’s a much simpler matter: the mp3 is available on Amazon for 99 cents.

For this “Got You Covered” post series, I’m setting the bar higher for Beatles covers than for those of other artists. I’d include one only if it is in some way surprising and unexpected despite being a Beatles cover.

That’s where The Bobs come in. The group originated in 1981 when a San Francisco singing telegram company went out of business, unemploying Matthew Stull and Gunnar Madsen¹. Needing a bass singer, the lone respondent to their classified ad was Richard Greene. At some point the group named themselves The Bobs, the basis of which was the dog show acronym meaning “Best of Breed”; nevertheless, each member took on the middle name “Bob,” apparently just for shits and giggles. The group soon completed itself with the addition of Janie Bob Scott.

Surely you’ve heard the Beatles’ original version of “Helter Skelter” from The White Album. If you need a little refresher, here’s a snippet of the Fab Four’s loudest, messiest, hardest-rocking tune:

“Helter Skelter” became notorious for its appropriation by Charles Manson. On U2′s live album Rattle and Hum their cover of the song is preceded by Bono’s statement, “This is a song Charles Manson stole from The Beatles. We’re stealing it back.” A worthy sentiment. One might even say that the song has been reclaimed further by the many other artists who have covered it as well, among whom are Aerosmith, Pat Benatar, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Mötley Crüe, Bon Jovi, and Oasis.

The Bobs do it differently. For one thing, they are an a cappella group. I recall reading a passage in the liner notes to one of their early albums which described their early days as the time before they “transcended musical instruments.” However, as you’ll hear, the Bobs are not your college’s a cappella group. They’re not the Manhattan Transfer, either. Their cover song arrangements don’t just translate instrumental parts to voices and sing them on “Ooo” and “doo-waah.”

The Bobs’ rendition of “Helter Skelter” is a perfect example of their knack for inspired a cappella overhauling; in fact, the arrangement earned them a 1984 Grammy Award nomination. ² An mp3 of the entire track is posted on The Bobs website, so I’m hoping they don’t sue me for re-posting it here.

As I have previously linked (but one more won’t hurt), The Bobs website is www.bobs.com. They also have a Facebook page (of course), and a profile on Amazon.

For the uninitiated, here’s a clip of AC/DC’s best-known song:

If the prospect of still touring after 37 years seemed unlikely, the notion that AC/DC’s music would be given a second incarnation by a bluegrass tribute band calling itself Hayseed Dixie must have been even more farfetched. The flatpicking rock-and-roll devotees’ tribute to AC/DC made a sufficient splash for them to continue on with cover versions of their other rock favorites, including Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way,” Queen’s “Fat Bottomed Girls” and the J. Geils Band’s “Centerfold,” to name but a few… or rather, to name but the few that I bought and downloaded before I realized that a little bluegrass covering of rock tunes can go a long way. At least, in a single sitting.

Be that as it may, the fun of the initial AC/DC covers remains undiminished. Listen up for yourselves:

Hayseed Dixie have themselves an Amazon store page thingy. They peddle their recordings at various other online merchants too, which are linked on their homepage at www.hayseed-dixie.com. You can always see if their concert itinerary is going to bring them anywhere near you, in which case you could take advantage of their permissive audio and video taping policy, which stands as (presumably) a grateful homage to The Grateful Dead.

Photo: Flickr/Bryan Ledgard

But check it out — this synthetic, plasticized swan is improbably re-shaped into an ugly-in-a-good-way duckling by the British folk-rock journeyman Richard Thompson. His vocal approach — aggressive, and more than a little bitter — turns kittenish teen-pop into a sardonic challenge. To cap it off, Thompson bends the song to his will with his virtuosic guitar interludes, at one point even shifting it temporarily into 6/8 time. All in all, it’s been enough to banish the Britney Spears version from my mind’s ear… but I don’t purport to predict its effect on others. Judge for yourselves:

You can download the whole track (and many, many others) at the Richard Thompson store on Amazon or eMusic. His home page, “BeesWeb,” is at www.richardthompson-music.com and he has fan pages on Facebook and MySpace. Thompson has done several interesting interviews with Terry Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air”; this episode from 2009 is comprised of excerpts from a few of them.

Lastly, for those who like photography… aside from the one included above, photographer Bryan Ledgard has many more terrific photos of Thompson (and others) on his Flickr page.