A Suggestion for Cat Power Regarding The Upcoming Album

Dear Cat Power:

Pitchfork just revealed the tracklist of your upcoming covers album and I have to say after the somewhat mistitled The Greatest, I thought I was over "Cat Power" (the recording artist, as opposed to the person. I don't pretend to know you as a person) , and am even more over the idea of you doing a Bob Dylan cover and am soaring miles above being over a new song by you about Bob Dylan. We all love Bob Dylan, already. It's the goddamn Official Year of Loving Bob Dylan. But I can use a break from Bob Dylan, or at least the aggressive loving thereof. Merle Haggard one said in an interview that we loved Elvis to death, and I'd hate to kill off good ole Bob with smothering hugs and sloppy kisses.

That spewn, I heard "Cross-Bones Style" on the radio today, and I remembered how much I love that song and the way you sing it, and now, I'm thinking how much I love your weird somnambulist reading of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" off the previous covers record, so maybe there is hope yet. I am totally not over "Cat Power."

And really, the only reason I posted this at all is when I saw the tripled picture and the mention of a covers record, I was really, suddenly, really hoping for a cover of Clarence Carter's raunchy line-dance staple "Strokin'" to be included on your album.


Click here if the YouTube thingy doesn't appear.

I don't know if "Strokin'" is as persistent everywhere else as it is here, but on any night, at any crappy blues club, one quarter can be spent on Clarence Carter and suddenly a panoply of women of all shapes and sizes and creeds and backgrounds will assume formation on the dancefloor and Electric Slide up a sexual storm.

So please, Cat Power, if you are the type to google yourself, as I suspect you might be, consider "Strokin'" as a late addition. Or a B-side. C'mon, you've delayed things before...this is a good idea! Like your Rolling Stones cover, or the karaoke version of "My Name Is" that made the rounds on the web. You own a cover when you do it right.

And, while I'm asking, consider doing a video for it with Feist and Peaches. And let Dave LaChapelle direct it. Or even better, let Dave Chappelle direct it. Either way, it's an idea whose time has come.

Respectfully,
Alex