Cover Songs are Painless

I have a complaint. It turns out that Marilyn Manson has covered "Suicide is Painless", the theme song to M*A*S*H (both the movie and the TV show). People. Why am I just finding this out now?

Okay, I realize it's probably not a great cover. I mean, the only other cover Manson's done that has come to my attention was "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)", and I didn't think that was great. I mean, it was okay, but it just kept going, and you pretty much got the point in the first line. And Suicide is Painless has six verses, so I'm prepared for Manson's version to take like eight minutes. But I still need it.

It's partly because I really like that song. When I was young (and foolish), I was a total M*A*S*H-head. I've got reference books. I've read not only the original book, but a couple of the terrible sequels. While I'm on the subject, if you're used to Hawkeye being all Alan Alda sensitive, you might not want to look at how he appears in the books. That is one foul-mouthed semi-racist you've got there.

Okay, anyway, I like the song. You only get to hear the lyrics in a couple episodes of the show, so I recommend seeing the movie for it. Well, and for it just being a really good Robert Altman movie. He directed both M*A*S*H and Popeye, you know. Does that seem odd to anyone else?

Damn. I got almost two sentences into that paragraph before I came completely untracked. Let's try again: I really like the song "Suicide is Painless", by Mike Altman and Johnny Mandel, which was written for the movie M*A*S*H. The asterisks were added for the movie version; they're not in the book title. They bug me, but accuracy is an important part of being obsessive. But about the song: Marilyn Manson has covered it, and it's occurred to me that there are probably people that heard it and didn't realize it was a cover. Sheesh.

In the course of my research, I've also noticed that the Manic Street Preachers have not only covered this song, they've actually released it as a single. Again, why was I not informed? I feel like I'm all alone here!

Oh, the reason I was looking around the Internet for "Suicide is Painless" is because I just bought an extremely inexpensive acoustic guitar (seriously, the shipping on this thing was almost more than the instrument itself) and I was looking for some songs that would sound appropriately folky and yet not, you know, actually have been performed by Peter, Paul, and Mary. Specifically, I was looking for tablature, because I, er, already own the piano sheet music.

Look, I never said I wasn't a geek.