Category: Music

Scene from my cassette rack:

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Axl Rose had nightmares like this.

Jeez, Louise, ten years later, and I can still name all five original Spice Girls by their spice names and their real names.

Even though I only just today listened all the way through to my first Spice Girls song.

Is it a blessing or a curse?

This morning, Weber and Dolan (teh best morning radio show evar!!!1!) asked listeners what albums they could sing from memory. I didn’t call in because I would have filled the segment myself.

Not that you care, but here’s a partial enumeration of albums I could sing end-to-end were they playing (although for many, I am taken aback when they’re played on CD and there’s no pause between the song at the end of side 1 and the beginning of side 2).

So, anyway:

• 52nd Street by Billy Joel
• Glass Houses by Billy Joel
• An Innocent Man by Billy Joel
• Piano Man by Billy Joel
• Greatest Hits Volume 1 by Billy Joel
• Greatest Hits Volume 2 by Billy Joel
• Scoundrel Days by a-ha
• Hunting High and Low by a-ha
• Stay on These Roads by a-ha
• East of the Sun, West of the Moon by a-ha
• Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd
• Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd
• Animals by Pink Floyd
• The Wall by Pink Floyd
• A Momentary Lapse of Reason by Pink Floyd
• Flesh and Blood by Poison
• Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich by Warrant
• David Gilmour by David Gilmour
• About Face by David Gilmour
• Sports by Huey Lewis and the News
• A Pocket Full of Kryptonite by The Spin Doctors
• I’m Your Man by Leonard Cohen
• These Eyes by The Guess Who
• The Return of Bruno by Bruce Willis
• No Time to Kill by Clint Black
• Repeat Offender by Richard Marx
• No Fences by Garth Brooks
• Greatest Hits Volume 1 by The Eagles
• The Scattering by Cutting Crew
• David Gilmour by David Gilmour
• Weird Al Yankovic by Weird Al Yankovic
• Dare to Be Stupid by Weird Al Yankovic

What can I say? I listened to these things over and over in my high school and college years. Note that none of these albums dates past 1994. Telling.

Now, you play. What albums could you sing every song on if that album is playing?

A special tip of the WTF hat to the advertising genius who centered the JC Penney’s Valentine’s Day ad campaign around the song “99 Luft Balloons“.

Interesting. KMJM is playing the song that runs through the strip club scene in Beverly Hills Cop. I think this makes my home office a hostile workplace. I might just sue myself.

On the other hand, I wonder what the title is, not that anyone would know it. It’s the Beverly Hills Cop Strip Club Song.

In another scandal, George W. Bush has not interrupted his regular activity to express sympathy for Big Band fans in their loss of revered band leader Artie Shaw.

Seven days, Mr. President, and no word from the White House. You’re sacrificing America’s international hep cred by not speaking up to give hope and solace to dozens.

You make me ashamed to be an American, and I am thinking of moving to Illinois in protest.

On Wednesday, Richard Roeper identified the worst holiday songs and assigns the worst ribbon to “Jingle Bells” by the Singing Dogs, which leads me to confess: I have this song on a cassette single.

As Roeper mentioned it, I put it in the old cassette deck and clicked the play button. And sang along.

Granted, I am just a suburban schmuck and not a big-city sophisticate (pronounced as Frenchly as possible), but even I have limits. For example, I don’t care for the Singing Dogs’ rendition of “Oh, Susanna” which is the flip side of the tape.

Having trouble distinguishing between Lou Reed and Lou Rawls? MfBJN offers this handy guide:

• Lou Rawls is the guy with singing talent.
• Lou Reed had something to do with Andy Warhol, who was a mid-twentieth-century painter who was famous, briefly, because Americans were bored after World War II.

Don’t be fooled by that talking-over-a-bass-line that represents “Wild Side”; that didn’t take much talent, and hence it’s obviously Lou Reed.

Yes, Ms. McGovern, they know it’s Christmas. They’re kids, for ding-donging out loud.

(Apologies to Jeff Goldstein for stealing his groove. Well, not really.)

Whistles do not belong in Christmas carols, ever. Your rendition of “Frosty the Snowman” is in violation.

Please, just rein it in a little bit, or we’ll have to contact Senator John McCain to enact Congressional legislation regulating Christmas Carols to prevent damn kids from destroying the traditional music enjoyed for generations in this great land. Without schnucking whistles.

(McCain’s got enough time if he has the leisure to tackle steroids in baseball, speaking of which, who doesn’t think that there’s enough bipartisan, nationwide sport to just freaking amend the constitution to prohibit steroids and blood doping in all sports?)