Thursday, May 11, 2006

It's Still Crock n' Roll to Me

(I know this topic has been done to death already – but it’s just too juicy a literary meatball to pass up on. Besides, it caters to my inane obsessive compulsive male nature to list things - and then mock them for all they’re worth.)

I have been busy organizing my CD collection over the last few days and I’ve made some startling rediscoveries about myself.

Some discoveries are rather odd; some are a bit embarrassing; and some just ain’t pretty at all. Yes, sir, it was ‘The Good, the Bad & the Ugly’ here this week at ‘ol Chez Tigerrabbit as I sifted through the stacks of old rock albums that have been piled on my bedroom floor for the past two years.

Most notably *, I was amazed at some of the crap I have listened to in my 33 years on this crazy rock. Apparently, “taste”, is something you only acquire after years of intensive immersion and multiple bong hits – and, as luck would have it, I’m a freaking Jedi Master at both.

So, below, for your scoffing pleasure, I have compiled twenty of the worse Rock n’ Roll nightmares to ever be recorded - the kind of crap that inevitably assisted with the steady deterioration of my brain over the years. Having seen the light - I would now rather listen to Yoko Ono perform ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ with her armpits than relive any of these circular turdlets of Rock history again.

1) The Police – De Doo Doo Doo De Da Da Da

Will somebody p-UUUU-lease explain to me what this smary English fucker is trying to say here exactly. Sting himself admits that the song was supposed to be “an articulate song about being inarticulate”. Even THAT doesn’t make any bloody sense!

“Don't think me unkind
Words are hard to find
The only cheques I've left unsigned
>From the banks of chaos in my mind
And when their eloquence escapes me
Their logic ties me up and rapes me
De doo doo doo, de da da da
Is all I want to say to you”

Bad Moon-June rhyming scheme aside, that kinda sums up the whole experience one goes through just in listening to this particular craptacular musical monstrosity. Other past “non-word” songs in history, such as ‘Doo Wah Diddy’, ‘Tutti Frutti’, or ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’, weren’t even this stupid. Sting claims that people who dismiss this song have not “bothered to listen to the lyrics”.

Pardon me? I guess I just expected that a former English middle-school teacher would have had more to share than this “doo doo doo” shit. If I wanted gibberish, you prick, I would just tease Special Needs kids at the mall.

2) Glass Tiger – My Town

The 80’s bastard love child between Duran Duran and Don Henley - minus the talent. Thankfully, this Canadian FM disaster would only go on to become the idiot’s Bachman-Turner Overdrive before slinking off into near obscurity. Just listen to this drivel:

“Bring the wind to carry me over
Lead me home to my town
Tell me when that breeze is blowing
Taking me home to my town”

It practically induces diarrhea on the spot. Just remembering listening to this song on the radio is giving me gastronomical pains. We should have collectively exiled them to Hans Island the moment they picked up instruments back in High School.

3) Billy Joel – We Didn’t Start the Fire

This is one of those embarrassing discovers I mentioned previously. Sadly, I used to enjoy this song when it was first released in 1989. Of course, once I developed some good musical style as I matured into an adult, I grew to realize that this song, in actuality, was nothing more than lame ass attempt at white middle class rap. Take that bitter pill all in for a second.

The random history references throughout the song make it seem like a disjointed term paper that was scribbled down the night before. War, famine, apartheid, murder, scandal, tragedy, dead celebrities, flipper babies, you friggin’ name it - Billy’s got himself a rhyme for it. What a tribute to our times to try and fit the entire cultural history of the twentieth century into a four minute shitzkrieg.

The fact that I still had this album lurking at the back of my collection for the past 15 years makes my skin crawl.

4) Guns & Roses – Insert any cover song they ever attempted.

I realize that this isn’t exactly a specific track that’s under scrutiny here, but the suggestion instead that nobody does a Rock n’ Roll a greater disservice at recording cover tunes than the ‘ol Gunners. If we were smart, we would have voted on and passed valid legislature preventing these Metal Gurus from ever attempting to play anybody else’s material ever again by punishment of death.

Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door, Sympathy for the Devil, Live and Let Die, and the entire Spaghetti Incident album. Nobody butchers a classic original like Axel. Nothing is sacred as Axel shimmies and shakes his emaciated skinny ass along to the artistically inserted power guitar solo.

He should just stick to modeling bandanas and inciting riots by drunken trailer park tailgaters and leave the business of Rock n’ Roll to the real musicians.

5) R.E.M. – Shiny Happy People

This is a song that is so annoying that it even makes the capillaries on the backs of your eyes swell and explode. In fact, it’s almost as if this song was written and intended to be this fucking unapologetically annoying – so much so, it almost openly mocks you as Michael Stipe chugs the verses along with his overly annoying uber-happy self.

“Everyone around, love them, love them
Put it in your hands
Take it, take it
There's no time to cry
Happy, happy
Put it in your heart
Where tomorrow shines
Gold and silver shine”

Somebody just fucking shoot me already.

Honestly, who doesn’t want to barf whenever they hear this lyrical fertilizer? Somebody take Michael off the goofers, slap him upside his head, and give him something really mournful to swoon about – like having your ass kicked for being such a pansy.

6) Donovan – Mountain

You repeat offenders to this blogsite will already know how I feel about this song. You know, the ‘ol “is it a mountain?” or “isn’t it a mountain?” debate - that old chestnut. I still haven’t figured out what’s going on in this song except that I have a headache already.

In my humble opinion, the best thing to ever happen to this song was the Allman Bros.

7) Beach Boys – Kokomo

The first return offering from the infamous Beach Boys sans Brian Wilson. Should have stuck to the surfing and drowning boys because this song sure sucks some serious ass! Besides the fact that this song brings to mind images of Tom Cruise in flowery shirts is curse enough – but it’s cockamamie lyrical rhyme is absolutely torturous to listen to.

“To Martinique, that Monserrat mystique.”

Whoah - give the ‘ol brain hamsters a rest there fella!

This devil song wasn’t even written by the Beach Boys. It was written by John Phillips of the Mama’s and the Papa’s. And you can just imagine how high John Phillips must have been back in 1988 to come up with that catchy inspiring verse. It’d be enough to push Brian Wilson back over the edge of insanity again – if he ever did came back in the first place.

They might as well have just pissed in Brian’s sandbox..

8) Paul McCartney & Stevie Wonder – Ebony & Ivory

You didn’t think I would forget about everybody’s hero Sir Paul, did you?

Remember these two numbnuts attempting to convince the races of planet Earth to co-exist together peacefully like the black and white keys on a piano? Sounds swell, doesn’t it. It still makes me laugh to consider it. I guess things just weren’t as simple as that in the long run considering the shit that would go down in the short years ahead. Rodney King, Coatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, Al-Quaeda, New Orleans, the French Riots, the Gulf Wars…what was I talking about again?

Oh, yeah! Racial harmony- whatever, dudes.

I suppose nobody explained to these poor two Grammy Award winning queerbaits that, unlike World History, the white keys did not enslave the black keys into a hundred years of forced servitude and harsh cruelty.

Lesson learned: it’s easy to get along together when you both earn, like, a cajillion dollars and you’re the only ones who can afford the membership fees at all the fancy Country Clubs. But I wonder, between takes; who do you think served whom the tea? Hmm?

“Yes, Mr. McCartney. Right away, Mr. McCartney! Now you just holds your cup out, boss, so I kins scoop the sugar in it for you.”

9) Queen – Bicycle

This song is about as faggy as Elton John’s wedding. It pains me to see people lip-syncing to this song like retarded chimpanzees. But then again, so were all Queen songs. So no real surprise here either I guess.

This song makes me want to jab sharp instruments into my eardrums. The merest hint of Freddie Mercury’s voice makes my penis retract back into my body like a frightened prairie dog.

If I ever come to rule the world in some sinister Orwellian future – my first official act as supreme leader, will be to eradicate all earthly evidence of Queen’s existence from the records of time. My world is a Queen-free world; where men were men and listened to Led Zeppelin - not prance about on a stage in leather chaps crooning about joyriding the neighborhood on a bicycle and ogling fat chicks asses.

Where’s the dignity?

10) Bobby McFerrin – Don’t Worry Be Happy

Another song that makes you want to go ape shit and smash stuff. In the same vein as ‘Shiny Happy People’, this song just flaunts it’s general annoyingness and is just begging for somebody to drive a spike through Bobby’s chest.

For those of you who remember the cool MTV era, you may remember watching Bobby McFerrin slap his chest and flap his arms while he sang. It was like watching a handicapped child throwing a hissy fit in the aisle at Toys-R-Us.

11) New Kids on the Block – Hanging Tough

It was all crossed arms and pouty scowls as these fag pies tried to convince the world that they were “tough” guys. Too bad in reality they made the Sharks and the Jets look like the fucking Chinese Triads!

It was a black day indeed for Rock n’ Roll history the day NKOTB (for those of you in the know) peddled this prototypical boy band cookie cutter crapola.

"Everybody’s always talking about who’s on top
Don’t cross our paths cause you’re gonna get stopped
We ain’t gonna give anybody any slack
And if you try to keep us up we’re gonna come right back
And you know it...
(Chorus)
Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh…"

And to think that these coifed Mary’s may have assisted in paving the way for the likes of G-Unit.

Now THAT’S some scary shit!

12) Barenaked Ladies – If I Had a $1,000,000

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get the concept. I’ve heard it all before. I’ve masturbated myself asleep thinking about what I would do if I were ever to hit the lottery motherload.

Forget the houses, tree forts, exotic pets, green dresses, and K-cars (a nice reliable automobile); you know what the first thing I’d spend my $1,000,000 on given the chance?

Having your barenaked asses assassinated.

13) AC/DC – Big Balls

And I quote:

“I've got big balls
I've got big balls
They're such big balls
And they're dirty big balls
And he's got big balls
And she's got big balls
But we've got the biggest balls of them all”

Okay - that a lot of balls - granted. But, umm, do we really have to hear about them over and over again? And, well, if “she’s” really got “big balls” too, I REALLY want nothing to do with this party. I don't know about you - but that’s not how I roll.

“And my balls are always bouncing
My ballroom always full
And everybody comes and comes again
If your name is on the guest list
No one can take you higher
Everybody says I've got
Great balls of fire”

I suddenly feel all weird when I find myself listening to this song by the Aussie rockers. It makes me feel all dirty – and I’m talking real Internet chat-room dirty here! Male genitalia should be forbidden from being included as subject material for all Rock n’ Roll songs.

End of story.

Dishonorable mentions include:

Styx – Mr. Roboto
Nazareth – Dream On
Europe – the Final Countdown
Phil Collins - Sussudio

Just being excluded from the list of histories suckiest Rock songs is, no doubt, reward enough.

* Besides the fact that I have the ‘Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’ followed by ‘Oasis’, or that I apparently still remember all the lyrics to Def Leppard’s ‘Pour Some Sugar Over Me’.

1 Comments:

Blogger Wandering Coyote said...

I agree with pretty much all of them except the shocking diss of Glass Tiger!! They were my fave in grade 7 and I took a lot of flack for liking them over - get this - Bon Jovi. I still like GT to this day. As for the AC/DC song...um...ugh...

Until I moved a year ago the most embarassing CD I owned was Ace of Base's 1st one. I got rid of it, and good riddance.

3:23 PM  

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