August 3, 2011
dear clusterflock
Each decade’s most ridiculous song.
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The song that prompted this post was Wang Chung’s Everybody Have Fun Tonight from 1986.
What about decades that were entirely ridiculous, like the 90s?
The Macarena.
Joel, we’ll put it to a vote.
So besides the Macarena, there was (at the very least) this, this, this, this, this and this.
And I’m not even convinced ‘Everybody Have Fun Tonight’ was the most ridiculous Wang Chung song of the 80s.
I still think this is the worst song ever.
But it led to one of the best things ever.
And that reminded me I forgot this.
Yes. And, yes.
1960s: Either The Men in My Little Girl’s Life or The Ballad of the Green Berets.
Thank you, Sheila.
You’re welcome.
1970s: “Brandy” pretty much makes me gag.
But “Seasons in the Sun” by Terry Jacks makes me gack up even more.
Any more from the 80s?
Cusp of the 1980s/1990s”: “Ice Ice Baby.”
1980s: “Chariots of Fire” is pretty flaming god-awful.
Starship’s “Sara” gives me a pain in my brain.
You asked.
I could make you crazy.
But I won’t.
Yeah, Sara is poop in a boot. I also love their “We Built This City.”
The Final Countdown.
Oh, god.
I ain’t goin’ to look up links. For the seventies anything by “bread” or “seals and crofts,” though I loved them at the time. The eighties, “Men in Hats,” or “Duran, Duran,” or “A Flock of Seagulls.” The nineties, I’m sketchy on. So, too, the oughts.
Oh, god, I just remembered Styx. Poop! But I loved them at the time.
Deron. I love you, man. [Seventies-style guy hug.]
I can’t get into “We Built this City,” man.
But here’s an embarrassing confession that actually doesn’t embarrass me.
I like this from Starship’s predecessor: “We Can Be Together.”
Up against the wall, motherfucker! Tear down the wall!
Yeah, Boston, Styx, and Chicago were fantastic.
Wait, you knew I meant hate, right?
Sheila?
“We Can Be Together” can also be considered a ridiculous song, which is one of the reasons I like it.
I’m with you, dude. ‘Cause I’m a dude. 25-34.
“25 or 6 to 4?” WTF was I thinking back then?
Dude.
Deron, don’t forget Kansas.
Yeah, Rick. So many to choose from.
Deron, I love you, man. Thanks for letting me be me.
And Sheila, just to be doubly sure, you know I rank “We Built This City” with poop in a boot?
Whatever became of Bachman-Turner Overdrive? Are they playing State-Fairs by now?
Right back at you, Rick.
Rick, Pat Benatar is playing one of the casinos in Dubuque.
BTO!
Oh, yeah, Deron. I knew!
But I honestly like “We Can Be Together,” even though it is embarrassing to say so.
Own your guilty pleasures!
Just don’t start with the fuckin Eagles, man. I can’t take it tonight.
Thank you.
Where would Karen Carpenter be today had she survived her malady? Playing drums at 60-something, on a State-Fair stage, in the stinging heat, singing “I know I need to be in love?”
Would there be a throng in the stands, sweating, cheering?
Dunno, Rick. But I’m bowing to Deron and seizing hold of my Grace Slick self.
Up against the wall, motherfucker! Tear down the wall!
Next year at the Iowa State Fair.
My second ex-wife looked like Pat Benatar on an album cover I can’t find. 1981-ish. Short-hair, face-full to the camera, black-and-white.
Love is a battle-field. And Cindy, “Welcome to the Hotel California.”
¡Aiee, Ricky! Back when I lived in the desert, me, I used to drive around in the ’66 Chevy and listen to the Gypsy Kings, their version of “Hotel California.”
It was — ¡Dios mio!
I love the Gypsy Kings version. Also A3′s.
What decade was You Light Up My Fucking Life?
My guess, late 70s. Could be early 80s. Any way you slice it, nasty.
Hey, Deron. There’s a show on PBS about noodling. Okie noodling. Right now.
Seventies, Cindy. But when Patti sang it! I flung myself up on the stage at her feet!
You were on drugs though, right?
PEOPLE! When she used to dedicate it to Keef! It was so great. How did you not prostrate yourselves? I followed her all over the Midwest when she sang that song.
No! I mean, I was on drugs through the seventies and much of the eighties, but i always had my wits. And when Patti sang “You Light Up My Life,” it was so great.
I first heard Gypsy Kings in a record store in Dallas when I was on a trip to Dallas for Saks. I went to help get the Visual Manager up to speed at the Galleria. She was new, Christmas decorations had been up a month too long.
On a lunch, I wandered into a music store and the Gypsies were playing. I didn’t ask at the time, but it was like flamenco mixed with rock with…I don’t know, but I loved it. A week later, I saw an ad for the Gypsy King’s album in The New Yorker. I said to Danny, “We have to have this.’
Okay, I can’t talk because I’m watching a documentary about noodling.
OMG! We were just talking about noodling at the office a couple days ago. Not that I have ever. One guy, talking, said, “It is dangerous, if the catfish clamps onto you and is big enough (bigger than you) to keep you there, you could drown.”
Okay, Deron, I think I got it. See, “We Built This City” is poop in a boot, and “We Can Be Together” is (a different-textured) poop in a (differently-styled) boot. But I like the texture and the style of the Airplane poop-boot better than the Starship poop-boot, even though I’m embarrassed to say it, except I’m not really embarrassed because (a) I’m confident re: my taste, even when it is bad, and (b) I don’t care!
Up against the wall, motherfucker!
You spin me right round baby, right round, like a record baby right round.
Sorry, I went through McDonald’s drive through on my bike. Cindy, I’m pretty sure that’s the Oklahoma noodling documentary I watched. Unless there’s two of them.
70′s. Michael Martin Murphy. “Wildfire.”
I will not let it exist on my computer. Go look for yourself.
That was the best noodling documentary I have ever seen. It made me remember Touch Me in the Morning.
Cindy, I saw a promo for a noodling show that’s going to be on Animal Planet. Not that it can touch the original. In the morning.
Noodling’s really taking off.
Noodling is like planking right.
Boston, Kansas, Chicago – the place, or the band?