Popular Music

[harrie]

I don't think they'll be playing that one at hockey games.

[jbottle]

no, or anywhere, else, I was on a tangent because our local state U is the Gamecocks and I have a friend who wanted to fire PETA up about the fact that their mascot is a "fighting gamecock," because there are still a lot of cock-fighting rings here and Mexicans like it and it has a history in the South (please see Charles Willeford's "Cockfighter," revered pulp) because he and I root for the rival.  It would be fun to make the President of the University explain why it's okay to celebrate the avian equivalent of dog-fighting by the people who call fish "sea kittens."

And then I added beer and started hearing the lead singer of AC/DC (which I started thinking was kinda funny because Queen was a band name and I never considered the subtext) and always thought of it as a reference to voltage, power rock, and then more beer and out of all that passive pop-whimsy, and then adding more beer you get what you sometimes regret.

I'm envious of Ween who can do it for real.

[harrie]

I know, was just goofing because the AC/DC one gets played at least once at like every single hockey game ever played.  It's a law or something.

[jbottle]

I love the AC/DC formula, and "Thunderstruck" is probably the most self-parodic and nonsensical and best AC/DC song of all...but "Back in Black" and "Big Balls" and most of them have a warm place in my heart, I love classic rock now because it makes me laugh like a schoolgirl.  Bad Company kills me, the eponymous song kills me, and "Rock and Roll Fantasy" kills me and Boston kills me and Frampton Comes Alive is so funny. 

[harrie]

No Double Vision?? That's one of those songs where I sing along but have no idea what it is I'm singing about.

[jbottle]

"Double Vision" is about when you are so drunk that you have severely damaged the occipital lobe of your brain with alcohol, it happens shortly after "beer googles" but not before "odd visual schematic apathetic euphoria/nausea," but all of these are treatable with the application of H2O, aspirin/ibuprofin, grease, nap, or the steady application of alcohol.  Yeah, "double vision" is a mother of a sing-along, I'm never sure if it's like "I close my eyes and I slip away," the Boston masturbation fantasy "more than a feeling," because it really, really seems like a (winking?) homage to the state of intoxication where you actually have double vision, you literally see two of everything.  To celebrate that state of mind seems reckless, and not a good thing for junior high kids, when I was aiming at it squarely hoping for a sort of epiphany.  I don't think that we need to tell today's kids to aim for double-vision as a goal for a heightened consciousness but to take mushrooms in a safe enviroment as an alternative.  A very safe envirnment, well, maybe that's bad advice for college kids, but then they like bad advice, so, yeah.

[barton]

Happy birthday, Jbottle, sometime this week IIRC.

I wouldn't have thought of the Boston song as a "masturbation fantasy" so much -- seems more like reflecting on how you move along through life and people come (not a pun here, dude) and go.   One of my favorite songs.  I think the heart of it is found in the lines,

So many people have come and gone,
Their faces fade as the years go by;
Yet I still recall as I wander on,
As clear as the sun in the summer sky.


As for Foreigner, I may have commented here before that they write "symptom" songs -- double-vision, cold as ice, hot blood, etc.  They embrace that basic of the rock canon, that life is experienced through the body and emotions are raging fevers or chills or gongs banging in your head, whatever.  Or they are automotive, that's your other major selection -- "Highway Star" by Deep Purple or "Panama" by VH, e.g.

[barton]

Parenthetically to the above, Jbottle, you might enjoy the film The Men Who Stare At Goats (if you haven't seen yet), as the main character is a Boston fan, and "More Than a Feeling" is used for comic background at one point, as well as when the credits roll.

[Gintaras]

You left out wish fulfillment, barton, like,

Shooting Star by Bad Company or
Juke Box Hero by Foreigner

For the latter, I remember their tour with the giant inflatable jukebox to drive the point home.  Bad Company had a little more subtlety.

[barton]

Bad Company had some hit about people you shouldn't hang out with, but the title escapes me at the moment.



Gint -- I left out several categories.  Wish fulfillment is a big one.  So is the related category of The Boast Song -- all those rock songs whose basic theme is "we are a rock band!"

Example might include Grand Funk Railroad's "We're An American Band."  I always liked Dire Straits send-up of that type song, "Money for Nothing."

 

[Gintaras]

Then there is the whole teen lust category,

Hot for Teacher

at least VH had a sense of humor.

[kam]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3rmCOQyGE0

[weezo]

I'm not usually on this  forum, but got this bit of information on a new band in JBottle's part of the countryside, and thought he would like to check it out: http://www.thestate.com/2010/04/08/1235315/party-band-villanova-has-things.html#storylink=addthis

[barton]

A newer band in Lincoln, Nebraska performed live on KRNU last night, and wondrously overcame the adversity of having to set up and play in a hallway, due to studio problems.  They are called Sons of the Soil, and do a great blend of roots, rock classics, R&B, and bluegrass.  Their harmonies on "The Weight" were exquisite, due in no small part to the vocals of Emma, who sounds like a young Janis Joplin, minus booze and cigarettes.  Emma also plays a mean fiddle.   She is so integral to the band that she is basically overlooking the possibly sexist name of the band.  Their versions of "Falling" (The Beatles) and "30 Days" (Chuck B.) also shone, in spite of vocal mike problems.  Emma is my little girl, all grown up.  I'm not proud or anything.

[harrie]

barton, that is soooooo cool.  Congratulations!