5 posts tagged “music”

We previously delved into the (if you’ll excuse the redundancy) world of geography with our 25 Horrible Bands Named after Places and in doing so incurred the wrath of hardcore fans of Kansas/Boston, bands we perhaps unfairly dumped on because they’re part of that most loathsome movement in music—Prog Rock. Then again, the more comments we get from people leaping to their defense, the less we regret their inclusion.

Gene Simmons defended the music of KISS, saying basically—and we’re paraphrasing here— simplicity is good (hell, KISS stands for Keep it Simple Stupid) and that people prefer things that are basic and catchy, like the marches of John Philip Sousa. Such advice was never heeded by those terrible bands in the 70s who dominated our list by penning 8 minute songs often accompanied in the studio by a horn section, chamber orchestra, penitents who Gregorian chanted, a high school Glee club, out of work poets (the only kind) and basically everything but the organ grinder monkey.

Defenders of these acts always say “they’re amazing musicians”. Well, not really. They’re decent compared to the likes of Nirvana, who couldn’t tune their guitars if you gave them a four string head start, but compared to jazzers and the classically-trained, it’s a different league. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Folk/Pop/Rock/Rap music is simple, fun and that’s why people are drawn to it, the same way musicians are usually the only people who like jazz.

Anyway, we’re back riding the geography train here and wondered after hearing Sweet Home Alabama, would anyone sing a paean to Pennsylvania? How ’bout an ode to Oregon?

So, here’s a rundown of US STATE SONGS, listed alphabetically, so we wouldn’t tire out our Google fingers tracking down when each joined the Union.

Caveat:

• Nearly every single one was penned by John Denver
• We’ve left out fight songs.
• This is by no means exhaustive, as you could fill a brochure with music about the states of California/Texas, but this is the best we could do.

Enjoy!

Alaska: North to Alaska, Johnny Horton. Horton was a buddy of Johnny Cash and being born in LA didn’t stop him from writing about pretty much everywhere else. “Where the river is winding, big nuggets they’re findin”. Horton also made the Honky Tonk Man famous before the WWF introduced the wrestler, known for a finishing move that was an acoustic guitar to the back of the head (lucky for his opponents, he wasn’t a bassist)

Arizona: Hotel Arizona, Wilco, Arizona, Kings of Leon. One of our faithful readers pointed out that in our Top 10 Drinking & Driving Songs of All Time (incidentally, Johnny Horton was killed in a DUI crash) we failed to mention the great Chicago band Wilco and their homage to boozin’ behind the wheel (or in this case, just next to it), Passenger Side. So, they make an appearance here. Here are two songs that pay homage to the high & dry state.

Alabama: Sweet Home Alabama, Lynyrd Skynyrd / Alabama, Neil Young. Alabama along with Southern Man, were Northern Neil’s Red State baiting, famously countered by Skynyrd. In the Gene Simmons Celebrity Roast (because no list of US State Songs is complete without at least two references to him), one of the comics slammed the house band saying, “I’ve heard better sounds from Lynyrd Skynyrd—as they were crashing!”

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As we noted in our Top 10 Bar Songs of All Time, many musicians have adopted the ‘write what you know’ credo, and given that they spend a considerable part of their waking hours in taverns (this isn’t nearly as much as it seems as they sleep in until well into the late afternoon), they looked around, put pen to paper gave us the decomposed remnants of organic matter from which our Top 10 List could grow.

If you’ve taken this ‘write what you know’ phrase to heart (even though it’s more worn than a yogic flier drawers), and find you’re still staring at a blank screen, you may in fact, not know anything. Luckily, there are plenty of people who can write what they know and who are more than capable of picking up your slack, you lazy, untalented hack.

Some of these people, though not nearly as many as those who’ve found inspiration at the bottom of a beer/wine/whiskey glass, have chosen Mother’s Ruin, as their muse.

Why is that, you ask? Well, gin, simply put, has a lousy reputation and the phrase ‘bathtub gin’ likely came about it’s the first thing that would spring to mind if you had to clean a ring around yours. The juniper berry spirit has its origins in 17^th century Holland, where it was believed to alleviate gout and its popularity, not surprisingly, spread quickly, as abandoning a diet rich in fat and booze was beyond comprehension, especially when the antidote could be guzzled cheaply and plentifully from the comfort of one’s armchair.

The potable soon spread to England, and from there, to mask the flavor of quinine so that English soldiers could spear colonials, unfettered by malarial concerns, while domestically, like reality television or the internet these days, it was blamed for every prevailing social ill. [Editor’s note, a strong case can be made for blaming every prevailing social ill these days, on the internet, please see our Top 10 Drinking and Driving Songs of All Time and Battling the Red Menace: Happy Kick a Ginger Day]

On these shores, and we’d like to think everywhere else, gin forms the basis of the only martini a man should be seen drinking (if you have one with cranberry juice or chocolate, you might consider arranging a fitting for a dress) and as a result, has seen its reputation improve, though you’d never really know it from some of the songs we’ve compiled here. So here, because to the best of our knowledge, it hasn’t been done (and if it has, carpal tunnel has prevented successfully Googling it) is our Top 10 Songs about Gin.

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Last week we presented our list of the Top Ten Karaoke Duets of all time, and, since we are not the kind of guys you can pry away from the microphone without a giant Vaudeville-style hook, we are revisiting that world of beer nuts and butchered harmonies — the American Idol audition reject’s last venue in which to sparkle — the karaoke bar. This time though we’re not focusing too closely on the songs but rather on the psychological effects of mixing lakes of booze with people who could not carry a tune in a velcro backpack.

Karaoke DJs are like the special-ed teachers at elementary schools. No matter how hopeless the performance they are witnessing, they are duty-bound to be positive and keep morale from settling to where nature intended it to be. And for the most part audiences are similarly charitable; drunk themselves and not wanting to be booed when they work up the Molson Muscle needed to get on stage, crowds can be surprisingly forgiving as a tone-deaf woman with a lisp makes her way through Celine Dion’s back catalogue.

But there are times when that powder keg of liquored up rowdies and household favorites being executed (in the murder-y sense) is set off. We’ve plundered old news reports, paid attention to new ones, and have even attempted to incite riots by singing “Yellow Submarine” in the depths of an urban slum, to bring you our list of the Top 5 Karaoke-Inspired Acts of Violence!

Bon Jovi’s baffling popularity has continued unabated for two decades now, as this weekend’s Central Park concert shows, however in our minds, there is nobody more deserving of both a solid punt to the arse, or a safe dropped on them from a sufficient height, than these crap-rock poster boys, whose music is so middle of the road, their tour bus should have its own dedicated lane.

If only we could lace ‘em up and kick ‘em when they’re down, but they’re never down, churning out the same Springsteen-lite cacophony year after year.

To honor the band, and also in the spirit of celebrating the worst of everything, we’ve decided to put together a tribute, of sorts, to Bon Jovi, the world’s most famous Bruce Springsteen tribute band/wimp rock quartet.

Unlike some bands, the core group has remained relatively intact. This has enabled the Jersey boys with Swiss watch- like reliability, to consistently put out unspeakably awful music year after year.

The sole exception of course, the booting bass player Alec John Such (the ’soul’ of the group in that he sported soul patch facial hair), because he ‘couldn’t play his instrument’—a requirement obviously forgotten as few of the remaining members actually know how to play theirs (with the exception being David Bryan, the band’s keyboard player, who actually trained at the Juilliard School of Music, and judging by his current gig tickling the ivories with the Jersey dunder-heads, is about as overqualified as the ‘Ice Man’ Chuck Liddell doing security detail at a Girl Scouts Jamboree)

Their intrepid leader Jon Bon Jovi, of course, is Bruce Springsteen— if Bruce had a tin ear, Meg Ryan’s hairstylist, and penned gems like ‘Tomorrow’s getting harder make no mistake, Luck ain’t even lucky’ instead of great songs like Born to Run, Highway Patrolman or Thunder Road.

It is not hyperbole to say that BJ represents everything wrong with modern music, or at least, modern horticultural hair band music that became more bankrupt, creatively speaking, than Bear Stearns, and peaked around oh, 1987, unbeknownst to the band.

Bon Jovi is a church-basement rummage sale clearing house version of The Boss. Their ‘rock-lite’ is more sanitized than a trauma burn unit and their Forest Gump libretti induces more projectile vomiting than the elimination round at a chili eating contest. If this wasn’t enough, and from our vantage point here it certainly is, their news anchor bobs will guarantee they’re a shoe-in for the next installment of ‘Old Men who Look Like Lesbians’.

The only thing worse than an actual Bon Jovi song, however, is Bon Jovi doing a version of someone else’s, automatically better original. Worse still, would be someone actually COVERING a Bon Jovi song, but to the best of our knowledge, the likelihood of this occurring is about as probable as a meteor the size of the state of New Jersey striking the earth.

Since their own music wasn’t bad enough, here is Bon Jovi doing what they do best—spilling their own REO Speedwagon / Journey / Three Dog Night / Springsteen-lite effluent on some of the world’s most well-beloved songs. Luckily for all concerned, these are so popular that nobody would mistake them for Bon Jovi originals and mislead any future generations. Here, in no particular order, because the pork rendering plant stench emanating from each, is indistinguishable from the other, is our 10 Worst Bon Jovi Covers of All Time:

10. Save the Last Dance for Me, Pomus and Shuman. Among the ‘better’ song on this list, only in the sense that it’s better to have testicular cancer than say, lung.

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Much like hypertension or obesity are predictors for cardiovascular disease, geography is a measure for determining whether a band’s music will make you want to cover your ears.

Before you start penning a terse letter to your city councilor, we’re not referring specifically to where a band might be from, but one whose name is geographic in origin.

Now, there is no question, there are a handful of talented place-derived bands in genres other than rock/pop. These include punk bands UK Subs, New York Dolls and MC5, soul bands like the Sugarhill Gang and the Ohio Players, not to mention traditional acts like the Blind Boys of Alabama or the Clinch Mountain Boys. However, with few exceptions, the vast majority of rock/pop bands at least, whose names reference a particular place are overwhelmingly and unspeakably awful.

There are several reasons for this. First, if you’re feeling less than creative when coming up with a band name, say, Julius & the Epileptic Caesars is already taken, the first thing that may spring to mind after a failed bid by the drummer to name the band after himself (The Tommy Hitzenberger Three), is a particular land mass or continent—especially if you were excited about tectonic plates in high school geography class.

Second, some bands are filled with a great sense of civic pride. The Doors, for example, whose version of Alabama Song received kudos in our Top 10 ‘Bar’ Songs of All Time would famously be introduced: ‘From Los Angeles, California, the Doors’. If an announcer isn’t available, or for some reason your band doesn’t believe in loosening up a potentially hostile crowd with whimsical banter, naming yourselves after a particular city works as this removes any doubt as to where you’re from for future ‘why don’t you go back to __________ ?’ heckling.

And thirdly, there are several bands, who for whatever reason, likely because they’re fond of anything and everything ironic [see the book/site, Stuff White People Like: The Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions and for Sharkguy Chris's review of said book in this past weekend's Globe and Mail click here] go out of their way to name themselves after somewhere they’re NOT from. Perhaps you’ll find them on our next list, that is, if they have enough staying power and a big enough fan base to extend beyond Brooklyn or Chapel Hill.

Here, alphabetically then, is an in no way definitive list, (as awful acts sporting geographic monikers are sprouting up literally everywhere as we write this), of 25 of the most notable, and quite horrendous bands with geographic names.

1. Alabama: Not coincidentally, as far as your ears are concerned, this band hails from Fort Payne and brought us Christian Rock-like crossover hits like Dixieland Delight, proving that a taste for piss-poor country translates to a lousy taste in MOR pop.

2. All Saints: after All Saints Road, London. Pure Brit blasphemy

3. America: Their songs have elevated people, but unfortunately only in the context of entering, and pressing your floor. America’s big hit ‘Horse with No Name’ is often mis-attributed to Neil Young–a guy who’d never pen anything like this. I mean, what good is a horse going to do in the desert? That’s what camels are for.

4. Asia: A wretched prog-rock outfit whose keyboards were so large they’d likely need to be hauled off by Hercules jets.

5. Backstreet Boys, after Back Street Market, a shopping area in Orlando, Florida. If you name your band after a shopping area, what more can be said, other than your tunes will provide musical accompaniment to mall teen loitering. As far as their Youtube videos are concerned, embedding has been disabled by request, and not by us either. A big thank you to whoever that was.

6. Bay City Rollers: According to legend, the Scottish ‘Rollers’ threw a dart at a map of the continental US and landed upon Bay City, Michigan. At least they really did put Bay City on the map.

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