Saturday morning music videos

Marty Robbins: "El Paso"


Marty Robbins - El Paso - Music Video via Noolmusic.com

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Jimmy Dean: "Big Bad John"


Dana Lyons: "Cows With Guns"


Ween: "Waving My Dick In the Wind"


Glenn Campbell: "Wichita Lineman"


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Smelling salts! Stat!

OH NOES!! The Chaser boys have offended some people again with a song that appears to take the piss out of dead celebrities, including Steve Irwin, Princess Di, Kerry Packer and Stan Zemanek (but is really just commenting on the hypocrisy of eulogizing those whom we found cause to dislike when they were still breathing).



Cue the hyperventilating . . .

"CHASERS WAR ON GOOD TASTE" wails Ninemsn. "To disrespect people have passed [sic] is cruel!" moans Deb of Adelaide, in the Ninemsn forum on the topic. On the ABC's own message board (and according to News.com, "Irate viewers rang the ABC switchboard to complain about the song after it aired and talkback radio hosts were inundated with comments about its content"), habbo1 whines: "A long time fan of Chaser, great dissapointment in the cringe factor that was last night 'dead celebrity bashing.' Juvenile, pathetic humour that we are to expect from Commercial TV's attempt to be 'controversial.'" I'm certain there's more to come. (UPDATE: And I was right.)

What a bunch of tightarse, whinging fuckpigs (as Billy Connolly would say).

This reminds me of when Sean Hannity was sooking about what a big meanie Christopher Hitchens was for the latter's criticisms of the late Jerry Falwell:



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90s joy

Why don't they make music like this anymore? 10 classic 90s songs (in no particular order):

Bomb the Bass -- "Bug Powder Dust"


Gin Blossoms -- "Hey Jealousy"


Garbage -- "Vow"


Veruca Salt -- "Seether"


Warren G and Nate Dogg -- "Regulate"


Tool -- "Stinkfist"


Grant Lee Buffalo -- "Mockingbirds"


Buffalo Tom -- "Summer"


Archers of Loaf -- "Web in Front"


Jebediah -- "Jerks of Attention"

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The Clueless Wings of Poesy: BBC6's worst pop song lyrics ever

BBC6 has been polling it's listeners on the worst song lyrics in popular music. The top 5 are:

1. Des'ree - Life
   I don't want to see a ghost,
   It's the sight that I fear most,
   I'd rather have a piece of toast,
   Watch the evening news.
2. Snap - Rhythm Is A Dancer
   I'm as serious as cancer,
   When I say Rhythm is a Dancer.
3. Razorlight - Somewhere Else
   And I met a girl,
   she asked me my name,
   I told her what it was.
4. ABC - That Was Then But This Is Now
   More Sacrifices than an Aztec priest,
   Standing here straining at that leash,
   All fall down,
   Can't complain, mustn't grumble,
   Help yourself to another piece of apple crumble
5. U2 - Elevation
   I've got no self control,
   Been living like a mole now,
   Going down, excavation,
   High and high in the sky,
   You make me feel like I can fly,
   So high,
   Elevation

Other songs containing some (in the opinion of BBC6 listeners) atrocious lyrics to make the top ten include Oasis' "Champagne Supernova"(#7), Toto's "Africa"(#6) and Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" (#10):



Certainly these lyrics are pretty bad, but are they really the worst out there? Surely there must be a Bulwer-Lytton or Eye of Argon out there that tops BBC6's candidates for crimes against poesy?

What would I choose? It's actually more difficult than it seems, partly because the criteria is limited to hit singles (and I don't really pay attention to the kind of music that gets played on Video Hits or Nova), and partly because a lot of silly lyrics are probably deliberately so. Take this nonsequitous example from Beck's 1996 hit "Where It's At:"

Bottles and cans and just clap your hands/and just clap your hands.

Or these lines from Eskimo Joe's "Ruby Wednesday:"

I met a girl who would travel the world for free/She told me her phone number, told me to call her at 3/She had a Gran who she liked to call Nan sometimes/That was a lie but I sung it because it rhymes

Maybe it only counts once a band starts taking itself seriously. "Ruby Wednesday" dates from a time when the only successful Perth band was Jebediah. Now that Eskimo Joe are as dominant in the contemporary Australian popular music scene as INXS were in 80s, they're opening singles with lyrics like this:

Sarah/Won't you tell me your name?

Um . . . what would be the point of that? I've always thought the following lyrics from Silverchair's "Tomorrow" to be fairly terrible:

Won't you come with me to a place in a little town/The only way to get there is to go straight down/There's no bathroom and there is no sink/The water out of the tap is very hard to drink/Very hard to drink

Then again, who doesn't write bad poetry at age 15?

If you like bizarre lyrics, Smashing Pumpkins albums never fail to satisfy. Adore's "Annie Dog" contains the lyrics: "She wants clean sheets/And fresh flowers/And dental shots/And the Hong Kong glue." What. The. Fuck? Of their hit singles, however, you can't go past the following from "Thirty Three:"

The Earth laughs beneath my heavy feet/At the blasphemy in my old jangly walk

Could Billy Corgan be the Jim Theis of popular music? Read more!

Grunge request fest

Super Simmo's blog is grunge-themed this week, and he's taking requests. Read more!

Invade Rage

Bruce has tagged me, so here's a list of 20 songs I would submit to Rage's be-a-guest-programmer-for-a-night competition if I were so inclined:

Metallica: One
Faith No More: Epic
Prodigy: Smack My Bitch Up
Ministry: Jesus Built My Hotrod
Depeche Mode: Enjoy the Silence
Verve: Bittersweet Symphony
Beastie Boys: Intergalactic Planetary
Massive Attack: Unfinished Sympathy
Nirvana: In Bloom
Snoop Dogg feat. Dr Dre: Who am I? (What's My Name?)
Jeff Buckley: Grace
Anthrax and Public Enemy: Bring tha Noise
Smashing Pumpkins: Today
You Am I: Berlin Chair
Bjork: Human Behaviour
Weezer: Buddy Holly
Rage Against the Machine: Killing in the Name
Rammstein: Sonne
Aphex Twin: Come to Daddy
The Cure: Lullaby

The rules specify that I have to justify at least five of these choices. Here goes:

Metallica: One
This is One of the main reasons I stayed up til the wee hours of the morning watching Rage of a Friday or Saturday evening in my high school years. (That, and the promise of Madonna's "Justify My Love" or Massive Attack's "Thank You"--those of you who know what I'm talking about know what I'm talking about.) Best. Music. Video. Ever.

Anthrax and Public Enemy: Bring Tha Noise
I have mixed feelings about this one: it's fucking brilliant, but on the other hand without this seminal thrash metal/hip hop crossover single, would we have had to endure the likes of Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park? In any case: have you ever seen a white rapper more ill-at-ease with the genre than Scott Ian?

Beastie Boys: Intergalactic Planetary
Unlike Scott Ian, these boys totally get the white-boy hip-hop thing. Most people would probably choose "Sabotage" as their favourite Beasties video, but I just can't go past three thirtysomething men busting out in yellow space suits, nor the lyric "I'll stir fry you in my wok!"

Ministry: Jesus Built My Hotrod
As soon as I discovered that this "rock" thing was true, I often found myself in the small hours watching this delightful music video featuring the vocal stylings of a reputedly inebriated Gibby Haynes (lead singer of the Butthole Surfers). Rim-a-ding-dang my dang-a-long-ling-long!

You Am I: Berlin Chair
I don't get the little dude in the sparkly jumpsuit. But this song, and this band, restored my faith in Aussie music after long and tortuous years of John Farnham, Jimmy Barnes, Wendy Matthews and Johnny Diesel dominating the airwaves. (Perhaps it's just that I started listening to JJJ about the time this song was released.)

And now, I pass the baton on to Sammy Jankis, Simmo, Null, Lucy and YepThat'sGold. Read more!

"Come wit' it NOW!"

" Whadda I got to, whadda I got to do to wake ya up?"

Rage Against The Machine, who so criminally went AWOL on a Bush America that desperately needed them, will reunite for the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in April.

The movie ran through me
The glamour subdue me
The tabloid untie me
I'm empty please fill me
Mister anchor assure me
That Baghdad is burning
Your voice it is so soothing
That cunning mantra of killing
I need you my witness
To dress this up so bloodless
To numb me and purge me now
Of thoughts of blaming you
Yes the car is our wheelchair
My witness your coughing
Oily silence mocks the legless
Now traveling in coffins
But on the corner
The jury's sleepless
We found your weakness
And it's right outside our door

Now testify

Via Dispatches From the Culture Wars Read more!