THE DUMBEST POP SONG OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

If you are on social media (or anywhere on the Internet), you know that people are usually complaining about how bad they think modern pop music is and that none of today's musical stars have any talent. Allegedly. People brag up "the good old days" and how wonderful everything was in the past. Quite a few of these people think that music was better before the advent of rock and roll. Think again.

You see, the people who hated Elvis, Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly, then turned their vitriol toward the Beatles, the Stones and Bob Dylan, then hated Led Zeppelin, Kiss, Sex Pistols and disco, they  had the government go after Prince, Ozzy Osbourne and Madonna, and now (if they are still living) complain about Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Kanye West, as well as hip hop/rap in general, liked one of the dumbest songs of the twentieth century (I'm saying the twentieth century, because honestly believe "Red Solo Cup" by Toby Keith will be considered the dumbest song of the twenty-first century).

Not only did they like this song, but they gave it the Academy Award for Best Song. Even harder to fathom is the fact it was written by two of America's greatest song writers. Some of the greatest pop singers of all-time have recorded it and singers are still recording it. What is this song?

My vote for dumbest song of the twentieth century is "In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening" written by Johnny Mercer and Hoagy Carmichael. Mercer wrote such great songs "Moon River, "Glow Worm," "Hooray for Hollywood," "And the Angels Sing," and "That Old Black Magic." Carmichael wrote "Ole Buttermilk Sky," "Heart and Soul," "Up a Lazy River," "Georgia On My Mind" and "Stardust."  Together, Mercer and Carmichael wrote the song "Skylark," which is truly beautiful. All of those are great songs, but this one, in my opinion isn't one of the great ones.

This song was recorded by Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Steve Lawrence and Edie Gorme. More recently Bette Midler and Crystal Gale have recorded this annoying, stinker of a song.  

My problem is the lyrics don't go together. It jumps around with this part early in the song:

"I like a barbecue, I like to boil a ham
And I vote for bouillabaisse stew (What's that?)
I like a weenie bake, steak and a layer cake
And you'll get a tummy ache too."

Then later in the song we get these lyrical gems:

"Whee!" said the bumblebee
"Let's have a jubilee!"
"When?" said the prairie hen, "Soon?"
"Sure!" said the dinosaur.
"Where?" said the grizzly bear,
"Under the light of the moon?"
"How 'bout ya, brother jackass?"
Ev'ryone gaily cried,
"Are you comin' to the fracas?"
Over his specs he sighed,
In the cool, cool, cool of the evenin'
Tell 'em I'll be there.
In the cool, cool, cool of the evenin'
Slickum on my hair."

I'm sure some dork out there will say, "Ah, they don't write songs like that any more." To that, I say "Good!"  This song is proof that there were bad songs in the pre-rock era. As a matter of fact, you could probably say that "In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening" is our parent's and grandparent's equivalent "We Built This City."


     

#tbt: DID YOU KNOW WHO THIS GUY WAS BACK IN THE 80s?

Earlier this year, there was quite a bit of over-exaggerated anger aimed at the younger generation, especially fans of Kanye West, because they supposedly did know who Paul McCartney was. West and McCartney recorded a song together called "Only One." If you are to believe articles circulating on social media, Kanye West fans thought McCartney was a unknown artist that Kanye discovered. There have even been "screen captures" showing "trending Tweets" by Kanye's fans circulating on Facebook, usually accompanied by condescending, head-shaking, hand-ringing comments from Generation X/Generation Jones people, who believe that the younger generation is screwed up and not wonderful, model teenagers "like we were." Several of my former classmates were among the "horrified" adults critical the "modern youth."

First off, I call BS on "screen captures" of those "trending Tweets." Any time I see a post of a screen capture of Tweets or Facebook post I'm a little suspect. Also these "Tweets" didn't sound like or look like a young persons Tweets or text. Young people know how to text and Tweet in a language older people don't know. Second, my classmates have no business slamming Kanye West fans, who were willing to greet Sir Paul with open arms, because they harassed and ridiculed me for like Paul McCartney and the Beatles in junior high. At my school, the guys liked Hank Jr. and the girls liked Barry Manilow. Because of my choice of music, I was bullied by the guys and refused romantic relationships with the girls. Now, they are acting like Paul McCartney was one of their favorite performers. Thy name is hypocrisy.

Let me give a shout out to Pam at Go Retro! She took the high road on this subject in a fun post filled with facts about Paul McCartney. She observed that every generation is oblivious to the previous generations music.
  
Of course, it is up to me, Desdinova to throw this back in my generation's face. Mwu-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Okay, 80s kids, tell me, who is the guy in these photos?

DID YOU KNOW WHO HE WAS WHEN YOU HEARD HIS NAME DROPPED IN 80S SONGS BY VAN MORRISON, BILLY JOEL, BILLY IDOL AND DEXY'S MIDNIGHT RUNNERS? Did you recognize him, when he appeared in the videos of Billy Idol and Dexy's Midnight Runners? WELL, DID YOU, YA LITTLE 80's PUNKS?

I may give you the answer or I might not. I may let you live with the fact that you chastised and criticized the young Kanye West fans because they didn't Paul McCartney, yet you did know who this man with a hearing aid was when you were in junior high and high school?  You are just like Principal Dick Vernon in The Breakfast Club. How do you live with yourself?

BTW: For the answer to the identity of this singer is, click on this link.

I'M STILL A GENERATION X SLACKER AND PROUD OF IT!

In recent weeks, I've starting seeing articles about "What happened to the Generation X slackers?" Most of these articles surmised that they "grew up to be responsible, hard working adults." Whatever!

First off, I'm probably the only person who wasn't offended by either the term "Generation X" or "slacker." As a matter of fact, I liked because being a "slacker" kind of sounded like being a "hippie." We dressed kind of like hippies and had our own music and culture like the hippies. I, myself, had a soul patch, wore Converse Chuck Taylor sneakers and Bart Simpson T-shirt, usually carried a copy of both Rolling Stone and Spin with me, and listened to Nirvana, Blind Mellon and REM on my Walkman. I even read Generation X: Tales of an Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland, because I considered it a kind of Bible of the subculture I in which belonged.

Also, like the hippies, we were hated by a certain segment of the older generation. We were hated by Baby Boomers. According to them, we were lazy, stupid, arrogant and had no taste in music. Whatever!

I first realized how bad this bigotry and hatred was at the first job I had out of college.  I worked at one of the local newspapers. Among the career goals I had considered was to have my own syndicated newspaper column, sort of like Dave Barry, Joe Queenan, Art Buchwald and Ron Davis' Chatter in the News Leader. I had researched how to land a syndicated newspaper column and I knew I had to have tare sheets or clippings of an actual column to submit to a syndicate. My supervisor and managing editor was a Baby Boomer. When I told him that I wanted to write a column from a liberal Generation X perspective, he flew into a rage and snarled, "Absolutely not! Nobody cares what people of your generation's opinions."  Whatever! (I guess he would rather read Bill O'Rielly, or a column by his wife or a real estate guy, who thinks it is cool to use the word "cattywompus" in his radio commercials).

Another Baby Boomer that I've had the displeasure of working with, enjoyed making jokes on the radio about Generation Xer's "who get them thar big college degrees and wind up asking ya if ya want fries with yer burger." I should note that this guy DOESN'T HAVE A COLLEGE DEGREE (but I've noticed several people people on Facebook, who are not college graduates, make this same stupid joke). He also didn't like that I had worked at the college radio station playing rock music. He didn't think that should be allowed on a radio station that received money from taxpayers. Whatever! (I didn't have the money to bribe a radio station to give me a radio show).

Most of these articles about "what happen to Generation X slackers" point out what we Generation X members already knew, we really weren't lazy or stupid. We quietly went to work, many times multi-tasking, doing things that we wanted to do and doing them our way. Granted, that has been hard for me to a degree, but I guess you could say this blog and my previous one is an example of me making the best of a bad situation and getting personal satisfaction from it, even if there isn't any pay. It is more for us personal rewards and goals than a huge house, fancy cars, stocks and bonds.


I discovered this video on You Tube about Millennials. Yes, every thing the actors playing Millennials in this video say Baby Boomers accuse them of are the same things they accused us Generation Xer's of. The only difference is you could substitute Brady Bunch for Full House and it is exactly the same thing I was hear nearly twenty years ago.

I should point out that the Baby Boomers who gave me grief about being a Generation X slacker were Republicans. They were not the cool Baby Boomers who would have cool stories about hitchhiking to a Grateful Dead concert in Laurel Canyon and seeing Tom Smothers and Peter Fonda in the crowd. These were the Baby Boomers have been wearing a suit and tie since they were 10 years old. They seem to be upset that I wasn't more concerned about "welfare queens" or "the drug epidemic." Whatever!

Those two Baby Boomers I mentioned above have probably come around to the fact that they like some Generation Xers. I know for a fact these two still hate my guts (And yes, they know each other because second one brags that his sister dated the first guy), so I know I'm not their ideal Gen Xer. Their ideal Generation Xer is this guy:

And this guy:

Whatever!

I'm know I'm way cooler than those two Preppies. You see, even though I have had to shave off the soul patch and wear dress clothes to work, I'm still the slacker in the Bart Simpson t-shirt, who reads Rolling Stone, watches MST3K and Beavis and Butthead, and can't decide whether his personal theme song should be "No Rain" or "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

Opinions, like these, are why I'm considered the Super-Villain of the Ozarks!!!! Mwu-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!    

THE MO-DETTES - WHITE MICE

I thought I would post this video of the punk girl band the Mo-Dettes to announce that 1) I am planing a 80s playlist like the recent "Campy 70s" playlist. I intend to make it fun, even though I notice when it comes to the two decades in the world retro blogs, some of the 80s folks don't have a sense of humor about the decade.

These people don' wallow in the badness like the 70s crowd does. They tend to either think the 80s were the greatest decade ever and not to be made fun of or they are embarrassed by the fun and frivolous things. These bloggers will tell you that their favorite song is "God Bless the U.S.A" by Lee Greenwood, their favorite movie is Red Dawn and since junior high they wanted to be either a stock broker or a computer analyst. Trust me, I'm from the 80s and I wasn't like that, although most of the people I graduated high school with were. In the words of Holden Caulfield, these people are "phonies" or, as I used to say on the old blog, they are "weenie bloggers."

The 70s oriented retro bloggers can't make up their mind if their favorite movie is Clockwork Orange, Star Wars, Blazing Saddles or Behind the Green Door. They like the Eagles, the Bee Gees and Led Zeppelin, but also "The Night Chicago Died" or "Kung-Fu Fighting." In college, the 70s bloggers were still try to decide between being a science fiction author or an adult film star.

Some 80s fans may whine and complain about what I choose. Oh well. My opinions are why I'm considered the Super Villain of the Ozarks. Mwu-HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

2) I have removed some of the other You Tube videos from the blog because they were either removed from You Tube or You Tube is blocking them. Honestly, I'm not that concerned about them at the moment, because most were posted during the Countdown to Halloween or Countdown to Christmas. In other words, they were posted by me just so I could have something to post. No big loss. So watch the Mo-Dettes while you can.   

WHAT IS YOUR MUSICAL FLASHPOINT?

Click on image to enlarge

Some of the recent passings in the music world got me to thinking about this. KTXR radio personality Wayne Glenn has put forth a theory an his radio show that pretty much holds water. Nothing involving scientific research but just a general observation from talking to listeners and taking request from them. Wayne Glenn has observed that people seem to gravitate toward the music that was popular when they were between the ages of 9 to 12. This is when most people first become interested in music.

I call this the "musical flashpoint." My musical flashpoint would be 1978 since I was nine years old at the time. That summer, the tube on our TV went out and my parents didn't fix it for along time. This may have been responsible for my discovering pop music and radio in general. During that summer, I noticed that the Springfield Leader and Press (Now the News Leader) published the Billboard Top 10 in the Sunday edition. I would flip around the dial to the see if I could find these songs being played on the local radio stations. I even started keeping a chart that tracked how often these songs were played and on what radio station (This is how boring my life was at age nine).

In those days, you could find more "popular hits" on the radio. In those days, most radio stations felt that you had to play what was popular especially if you were the only radio station in town. Many small town radio stations had what was called a split format. Usually, they played country from sign on through the early morning for dairy farmers, easy listening during the midday for housewives and rock/pop from the afternoon until sign off. The horrific plague of "we-can-only-have-country-or-talk-in-the-Ozarks" only came about in the 90s.

I found a chart on ARSA to use as an illustration of that summer's great music. I look down the list and notice many of my favorite songs:  Gerry Rafferty "Baker Street," Eddie Money "Baby Hold On," The Sweet "Love Is Like Oxygen," Rolling Stones "Miss You," Jefferson Starship "Runaway," Patti Smith Group "Because The Night," Foreigner "Hot Blooded," Donna Summer "Last Dance,"   Meat Loaf  "Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad," Bob Seger "Still The Same," Styx "Fooling Yourself," Pablo Cruise "Love Will Find A Way" Abba "Take A Chance On Me," and The O'Jays "Use Ta Be My Girl" are there, as well as the guilty pleasures like Andy Gibb's "Shadow Dancing," Chuck Mangione "Feels So Good," Steve Martin "King Tut," The Trammps "Disco Inferno," Bonnie Tyler "It's A Heartache," Yvonne Elliman "If I Can't Have You," Frankie Valli "Grease," England Dan & John Ford Coley "We'll Never Have To Say Goodbye Again," Barry Manilow  "Copacabana"  (the only Barry Manilow song I have ever really liked).

I've also figured out that even if I didn't hear the song or group in 1978, I usually like anything made at that time. An example of this would be a big British hit by Scott Fitzgerald and Yvonne Keeley called "If I Had Words." Sure it is a sappy bubble gum/reggae song based on a song by Saint-Saens "Symphony No. 3," but I like it, because it has an energy and playful nature like many of the songs of that era. I really didn't hear the Sex Pistols until sometime in the early 80's (although I knew of them back then), but they immediately became one of my all-time favorite bands. I don't think I heard Pousette-Dart Band until college, unless they weren't identified on radio (the late 70s was the beginning of that bad trend in radio).

There, of course, are other singers and bands that were popular in 1978 that were not on that particular radio survey that I cannot live with out. Groups like Kiss, the Eagles, Boston, REO Speedwagon, Van Halen, the Cars, Bruce Springsteen, the Bee Gees, Kenny Rogers,  the Jacksons, Kansas, Earth, Wind and Fire and...I could go on and on.

Now, if you are waiting for me to trash today's popular artist, you can keep on waiting. I like most popular music and enjoy listening to it, as a matter of fact I'm madly in love with Katy Perry (Okay, okay,  I HATE COUNTRY MUSIC, but I admit it). I'm not be one of those old guys who sit around complaining about what younger people do, because I never liked for older people to say disrespectful things about the music I liked. Also, I have more friends who are younger. I wonder what year was their musical flashpoint?  

Classic Coca Cola Christmas 1977

DRINKING FROM THE GARDEN HOSE & EATING LEAD PAINT DOESN'T MAKE YOU SUPERIOR TO ANY GENERATION!

When I started this new blog, I thought I was going to stay away from the controversial opinion post that I did on the original Desdinova blog. However, I feel a need to direct some criticism at my generation that I had hoped we would not be apart of like previous generations.
I have read several recent articles in radio and music trades that say that the "generation gap" no longer exist among parents and their children (at least with music). Teenagers are downloading music from the 40s - the 90s, while some of the parents are listening to Lady Gaga, the Black Eyed Peas and Nickleback.
Sadly, there are some people of my generation that didn't get the memo. These people seem to be repeating the mistake made by our parents, only they are doing it on Facebook and through e-mail. They forward it in an over circulated e-mail or they post cut and paste the status on Facebook.
These are usually a laundry list of how the younger generation has it better than we did. Like the "generation gap" propaganda of the previous generation, all of this makes the younger generation inferior to the writer's generation. The tone is overall hateful and disrespectful toward young people.
For some reason, the people who write these e-mails and Facebook post act like they are superior to the current generation because they cannot use modern technology. 

Another thing I notice with these e-mails and Facebook post is the glorification of child abuse. It makes beating children a positive.
These e-mails and Facebook post also seem to make out that ingesting harmful chemicals make a person superior to the younger generation. They seem to glory in eating lead paint and drinking from a garden hose. That seems to be the big one. Most of these act like drinking from a garden hose makes their generation superior to those who drink bottled water. 
What bothers me about this stuff is that my generation is falling into the same trap as a our parents. I would hope that people of my generation didn't ever utter the words "When I was your age." Sadly, we are sending it all over the Internet and Facebook.
I HATE ADULTS AND THIS KIND OF STUFF MAKES ME EMBARRASSED TO BE ONE!!!
Of course, an opinion, like this one, is why I'm considered the Super Villain of the Ozarks!!! Mwu-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!