Showing posts with label Grunge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grunge. Show all posts

Sunday, September 29, 2013

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!!!    


Friday, June 8, 2012

I AM NOT ASHAMED PART 2


I couldn't wait. I needed to post a second volume of guilty pleasures  music "I am not ashamed" to like. I hope to update the Amazon store at the left of the blog with these songs or I may link them to Amazon's downloads.

DESDINOVA'S "I AM NOT ASHAMED" GUILTY PLEASURES PLAYLIST:

Amy Holland - "How Do I Survive"
Jennifer Page - "Crush"
The Equals - "Baby Come Back" (Early Eddy Grant)
The Bluenotes - "I Don't Know What It Is" (Cheesy 50s rock & roll love song)
Bob Seger and the Last Heard - "East Side Story" (His first record)
Vanilla Fudge - "You Keep Me Hanging On"
Karla Bonoff - "Personally"
Kate Bush - "Hammer Horror"
Tanya Tucker - "Can I See You Tonight?" (Remember the poster of her in a black leather jumpsuit holding T.N.T?)
Mama Cass - "California Earthquake" (She had a lot of courage to sing the line, "They tell me the fault-line runs right through here." Just saying.)
The Kingston Trio - "M.T.A"
Lindsfarne - "Lady Elenore"
Earl Grant - "House of Bamboo" (A cool song from an organist who sounded like Nat King Cole)
Kim Wilde - "Love Blonde" (The video sold me on this song. Kim Wilde is sssoooo sexy!)
Glen Campbell - "Wichita Lineman" (Jimmy Webb/Glen Campbell-sunshine pop/country masterpiece with a synthesizer. I also like this because my father was a lineman at the time this was popular.)
Peter Murphy - "Cuts You Up" (Former Bauhaus singer with a Goth rock hit from my early days in radio)
Pet Shop Boys & Dusty Springfield - "What Have I Done To Deserve This?"
Argent - "Hold Your Head Up"
Labelle - "Lady Marmalade"
Boys Don't Cry - "I Want To Be a Cowboy"
Middle of the Road - "Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep"
Katy Perry - "I Kissed a Girl"
James & Bobby Purify - "I'm Your Puppet"
Michael Cox - "Angela Jones" (Another cover better than the original. A Joe Meek production.)
The Buggles - "Video Killed the Radio Star" (Actually it was stupid, greedy people in management.)
Nik Kershaw - "Wouldn't It Be Good" 
Dean Friedman - "Ariel" (At the time this came out, people mistakenly thought this song was by Billy Joel.)
Roseanne Cash - "Seven Year Ache" (I always wanted to be the guy she is singing about.)
Canned Heat - "Going Up The Country" (I also like the song they did with the Chipmunks.)
Depeche Mode - "People Are People"
Daniel Boone - "Beautiful Sunday"
Fever Tree - "San Francisco Girls" (Is there a bad record containing fuzztone guitar and feedback?)
Olivia Newton-John - "Physical" (A big number one hit that radio stations don't play today.)
Marcy Playground - "Sex and Candy"
The Barbarians - "Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl?" (A mid-60s garage band making fun of homophobic jerks. The band's drummer, Moultly, had a prosthetic hook for a hand.)
Focus - "Hocus Pocus" (70s Prog/metal with a yodeler)
Four Seasons - "December 1963 (Oh What a Night)"
The Blow Monkeys - "Digging Your Scene" (I'd like anything from a group called The Blow Monkeys.)
The Bay City Rollers - "You Made Me Believe Magic"
Circus Maximus - "The Wind" (Jazzy/folk/psychedelic group with Jerry Jeff Walker)
Bananarama - "Cruel Summer"   

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

I AM NOT ASHAMED or DESDINOVA'S MUSICAL GUILTY PLEASURES


This post has two titles, because websites call what I'm about to post by another name and people looking for such will no doubt Google the more common phrase. This is a list of songs I like that many bloggers and pop culture websites refer to as "guilty pleasures." However, I have a different view point than most people (Don't I always) on this. I will turn 43 later this year and I have two college degrees...I WILL LIKE WHATEVER I WANT AN NOT APOLOGIZE FOR IT!

I have gotten flak about the music I like ever since I was in elementary school. Rednecks who tell you that the only music you should like is Hank Junior or people, who  tell you that the music you like is affiliated with the Satanic/Leftist/drug culture. I thought being in radio, I would meet people that liked as many various kinds of music as I did. WRONG! The problem with radio is there are people who only like what is popular at that moment or hate everything that is popular. Of course, the morons in the talk radio area HATE pop music of any kind and want it all banned from radio.If you mention that you like a certain pop song around these people they frequently tell you "The only song I like is the Star Spangle Banner." These people also claim to carry a copy of the Constitution with them everywhere.

On a personal note, I have always made fun of people who like country music and I tell people that I hate country music. Truth is there are a few songs on here that are country songs that I cannot live without.

So I have decided to swipe a phrase from the types of people, who usually criticize my musical taste, use in their little cut-and-paste postings on Facebook.. This is not so much a guilty pleasures list but the "I AM NOT ASHAMED" list. This is only the start of this. I plan to do follow up list.

DESDINOVA'S GUILTY PLEASURES "I AM NOT ASHAMED" PLAYLIST LIST
(In no particular order)

"Do You Really Want To Hurt Me" Culture Club - (Boy George is the most underated singers of all time).
"Lonely Boy" - Andrew Gold (I hated this song when I was younger, until I noticed it kind of rocks).
"May the Bird of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose" - Little Jimmy Dickens
"Just Like Heaven" - The Cure
"Fancy" - Bobbie Gentry
"Batman, Wolfman, Frankenstein or Dracula" - The Diamonds (If I ever meet a horror movie loving girl like the one in this song, I will marry her on the spot).
"Click Click" - Dicky Doo & the Donts
"Green Slime" - The Green Slime
"Dress You Up" - Madonna
"Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)" - Edison Lighthouse
"Grazing In the Grass" - Friends of Distinction
"Rock & Roll Waltz" - Kay Starr
"Goodbye Earl" - The Dixie Chicks
"Bela Lugosi's Dead" - Bauhaus
"You're the Reason God Made Oklahoma" - David Frizzell & Shelly West
"Alice Long (You're Still My Favorite Girlfriend)" - Boyce & Hart
"Take On Me" - A-Ha
"Eloise" - The Damned (One of the few remakes that is better than the original).
"She-Bop" - Cyndi Lauper
"Point of No Return" - Expose
"Mmmbop" - Hanson
"Batman's Theme" - The Markets
"How About Us" - Champagne
"Let It All Hang Out" - The Hombres (Some people have called this a bad Bob Dylan imitation. I believe it is a really good imitation of Roger Miller).
"Della and the Dealer" - Hoyt Axton
"Gotta Get Away" - Jackie Trent & Tony Hatch (This song is in the pilot episode of the TV 70s show The Persuaders).
"Come Softly To Me" - Jane Olivor (Another remake that is better than the original).
"Pop Muzik" - M (This song bridged the gap between the disco era of the late 70s and the new wave era of the early 80s).
"Stop & Get A Ticket" - The Clefts of Lavender Hill
"I Can Make It With You" - Pozo-Seco Singers (Another underated singer, Don Willaims, before he was a major star).
"Psilocybe" - The Mad Violets (80s psychedelia)
"If I Can't Have You" - Yvonne Elliman
"Give It Up" - K.C. & The Sunshine Band
"Bad Time" - Grand Funk Railroad (This is as close as Grand Funk came to a power ballad - ignorred by classic rock radio).
"In The Year 2525" - Zager & Evans (The greatest one-hit wonder of the rock and roll era. It was number one the day we walked on the moon and the day I was born).
"Goody Goody Gumdrops" - 1910 Fruitgum Company
"Seventeen" - Winger
"I'd Love To Change the World" - Ten Years After
"Pretty Blue Eyes" - Steve Lawrence
"Rock Me Gently" - Andy Kim
"Unbelievable"  - EMF
"Experiments With Mice" - Johnny Dawkworth Orchestra
"Radioactive" - The Firm
"125" - The Haunted
"Yankee Rose" - David Lee Roth
"Don't Stop Believin" - Journey
"Walk Away Renee" - The Left Banke
"If You Seek Amy" - Britney Spears
"Rio" - Duran Duran
"Dust In the Wind" - Kansas
"Cherry Hill Park" - Billy Joe Royal
"King of Wishful Thinking" - Go West
"Tainted Love" - Soft Cell
"Bubblegum Factory" - Redd Kross
"Indian Reservation" - The Raiders
"Bend Me, Shape Me" - The American Breed
"Windy" - The Association
"Laid' - James
"My Special Angel" - Bobby Helms
"Butterflies Are Free" - The Free Design
"Who Do You Love (I Want To Know) - The Sapphires (One of the great lost R & B classics. Why oldies radio stations don't play it anymore is beyond me).
"Naughty Naughty" - John Parr
"Lotta Love" - Nicolette Larson
  

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

HAPPY 30th BIRTHDAY MTV!!!

This week MTV celebrates its 30 anniversary this week. Here is a Rolling Stone article about the original VJs. Some idiots here in the Ozarks hate MTV, because they feel it has had a negative effect on American youth. I'm not one of them. I feel that Fox News has had a much more negative effect on our country than MTV has. I also believe that parents who have MTV blocked on their cable systems should have their children taken away from them.
Of course, opinions, like these, are why I'm considered the Super Villain of the Ozarks!!! Mwu-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...