Great songs aren't great everywhere

Without further (or any) fanfare, I present to you my favorite songs that aren't appropriate for jukeboxes. These songs rule, until someone plays them at the bar:

--"Like a Rolling Stone," by Bob Dylan. This song is like a vast desert. It is beautiful and disorienting and if you get lost in the middle of it, you will die before you figure out where you are. Try turning it on, then leaving the room, then reentering. You can leave for a while, because the song is longer than any one Ramones album. When you come back into the room, try to finish the verse, then jump to the next. No one--least of all Dylan--can do this. This leads to a lot of people quietly singing Dylan's words in random sequence at bars. "Like a complete unknown...have you on your knees...uh...go to him now, Napoleon...Tangled up in, oh man..."
--"Sex Type Thing," by the Stone Temple Pilots and "Closer," by Nine Inch Nails. If I were a major league closing pitcher, I would tell the sound people to play "Closer" during my run from the bullpen to the mound. Not only would this treat the audience to a delicious pun, it would make batters think I felt indecent intentions for what we would do after I struck them out. Don't play this at the bar, unless it is one of those bars filled with punk men and women who would be turned on by Trent Reznor's spooky thumping mishmash of religious, sexual and animal imagery, which he caps with an unnecessarily blunt pickup line. Ditto for STP.
--"Sunday Morning Coming Down," by Johnny Cash (and others). No one at a bar wants to hear a prediction of how lonely and regretful they're going to feel in the morning.

A Guns N' Roses moment

I was sitting in Barnes and Noble the other day drinking iced coffee while I waited for Sears to finish taking three hours to put new tires on my truck. Next to me was a man who I recognize from hanging out downtown singing out song lyrics and generally freaking people out. So he starts singing...

'Double Talkin' Jive' by GnR. He really only sang the part that goes 'Double Talkin' Jive,' but still, I almost spat ice cubes and coffee and my uvula onto the window. I didn't know anyone else had ever listened to that song. It might be the stupidest song on either Use Your Illusions album (I love my GnR, but that is a serious accomplishment).

Then, when I my vision cleared and I started to breathe again, his friend comes in and they talk. He tells the friend he's been working on...

'Night Court' fan fiction. I don't have a joke about that. I will send you here. I strongly advise against following that link if you don't want to see some really amazing things.

Also, Google 'Eminem fan fiction' and get ready for some readin'. Wow. It's a great big world. And I'm just a squirrel. Tryin' to, well, you know.

Thrilla with Hilfiga

How crazy do you have to be to have a donnybrook with Axl Rose and come off looking like the crazy one? The apparent answer.

The funniest thing about this is that Axl said: "It was the most surreal thing, I think, that's ever happened to me in my life."

This is a life that has included jumping off an aircraft carrier in huge basketball shoes with his name on the tongue. The man wrote a song in which he confessed to wanting to crush mens heads tight in his vice ("PAIIIIIINNNNNN!"). This man has been working on the same album called "Chinese Democracy" for a decade. This man has orange cornrows.

You've got to be some kind of awesome to give Axl the most surreal experience of his life. My congratulations go to Tommy Hilfiger, if this account is true.

You'd better sit down

If your brain is prone to exploding in response to excellent news, stop reading now because W. Axl Rose said on a radio show that the new Guns N' Roses album is going to come out this fall (I chose that manifestation of the AP article because ABC News failed to spell the Cornrowed One's name correctly in the photo cutline).

Issues:
1)When "Chinese Democracy" comes out, I hope record stores pull all remaining copies of albums other Guns members have done since the breakup of the real band and put them on a temporary shelf near the C.D. cds. Then I will steal this shelf.
2)Does ten years of work translate into ten years of awesome? Will this be a three disc album like the Magnetic Fields' "69 Songs." How might the songs on Chinese Democracy respond to magnets? Can you own a Magnetic Fields disc and three copies of Appetite for Destruction?
3)Will there be a tape version, or will I have to choose between buying a cd player for my truck or never going to work again?
4)How many of the songs are about Bob Guccione Jr.?

5)How can I get ahold of Sebastian Bach's cell phone? Axl answers his calls. I wonder who else I could reach....

Me: Hello Glenn Danzig.
Glenn Danzig: What's up Sebastian?
Me: I just wanted to tell you to tell your children not to walk my way.
GD: Huh?
Me: Do you want to bang heads with me?

Misheard lyric

I remembered a classic hip-hop misinterpretation this weekend while I was driving on I-90 from Chicago.

I was riding with my friend Michael a few years ago, listening to his favorite joint of the moment, "Hate Me Now," the Nas track probably best remembered because of the Hype Williams video in which Nas is crucifed for the sins of humanity. (As I understand it, Capone betrayed him with a kiss and Noreaga denied him three times to Funkmaster Flex. This information is from the recently discovered gospels of AZ and Nature).

Nas has always been one of hip-hop's most original, thoughtful MCs. He is also tragically inept at making career and artistic decisions. This of course leads to Puffy yelling moronic threats all over "Hate Me Now."

Back in the car with Michael--an even whiter whiteboy than myself--the song starts. He turns to me puzzled and asks "Why is Puff Daddy yelling 'Basketball season has returned?'" I informed Michael that Puffy was yelling "Escobar season has returned." Of course, "Escobar" season makes much less sense than "basketball season" to any one who doesn't know that Nas self-applied the last name 'Escobar' for a few years there. He has recently shied away from that in favor of his real last name, "Jones," which sounds much less like "basketball."

The only Rupert Holmes misheard lyric

I bet William Safire sings this song "If you like pinas colada."

Until a few years ago, I had always heard Rupert Holmes singing about "waking up at midnight in the dunes on the cape," in his immortally preposterous "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)." Turns out he's singing about "makin' love at midnight on the dunes on the Cape." I think my interpretation makes more sense, since someone who likes pina coladas enough to write a song about them is likely to mysteriously wake up on a beach at midnight at some point. "If you like staring up at flashlights/and getting thrown in the jail..."

But that misheard lyric isn't even the most interesting thing about the song. Other issues:

-I know he means "cape" geographically, but I also think the lyric about "making love " on a cape would be meaningful if he were talking about superhero clothing. People who wear capes get a lot of action, I bet.

-So the song is about a guy who leaves his wife after he reads a personal ad from someone who likes the same things he does. Drinking. Capes. Not doing yoga. But there's one line that's especially troubling, even for a personal ad seeking a drunken, lazy exhibitionist: "If you have half a brain." This is supposed to be an exasperated jab at the stupid, self-absorbed people who rule all dating scenes everywhere. But the wording makes it sound like having exactly half a brain is a requirement. Like having a whole brain disqualifies potential mates. I would say a newspaper is a poor place to advertise to people who have had halves of their brains removed. Also, does it matter which half? Sure sounds like it would be tricky introducing your new partner to the parents:

You: Mom, Dad, meet Rupert. He's just perfect. He's got half a brain.
Mom and Dad: Hi, Rupert!
Rupert: Gluphhhhhhhsssssssssspuuuhhnnnnnnnnnnn. Uuuummmmmmmmmmmspuuhhhhhhh.
You: Oh, isn't he just the most? I found him asleep on the beach. He hates yoga.
Rupert: Eszchhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
You: Could somebody get him a pina colada?

"Let's Kill Saturday Night."

Ha! I tricked you. "Let's Kill Saturday Night," by Robbie Fulks is not a bad song. It's one of those songs I like so much that when it comes on the radio, I almost crash my car. Other songs that radio stations play that impair my driving abilities include:
-"Brick House," by the Commodores.
-"You Never Even Called Me by My Name," by David Allan Coe.
-"Walk Like an Egyptian," by the Bangles.
-"Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress," by the Hollies.
-"What's So Funny ('Bout Peace, Love & Understanding)?," by Elvis Costello (that's a tough one to punctuate).
-"My Boyfriend's Back," by the Angels.
-"How Do You Like Me Now?" by Toby Keith.
-"Can't Deny It," by Fabolus.
-"Train in Vain," by the Clash.

It's not that radio stations don't play good music. It's that they almost never play good music. When they do play good music, it seems to be by accident (let's not even get started on morning show DJs. What chimpanzee focus group told radio execs it wanted to hear small talk, gay jokes and hoarse cackling between 5 and 9 a.m.?) I expect to hear one really good song per day in my two hours of drive-time radio listening. I expect to hear "Yo (Excuse Me Miss)" by Chris Brown seven times. I suspect I hear Gwen Stefani's voice more than any other human voice (were Adam and Eve's transgressions really bad enough to earn us this? Jeez. It was just an apple eaten on misleading advice from a talking snake)

You know how we could start to fix the problem of hearing almost no good music on the radio? Put Robbie Fulks on country radio. Robbie has a big catalog of twangy, up-tempo country songs with understandable lyrics and smart, gimmicky choruses.

Often when someone doesn't get played on the radio, you can chalk it up to exclusivity or the difficulty of understanding or identifying with the music.

(Thus, we are saddled with the burden of pop songs with messages so simple, four-year-olds can unpack their meanings. "Mommy, Daddy: I want a milkshake, but I'm not sure I want boys to come to my yard. Do you have any suggestions?"

(Also, I should not that when he was about three or four, my brother used to wander around the house singing "Don't Stand So Close to Me," a song by the Police about an illicit teacher-student relationship. At three-years-old, I'm not sure how my brother interpreted the Nabokov reference. I think he probably identified with Sting because The Stinger pronounces things like a small boy. "Doh stah. Doh stah so. Doh stah so clohs to me.")

Back on track now, Robbie's music should be understandable to everyone. His songs are about drinking, lost loves, home and the south. No person capable of operating shoe laces should be too stupid for Robbie Fulks. The music is great (Objectively great. I'm not kidding. Buy "Georgia Hard," tell me it's not good, and prepare for a fight).
And he's a cool guy overall. Check his specs on Google.

So why, why, why, why in the name of Nickelback are our airwaves death-gripped by insulting, trite, safe garbage?

I have no answer. Ask the record company people and the old guys who run the radio stations. But if the case of Radio Stations v. The Country's Dignity ever goes to trial, Robbie Fulks should be a witness.