#TurnASeventiesSongIntoAHalloweenHit

 

I've never been a huge fan of Halloween and I may have just figured out why. It just doesn't have any good songs!

Sure there's "Monster Mash" by Bobby "Boris" Pickett, and Michael Jackson's "Thriller," but if we're being honest, the only really good marginally-Halloween-themed song doesn't even have any words: "Frankenstein" by the Edgar Winter Group.

Momma always said not to complain unless you had an idea on how to fix the problem, so here we go...tweaking some of the best songs from the best decade of music to turn them into holiday hits on the macabre side.

Suspended Over Troubled Water  -  Simon & Garfunkel sing about a classic dungeon scene

Guillotine Keeps Choppin' Off My Head  -  ♫♪ And just like that, the guy makes sure that I am dead ♪♫

Spirit in the Guy  -  Norman Greenbaum's salute to demonic possession

The Long and Winding Rope  -  ♫♪ That wraps 'round your neck ♪♫

One Bad Apple  -  This time, the Osmonds are telling the tale of how Snow White's evil stepmother put her to sleep

How Can You Reanimate a Stolen Heart  -  ♫♪ How can you stop the blood pressure from going down ♪♫

You've Got a Fiend  -  James Taylor's dark side

Gypsys, Tramps & Werewolves  -  ♫♪ They chase you through the woods and make you howl at midnight ♪♫

The First Time Ever I Sawed Your Face  -  Roberta Flack takes her number one hit to a Texas massacre

American Die  -  ♫♪ Drove my Chevy to the levee where I buried this guy ♪♫

A Ghost With No Name  -  A song about going through the desert with an anonymous spook

Tie a String of Garlic Round the Old Oak Tree  -  ♫♪ Make those vampires flee far away from me ♪♫

Killing Me Softly With His Saw  -  Roberta Flack's follow-up hit

Bennie and the Banshees  -  ♫♪ She's got lethal nails and a voice that wails ♪♫

50 Ways to Cleave Your Lover  -  Paul Simon gives several new meanings to the word "hacker"

What Is the Vertical Magnitude of the Sentimentally Charged Interpersonal Attachment You Experience?: The 366th Greatest Song

 

I have a theory that says the only reason people liked "How Deep Is Your Love" so much is that it was juxtaposed next to all the disco on the Bee Gees' album Saturday Night Fever. You know, like how in high school I only hung out with guys uglier than me...so I would look good in comparison. (Of course, there were only two guys in the whole school who met that qualification.)

Another possible point of interest in the song might be this #FunFact divulged by Rolling Stone:

The Bee Gees' work for Saturday Night Fever was recorded during a famed two-and-a-half-week-long session at a chateau in northern France, where, according to Barry Gibb, "six classic lesbian porno scenes [were] filmed."

 

For the Record:

1. I'm fairly certain the porno scenes were not filmed at the same time the Bee Gees were recording.

2. Now that I'm aware of this connection, I'm wondering which movie they meant "How Deep Is Your Love" to be part of.

I know your eyes in the mornin' sun

I feel you touch me in the pourin' rain

And the moment that you wander far from me

I wanna feel you in my arms again

And you come to me on a summer breeze

Keep me warm in your love, then you softly leave

And it's me you need to show

How deep is your love?

I'm just sayin'!

Arguable Advice from the Fab Four

 

With 213 songs to their credit, the Beatles were bound to stumble upon a few wise words here and there. "Let it be" and "Money can't buy me love" come easily to mind.

But let's remember that the Mop Tops were only human. Not everything that sprang from the grooves of their records can be considered "speaking words of wisdom." I offer, therefore, the following list of Beatlesque advice that might make you think twice.

• Your loving give me a thrill, but your loving don't pay my bills. Now give me money. That's what I want.
• Gather round, all you clowns. Let me hear you say, "Hey you've got to hide your love away."
• Leave it all till somebody else lends you a hand.
• Baby, you can drive my car, and maybe I'll love you.

• If the sun don't come, you get a tan from standing in the English rain.
• Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.
• Happiness is a warm gun.
• Let this be a sermon. I mean everything I've said. Baby, I'm determined, and I'd rather see you dead. You better run for your life if you can, little girl. Hide your head in the sand, little girl. Catch you with another man, that's the end, ah, little girl.
• Lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void. It is shining, it is shining.
• Picture yourself in a boat on a river with tangerine trees and marmalade skies.
• And it really doesn't matter. If I'm wrong, I'm right.
• Roll up for the magical mystery tour! Step right this way!
• Why don't we do it in the road?

This One Will Sneak up On You: The 367th Greatest Song

  

Cream's Top Ten hit, "White Room," was birthed by a period of drug and alcohol excess. We should have realized that the minute we heard the lyrics.

Let's allow CoPilot to visually interpret the first verse:

In a white room, with black curtains, near the station...

Black roof country, no gold pavements, tired starlings...

Silver horses, ran down moonbeams, in your dark eyes...

Dawn light smiles, on you leaving, my contentment...

All of which sounds and looks reasonably normal (moonbeam-running horses notwithstanding) until we hit the chorus:

I'll wait in this place where the sun never shines
Wait in this place where the shadows run from themselves...

Eeek!

Happy Dolly Parton Day!

 

Warping  9 to 5, what a way to cross the cosmos

Two levels down, they're holding a princess in a jail cell

Searchers for some droids
That is what we are
So we ambled in
This cantina/bar

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene...

I'm begging of you, please don't take my Death Star plan

Three Minutes of Tuneful Self-Importance: The 368th Greatest Song

 

Depeche Mode started out orthodox enough:

Reach out and touch faith

Your own personal Jesus

Someone to hear your prayers

Someone who cares

Your own personal Jesus

Someone to hear your prayers

Someone who's there

But it soon becomes clear the singer is encouraging the listener to consider the singer to be the listener's supernatural confidant:

Feeling unknown and you're all alone

Flesh and bone by the telephone

Lift up the receiver, I'll make you a believer

Take second best, put me to the test

Things on your chest you need to confess

I will deliver, you know I'm a forgiver

I was going to continue with more lyrical analysis, but I just realized that I have already given you all the words in the song. Everything else is repeating what's already been sung.

So...

Not only is the singer manifesting a textbook case of Messiah Complex, but he is also making it clear his songwriting ability lacks...shall we say...depth.

Certainly length.

Stuph That Has No Reason Being in My Head, Vol. XI

  

I've always known that Donny Osmond and Michael Jackson were about the same age, but it boggles me that Prince (born June 7, 1958) was actually over two months older than MJ.

You know when someone sneezes and you say "Bless you"? THAT sounds like a sneeze, too.

Even though they were originally voiced by two separate people, since the late 1990s, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger have been voiced by the one and only Jim Cummings.

Snap, Crackle, and Pop were the first breakfast cereal mascots.

If you replace W with T in the words what, where, and when, you get the answer to each of them.

Julie Andrews was not cast to recreate her Broadway role of Eliza Doolittle in the film version of My Fair Lady, making her free to star in Mary Poppins instead . . . for which she won an Oscar.

The canine television sensation, Lassie, was always played by a male dog.

Speaking of dogs, we all know what a female dog is called, but I had to ask the WorldWideWackfest what the term for a male dog is. I learned that dogs used to be called hounds and that dog was the term for a male hound until it started being used for the whole species.  So now there is no specific term for "a male dog."

Whenever I write or type the word "Wednesday," I say three syllables to myself: wed - nes - day.

♫♪ The Mate was a mighty sailing man

The Skipper, brave and sure

Five passengers set sail that day

On a three-hour tour

A three

Hour

Tour ♪♫

Repetition, Thy Name Is Bo: The 369th Greatest Song

 

According to the magazine Rolling Stone:

The B side of Diddley's first-ever single was built around a four-note guitar stomp that was a trademark of mid- Fifties Chicago blues. Songwriter Willie Dixon, who supervised the 1955 session, said it was Diddley's sense of rhythm that set him apart from everyone else at Chess [Records]: "The drums are speaking, and he'll tell you what the drums are saying."

Hmmm...

If Bo Diddley's "I'm a Man" is telling me what the drums are saying, I cannot help but be reminded of a Far Side comic wherein Larson translates the barking of dogs into English: We see a dog chasing a car and another dog excited about a person walking down the street and still another dog squaring off with something up a tree  . . . and in each instance, the dog is saying "Hey! Hey! Hey hey!"

In other words, the song is that four-note guitar riff (Da-DAA da-dah), endlessly repeated.

Over and over.

And over.

With Bo's two-note melody expressing lyrics that may not even be worthy of that many notes:

Now when I was a little boy (Da-DAA da-dah)

At the age of five (Da-DAA da-dah)

I had somethin' in my pocket (Da-DAA da-dah)

Keep a lot of folks alive (Da-DAA da-dah)

Now I'm a man (Da-DAA da-dah)

Made twenty-one (Da-DAA da-dah)

You know baby (Da-DAA da-dah)

We can have a lot of fun (Da-DAA da-dah)

I'm a man (Da-DAA da-dah)

I spell M (Da-DAA da-dah)

A (Da-DAA da-dah)

N (Da-DAA da-dah)

Man

I seriously (Da-DAA da-dah) cannot imagine (Da-DAA da-dah) picking this song (Da-DAA da-dah) over Chicago's totally different song with the same title...which didn't even make Rolling Stone's list.

Da-DAA da-dumb!

And the Wind Cries "Squirrel!": The 370th Greatest Song

 

It's not often that Jimi Hendrix wrote a ballad.

Then again, it probably wasn't all that often that he and his girlfriend had a dish-smashing argument.

All I know is, "The Wind Cries Mary" is fairly depressing:

After all the jacks are in their boxes

And the clowns have all gone to bed

You can hear happiness staggering on down the street

Footprints dressed in red

And the wind whispers, "Mary."

And it goes on from there with talk of a crying queen and wifeless king and blue traffic lights and a tiny island that sags downstream and the wind with a bad memory and a crutch and what were we talking about anyway?

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The 371st Greatest Song

The Who's very first single spent a mere two weeks on the March 1965 charts and only made it to Number 93.

Musically, it feels suspiciously like "You Really Got Me" by The Kinks (maybe because both songs were produced by the same guy). So much so, Dave Davies of The Kinks says that when he heard "I Can't Explain," he thought those "cheeky buggers" from The Who were copying them.

According to Songfacts.com: The Who guitarist Pete Townshend wrote this song when he was 18 years old. He described it as being about a guy who "can't tell his girlfriend he loves her because he's taken too many Dexedrine tablets."

And yet, Rolling Stone considers it the 371st greatest song of all time.

I can't explain why.

The Most Unfortunate Insect Metaphor in Rock History

 

"Hey, Siri, what is Rolling Stone's 372nd greatest song of all time?"

"'Marquee Moon,' by Television."

"How high on the Billboard charts did it go?"

"'Marquee Moon,' by Television, was never released as a single and was never listed on any airplay or sales chart."

"Did Rolling Stone give any reason for why they put it on the Greatest Songs list?"

"Not at all. Here's the blurb they connected to it: "Marquee Moon" is Television's guitar epic, stretching out for ten minutes of urban paranoia. "I would play until something happened," Verlaine said."

As if "urban paranoia" wasn't enough to keep me from even listening to this, the first line of the oft-repeated chorus puts a kink in my colon:

Life in the hive puckered up my night

The nicest thought this brings to mind is that a bee accidentally sucked up lemonade instead of honey.

Ewww...

Stuph That Has No Reason Being in My Head, Vol. X

 

The television series Castle, though firmly set in New York City, was filmed in Los Angeles.

The Archies (a cartoon musical group created for a television show) had a huge hit with the song "Sugar Sugar," which was originally offered to The Monkees (a human musical group created for a television show).

From my GPS while driving in Las Vegas: "At the light, turn right on Mel Torme Way and then turn left onto Sammy Davis Junior Avenue."

Somehow, the word horrified ought to have something to do with prostitutes.

The hashtag symbol (#) is called an octothorpe.

The King of Hearts is the only king in the deck without a mustache.

A single strand of spaghetti is called a spaghetto.

Crows hold funerals and gather together to mourn the passing of dead crows. Kind of ironic, considering that a group of crows is called a murder.

Reindeer eyes turn blue in winter for better low-light vision.

♫♪ Gimme dat ding

Gimme dat, gimme gimme dat

Gimme dat ding

Gimme dat, gimme gimme dat

Gimme dat ding

Gimme dat, gimme gimme dat

Gimme gimme gimme dat ding ♪♫

How to Impress Women While Knowing Nothing: The 373rd Greatest Song

 

Sam Cooke fiddled with the lyrics of the Herb Alpert/Lou Adler song, "Wonderful World,"  and created a huge hit.

He also admitted to being far from the sharpest pencil in the box:

Don't know much about history

Don't know much biology

Don't know much about a science book

Don't know much about the French I took

Don't know much about geography

Don't know much trigonometry

Don't know much about algebra

Don't know what a slide rule is for

I mean...instead of "Wonderful World," shouldn't it be titled "Imma Dunce"?

And having admitted all this ignorance, why would a young woman believe he has the insight and forethought to be able to say:

But I do know one and one is two

And if this one could be with you

What a wonderful world this would be

Then again, according to Rolling Stone, "Before it came out, Cooke liked to sing it for women he met, telling them he'd made it up on the spot just for them."

Maybe he's not as stupid as he's making himself out to be.

Change a Letter and Change a Band

 

All it would take is a single typo to completely change some of the greatest musical acts of all time.

Would anybody pay money to hear:

• The Why  -  ♫♪ "He's a pinball philosopher, there has to be a reason..."
• Talking Herds  -  If cows could speak
• Curtis Mayfiend  -  The first African-American punk star
• Nine Inch Sails  -  Industrial rock played on tiny boats
• James Tailor  -  ♫♪ "Oh, I've seen shirts, and I've seen pants..."
• Guns 'n Hoses  -  Like Village People, only everyone is either a cop or a firefighter
• Toe Petty  -  Music for those with a foot fetish
• Slack Sabbath  -  A band of non-practicing Jews
• Blue Öyster Colt  -  ♫♪ "Don't rear at the mollusk"

• Smashing Bumpkins  -  The soundtrack for tractor demolition derbies
• Earth Wino & Fire  -  There's one in every trio
• R2  -  Known for "These Still Aren't the Droids That You're Looking For"

• The Toasters  -  ♫♪ "Why's everybody always butterin' me?"
• Brood Sweat & Tears  -  Proving that chickens DO perspire and cry
• Pears Jam  -  Music to preserve fruit by
• The Beach Toys  -  Actually, this doesn't change things all that much
• Eaglet  -  ♫♪ "Welcome to the Preschool California..."
• The Polite  -  With their big hit, "If It's Not Too Much Trouble, Could You Please Stand Further Away From Me?"

Green-Eyed Writer Man: The 374th Greatest Song of All Time

 

"Brown-Eyed Handsome Man" was written and performed by Chuck Berry, and never made the charts. But it was apparently well-known enough to inspire cover versions by both Buddy Holly and Waylon Jennings.

According to Rolling Stone, "Berry was inspired to write this song while he was touring through heavily black and Latino areas of California. As Berry put it, 'I didn't see too many blue eyes.' He did see a good-looking Chicano nabbed for loitering until 'some woman came up shouting for the policeman to let him go'."

Arrested on charges of unemployment

He was sitting in the witness stand

The judge's wife called up the district attorney

She said, "Free that brown-eyed man.

If you want your job, you better free that brown-eyed man."

I wonder how the song would have gone had he seen me in my natural habitat...

Resting on his haunches while "working from home"
He was sitting in front of a fan
Then his wife called down from the kitchen upstairs
"Are you busy, green-eyed writer man?
I need a favor from my green-eyed writer man."

Flying upstairs like a bat outta heck
Hoping romance was part of the plan
She just couldn't reach something on a top shelf
Like that green-eyed writer man
He's so much taller, yeah, that green-eyed writer man.

Drinking Dr Pepper, eating CornNuts,
Enjoying as much as he can
There's never ever been any ifs, ands, or buts
From that green-eyed writer man,
It's a lot of quirks with that green-eyed writer man.

Beautiful music from the 70s and back
Lyrics like the back of his hand.
Not much else swirling 'round in the mind
Of that green-eyed writer man
He's full of earworms, he's a green-eyed writer man.

Of course, you know there's a serious side
He loves Jesus and the Gospel plan
And the joy in his heart can't help but spill out
Of this green-eyed writer man
Humor is healthcare for this green-eyed writer man.

All in All, Just Another Day Trying Not to Nap: The 375th Greatest Song of All Time

 

Word has it that Pink Floyd member, Roger Waters, didn't write "Another Brick in the Wall Part 2" just as part of their concept album The Wall. It was meant as an actual critique of his elementary school teachers.

From Songfacts.com:

He hated his grammar school teachers and felt they were more interested in keeping the kids quiet than in teaching them. The wall refers to the emotional barrier Waters built around himself because he wasn't in touch with reality. The bricks in the wall are the events in his life that propelled him to build this proverbial wall around himself - his school teacher was just another brick in the wall.

What a different tale would have been told had it been written about my elementary education in a rural school, just wanting to get through the day . . .

We don't need no tours of bakeries

Time ill-spent away from home

No dark rooms to yawn through filmstrips

Teacher, throw them kids a bone

Hey, teacher, throw them kids a bone

All in all it's just like sitting out in the hall

Try to crawl to just another grade in the fall

When you're tall, you'll get to go and shop at the mall

You'd never know I had a crush on my 2nd-grade teacher, Mrs. Hunter.

The Sound of My Expectations Lowering: The 376th Greatest Song of All Time

 

It's always interesting when one of Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" is something I've never heard of.

It either means the magazine doesn't know what the definition of the word great is, or I am hopelessly out of touch with any music produced after the 1980s.

I'll give you a few facts about Radiohead's "Fake Plastic Trees," then let you form your own conclusion.

• Released in March of 1995, the song spent four weeks on the charts, reaching only as high as Number 65.
• Thom Yorke said the song began as "A very nice melody which I had no idea what to do with; then you wake up and find your head singing some words to it."
• Thom Yorke apparently has no idea what constitutes "a very nice melody."
• An acoustic version was featured in the 1995 film Clueless: Cher (Alicia Silverstone) criticizes her stepbrother's taste in music when she overhears him listening to the tune, calling it "crybaby music."
• The video for the song is so boring that several members of the cast and crew went comatose during its filming.

My lack of enthusiasm for this song knows no limits.

Talkin' Smack to Jack: The 377th Greatest Song of All Time

 

I can't express how happy I am that we have come to this point in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and here's why:

• It's Ray Charles, man!
• The female lines were sung by one of Ray's backup singers, who was told to hit the road a couple of years after this song went to No. 1. (Irony is king.)
• It gives me the opportunity to introduce you to Mr. Charles doing this parody version for a KFC commercial.

https://youtu.be/ctqPgE-sPhA?si=lFPHay-pdhtnIJgT

That right there is finger-lickin' good.

Stuph That Has No Reason Being in My Head, Vol. VIII

 

Somebody, somewhere, needs to splice together every instance of Laura Petrie saying "Oh, Rob" into one big, beautiful supercut.

Only about a third of Gilligan’s Island episodes are about trying to get off the island.

Billy Joel wrote "We Didn't Start the Fire" as a response to a friend of Sean Lennon having said that Joel's life had been easy because he grew up in the 50s and everybody knows that nothing happened in the 50s.

The actor who was Alfalfa in the original Little Rascals/Spanky and Our Gang comedies, Carl Switzer, turned the key that opened the gym floor in It's a Wonderful Life and was the Haynes sisters' brother, "freckle-faced Haynes, the dog-faced boy," in White Christmas.

Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun

Ray Charles shilling for Diet Pepsi:

https://youtu.be/J8RPtMBsM5M?si=wMGhSjZ6EWjVpUGM

I know it shouldn't bother me, but it does: My high school and college-aged co-workers at FastStop do not know who John Wayne is.

The square root of 6,561 is 81.

During the year that Tom Hanks was losing weight to film the 2nd half of Cast Away, Robert Zemeckis and the whole crew filmed the jeepy-creepy What Lies Beneath.

The term "gaslighting" (a form of psychological manipulation where someone makes another person doubt their own reality, memories, or sanity) sprang from the 1944 film, Gaslight, though that film was based on a 1938 play of the same name.

The Most Unexpected Cameo in Rock History (Hint: Barbed Wire Is Involved)

 

"Pride (In the Name of Love)," was U2's first Top 40 hit. It only reached 33 on the Billboard charts, but went all the way to Number 378 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

It's a fine stadium rock anthem with the numerously-repeated subtitle easily sung along with.

According to songfacts.com, the song was inspired by a visit to the 1983 Martin Luther King, Jr. exhibit at the Chicago Peace Museum and calls to mind singular men who lived their lives in a way they could be proud of...lives dedicated to love for all of humanity:

The words, "Early morning, April 4, shot rings out in the Memphis sky. Free at last, they took your life. They could not take your pride" allude to Martin Luther King, Jr. (even though he was actually shot around 6 PM. No matter, Bono has since apologized for the historical inaccuracy.)

When he sings "One man come in the name of love" and "One man betrayed with a kiss," we are meant to think of Jesus and how Judas identified him to the arresting officers.

And then there's "One man caught on a barbed wire fence," which obviously is a tribute to Captain Virgil "The Cooler King" Hilts; the character in The Great Escape played by Steve McQueen.

Well, maybe not.