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.

It's Not My Fault: The 379th Greatest Song

My personal history with R.E.M.'s "Radio Free Europe" begins with my seeing that it is number 379 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Having never heard it, nor heard OF it, I go to YouTube and watch the music video they created for it. I can only understand 3 or 4 words in the whole song, and the video is giving me zero clues about its meaning: There's a guy, then two, and finally three guys wandering around a field and an overgrown lawn-and-garden outlet. Oh! And there's a guy sitting at a Bob Cratchit-style desk. Maybe he's writing about the guys in the field and overgrown lawn-and-garden outlet?

So I head over to azlyrics.com and read the words to the song.

This may or may not come as a shock to you, but I still have 100% no idea what the song is about.

So...it's off to songfacts.com. And it is here that I learn what I had been kind of suspecting all along:

There was a good reason for Michael Stipe's infamously indecipherable lyrics on this song: He hadn't finished them by the time they recorded it. In a 1988 NME interview, Stipe described the lyrical content as "complete babbling."

I feel SO justified!

Stupid Stories™: Ms Wack, Loan Officer

 

Patti Wack was recently hired at a local bank as a loan officer and was having trouble deciding whether to lend money to a particular applicant.

The first red flag for Ms Wack was that the potential customer wasn't human. He wasn't even a mammal. The "person" applying for a loan was a frog.

A frog!

How was she supposed to deal with a googly-eyed, web-footed, amphibious creature who wanted the bank to entrust him with cash? He had no job other than sitting around in a swamp.

"How deep is this swamp you sit in, sir?"

"Knee deep. Knee deep."

"Be that as it may, I see no reliable source of income from which to repay this loan you're asking for. Do you have anything you could put up as collateral?"

The frog handed Patti a ceramic figurine of a red-winged blackbird.

"Excuse me, sir, let me consult with my manager."

Patti took the figurine to her manager and, after explaining the whole situation, said, "What am I supposed to do? I mean, I don't even know what this thing he's calling collateral even is."

The loan manager looked her in the eyes and, in a condescending tone, said, "It's a knick-knack, Patti Wack, give the frog a loan."

Goodbye, Penelope Rose: The 380th Greatest Song

 

It is no secret that when Elton John sings, people don't understand the words.

Sometimes, it's because Bernie Taupin's lyrics are weird and only representational of coherent trains of thought. But mostly, it's because Sir Elton has trouble enunciating important sounds...like consonants.

A prime example is the song "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road." It's a fine melody and attempts to express a longing for a simpler life, but when you replace what Bernie wrote with what people hear Elton singing, things quickly go awry.

When are you gonna come down?
When are you gonna calm down?

When are you going to land?
When are you going to learn?

I should have stayed on the farm
I shoved that stake in my arm

I should have listened to my old man
Shoveled glitter into my can

You know you can't hold me forever
You know your cap told me more better

I didn't sign up with you
I giggle hiccup with you

I'm not a present for your friends to open
I'm not a pheasant for your hands to hold on

This boy's too young to be singing the blues
"Da boing do yada," me's singing the blues

So goodbye yellow brick road
So goodbye, Penelope Rose

Where the dogs of society howl
Where the dogs are, though I can't see how

You can't plant me in your penthouse
Your cat locked me in your penthouse, or
You can't have me as your pen pal

I'm going back to my plough
I'm going back to my cow

Back to the howling old owl in the woods
Back to just howlin' around in the world, or
Back to the hidey-hole out in the woods

Hunting the horny-back toad
Punt with a horny, old sow

Oh, I've finally decided my future lies
Oh, I find that my eyes, all putrified

Beyond the yellow brick road
Belong to hollow brick role

BESIDES...

Shouldn't the whole thing have been more about The Wizard of Oz?

When the wind's done spinnin' 'round

When am I going to land?

I should have stayed on the ground

I should have listened to Auntie Em

Ahh...a lost opportunity indeed.

Headlines to Hope for in 2026

 

Please, oh please, oh pretty pretty please!

Campaign Promises to Lower Prices Are Fulfilled

Hollywood Produces 10 Films People Actually Want to See

Minnesotans Give Up Their Juvenile Insistence on Calling "Duck, Duck, Goose" "Duck, Duck, Gray Duck"

Airlines Replace Tasteless So-Called Cookies with CornNuts

Ice Cream, Like Water, Declared Essential for Life and Free at All Restaurants

Art Garfunkel, James Taylor, and Paul Simon Release Cover of Satchmo's "What a Wonderful World"

Campaigning for Mid-term Elections Restricted to Publishing of Position Papers

Waste-of-ink comic strip, Fred Basset, finally shuts down. #FredBassetMustDie

How to Ruin Date Night in 3 Verses: The 381st Greatest Song

 

As the story goes, the angel-voiced Aaron Neville was a longshoreman when he recorded the sweet-but-direct plea for a truthful love relationship, "Tell It Like It Is."

That dichotomy between a slow R&B ballad and the rough and tumble life of a longshoreman seems to have affected the effect of the record. Neville is quoted as saying, "A lot of people come up to me and say, 'That song got me and my wife together, and others say, 'It broke me and my wife up. '"

I looked up the words of the song, and I've gotta say, I'm on Team Breakup. Check it out:

If you want something to play with

Go and find yourself a toy

Baby my time is too expensive

And I'm not a little boy

I mean, doesn't he sound a little confrontational and demanding?

And what's this thing about his time being expensive? Is he a high-end gigolo?

If you are serious

Don't play with my heart

It makes me furious

Heads Up: If anger management is an issue for this guy, put on your high-heeled sneakers and run. a. way!

I believe you love me

Forget your foolish pride

In other words, don't listen to what your heart is telling you. Listen to me! I say you love me, so start acting like it!

Ah yes...nothing says romance like "you love me because I said so."

Here We Go Round and Round: The 382nd Greatest Song

 

SO MANY unanswered questions about "Bitter Sweet Symphony" by The Verve.

What made them think they could make a six-second loop of an orchestral arrangement of a Rolling Stones song ("The Last Time"), create a four-minute song from it, and not give Jagger and Richards writing credit (which they were eventually forced to do)?

Why use a Stones song that had its own origin controversy? ("The Last Time" is very similar to a 1955 song by The Staple Singers called "This May Be The Last Time," but The Stones claimed it as their own.  -SongFacts.com)

Why does the video for the song consist of the lead singer walking against the flow of pedestrians on a busy sidewalk, bumping into people?

Why would the listening public of 1997 turn a song with a lyric like "You're a slave to money, then you die" into a Number 12 hit?

And last but not least, why would Rolling Stone magazine call it the 382nd Greatest Song of All Time?

Unknown and Under-Appreciated: The 383rd Greatest Song

 

Here we go again, Rolling Stone  -  another "Greatest Song" that was never released as a single, let alone showed up on a Billboard chart of any persuasion: "Whipping Post" by The Allman Brothers Band.

And you have the nerve to say  -  about a song I've never heard or heard of  -  "This enduring anthem was written on an ironing board in a darkened Florida bedroom by Allman. Leaping off with a rumbling Berry Oakley bass line, rife with tormented blues-ballad imagery and punctuated by Duane Allman's knifelike guitar incisions, the song is best appreciated in the twenty-three-minute incarnation on At Fillmore East."

Well, sorry, but I guess I'm stuck only appreciating the 5-minute version in the lyric video I found on YouTube.

I'll accept that as not being the best amount of appreciation, but hopefully it's not the worst.

Is it okay if I have a modicum of appreciation?

A tad?

What exactly is acceptable in terms of appreciating this thing?

Ticket to Ride in a Squad Car: The 384th Greatest Song

 

Taken at face value, "Ticket to Ride," by The Beatles, is a song about a girl leaving a guy by way of train.

Taken at dictionary value, it's a confusing mess.

For instance...

I think I'm gonna be sad. I think it's today, yeah
The girl that's driving me mad is going away

Question: If the girl's driving you crazy, why would her departure make you sad?

She's got a ticket to ride
But she don't care

She doesn't care that she has a train ticket? So is she going away or isn't she?

She said that living with me is bringing her down, yeah
For she would never be free when I was around

So ... in terms of being driven crazy, who is driving and who is riding?

Before she gets to saying goodbye
She ought to think twice
She ought to do right by me

Sounds a little threatening, like "If I can't have you, NObody can!"

Makes me think of a different Beatles lyric: "You better run for your life if you can, little girl!"