Wicked Guitar Solo of the West: The 409th Greatest Song of All Time

 

Eric Clapton played lead guitar.

That's probably why this made Rolling Stone's list of the greatest songs of all time, because other than that, it's a pretty standard blues progression with unimpressive words. In fact, they might benefit from a little almost-style explanation:

I went down to the crossroads
       Apparently, some of the streets in Los Angeles are not happy

Fell down on my knees
       Fun Fact: Clapton filed a workman's compensation claim after recording this song

Asked the Lord above for mercy
"Save me if you please"
       Sources are not convinced this was an authentic conversion experience

I went down to the crossroads
Tried to flag a ride
       Cream bassist, Jack Bruce, attempted to be the starter for some street drag races

Nobody seemed to know me
Everybody passed me by
       Being passed by cars had nothing to do with being unrecognized and everything to do with the fact he was standing in the middle of the road

I'm going down to Rosedale
       An enclosed shopping mall in Roseville, Minnesota

Take my rider by my side
       Talk-to-text technology misspelled this reference to going to the mall with his lyricist

You can still barrelhouse, baby
On the riverside
       A veiled threat that if this song doesn't become a hit, the writer may return to being homeless and living in a large wooden cask next to a van down by the river

You can run, you can run
       The person being sung to is able to rapidly move forward by foot

Tell my friend-boy Willie Brown
       Coded message that is actually asking if the singer's boyfriend is planning on getting a tan

And I'm standing at the crossroads
Believe I'm sinking down
       "I'm melting! Melting! What a world! What a world!"

#PutAnAnimalInAFiftiesSongTitle

 

The Fifties were years of rocking, rolling, and pure animal energy.

Donkey Cruel  -  Elvis sings of a heartless burro.

That'll Be the Jay  -  ♫♪ "That'll be the jay; the bird that's so blue. That'll be the jay just a singing for you. That'll be the jay, learning to fly. That'll be the jay-ay-ay in the sky!" ♪♫

Blueberry Krill  -  A fruity seafood dish where Fats Domino found his thrill

Ain't Cat Ashamed  -  ♫♪ "You made (boom, boom) me cry (boom, boom) when you scratched (boom, boom) my eye. Ain't cat ashamed? My tears fell like rain." ♪♫

Rock and Vole Music  -  A little tune for a little mouse by Chuck Berry

Groundhog*  -  ♫♪ "You ain't nothin' but a groundhog, diggin' in the ground..." ♪♫

Stoat Gets in Your Eyes  -  The Platters sing a warning about a weasel.

Hart Breaks Hotel  -  ♫♪ "When Bambi crashed into the lobby, it was quite the tale to tell. The headline read next morning: "Hart Breaks Hotel" ♪♫

Snake Up Little Susie  -  The Everly Brothers sing the terrifying tale of a girl, a snake, and a toilet.

_______
* Yes, it IS weird to take a song that alREADY had an animal in the title and almostify it.

The Third and Final #MakeAMovieEdible

 

I just can't eat another bite.

There Will Be Blood Pudding  -  A story of family, religion, hatred, oil, and gross UK cooking

Filleting Nemo  -  Oh my, let's skip the description here, shall we?

Monty Python and the Holy Quail  -  "Listen, strange women lyin' in ponds distributin' swords is no basis for a system of ornithology."

Dial M for Mackerel  -  A former tennis star arranges the murder of his adulterous wife by blunt force trauma with a fish.

Lox, Stock and Two Smoking Bagels  - High-stakes poker at a local deli

Gone With the Rind  -  "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a lime."

Harry Potter and the Takeout Order of the Phoenix  -  A mythical bird rises from the ashes and gets the orange chicken.

The Sound of Mueslix  -  Sister Maria chews her breakfast with her mouth open.

Dead Poultry Society  -  "Seize the drake, boys!"

Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Bean Chili  -  And you thought being one of the undead was bad...

Proof the Editors of Rolling Stone Were Actually Stoned: The 410th Greatest Song of All Time

 

"Monkey Gone to Heaven" by the Pixies is NOT a great song.

Behold:

• Its melody is almost nonexistent.
• Its lyric is, as confessed by its composer, Black Francis, lacking coherent meaning.
• It never made the charts.
• The phrase "monkey gone to heaven" never even appears in the song.

The phrase that DOES get repeated and repeated and repeated is "This monkey's gone to heaven."

After a while, it even stops sounding like that's what they're saying...

This monkey's gone to heaven

This money's long too leavened

This muck keeps bongs in head bed

Thick mud seeps strong to deadheads

The Second #MakeAMovieEdible

 

Movies to get hungry by.

Gladcontainer  -  A former Roman General keeps his leftovers fresh.

The Fryin' King  -  Mufasa tries to teach his son everything he knows about being a short-order cook.

Quesoblanco  -  "Of all the Taco Bells, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine."

Hot Pocket Lips Now  -  Go on. Just look at Marlon Brando's face and tell me this doesn't make sense.

Drive-Thru Window  -  A photographer in a wheelchair spies on his neighbors from his job at a fast-food restaurant, and becomes convinced one of them has committed murder.

Crullers of the Lost Ark  -  "Indiana Jones. I always knew some day you'd come walking back through my door. Want a doughnut?"

Cocoa  -  Aspiring chocolatier Miguel, confronted with his family's ancestral ban on candy, enters the Land of the Dead.

Good Dill Hunting  -  A janitor at M.I.T., has a gift for pickling but needs help from a psychologist to find just the right spice.

The Waffle of Wall Street  -  "Let me tell you something. There's no nobility in poverty. I have been a rich man and I have been a poor man. And I choose rich every bleeping time. Because, at least as a rich man, when I have to face my problems, I show up in the back of the limo, eating the best breakfast buffet money can buy."

To Grill a Mockingbird  -  Atticus Finch, a widowed lawyer in Depression-era Alabama, defends a black man against an undeserved negative restaurant review.

The First #MakeAMovieEdible

 

The concept isn't originally mine, but the following executions of said concept are:

The Shawshank Reduction  -  A prison's population is reduced in volume through evaporation over a medium-to-high heat

The Codfather  -  A Sicilian crime boss launders money through his chain of seafood restaurants

The Dark Chocolate Knight  -  "I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the raspberry drizzle."

12 Hungry Men  -  A sequestered jury can't agree on what to order for dinner

The Lord of the Onion Rings  -  Well, this one can't be all that original, seeing as how I found this graphic on the World Wide Wackfest.

The Good, the Bad & the Sushi  -  "You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who roll rice and kelp. You roll."

Star Wars: Episode V - The Potato Salad Strikes Back  -  Food poisoning in a galaxy far, far away

One Stew Over the Cuckoo's Nest  -  A precariously-placed crockpot threatens an entire hospital ward

It's a Wonderful Loaf  -  "Zuzu's sourdough!"

Back to the Buffet  -  The merry adventures of a time-traveling gourmand

The Birth of MY Blues: The 411th Greatest Song of All Time

 

I know I've whined before about how I don't think a particular song belongs on Rolling Stone's list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time," but seriously...

I Feel Love, by Donna Summer, is an experiment in totally computerized (Moog synthesized) instrumentation with a thin veneer of smooth vocals consisting of the repetition of seven short phrases and the word, "ooh".

• Ooh
• It's so good
• Heaven knows
• I feel love
• Fallin' free
• You and me
• I'll get you
• What you do
• Ooh
• I feel love, I feel love, I feel love

The word on the street is that this song broke open a new territory of sound and ushered in electronic dance music.

Just one more reason for me to not like it.

Ooh, I feel sick, I feel sick, I feel sick...