In 2007 there was a challenge issued on the b3ta.com board for artists to render what happened outside the frame of popular album covers.
The results are many and some will make you laugh.
Category Archives: funny
Time Waster: Which Classic Rock Band Are You?
Buzzfeed strikes again. Yesterday I was Pennsylvania, the state that leads. The day before I was James Madison, the President who had a personality like mine. Today:
I’m learning so much about myself.
Another Kiss Tribute
Nobody generates more facepaint. (click to enlarge)
Night Music Goes to the Movies: Gene Krupa & Barbara Stanwyck, “Boogie”
This month my favorite TV network, TCM, is having their annual “31 Days of Oscar” leading up to the actual awards ceremony (to which I am fairly indifferent). During that span every film TCM shows has at least been nominated for an Oscar, and most have won at least one.
TCM is a treasure trove of cinematic brilliance, with the bulk of their offerings focusing on the heyday of the studio system in the 30’s and 40’s.
One of the standards in those movies was to toss in a song. Which is why in the middle of a dark and brilliant Noir film, like The Big Sleep, we see Lauren Bacall singing at a speakeasy operated by gangster Eddie Mars (he is to this film, sort of what Jackie Treehorn was to Lebowski).
So, this morning I was working with TCM on in the background when Howard Hawks’ (who also made The Big Sleep, and my favorite Screwball Comedy, Bringing Up Baby) Ball of Fire came on.
Written by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, the film is a great Screwball Comedy that deconstructs Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, placing the setting in Manhattan in the early 40’s, with Stanwyck playing the moll Sugarpuss O’Shea to Gary Cooper’s English professor Bertram Potts (Cooper is one of eight sheltered eggheads working on an encyclopedia).
A few other things:
- Every great character actor and cartoon voice from that time are among the professors, so if you watch, you will suddenly hear Fractured Fairy Tales etc. in the back of your head.
- This is the last script that Wilder and Brackett wrote before Wilder went on to his fantastic career as a director (Stalag 17, Some Like it Hot, Sunset Boulevard, and Double Indemnity are just a few).
- One thing that stuns me about Wilder is that English was his second language, yet his writing in our language is so sharp. And, if you watch Ball of Fire you will get an idea of just that. This movie is as funny and witty as anything ever put on the big screen.
- One other thing I love about Wilder is the apocryphal tale of when he premiered Sunset Boulevard for a cluster of Hollywood moguls, after the film Samuel Goldwyn got up and chastised Wilder for making such a dark portrayal of the industry that made him rich and famous. What was Wilder’s response to the most powerful man in his industry, in front of their peers? “Fuck you.”
Back to the movie, as part of the set-up, Cooper/Potts takes to the streets fearing his grasp of slang is already outdated, and happens upon O’Shea at a night club (he also goes to a ball game and gets some good slang there).
O’Shea is the singer at the club, and though her singing and the song are marginal, Gene Krupa and his big band are just deadly. So is the piano player and the guy who does the sax solo. Funny too, cos playing guitar was just a minor rhythm instrument, as you can see in most films of this ilk.
Anyway, Canned Heat et al all owe their boogie chops to this great scene.
And, just for fun, after the big number, Krupa and Stanwyck reprise the song with Krupa playing matchsticks instead of drumsticks.
Oldies: Screaming Lord Sutch and the Savages, “Jack the Ripper”
A lovely family portrait at the Grammys, with Slipknot’s Shawn Crahan and his lovely family.
Then there is young Kiss, well before it all got a little tired.
But the painted face shtick was fresh in 1964.
KISS My Whatever
There have been more than a few discussions about KISS and their music and what is real rock and roll since we started up here around nine months or so ago.
For the record, I have seen KISS live, in 1979, and they did little or nothing for me (though I did get some great photographs of the band).
However, as I am about a decade older than my two friends who are the biggest fans of the band I know–Steve Moyer and Scott Engel–I will admit that just age and experience had a lot to do with my indifference to the band.
I got the Beatles and the Stones and the Who and the Kinks when they were new, and then a few years later I lived in the bay area when the San Francisco bands hit it.
So, one of the things at play here is that the bands we love and which form the basis for our likes and dislikes, make their impression during our adolescence and in that context, I was too old for KISS.
That said, I still don’t really think that much of them as a band, but I also know there are those who hated the Moody Blues when they were my favorites, and well, look how Bob Dylan was received when he plugged in. And, all Dylan was trying to do was keep his art growing.
Anyway, over the past week, KISS has come to my radar in a couple of odd ways.
First, the previously noted Mr. Engel invited me to come play miniature golf in Las Vegas when we were both there for the Fantasy Sports Trade Association Winter Meeting.
The kicker was this pee-wee golf course is dedicated to KISS. Which kind of makes me like them (I love miniature golf) and kind of hate them (how much shilling does Gene Simmons need to do?).
However, a few days after I got home from Vegas, Diane and I were snuggled in bed, watching the tube before we fell asleep, and the Road to Europe episode of Family Guy came on.
Now, as with the miniature golf, I have mixed emotions. On one hand, again, sigh, KISS all over the fucking place.
OTOH, we both love Family Guy.
And, this episode was particularly sweet with us finding out that Peter is proud of his wife Lois for “doing” KISS (we find out as an aside that she also did the Geils band).
How can you not like that?
Excerpt: The Sex Lives of Cannibals by J. Maarten Troost
My friend David, who is living in New Zealand these days, sends this clip from The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific
I packed thirty-odd discs that I felt could comprehensively meet any likely musical desire…[but] I forgot our CDs in my mother’s garage in Washington, thousands and thousands of miles away…
..I was thinking about these CDs a few months later, when once again I was being driven to the brink of insanity by an ear-shattering, 120-beat-a-minute rendition of “La Macarena,” the only song ever played on Tarawa. It was everywhere. If I was in a minibus, overburdened as always with twentysome people and a dozen fish, hurtling down the road at a heart-stopping speed, the driver was inevitably blasting a beat-enhanced version of “La Macarena” that looped over and over again. If I was drinking with a few of the soccer players who kindly let me demonstrate my mediocrity on the soccer field with them, our piss-up in one of the seedy dives in Betio would occur to the skull-racking jangle of “La Macarena.” If I happened across some teenage boys who had gotten their hands on an old Japanese boom box, they were undoubtedly loitering to a faint and tinny “La Macarena”…
…As I continued to be flailed by “La Macarena,” I took small comfort in the fact that at least no one on Tarawa had ever seen the video, and I was therefore spared the sight of an entire nation spending their days line dancing…
…What finally brought me to the brink was the recent acquisition of a boom box by the family that lived across the road… sometimes for hours at a time, and I would be reduced to an imbecilic state by the endless playing of “La Macarena.” It was hot. My novel—and this is a small understatement—was not going very well. My disposition was not enhanced by “La Macarena.” I wondered if I could simply walk across the road and kindly ask the neighbors to shut the fucking music off… and I asked Tiabo if she thought it was permissible for me to ask the neighbors to turn the music down. “In Kiribati, we don’t do that,” Tiabo [the maid] said. “Why not?” I asked. “I would think that loud noise would bother people.” “This is true. But we don’t ask people to be quiet”…
…As the months went by and “La Macarena” was etched deeper and deeper into my consciousness, I became increasingly despondent that our package of CDs would never arrive. Then, one day the stars aligned, the gods smiled, and as I rummaged among the packages I saw with indescribable happiness my mother’s distinctive handwriting. Oh, the sweet joy of it. I claimed the package, stuffed it my backpack, and biked like the wind.
“Tiabo,” I said, full of glee. “You must help me.” She eyed me suspiciously as I plundered through our box of CDs. “You must tell me which song, in your opinion, do you find to be the most offensive.” “What?” she asked wearily. “I want you to tell me which song is so terrible that the I-Kiribati will cover their ears and beg me to turn it off.” “You are a strange I-Matang.” I popped in the Beastie Boys’ Check Your Head. I forwarded it to the song “Gratitude,” which is an abrasive and highly aggressive song. “What do think?” I yelled. “I like it.” Damn. I moved on to Nirvana’s “Lithium.” I was sure that grunge-metal-punk would not find a happy audience on an equatorial atoll. “It’s very good,” Tiabo said. Now I was stumped. I tried a different tack. I inserted Rachmaninoff. “I don’t like this,” Tiabo said.
Now we were getting somewhere. “Okay, Tiabo. How about this?” We listened to a few minutes of La Bohème. Even I felt a little discombobulated listening to an opera on Tarawa. “That’s very bad,” Tiabo said. “Why?” “I-Kiribati people like fast music. This is too slow and the singing is very bad.” “Good, good. How about this?” I played Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. “That’s terrible. Ugh . . . stop it.” Tiabo covered her ears. Bingo. I moved the speakers to the open door.
“What are you doing?” Tiabo asked. I turned up the volume. For ten glorious minutes Tarawa was bathed in the melancholic sounds of Miles Davis. Tiabo stood shocked. Her eyes were closed. Her fingers plugged her ears. I had high hopes that the entire neighborhood was doing likewise. Finally, I turned it off. I listened to the breakers. I heard the rustling of the palm fronds. A pig squealed. But I did not hear “La Macarena.” Victory. “Thank you, Tiabo. That was wonderful.” “You are a very strange I-Matang.”
Should Nicolas be Caged?
The Valley Girl references, as Nic Cage’s first film, reminded me of this great and funny YouTube of Mr. Cage losing it, which is what he largely does in his movies.
I will admit to being a big fan of the film Adaptation, in which Cage plays twin brothers, but, after watching that film with my niece Lindsay, she turned me onto this hysterical compilation clip of Cage out of control.
Night Music: Bonzo Dog (Doo Dah Band) – “The Intro And The Outro”
Peter and I have written back and forth about what it is that triggers the “Night Music” pieces, at least for us.
For me, sometimes the impetus is simply hearing a song on the radio (yes, I still listen to that old fashioned medium) or on my shuffle. Sometimes a tune just pops into my head. Sometimes something will occur during band practice and remind me that “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love” was not a bad tune and one the Biletones could cover.
And, sometimes it is a stimulus-response thing, as in one of us will write about a song and band, and that starts the whole association moving along.
So, Peter, writing about the Rutles has done for me.
As an already crazy Python fan when The Rutles All You Need is Cash was released in 1978, I watched it, loved it, and even bought it on DVD years later.
I am still a fan of all things Python related, but my familiarity with the music of Python pre-dated my seeing the comedy act by a handful of years. Before that, my friend Stephen Clayton and I had been big fans of the Bonzo Dog (Doo Dah Band), whose principle song writer was Neil Innes.
Innes moved on to do the music for the Python films, and as Peter noted, headed up the Rutles (with Eric Idle, from Python) and also did some solo stuff. Innes also appeared on Saturday Night Live, when I believe Idle was the guest host, and if memory serves, he wore white and played a white grand piano, a la Lennon, and performed the Rutles Cheese and Onions.
The Bonzo Dog band were a goofy consortium of great British musicians with a slight twist on everything, pre-dating quasi pop-rock Big Band sound Squirrel Nut Zippers and their ilk produced by nearly 30 years.
The band’s biggest hit–at least in England–was the venerable I’m the Urban Spaceman but my fave song of theirs was the opening cut to the album Gorrilla from 1968 called The Intro and the Outro, a shameless grab of Duke Ellington’s C-Jam Blues, although in the Bonzo’s treatment,Count Basie gets the nod over the Duke lyrically, shall we say.
Still, a great riff, funny words, and everything that is Innes, Bonzo, and Python.