Category Archives: youtube song

Seth MacFarlane Knows

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Life is busy.

That is my cheap shit excuse for neglecting to surrender my share of contributions to the Site here over the past weeks.

Truth is, my life is very busy, although I am in the process of transitioning from one of those more than demanding day jobs that really pays the bills and provides my health care, to the ranks of the retired. Although for me retired means writing four or five baseball columns a week, working on some fiction, being at the ball park, playing music, writing songs, and well, writing here too among other things.

Well, rest assured, just because I get distracted and forget to post stuff here, it doesn’t mean I am not thinking about it.

And, while I have a lot of fodder floating around in my grey cells, somehow when watching Family Guy a couple of weeks ago I saw this which demonstrates just how brilliant Seth MacFarlane and his mates can be.

I get if you hate Family Guy. Peter Griffin is as oafish and mostly offensive a character as we can imagine. In fact if The Simpsons has proved to be the best representation of American Family life ever recorded, the Griffin family has pushed that envelope by showing our basically soulless full of reality TV instant experts internet cell phone culture in an even more visceral way.

In other words, yeah: lots of fart and toilet jokes, too much blood and vomit, lots of gags that no one can let go of, and on and on.

However, if you can indulge creator MacFarlane just a little, when he is on, he is so on it is scary.

And, very often, that on is the result of some musical genius.

Not that we are talking Lou Reed or the Hellacopters or original music.

More like knowing that the ever-hot Lois Griffin banged all of Kiss as a young woman, something that makes her Trog husband Peter proud.

But, the show also riffs other songs and genres and stuff so brilliantly. As in the song/sequence below where MacFarlane and mates take on Disney, not only in song, but with just a few deft line changes from the animators, and a little creative use of metaphor, well, you get this:

OK, so it ain’t rock’n’roll, but it is funny and I do like it. It is also smart, which I also like.

When I think about it, in fact, most of my earliest exposure to classical music–aside from what my parents usually had going in the background–was the result of Looney Tunes, as in this great clip of Bugs playing Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody #2 (although when I first saw it, I had no idea what the music was):

To finish off, I am going back to Family Guy, again with a song and dance number that is so clever, and to pair with Bugs and his ilk, links back to the 30’s with the song Bag O’ Weed which totally riffs on the Marx Brothers and Duck Soup (I looked for a video clip of the brothers banging on the helmeted heads of the enemy Sylvanians with dubbed xylophone music that MacFarlane parodies, and could not find one).

However, if you watch carefully during the finale, you will indeed see a Groucho head spill out (at 2:49) among the images, giving credit where credit is due right after the Duck Soup riff (instead of helmets, Brian and Stewie are banging on bongs).

OK, so I got that out of my system, and I can start writing about some serious music. Like Foghat.

Happy and safe holiday to you all.

 

 

 

 

Lunch Break: Slade, “Coz I Luv You”

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My Oh My was Slade’s last hit, and a remarkable difference from this one, their first. Today’s palette cleanser…

I guess the point of last night’s rant wasn’t that there was anything wrong with being popular, but that maybe over time a popular artist has to find new ways to reach the mass audience. And maybe one of the ways is to go with sentimental prettiness rather than stronger sounds and words. Or maybe it’s just that over time good new ideas run out, squeezed like toothpaste from a tube.

By the way, John Legend’s first Top 20 single was also his first No. 1. Yuck.

Night Music: Keith Richards and Norah Jones, “Love Hurts”

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Okay, I got onto Love Hurts tonight because John Mahoney was in the movie of that name, which comes from a song the Everly Brothers made famous that was written by Boudleaux Bryant. I know the Everly’s version, which is iconic, but the one I know most is Gram Parson’s version.

Ten years ago there was a tribute concert to Gram Parsons. I don’t know where or why, at that time, but what I found tonight was this clip of Keef and Norah. She has a lovely voice and Keef seems to enjoy holding her close, but the impressive thing is his vocals, which aren’t particularly powerful but are nuanced and adept and show that he’s a good singer and having a gas, despite sporting a rather odd look.

Night Music: PAWS, “Sore Tummy”

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This isn’t their best song, but it’s close enough and it’s the best PAWS video I’ve seen. For what that’s worth.

I’m wanting to blame young rockers for not rocking, and in this video when we land on the plastic insects on the snare I started to rethink PAWS.

Give them room for being Scottish, but this is too fey by half. Or twice two fey.

But I’m not sure it’s their fault. That’s what the kids want, along with songs about moms having contractions. It’s a different world than the one I grew up and hated. It’s a different world than the one Steve lives in now.

So, give this a listen. For modern rock it doesn’t suck. It’s three guys with instruments making a bunch of noise. The bass player seems to have some good ideas. The drummer isn’t afraid to hit it hard.

But they’re not FIDLAR.

Lunch Break: Jim Carroll Band, “Wicked Gravity”

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What else would I be doing during the day than working and listening to KTKE? Even if baseball is on in the background, the volume is down, essentially sparing me the observations of commentators explaining what I can see for myself.

This time, the nugget from the past they hit me with was Wicked Gravity by the Jim Carroll Band

Carroll was a young poet who emerged from the New York arts scene of the late 70’s, along with Patti Smith and Robert Maplethorpe, with whom he apparently shared living space as the punk movement was burgeoning.

He published an autobiographical volume, The Basketball Diaries, in 1978 that dealt with his adolescence, sex, shooting hoops in high school, and drugs, specifically the author’s heroin addiction.

Largely a product of a Catholic upbringing, the young poet hit the music scene to, forming a band and releasing a decent enough first album, Catholic Boy.

The big hit from the disc was For All the People Who Died, but I always dug the cut here, Wicked Gravity a little more as a song.

Apparently this clip was posted on YouTube by Carroll Band bass player Steve Lisnley, who noted the video is from the band’s final live performance.

Carroll produced music, prose, and poetry through 2000. He passed away in 2009 at the age of 60 from a heart attack, and one posthumous volume, The Petting Zoo was released in 2010.