Apparently, Tim Curry had a stroke recently, and my heart goes out to the guy and I hope he makes a full recovery and that he can soon get back to being the most kitschy and flamboyant human being this side of John Waters.
I've always loved the guy. He's made a career out of making bad movies a little more awesome with his presence. His iconic performance in Rocky Horror Picture Show defined the concept of a performance that's so bad that it's good. The guy is a b-movie legend, and his performances in film, stage, TV and cartoon voice work are always fantastic and very memorable.
But one of my favorite things he's ever done is I Do The Rock, a largely forgotten song he made in 1979. I have no idea how it's been forgotten, because it's everything glorious about Tim Curry. He's making a horrible attempt at an accent - I don't even know what accent. Russian? Jamaican? I'll just call the accent 'Tim Curry Attempting an Accent.' It's the same one he did in Congo. He's also prancing around like the gayest man on the planet, and just being all around awesome. Also, the song is absolutely horrendous. It's one of the worst things I've ever heard, but I can look past that because it's Tim Curry, dammit. Hell, I don't look past it. The awfulness is the main attraction. I'm watching this flamboyant, creepy British guy prance around and sing the most idiotic lyrics I've ever heard. This is Tim Curry at his finest.
It's been a while since I've done this, and I figure the best way to make a comeback to this blog is with a throwback to my first entry - Device. I've done a bit more research about these guys and their keyboardist/songwriter Holly Knight since my first entry, because of the same kind of curiosity that lead me to discover countless bands and artists. To quote the guy Harry Callahan threatened with that famous 'did I shoot six shots or only five' line, "I gots to know."
That's how I found their other video for a song called Who Says. It's quintessential eighties trash rock, and it is glorious.
This video might be obscure as hell, but it's a defining one of the era. It had everything.
It was shot in a warehouse. There are random spotlights all over. For some reason, there's some hot girl wearing a sweatshirt wandering through a parking garage. Every guy here has a magnificently awful blonde mullet. Holly Knight is playing a keytar. A friggin' keytar, for God's sake. And the fashion is horrendous.
The guitarist is wearing denim with a scarf around his neck. The lead singer is wearing leather chaps over his denim - LEATHER CHAPS. Holly Knight is wearing a tight one piece spandex thing with a jacket that doesn't look like it has any way of closing, and it doesn't even go any lower than her stomach. The drummer is wearing a sleeveless black button up shirt. The kicker there? Holly Knight was credited for providing 'programming,' which I assume means drum machine programming. There was no drummer credited on the album. They just found a guy with a mullet and sat him down at the skins for this video because... I have no idea why.
The best part of this? The singer. Initially, I thought his voice sounded familiar. I brushed this off because it's sort of the generic eighties singer voice. Then I looked up the album's credits on the All Music Guide and found out that the singer is Paul Engemann. It's certainly not a household name, but he does have one very well known song.
Holy shit, it's the Push it to the Limit guy. I'm kicking myself for not finding this out for the first entry on this blog.
This is a great one of the best pieces of eighties rock I've come across. It's cheesy and stupid, sure, but it was written by Holly Knight and sung by the same voice that did Push it to the Limit. The album was produced by Mike Chapman, who was pretty much the Holly Knight of the seventies. You shouldn't expect smart music from these people. You'll get catchy, listenable and very memorable music from them, though.
Unfortunately, Device split up after one album, and this and Hanging on a Heart Attack are the only videos they put out. It's a shame because these videos are great fodder for me and this blog. But I can take solace in the fact that Holly Knight was a very prolific songwriter. There will be more songs with her songwriting credits on here, you can count on that. It would be unavoidable even if I was trying not to - she's that prolific. But I won't avoid her work. Not just because it's perfect for this blog, but because I really like her work. I'm a fan.
This is an update to my last entry from a few weeks ago about Eurovision where I railed against the contest for producing a lot of shitty music. I still stand by that statement. But to be fair, I didn't pay any more attention to Eurovision after writing that and I just now figured that I might as well see who won.
Eurovision has declared a winner. Only Teardrops by Emmilie De Forest, Denmark's entry. I'm not blown away by it, but it's a pretty decent song.
So yeah, something decent won this year. It's better than that Norwegian guy's awful Fairytale song that won a few years back. That song was the worst piece of music to ever come out of Scandanavia. And that's the region of the world that crapped out ABBA. I'd take Dancing Queen over that garbage any day of the week.
I like how this went from sort of praising Eurovision for this year's winner being decent, into ripping into some fiddle playing jerk's awful song. But seriously, Fairytale can go fuck itself.
Eurovision is this month! What is Eurovision, you may ask? Let me explain this to my American readership.
It's a yearly contest where a bunch of European countries (and a few in northern Africa and the western parts of the middle east, which as any fourth grader taking a geography class could tell you, are not parts of Europe) pick singers from their country to record a song, and then a panel of judges picks which one is the best. It's a pretty huge deal in that corner of the world.
Some of the artists who took part in the contest have gone on to be big names in the music world. Such as ABBA and Celine Dion, who most of know for being completely and indefensibly horrible.
However, in the interest of fairness, I want to talk about one of the good entries in the contest, because there were some good ones over the years. By the law of averages, there would have to be. If Sturgeon's Law states that 90% of everything is crap, 10% has to be at the very least not crap, and a small percentage of that 10% has to be good or even great, right?
The best song I could find from the contest is by music legend, Julio Iglesias with his first big hit song, Gwendolyne, which was Spain's entry in the 1970 contest. It's an absolutely beautiful song.
On the other end of the quality spectrum is this mess, the UK's 2000 entry, Don't Play That Song Again by Nicki French.
UGH. Don't play that song again.
This woman has all the talent of a third place runner up on a bad season of American Idol. She's probably better known for this awful cover of Total Eclipse of the Heart that was an actual hit in America in 1995 going to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100. I have no idea why. It's painfully bland.
It's not always pop music, though. Sometimes, it's as far from pop as you can get. And it still manages to suck. Like Spain's 2010 entry, Algo Pequenito by Daniel Diges.
It's like Tim Burton and Cirque Du Soleil teamed up to show me absolute horror, and to add insult to injury, they had some guy with Art Garfunkel's hair sing a horrible song at the same time.
Norway's 1978 entry, Mi Etter Mil by Jahn Teigen, is considered one of the worst ever, apparently. The kicker is that they brought this guy back twice afterwards to represent Norway.
I don't know why people hated this. If you're going to make awful music, you might as well be hilariously bad about it. I dig this guy. The suspenders, the tie, the collar, the pants, the sunglasses, that little jump he does at the end... This is a man failing spectacularly, and apparently he used that failure to propel himself into a successful music career. Jahn Teigen rules.
Here's another one from Norway, 2009's entry by Aleksander Rybak. The song is called Fairytale. This guy has one of the worst singing voices I've ever heard. And he rocks the fiddle like a Scandinavian Charlie Daniels.
Here's the worst part. That won. A panel of judges from across Europe determined that this was the best song to come out of Europe and a handful of countries outside of Europe that year. Now, I'm not really up on European popular music from 2009, but I'm betting that that's not true.
As I mentioned before, not all entries are from Europe. The funny thing is that Israel has won the contest three times. That's not a statement of quality, but it's something.
Anyway, here's Israel's 2000 entry. It's by a band called Ping Pong, and the song is entitled Sa' me 'akh. Just press play and brace yourself, because you're in for a bumpy ride.
You probably turned the video off as soon as the singing starts, and that's understandable because blondie there is one of the worst singers I've ever heard, but trust me - it gets worse with each passing second. This is one of the worst things I've ever heard. I hate this song and I hate everyone involved with it.
Apparently, they got into a bit of trouble with their country's government when they all pulled out flags, some of them Syrian, and waved them around because a song this horrible needs a political message thrown in because otherwise, I wouldn't take it seriously.
That's not all the horrible songs I could find (and the Julio Iglesias song isn't the only good one I could find either), but that's all I really want to say. I think I showcased plenty of horrible stuff and one really good song, and that's really the only thing I'm trying to do here.
I honestly wish I had more time to research this contest because I'm sure I'm missing some great music, as well as some horrendous garbage. I just hope that Ping Pong was the worst entry in Eurovision's history. I don't know if I could stomach anything that's worse than that.
There's also the possibility that I'm being far too kind to Eurovision. I won't rule that out either.
Everything that is awesome about generic eighties rock is on this album.
If someone asked me to defend shitty eighties rock, specifically the early eighties kind of garbage rock, I'd have one name for them... Aldo Nova. Not the artist, because nobody cares about him. I'm referring to his 1982 self titled debut album, which was everything horribly awesome about commercial eighties rock. Specifically the album's first track, the big hit from the album (and really, Aldo Nova's entire recording career) - Fantasy.
Note - the song itself starts about 1:30 into the video. Before that, it's just complete nonsense
I know that Fantasy is about as far from an actual defense of this kind of stuff as you can get - if you hate early eighties commercial rock music, you will despise this song. But if you like it, then you probably can't bring yourself to not love this song.
Puke green Dodge St. Regis - the official car of Sledge Hammer.
This is the kind of song that would be played in an low budget hard-R eighties cop movie as the hard boiled cop on the edge cruises the Sunset Strip in a lime green Dodge St. Regis to pick up a hooker and some coke.
So, part of the reason I like this song is because it reminds me of a type of movie I like, even if it was never used in one of those movies. But I also like it because it's a defining song of this type of music and it exemplifies everything I love about it. It's a cheesy song with just as much synthesizer as guitar, the lyrics are generic 'life on the streets' fare written by a French Canadian rock musician who would later go on to do session work for Michael Bolton and Celine Dion - yeah, man, Aldo Nova's from the streets. Come on, he's like the Canadian version of Tommy Shaw from Styx. That's not a compliment.
Nobody ever accused this kind of music of being sincere or intelligent. If they did, they're either kidding or they're stupid.
The part of this video that people remember is the opening. Some dorky looking guy in a bowtie is standing around holding a guitar with some guys holding guns standing around him in what is probably meant to look like a shipping yard at night, but is more than likely a warehouse indoors, because every eighties music video was shot inside of a warehouse. Then, they lower a cheap helicopter prop from the ceiling. And then, this steps out of the chopper.
Nice pajamas, dork.
The guy in the bowtie is no longer the dorkiest guy there, because while bowties are dorky, they're not nearly as dorky as tight leopard print pajamas. They go over to a door, Aldo Nova shoots it with his guitar lazer and they go inside so Aldo Nova can lip synch his song to a group of central casting hires in a warehouse made to look like a night club.
To my original point about this being a defense of this kind of music. It only is if you like the stuff. If you're like me, then this was awesome. If you're not, then you think I'm a moron. And you're probably right.
But at least I'm not wearing leopard print pajamas.
Warning - I'm about to admit to liking something that I should probably hate.
Long before I even attempted this blog, I was making
fun of bad music videos and bad music, and one of my favorite punching bags was
the mid-eighties all-girl pop/metal band, Vixen. It's sort of hard to see why, considering that nobody remembers them, but I can explain it, I think.
I recently got to thinking about why I chose to make fun of
this briefly moderately successful and largely forgotten band. Is it because
they’re all women? Absolutely not. I happen to like The Runaways and Girlschool,
and they were both all-girl rock bands. Is it because they were a pop band?
Hardly. I’m a huge fan of power pop, and this isn’t far off from mid and late
eighties power pop bands like Enuff Z’Nuff and the latter day Cheap Trick, both bands that I like.
Is it because Edge of a Broken Heart sucks? No, actually. I’ve
recently been able to admit to myself that I kind of like this song, to my
eternal shame. It’s a guilty pleasure. And that's the reason - I couldn't admit to myself that I actually liked this, so I listened to it and made mean jokes about it.
I can also admit that these girls aren’t bad musicians. The
singer has a good voice and if she let herself go a little more, she’d be very
enjoyable to listen to. The instrumentalists aren’t bad, either. They aren’t
extraordinary, at least as far as I can hear, but they’re a tight, professional
unit. I love the guitar riff and the guitar solo here is quite good, and the
bassline is noticeable, which is a plus – there aren’t enough good bass parts
in rock music, and I always appreciate being able to say anything about the way
a bass is played in a song.
The only problem I have with Vixen is that they’re bland.
There’s no personality to this. I’m wondering if their handlers at the record
label had them tone it down so as not to threaten their potential, largely male
audience. It’s a possibility, and it’s unfortunate. Apparently, they were
veterans on the Sunset Strip club scene for a long time before they got a
record deal.
Admittedly, there’s also the possibility that they would
have just been another lame hair metal band if given the chance to do what they
wanted to. In fact, it’s probably pretty likely. But it’s a shame that they
weren’t given the same chances as their male counterparts to make crappy music.
At the very least, they would have stood out amongst the crowd of mediocrity.
That’s not necessarily a good thing, but it’s something, I guess.
And yes, I know that this song was co-written by Richard Marx. I can't stand that guy. The other writer? Fee Waybill from The Tubes. If you know anything about The Tubes, that's kind of shocking and not surprising at all both at once. Do yourself a favor and click that link. That's The Tubes. You're welcome.
Mick Jagger and David Bowie's horrific cover version of Dancing in the Street by Martha and the Vandellas gets a lot of flak for supposedly being one of the worst songs of the 1980's with one of the most uncomfortably homoerotic music videos ever. Don't take my word for it - click that link and see for yourself. That probably won't be the last you'll see of that video on this blog - I almost have to take a shot at it at some point.
Oh God, where's the Mars Bar? I apologize if you got that joke.
It is a horrible video for an equally horrible song, but the weird sexual chemistry between Bowie and Jagger at least has the potential to make the video amusing, I guess. But there's another eighties duet that's much, much worse. Clarence Clemmons and Jackson Browne's You're a Friend of Mine.
Now, I love Clarence Clemmons. He was just a big, goofy guy with a saxophone and he seemed like one of the most genuinely nice guys in music. He was also one hell of a sax player. But there's a reason that he isn't known as a singer. It's because he's not good at it. I'm a fan of Jackson Browne as well. Running on Empty is one of my favorite albums ever and The Pretender is one of my favorite songs. He also produced another one of my favorite albums, Warren Zevon's self titled 1976 release. I have to clarify all this because I HATE EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS SONG.
The video concerns Clarence Clemmons in an ugly blue shirt failing to dance. Understandable, I guess. I know that he's a sax player and a black guy, so going by stereotypes surrounding sax playing African American men, he should be able to dance. But he was like, 6'6", so I can understand how he wouldn't be the most graceful guy. But it's still funny seeing him try to dance in most cases. This is not one of them.
There's also Jackson Browne going around the apartment they're in playing his guitar and singing directly The Big Man's face. That's awkward. Then there's the Dave Coulier looking guy on piano and the Al Jurreau looking guy on drums. To the Dave Coulier lookalike's credit, he doesn't look like he's having much fun.
The part that I think is the closest to being amusing is Darryl Hannah who was apparently an item with Jackson Browne at the time or something. She's painting them at first and later videotaping them. Because apparently they wanted this to be recorded for people to see. Why would they think that? Because in the eighties, people did a lot of cocaine, and if Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories taught me anything, it's that...
Things to listen for - towards the end, Jackson Browne's voice cracks. They didn't go back to re-record that line, because... why would they? It's Jackson Browne and he had better things to do in the eighties, like trying to convince people that Lawyers in Love wasn't a horrible album.
Overall, this song is probably the worst thing either of these guys ever did. But you want to know something depressing? Look up Clarence Clemmons's name on Google.
With everything this guy ever did with Springsteen and the E-Street Band, this is what people care most about.
