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05/22/2006: "Other Things that Frighten Me, Their Antecedents and Effects"

Hi All,

First off, I made an interesting discovery about the song I'm currently running into the ground---'Where'd You Go,' by Fort Minor. It's a great tune (it's one of the guys from Linkin Park), but, listening to it for the 200th time or so, I said to myself, I said, "Where have I heard this before?" It starts off with this really great piano riff (I'm a big piano guy; I play a MEAN air-piano on the edge of my desk) and then segues into this hand-clappy, beat-boxy overlay; then there's the singing, and rapping, and what-all. So like I said, I listened it for about 5 hours straight while writing and went, "Hey, I know where that piano lick comes from---it's 'Closing Time,' by Semisonic!" Then I listen some more and went, "Hey, I know where that hand-clappy overlay comes from---it's 'Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand' by Primitive Radio Gods!" Now don't get me wrong, it doesn't dampen my enjoyment of 'Where'd You Go?'; I just wonder now, with all the sampling going on, wether I love songs genuinely, or love them because they steal from other songs I've loved. Queue those three tunes up on Limewire (or buy them like a law-abiding schmuck) and give it a listen---you'll see! I feel like such a musical gumshoe---fitting, one might say, since this is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's birthday. Or one might say I'm a moron and have too much time on my hands. In both cases one would be correct.

Hey, what happened to Semisonic, anyway? Or Primitive Radio Gods, for that matter? Or Chumbawumba?

He drinks a whiskey drink, he drinks a vodka drink, he drinks a lager drink, he drinks a cider drink...

...he's buying government cheese with his one-hit wonder royalties.

That's not very nice. My apologies to Chumbawumba. But really, that band had, like, 30 group members or something. They had, like, the jug-blower, the washboard-player, the guy with cymbals between his knees. That's gotta spread the royalties kind of thin, don't you think, especially for a one-hit wonder? I mean, at least Right Said Fred only have to split their 'I'm Too Sexy' royalties two ways; that'll keep them in scalp polish and fishnet tee-shirts for life. And Gerardo gets to keep every penny for "Rico Suave" for himself. If I'm Chumbawumba, right now I'm thinking, "Did we REALLY need the zither player? Did we really need that guy who clapped his hands? The, like, trio of maracas players---were they really necessary to our, uh, SOUND?"

Well, this was only supposed to be a very short preamble to the main part of my post (the subject line of which I've left unchanged), but since I've meandered on, as I have a tendency to, I will simply make this my post and log back on in a few days to talk about other things that have frightened me.

Danny Boy, Danny Boy, Danny Boy... (Did Chumbawumba really need the woman who sang that line?)

And here are a few other tunes I'm currently running into the ground:

'Save Me'---Bird York
'Bonnie and Clyde II'---Martina Sorbara
'Black History Month'---Death From Above 1979
'Downtime'---Ghandarvas
'Carefree Highway'---Gordon Lightfoot
'High School'---Jeremy Fisher
'Redemption Song'---Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros
'One Safe Place'---Marc Cohn
'Red Right Hand'---Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
'The Things I do For Money'---Northern Pikes
'Werewolves of London'---Warren Zevon (I saw a Werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic's / His hair was perfect)

All best, Craig.