There’s a lot to be said for throwing down a Last Man Standing challenge that results in more than 400 comments. Ask hrrundivbakshi and cdm how it feels to grab so much attention and respect in the Halls of Rock. Short of attempting to break the 400-comment mark, it’s sometimes fun to see if one can craft the most specific Last Man Standing topic, one that even the finest minds in rock discourse have trouble topping after 3 or 4 entries. In that spirit, I’m pretty sure I’ve come up with our most-exclusive challenge ever: Songs That Clearly Reference the Signature Harmony Guitar Solos in Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back in Town.”
Songs that simply happen to have harmony solos will not be accepted. The harmony solos must be intentionally modeled after the harmony solos in “The Boys Are Back in Town.” Other Thin Lizzy songs that followed that hit may be acceptable; I’m willing to believe a band with so little to offer would have attempted to copy its most successful recording. However, these entries would have to follow “The Boys Are Back in Town,” and they would have to include instrumental passages that clearly ape the signature harmony solo in their signature song.
I can think of only 2 entries that satisfy these criteria. By the powers of the Hall, I cannot tell you what they are unless you first post them—one entry at a time. Now more than ever, don’t bogart this thread! If we come up with more than 2 entries that satisfy these criteria, I am willing to bet $5.00 that we do not come up with more than 5 entries, which may make this the most exclusive Last Man Standing ever. I know you people are smart, but I doubt even you are that smart.
Townspeople, put your brains to work!
So you want me to listen to and actually study Thin Lizzy now? Naw, I see this as an obvious attempt at revenge for my daring to rain on your Donna Summer two-minute hate.
It may be a stretch, but I’m thinking Steely Dan’s “Bodhisattva.”
Yes, that’s the Cop Out siren you hear.
Good try, but that’s just a song with harmony guitar parts.
I’m not sure quite what the aping criteria are that you’re looking for. For example, does this Thin Lizzy song’s harmony guitar riff qualify, or is it too different?
http://youtu.be/fq9YedUoONg
Since the following won’t qualify for the same reason as “Bodhisattva”, I’ll add it anyway on the same post. I was thinking — with one of your favorite artists on lead vocal — that “Hotel California” has a harmony riff-heavy solo ending with some particular riffs that are almost inverted from the parts in “The Boys”.
http://youtu.be/NUbTW928sMU?t=5m24s
By the way, looking for Thin Lizzy songs that might fit, I listened to “Jailbreak”. The lyric made me chuckle: “tonight there’s gonna be a jailbreak / somewhere in this town”. Hmmm, “somewhere”? Any chance it will occur AT THE JAIL?
“Still the One”
I think “Waiting for an Alibi” is simply a song with harmony guitar parts, not a clear reference… The backing vocals on that song, however, make me think of something Graham Parker and the Rumour or My Aim Is True-era Elvis Costello would have done. Trying to figure out what new wave song sounds like it ripped off that chorus is going to bug me.
I like your analysis of “Jailbreak”:)
I don’t think so, that was released the same year as “The Boys…” I’m not sure which album came first, but I can’t see Orleans having been so hip as to have picked up on a new Thin Lizzy song and incorporated one of its hooks into their music.
The 2 songs I’m sure are direct references to the Thin Lizzy harmony guitar part, by the way, were released in the past 7-15 years (I’m not exactly sure when, but both groups are still active).
“Bodhisattva” also came out well before “Boys Are Back in Town” (1973 vs. 1976).
I’m listening to one of these songs again, and it’s actually debatable whether it features a harmony guitar riff. However, the signature harmony guitar riff from “The Boys Are Back in Town” is clearly implied. I’m sure you will agree that this song I have in mind will stand as a valid entry.
One is definitely Detroit Rock City by Kiss.
Did The Dukes of Badass do this in their song, “The Dukes of Badass”?
I know they were more of a Southern Rock thang, but…
I would agree, but Destroyer and Jailbreak both came out in March 1976.
Can we declare this a mistrial, already?
I am not sure if I have the capacity to distinguish a clear reference from a merely coincidental similarity in this case, but I offer “Flirtin’ with Disaster” from Molly Hatchet, in this badass live version from Don Kirschner’s Rock Concert, harmony solos beginning around 3:00 and at 3:44 turning into an epic three-way harmonized solo. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgNAfSENE68 Man, do I want a life-sized poster of them in formation taken from a freeze-frame of at the 3:44 mark.
Anyway, even if this does not bring me the coveted no-prize, I enjoyed watching it more than I can tell you. I am not sure I had ever even seen what Hatchet looked like. I think that I may have thought the Frank Frazetta drawings on the album covers were actual portraits of the band, which, actually, isn’t so far off the mark.
Mod, could you be referencing a Malkmus tune?
Though I remember the song “Flirtin’ With Disaster”, like you I have no memory of what the band looked like. The clip you provided shows them to be just as I pictured – Black Oak Arkansas after a bath and in cleaner clothes.
That’s more like the I Can’t Be Bothered siren.
No, we cannot. The fact that both songs came out in March of 1976 saves me the trouble of listening to what, I must admit, was among the most tolerable KISS songs that my kid brother used to play growing up.
Right, they were squarely coming at it from a Southern Rock perspective. Good try, though. I considered them.
That entry does not qualify; however, watching that video is work a patented RTH No-Prize Consolation Prize, that is, a Consolation No-Prize! Brings me back to my high school days with my old guitar mate Mike.
“Flirtin”” definitely qualifies — as do 2/3 of all the tracks on all the Thin Lizzy albums released after “Jailbreak”! Here is but one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FROvCqT-gz8
Not any song of his that I know of (I don’t know them all), although he’s the sort of musician I could imagine going out of his way to reference that Thin Lizzy song.
Well, after a really short bath–maybe more of a dunk in the trough.
Thank you for your support. Can you tell the Mod he needs to broaden his unrealistically tight-assed criteria for this?
I can’t speak for the rest of the “2/3 of all the tracks…released after ‘Jailbreak’,” but I think this one just happens to be a song employing harmony solos. The solo’s not constructed as an obvious cash-in on their big hit. For a Thin Lizzy song to qualify it’s going to have to work the way Chubby Checker’s “Let Twist Again” related to “The Twist” or at least the way the first two big Kinks songs relate to each other (whichever came first, “You Really Got Me” to “All Day and All of the Night”).
When you hear the two songs I have in mind as fully qualifying you will ask me to delete your statement from the record!
Where’s The Great 48 when I need him? I bet he knows one of the songs I have in mind.
This song doesn’t have the double guitars but to me, it’s a tasty little treat with a Thin Lizzy coating and a Dave Brubeck center:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmkESk1aXHk
Steely Dan WERE super geniuses!
I’m pretty sure Pride Tiger made a whole album based on The Boys Are Back in Town. Is it dumb? You betcha. Does it Rock? Hell, yeah! It sounds like a Thin Lizzy album. And that’s a good thing, just ask HVB.
Here’s a couple songs:
The Lucky Ones http://youtu.be/VLS8fOfbBCk
Fill Me In http://youtu.be/GveTlTN7PaI
I’d give you more, but I know how well loved Thin Lizzy is around here. But this is just as dumb as Jailbreak, and it’s just as much fun.
I did not know of this album, but let’s count that as one entry, meaning there are now at least 3 possible entries in what I hope will be the most exclusive Last Man Standing ever.
This sounds like something Queens of the Stone Age might try, but I’m mot familiar enough with their catalog to say where they tried it.
The Foo Fighters, too, strike me as the type of band that might try to pull off this type of homage, given Grohl’s love of 70s rock. Again, I don’t know their music well enough to give an instance.
And these songs were both released roughly sometime between 1998 and this week, correct?
Man those Molly Hatchets don’t look anything like their album covers.
The two I have in mind are from the early 2000s.
Is one of the songs Belle & Sebastian’s “I’m a Cuckoo”?
Bless you, diskojoe. YES!!! They even include “Thin Lizzy-o” in the lyrics. Check it out and see what I mean about it clearly referencing that song’s signature guitar break.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr6ieHPOllo
Now, misterioso and other wiseacres, do you want to take back the skeptical things you posted? Well, you can’t!
The other song I had in mind is something saturnismine, alexmagic, or Oats should have cited by now. If my friend Bill wasn’t legally obligated to lurk I bet he’d post it.
diskojoe, we are all in your debt for crawling into the Mod’s headspace, which is normally incomprehensible.
Yes, indeed, and good luck finding your way out!
Just for the record, if this subject ever comes up again and “Flirtin’ with Disaster” isn’t mentioned prominently, me and the boys from Hatchet are coming after you, and see how much help Belle & Sebastian will be then, me boyo.
I may be off in the “champ de patates” but are you thinking of The Strokes, perhaps on the song Hard To Explain.
What a dweeby band. Thin Lizzy might have been the initial influence, but then it was de-sexed, bleached, de-boned, tenderized, and pureed for east swallowing and digestion. Think of Jailbreak reduced to Detention After School for Chewing Gum in Class.
I think it’s a case of irony, tonyola.
I’m not sure if I’d ever heard that song before. That’s not what I had in mind, but it’s similar to the one I’ve been thinking of that no one’s gotten yet. It’s got an implied “Boys Are Back” vibe.
My man kpdexter’s been seen in the Hall today. I would be he knows this song. (And I keep meaning to send him Mad props! for a care package that will make up a future Saturday Night Shut-In.)
John Cougar, intro to “I Need a Lover”
aloha
LD
Funny, I always thought of that intro as an homage to the beginning of the VU’s studio version of “Sweet Jane.”
Irony is the last refuge of the insipid, isn’t it?
Thanks guys, but to me it was a no-brainer. That was the first song I thought of (being a fan of B&S) when I saw the thread & I was surprised that nobody mentioned it.
I agree completely. The harmonies on “Bodhisattva” are indeed different but the ones on “Reelin’ In The Years” are the same, that is the root and third. but it predates the challenge.
Now, mind you, I have no hope of being right about this, but I’m gonna chime in anyway.
the first thing I noted about this post was the peculiar choice of words in the title: *songs* that make reference to the famous lead in the Boys are Back, not guitar solos that do so.
I couldn’t help but thinking of that Ted Leo and the Pharmacist’s song called “Timorous Me.” This is a song that owes much of its vibe to “The Boys are Back in Town” if you were to combine it with Van Morrison’s warblings about making out behind the stadium, and those Mountain Dew commercials where happy kids are diving into the pond off of tire swings while sipping their favorite sweet, urine-looking beverage.
It has no harmonized leads, so I know it’s not what you had in mind, mod, I just thought the conversation couldn’t happen without mention of that song (which I find rather annoying in its
YES, YES, YES – Ted Leo and the Pharmacists are exactly who I had in mind, although I was thinking another song in that vein, “Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?” I forgot about “Timorous Me,” which also satisfies what I was looking for. It’s a vibe, man.
Oh man…if I had remembered “Rude Boys,” I certainly would have said as much. But it being a song I’ve heard from on an album I don’t have puts it at the periphery of my memory.
Sorry for the incomplete thought at the end, where I say I find the song “annoying in its..” before trailing off (as I am often inclined to do). I was going to put the whole Mountain Dew bit that now appears in the middle paragraph there at the end there, and forgot to delete it the fragment.
Happy to be of help!
This is seriously verging on “I’m thinking of two songs. What are they?”
If nothing else, this thread inspired “Irony is the last refuge of the insipid.” For that alone, I am deeply grateful to tonyola, and to Mr. Mod for providing the environment for it. I suppose I should thank Belle and Sebastian too, but even I have limits.