I am the original skeptic when it comes to the poetic value of rock and roll lyrics. Strip these words of their musical accompaniment, and I submit that 99.999% of them will suck. With music, I’d say a good 50% of them are still pretty embarrassing.
Every now and then, though, rock lyrics deliver. They give us goose bumps, they make us punch our fist in the air, or they make us stop and stare out the window for a moment.
Usually, these words take flight because they achieve perfect symbiosis with the music they accompany — but sometimes, they just escape the pull of gravity because they’re just, you know, really good.
For the last few days, I’ve woken up with the Jam song “Monday” bouncing around in my head — and I always pause when my mental Rock-Ola gets to the line “I will never be embarrassed about love again.”
I don’t know what Paul Weller meant to say — and I don’t even really know what that line means to me. But I love it. I’d like to focus a quick discussion on rock lyrics — but not entire songs or verses, or even couplets. I want to know if there are any rock “one-liners” that deliver the goods for you, like that one line in “Monday” does for me.
Today we launch another chapter in our ongoing effort to squeeze some fun and entertainment out of popular music’s banality, with a segment I call: In a Word — Schtick!
Here’s how this is going to work: contestants will vie for the coveted RTH No-Prize by attempting to use as few words as possible to describe a vital component of a given performer’s “signature” move, or Look, or some other thing by which he, she, or the group is identified. The goal is to have RTH readers guess the artist in question with the schtick-clue provided. The fewer words used, the bigger the prize awarded — and prizes are only awarded to townspeople who can provide a clue that elicits a correct artist ID on the first try. You lob a schtick clue into the void, and hope the first guess that comes back is the right one. If it is, you win! If it isn’t, it’s the dreaded buzzer for you.
For example — if I wanted you to guess “Keith Richards,” I might submit “drugs” as a one-word clue — but chances are that clue would be too broad, and somebody might incorrectly guess “Sly Stone.” BUZZ! If, on the other hand, I offered the schtick-clue “skull-ring” — that might work.
A few ground rules are in order:
God-given/natural aspects of appearance or behavior are not allowed as clues — so, for example, saying “big lips” to get us to guess Mick Jagger would result in a buzzer. But “omega shirt” would be okay.
Dialog is only appropriate if it was part of the artist’s schtick, and no famous one-time quotes qualify — so “thank you very much” is allowed for Elvis, while “I’ve got blisters on my fingers!” is not allowed for John Lennon.
No song lyric snippets or alliterated riffs are allowed. It’s about the schtick!
Now that’s some cool stagecraft! What was the last great integration of technology or gadgetry you saw at a rock and roll show? Conversely, what was the worst deployment of technology in the service of Rock you ever witnessed on stage?
Hey, team — I just wanted to fire off a quick, earnest appeal, urging all of you to reach out to your senators to voice your opposition to the Protect Intellectual Property Act, or “PIPA.” You’ve probably heard a lot about this bill already, thanks to famous Internet players like Wikipedia blacking out their site for a day to protest the draconian means by which the US government proposes to restrict access to “pirated” content.
I won’t bore you with all the specific, tech-y reasons why PIPA is a horrible bill — and I won’t irritate you by bloviating about how it would mean the breaking of the seventh seal of the free speech apocalypse, ushering in a new dark age of e-fascism in the name of corporate greed, etc., etc. What I will tell you is that if this bill passes, Rock Town Hall as we know it will, in all likelihood, eventually cease to exist.
All those so-awful-that-they’re-hilarious videos will be taken down at the source, under threat of legal action. All the unauthorized screen caps from JaBo’s “Dancing in the Streets” video will be replaced with black boxes. No more Mystery Date. No music-rich Insta-Reviews or histories of obscure rock bands. In fact, there’s a good chance that the site as a whole would be taken down, if the wrong people find us and threaten the RTH web host with legal action because they’re “facilitating copyright theft” by keeping us on their servers.
Many of you know me as a fun-loving, studio-owning, underemployed composer of music — but my “day job” is as a marketing executive at one of America’s leading web hosting companies, and we’re neck-deep in a fierce battle to kill PIPA and other bills like it. PIPA is coming up for a key cloture vote on January 24, and we need to make sure it doesn’t pass that vote. (If it does, it will be hurried onto the floor for a yes/no vote, and chances are good it would pass.) What we need is more time, so we can explain to ignorant lawmakers just why this bill makes no practical sense. You can help us get the time we need.
If I could impose on you, by January 23, to take a moment to write a brief note to your senators outlining your concerns about PIPA’s effect on Internet innovation and small businesses — small-business innovations like a certain free-wheeling, fun-loving communi-blog devoted to the world’s aging rock nerd community, for example — I would appreciate it. And I know our Moderator and The Back Office would, too.
Recently, I stumbled across a bit of promo fluff for an upcoming album by a musical entity I’m sure you’d all recognize. Your job is to guess who it describes. Your secondary task is to assess the teeth-grinding idiocy/insightful brilliance of the blurb in question. Here’s the blurb:
mixing pop art punch with soulful communication, jazzy explorations into psychedelia and dub with razor-sharp melodies, abstract soundscapes with clear-eyed forest-folk.
Mod’s excellent SNSI this week caused me to once again investigate the work of a band I just know I need to have more music from: Slade. In so doing, I ran across this — surely the best sports/rock video Venn diagram intersection ever. Can you top it? (First Townsman to ironically post the “Superbowl Shuffle” video gets an RTH Demerit Badge.)
I mean, seriously: the only thing this song lacks is a juicy moment of profanity. Otherwise, it’s got it all: sports footage, sports clapping, scarves, frigid outdoor “live” shoot, a fans-come-first perspective, and bellbottom highwaters. It’s a winner!
Hey, gang! Remember when I went on my last big vacation, and I took the time to snap a photo of the Kelvin Hall in Glasgow — then posted it here and asked you all to guess what the heck it was? Remember how you were able to correctly identify it as the location where the Kinks recorded the worst-sounding/most amazing live album in their career? Remember how dorky you felt for being able to figure all that out from just a photo of a red brick building?
Well, if you crapped out on the Kelvin Hall challenge, I return from a two-week vacation to Europe with a new photo to torment/delight you. We’ll play this one the same way we did the last travel pic quiz: I’ll pass along an initial clue, and see if anybody guesses off the bat. As incorrect guesses flood the RTH serves, I’ll unveil new clues until some smarty-pants gets the right answer. SPECIAL NOTE FOR HAPPINESSSTAN: as a resident of the UK (where this was taken), you may be able to lunge for the golden ring with surprising speed. In the interest of keeping things fair, if you believe you know the answer sooner than you think is fair to us state-siders, hold it in! We’ll believe you if you assert you knew the answer long before the rest of us, after the Yanks finally give up.
Anyhow, here’s your first clue: this is a home — one of many owned by a famous British rock personality. It’s in the United Kingdom. It was pointed out to me by some friends who live in the city where it’s located as the residence of (rock star X). As we walked by, I noticed one of the windows was opened. To my surprise and delight, the famous resident was home — and was just sitting down to breakfast!
