Dec 142010
I don’t know about you, but this time of year brings new meaning to the term “cold season.” In my house something’s been going around that fills our lungs and nasal passages with what feels like rubber cement. We can’t even get a satisfying nose blow out of this cold. In honor of the power of all the stuff flying around and getting folks sick, let’s do a Last Man Standing on sick songs. To qualify, the song title must contain the word sick or otherwise specify a physical illness. Songs of mental illness that do not have sick in the title will not be accepted. I’ll kick things off with one of my favorite childhood singles, Huey “Piano” Smith’s “Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu,” performed today by Jerry Lee Lewis.
I will start with overrated choices
Ramones – You Sound Like You’re Sick
Mudhoney, “Touch Me I’m Sick”
Oh no, someone played this Sick Card a while back! Sorry I forgot about this. Please see if you can build off of the fine suggestions from this previous thread:
https://www.rocktownhall.com/blogs/index.php/lms-sick/
This old thread was limited to songs with “sick” in the title, so now you can play all the other physical illness titles that you couldn’t play back then.
Sick of Seattle – The Smithereens
“Her face at first just ghostly turned a whiter shade of pale”
Joe Jackson – Cancer
Sick of Myself – Matthew Sweet
Poison Ivy
Still ill-The Smiths
Love-Itis – J. Geils Band
Cat Scratch Fever
I Am The Cancer – Sloan
Van Morrison, T.B. Sheets.
“Heartattack and Vine,” Tom Waits.
Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, et al, Vomit Express.
What the hell is Jerry Lee playing in that clip, some kind of clavinet? It sure doesn’t sound like a piano.
Huey Smith followed up Rockin’ Pneumonia with Tu Ber Cu Lucas and the Sinus Blues:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTlIdxu–TM
It pains me to mention this one, but “Sick On You” by the Boys and Hollywood Brats.
Sickbed Blues – Skip James
“He may get better but he’ll never get well no more…”
KISS – “Goin’ Blind”
Radiohead – Myxomatosis
Death – “Leprosy”
Bee Gees – Night Fever
I break out … bump bump bump … in a Cold Sweat…
James Brown
Insofar as you may think about grindcore, you may be surprised to hear that the genre’s song titles overwhelmingly favor medical procedures (fantastical or otherwise) over actual illnesses. But here’s one:
Exhumed – “Septicemia (Festering Sphinctral Malignancy Part II)”
Anthrax – Gang of Four
Warren Zevon “Don’t Let Us Get Sick”
Screamin’ Jay Hawkins – Constipation Blues (for Plurbie)
Still Ill – The Smiths
Psychotic Reaction – Count 5
The The “Infected”
Ween — “Mononucleosis”
Ween — Spinal Meningitis (Got Me Down)
Switch this to a Battle Royale and you win with that entry!
“Diva Fever” — Spinal Tap
Headache – Frank Black
Lane Steinberg (formerly of the Wind): Swine Flu Blues
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lu1FIGIFpp8
A guy I know had a studio in Memphis in the late 1990’s and recorded a Rufus Thomas Cd that I don’t think ever came out. The song he played for me was called “AIDS Done Scared The Hell Outta Me” and he sings about AIDS like it was a Voodoo curse.
Fever – Peggy Lee
Hyperactive – Thomas Dolby
Fountains of Wayne “Sick Day”
Dead Kennedys “Ill in the Head”
Echo and the Bunnymen “The Disease”
Catch My Disease – Ben Lee
Bad Case of Loving You – Robert Palmer
Rubella – Smoking Popes
RUN-D.M.C. You be Illin’