last man standing

Last Man Standing: Songs of Excess

Mar 042014

To celebrate Mardi Gras, let’s conduct a timed Last Man Standing on songs of excess. ~~The last comment in by midnight New Orleans time will win a prize direct from the city of New Orleans, albeit this time next week, when I’m back from a coming trip there.~~ [It turns out I was the last to add to the list before midnight New Orleans time on Mardi Gras, so I win/we lose. We’ll let the LMS carry on as nature intends.]

Do I have to explain what I mean by “songs of excess?” I hope not. If so, perhaps you might want to sit this one out. I’ll kick things off with “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer.”

Live it up!

Last Man Standing: Count-Offs

Posted by Mr. Moderator

Feb 152014

Sorry, Dee Dee!

I caught the tail end of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s “Born to Run” while flipping channels on the radio this morning. Have you ever heard that song? In the middle, there’s a instrumental breakdown before The Boss counts the band back into the final verse: 1-2-3-! When I was a teen, first trying to get my head around this phenomenon and trying to find other Springsteen songs that matched the excitement of “Born to Run,” I kept coming back to that count-off. I’m sure, with 82 zillion hours of live performances under their belt (over the course of just a single year of touring) that the band didn’t really need their leader to count them back into the grand finale of the song, but it’s exciting nevertheless. For a 14-year-old boy, or whatever I was, trying to get his head into the mechanisms of how real rock ‘n rollers conduct their business, it was a peak behind the Wizard’s curtain. From that point forward I could become aware of other studio recordings that used the count-off/count-in device, a device that in most cases could have been excised from the final recording, but I guess the artists thought it was as cool to document as teenage me did.

This week’s Last Man Standing does not threaten to be a stingy one. Quite the opposite. As we seek studio recordings including count-offs/count-ins, only a few rules apply:

Live recordings are excluded.
All Ramones recordings are excluded, including studio ones, because that could be too easy.
Songs that happen to include a counting device that’s not related to instructing the band to the song’s tempo do not count (so hold your “All Together Now” and “1-2-Crush on You” entries, Beatles and Clash fans).

As always, your Moderator reserves the right to include new rules as needed.

So “Born to Run” is off the table. Let the studio recordings that begin with count-ins and include count-offs at other points follow!

Last Man Standing: Music Critics on Film

Posted by Mr. Moderator

Feb 032014

In honor of the great (and now ~~stupidly~~ frustratingly dead) Philip Seymour Hoffman, whose Instant Offense acting chops managed to raise even Almost Famous, one of the most grating, ass-kissing movies I’ve ever had the displeasure of sitting through, let us celebrate music critics, as portrayed on film.

Both real and fictional music critics appearing as characters in movies are eligible. Real critics playing themselves are eligible, but they must appear in a dramatic film, not as talking heads in an actual rock documentary. Critics appearing as themselves as talking heads in mockumentaries, however, are eligible for inclusion.

Since this is likely to be one of our more exclusive Last Man Standing competitions, multiple portrayals of the same critic are eligible, provided you specify a new film.

Got that? So, Lester Bangs, as portrayed by Philip Seymour Hoffman in Almost Famous is OFF the board, but I can think of at least 3 other critics who appear as movie characters. I’m sure you’ll think of more!

[NOTE: I dug up the 2009 interview Hoffman did with Terry Gross on Fresh Air that’s stuck with me through the years. Click here to listen. At the 20:30 mark, Hoffman starts talking about sports then addiction. I wanted to high five that guy at that point and still wish I could.]

Last Man Standing: Songs With Brief, Carnival-Sounding, Calliope-Like Instrumental Breaks

Posted by Mr. Moderator

Jan 292014

The calliope, that strange carnival organ that only seems to play goofy, off-kilter, slightly menacing “carnival music.” Truth be told, I know nothing about the instrument, such as what makes a calliope a calliope. To be even more truthful, if you can handle it, I wasn’t even sure if a calliope was an instrument or a style of music. A 12-second scan of YouTube results for the search term calliope tells me it’s an instrument.

Rather than investigate the inner workings of a calliope, I prefer to follow what got me thinking about this thing in the first place. I was listening to a favorite song from childhood that involves a brief, carnival-sounding, calliope-like instrumental break. I’m not sure if an actual calliope was used in the recording of this instrumental break, but it has that sound, that rhythm, and those clusters of notes that suggest clowns; rickety amusement rides; the smell of sawdust, animal droppings, and cotton candy; and parents looking like they’re questioning whether they did the right thing by bringing the kids to this place.

Along with the song that came on my iPod tonight, I thought of one other song that features a definite carnival-style, calliope-like break. It’s also a song I was fascinated by as a kid, yet it doesn’t hold up as well as the first one I thought of tonight. Beside those two songs, I strongly doubt that there are more than two or three other examples of this device. BEWARE:

Last Man Standing: Walk Don’t Run

Posted by Mr. Moderator

Jan 142014

For this week’s Last Man Standing we seek songs that either walk or run—or both, as the case may be. Your entries should only include songs with titles involving the verbs “to walk” or “to run,” including their gerund forms. Songs about trotting, skipping, jogging, and scampering don’t qualify.

EARLY-GAME RULE ADDITION (1/14/14 @ 12:07 pm): Please alternate walk and run entries. For instance, if you see a “walk” song as the latest comment, try to follow it up with a “run” song.

If you’re new to participating in a Last Man Standing thread, which usually lasts until eternity or the end of our collective knowledge on a given topic, please limit yourself to one entry per comment. In other words…

Last Man Standing: Name Songs…In Alphabetical Order, Beginning With L!

Posted by Mr. Moderator

Jan 092014

On a whim I went searching for video footage of Peter Blegvad performing anything from his 1983, Andy Partridge-produced album, The Naked Shakespeare. I’ve always loved this album. Colin Moulding contributes bass to a few songs. Terry Chambers may appear as well. I need to dig it out and digitize it.

Anyhow…to my surprise, I found a clip of Blegvad lip-syncing “Karen” on Top of the Pops, or some English show like that. The video is mildly not safe for work owing to the appearance of a tastefully naked butt.

Anyhow…rather that attempt to strike up an in-depth conversation over the works of Blegvad, I thought I’d do my part by simply exposing him to some of you and then launching a Last Man Standing on Name Songs. There’s one catch: We must list them in alphabetical order, beginning with my entry, “Karen,” a name that begins with the letter K.

It shouldn’t be hard to list a name song beginning with an L, M, N, O, or P, but we’ll see how far we get toward the end of alphabet. We will exclude the letter X from play. How many name songs are written to Xavier? (NOTE: If we can get through Z one time, we can consider eliminating that letter from play in the second round.) If we get all the way through to J, we will start over at K.

Got that? Let the first name song, beginning with L, appear in the Comments!

UPDATE: Comments are set to close sometime tomorrow (1/20/14). Consider the conclusion to this Last Man Standing a race against the clock!

Last Man Standing: Promises, Promises

Posted by ladymisskirroyale

Nov 302013

I don’t know if you’ve stepped out to the sales. Maybe shopping is the best way to work off a Thanksgiving food coma, but I’d prefer sitting around and reveling in it. Besides, do those promises of a discount, free shipping, or a ginsu knife, make the crowds worth it? Who needs football when you can just go to your local Big Box store for some offensive and defensive action?

Sales? Gimmicks? Americans love to save money. In the spirit of this, let’s come up with songs that reflect, in the immortal words of Mike Brady, “Caveat emptor.”

I can think of two. What about you?

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