I've been doing what I often do during my down time, and that's goof around with musical miscellany. By that I mean I 'enjoy' a variety of different tunes in the one sitting; some I choose and others friends bring to my attention. I've compartmented the numbers to which I have listened this mild afternoon - yeah, it's mild now, but you wait, Reader, that frigging heat will come back and grab us all by the crotch and twist hard! - into a type of genre.
1. Song That Makes Me Think The Narrator Is A Twat: 'Baby, Don't Get Hooked On Me' by Mac Davis. I actually rather like this guy's voice, but I listen to the song and the narrator of the piece just sounds like a high-maintenance knob with an overblown sense of his own sexual prowess and appeal. 'I'll just use you and then I'll set you free....' Dunno about you, but I listen to this and think, 'Just get over yourself!'
2. Song That Also Makes Me Think The Narrator Is A Twat: 'The Wanderer' by Dion et al. I mean, seriously, folks: 'I kiss 'em and I love 'em 'cause to me they're all the same/I hug 'em and I squeeze 'em/They don't even know my name/They call me the Wanderer..' More like the Molesting Sex Pest! I will own a certain guilty pleasure to enjoying Status Quo singing this, but when Leif Garrett does it, it's grotesque because he was only sixteen when he recorded it. To my horror, when we were cleaning out at our parents' house, I discovered the most embarrassing album I have ever bought: a compilation of songs recorded by Leif Garrett, and this ditty is on it. I thought about tucking that shameful find into my top, like a shoplifter in Angus & Coote, but swallowed my pride and held it out for my husband, siblings, and siblings-in-law to see. And then I tried to shrink inside myself like a turtle retreating to its shell as my husband, siblings, and siblings-in-law all brayed laughter at me.
3. Song That Must Be The Ultimate In Chutzpah: 'The Lost Sheep' by Adrian Munsey. I'm not sure this qualifies as a song per se, as there is not a lot of singing. What there is, is bleating. Adrian Munsey bleating. He stands there, holding a cute lamb, and bleats piteously and mournfully. If you weren't watching the film clip, you would actually cry for that poor lost little lamb. But if you DO look at it, you find yourself gobsmacked at the sight of a very plain man, who resembles your daggy old Commerce teacher, surrounded by formally-attired musicians on piano, drums, violin, cello, and harp; that man replicating the sounds of a sheep lost and bleating for its flock. I would like to find out how many 'takes' had to be done when filming this clip, because the musicians are deserving of medals for maintaining their composure. I daresay when that final note was played, and the director called 'Cut!', everybody must have been rolling around laughing their guts out. I understand Munsey to be a prolific figure in a few artistic disciplines, so it's got me wondering what he was thinking with this, um, piece. Perhaps he was thinking, 'What the hell, I'm going to have some fun!'. Yeah, like I said, for someone to actually conceive this idea and orchestrate it, and convince someone to go along with it, and then have it played on 'Countdown' in Australia no less, that's some serious chutzpah happening!
Well, I'd best be off now.
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