do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

in 1981,  american ex-pat joe dolce came up with cult hit shaddup you face, an unintelligible song with a chorus apparently written by joe’s eye-talian mama:

Whassamatta you? (hey!)
Gotta no respect?
Whaddaya think you do?
Why you looka so sad?
It’s-a not so bad
It’s-a nice-a place
Ah, shaddap you face!

it actually ended up on the billboard hot 100 and took its place among the thousands of novelty songs that litter doctor demento’s mind and radio show.  in the UK, it even knocked ultravox’s vienna out of the number one spot.  this is somewhat surprising since the song hearkens back to an old sing-song that someone’s grandmother might have sung, albeit with wildly different lyrics.

annoyance aboundeth.

for starters, telling ANYONE to shut up was verboten in my family — it still is today.  you can disagree with someone else’s opinions, you can shush little kids who need to be quiet in a theater, when wildly provoked, you can tell a grown someone to hush. but to tell someone to shut up is like to slap someone in the face. it is just not done around here. and so hearing this song to me was a full affront on kindness. it was a dude encouraging people to behave badly. and to me, the 16 year old emily post of NJ, this was just wrong.

secondly, this ended up on a rock chart??? seriously??? novelty acts often annoyed me, but they were an annoyance that hardly showed up anywhere except on novelty shows. but i was subjected to this in my car on a regular basis for awhile. was it because people in the NY/NJ metro could relate to the eye-talian mama? (was it because the station managers could?) i couldn’t bear to hear this the first time; after the 50th time, i was screaming uncle.

to say it was a major step below  pac man fever pretty much would be an understatement.

hi, sailor.

i have never been a huge fan of cher’s singing. so when the former mrs. bono / former mrs. allman made a musical comeback aboard the USS Missouri in 1989, i was not among the people cheering her on. to me, this song is an anthem to cher’s future of never-ending attempts to be younger. between her plastic surgeries, her cougar antics, and her musical choices, cher has been trying to be the female dorian grey.

maybe it’s easy for me to say, as i am not yet in my 60s and don’t make my living in front of a camera in an industry ruthlessly in pursuit of young and younger and thin and thinner.  but it is infuriating that a beautiful woman like cher has the need to reupholster herself. cher is a wonderfully talented actress (her performance in moonstruck still remains one of my favorites) who shouldn’t need to prance around in little nothings singing utter crap. she should be appreciating herself at every age… and acting!

if i could turn back time with cher, i would somehow get her to appreciate her worth so that perhaps she wouldn’t resort to plastic surgery. (as for dating much younger men, i’d say go for it.)

and i would get her to sing better stuff. i realize that diane warren, the author of this song, is a very-much awarded songwriter.  but the thing that sold the song as far as i’m concerned is cher strutting her stuff in a body stocking barely covering her naughty bits. otherwise, it is a droning drag of a song.

she breaks like the wind…

sadly, we lost patrick swayze this year. an accomplished actor and dancer with a fabulous comedic streak, swayze should have quit while he was ahead.

but nooooooooo.

during the making of dirty dancing, swayze shared this song, originally recorded in 1984 for a movie that did not use it, with his producers,  who passed it along to someone who could actually make the song happen. and happen it did, all over the place, on the coattails of the wildly-successful movie. i suppose i ought to be grateful — it was his one and only hit, and it doesn’t appear that he tried again after this, sparing the world of more aural misery.

the ultimate stamp of approval sign of success: david hasselhoff covered it on his greatest hits album. sadly, youtube does not offer that lovely version up, so please accept this consolation prize: the hoff’s cover of hooked on a feeling. (hey~ don’t hassle the hoff!)

RIP, patrick swayze. i think you’ll prefer to be remembered for your work beyond this song. and you will.

tonight’s top story: five men with the will to survive a walk through the mean streets in jeans so tight, they will likely cause a blood clot.

[embedding is borked on this one, so you can click through to you tube to listen to it in all it’s splendor or you can merely click here.]

eye of the tiger, theme song from rocky XXX, has been parodied so many times, it is difficult to even think about it in a fresh way.  (here’s some weird al for you, BS, because i love you.) one has to suffer through it every time a TV show wants to be cute and show its protagonist undertaking some incredibly trivial trial. it ends up getting played by every freaking team with a tiger mascot. and if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then there are a jillion people out there who fancy this song.

i would not be one of them.

all these macho anthems become favorites of people whose most difficult survival experience is making it through a day of work without snapping and going on a shooting spree.  this was bombastic and overblown when it was released in 1982. now, it sits, like a bloated elvis, ready to topple over and off a toilet.  please join me as i try to close the eye of the tiger. let it rest peacefully in the annals of history. it’s 2009. no one should have to suffer needlessly through this song anymore.

it’s time to euthanize the beast.

but why?

there are several artists in the 1980s who make it difficult for a hater music critic like myself. billy ocean is one of those people. his musical output in the 1980s is a scourge on the face of the musical earth.  i mean, how can you pick when you can choose from such works as suddenly (which, i would add was my brother and sister-in-law’s wedding song — this being BTD, the guy who probably single-handedly hepled influence my complete and utter neurosis fascination with rock, which tells you that love does strange things to people), there’ll be sad songs (to make you cry) (yeah… like this one), soundtrack staple when the going gets tough, and of course, his mega-hit, caribyooon queen caribbean queen (now we’re sharing the same dream… would that be the one about world domination? nope. didn’t think so.) yes, millions swooned to billy ocean’s mellow sound, including chris rock’s sister on everybody hates chris.

but not me.

the man has an inviting voice… and what does he do? he orders me to get into his vehicle. do i know whether he’s been drinking? do i know whether he’s got a record? do i know whether he even has a license?  no. but somehow, simply by virtue of the fact that he has been dreaming about me, i am supposed to drop what i’m doing and go for a drive with him? mr. ocean, didn’t your mom teach you a thing or two about how to treat a lady?

i have the feeling that part of what made this song a hit was the video. if you look, you’ll notice some cutting edge (for 1988) animation interacting with ocean, the same sort of thing your homegirl paula abdul would later use. (is that a duck witha boombox?) yep. cartoon fish are what passes for entertainment. and the new twist on the mousy librarian who takes her glasses off and pulls her hair down is the lady at the carwash who has some satin number underneath her work jumper. of course, her outfit cannot compare with ocean’s giant white muu-muu of a caftan suit. ah, eighties videos and songs. you think it can’t get much worse than this.

but it can.

how do you feel when you got no herb?

mon, i like me my reggae as much as the next gal, but seriously? give this song by the mighty diamonds a listen and you tell me…

the song, originally pass the kouchie (slang for bong), was sanitized for these british-jamaican schoolboys and converted into a song about a dutchie (cooking pot.) Loaded with political overtones (how do you feel when you got no food?), the song shot to number one here and all over the place.

Something about the song drove me nuts when it came out. Was it the mind-numbing chorus that echoed through my brain on constant repeat? Was it the fact that boys were singing a song that really, really was about drug use, nudge-nudge, wink-wink, for someone else’s commercial success? Was it the fact that a piece of the melody sounded a little like a carpenter’s song i loathed, top of the world? or was it the fact that half the time, i could not figure out what the hell the little dude was saying?

who knows. but the song has not improved with age, at least not for me.

enjoy the earworm.

the beaters?

at this moment is one of those songs that didn’t do amazingly well the first time around (1981), but boy, the second time was the charm, thanks to my boy alex p. keaton. alex, played by my beloved michael j. fox, was one of the star characters of the hit ’80s comedy family ties, a show that poked fun at liberals and conservatives alike. during the show, alex fell in love with a young lady named ellen reed who was played by tracy pollan. pollan and fox ultimately married in real life and are still together to this day, raising a family and fighting the good fight against fox’s parkinson’s disease. anyway, during some charged romantic scene between alex and ellen, at this moment played in the background. apparently, people went nuts and asked for this song. one quick re-release later and bingo, bango, billy vera and the beaters had a hit on their hands.

i tend to shy away from sappy songs, and this one is definitely retro-sap. with sincere apologies to friends like testosterone zone (who i know loves this song dearly), i never could stand this song. and the beaters? what sort of beaters? the mind reels.

billy went on to guest star in plenty of TV and movie projects and is still involved in music today, both playing and as an historian. the beaters are still playing with billy.  (i know. that sentence simply is wrong. bear with me. i didn’t name the band.) and easy listening stations everywhere continue to play at this moment, perhaps somewhere at this moment.

gah.