remember, this was the era of sybil.

in 1975, jessi colter, wife of waylon jennings, had her breakout hit (and only crossover pop hit) with i’m not lisa. i always misheard her singing the name in the song: she was singing: i’m not lisa. my name is julie.

a chitty chitty bang bang fan, i thought she was telling the world that this was her identity:

why a country singer would be singing that she, in fact, was a character from a fluffy, frothy (and fun!) british novel for kids, i never understood. at least, i didn’t get it when i was 10.

i’m older now, of course; and i understand the lyrics a whole lot better than i did back then. nevertheless, i continue to wonder: why does the song’s subject even stay with a guy who calls her a name other than her own? i want to smack her silly and scream at her to develop a bit of a backbone.

while she’s at it, why didn’t colter try something else, something more country-ish and appropriate. something like:

my husband‘s a junkie

he looked like a monkey

he was a dukes of hazzard flunkie

and i apparently didn’t mind.

(no. i’m not a grammy-winning country lyrics writer. that would be my wonderful cousin.)

i’m not lisa. i’m not julie. and i’m not impressed, either.

here, horsey horsey!

singing cowboy michael martin murphy sings wildfire, a song about a dead girl, a dead horse, and the man who should be quivering in fear at the knowledge that they’re comin’ for me i know. sounds like some westernized stephen king, if you ask me. and yet people in 1975 found this a terribly romantic song, and voila! it became a hit.

in 1975, i was 10 years old and at the height of every young girl’s favorite pasttime: horses. i read all about misty of chincoteage and every single solitary follow-up book marguerite henry wrote about those damn ponies. i oohed and aahed every time i had the opportunity to go horseback riding at camp; i especially loved it when i could get my horse to canter or even gallop. you’d think i was a solid audience for a song about a pony.

you’d be wrong. dead ponies don’t go off well with 10 year old girls.

it took me awhile to figure out that the pony AND the girl were dead. but then, i couldn’t understand why the singer was sounding glad that the dead things were coming for him. run, mister, RUN! hadn’t he seen horror movies? did he not value his life? did he want to wander the earth, zombie-like, terrorizing the masses in the countryside?

sheesh. grownups can be sooooooo dumb.

and musically, though i enjoyed the piano in the very beginning of the song, it seldom got any airplay on my favorite music radio WABC. the music is sleep-inducing; the lyrics are horrifying.  i didn’t know whether to snooze or become a serial killer.

how wildfire caught on like, well, you know what, i will never understand.

don’t throw up on the gravy!

there’s an age-old showbiz activity that goes on to this day: let’s make the actors SING! disney now does it in spades with all the teen kings and queens featured on the disney channel shows and movies. and in the 1970s, television seemed to be teeming with variety hours where actors would guest star and end up in a musical number or two. f’rinstance, milton berle singing on the donny and marie show.  danny thomas singing on the tony orlando and dawn show. i guess funnymen from the old world of vaudeville were used to having to be able to do it all.

fast forward to the younger folks of the 1970s, specifically david soul. (was he starsky or hutch?) to capitalize on his fame in starsky and hutch, the blonde guy in the duo cut a single. a treacle-y mess of a single. a single so nauseatingly sweet, i have never ever figured out it’s redeeming qualities.it was his only US hit. he has since gone on to become a british citizen, probably realizing that they are the only folks who appreciate his unique, uhm, talent. i don’t wish him ill; i just don’t wish him to do another single in the US.

and yes. i really did sing it as don’t throw up on the gravy as a girl. still do.

when you think vegas, you think elvis. you think wayne newton. you also might think clint holmes.

ah, vegas – the bastion of people who probably had their better days before them. anytime americans go off on britons for allowing mull of kintyre — perhaps the sappiest song ever put forth by my beloved secret boyfriend paul mccartney (and which, admittedly, i’ve grown fond of in my addle-brained old age) — to chart at the top for weeks and weeks, i merely have to point out our dirty little american secret: playground in my mind.

in 1973, bastion-of-vegas clint holmes struck it big with this nursery crime rhyme of a song, in which he duetted with the young son of his producer (a little boy who is now about the same age as i am.) to put things in perspective, 1973 produced a bumper crop of unadulterated musical crap (some of which you’ll read about soon); it also managed to produce such amazing classics as my love, you are the sunshine of my life, crocodile rock, stuck in the middle with you, let’s get it on, and one of my guiltiest of pleasures, will it go round in circles.

but perhaps the creme de la creme de la crap from that year would be this song. even then, as an eight year old, i knew this song was awful; and i recall making up awful words to it. probably not as awful as i do now, of course, thanks to years of maturity. things involving michael, who had a nickel… bag. and cringing at cindy, whose highest aspiration in life is to get married, have a baby or two, and let them visit their grandma.

yes, cindy said, sighing, you kids go visit your grandma. keep her away from her crack pipe, willya?

somehow, holmes parlayed this song into a las vegas career, including a room named for him at one of the hotels.

(no, i am not making this up.)

on the bright side, what went to vegas stayed in vegas and never bothered the rest of us again.

it’s hard to pick just one cher song that sucks.

many of cher’s ’70s hits touch upon the fact that she’s living in some darker world. there’s gypsies, tramps and thieves – she’s a member of the out crowd, involved in sex, gambling, and Dog knows what else, and it’s all because of her parents.  there’s dark lady, where she’s somehow fighting against the forces of supernatural evil (which are handily beaten by a smith and wesson.) half breed tells the sorry tale of a woman caught between the white and the native american worlds.

who am i kidding? all three songs bite. i think i’d rather be tied to a chair and forced to listen to i got you, babe 100 times then listen to most of these, and i can barely stand the sonny bono’s froggy croak. at least sonny’s prince valiant hair and cher’s hippie garb (is she wearing a dog?) could make me laugh at least for the first 10 go-rounds.

don’t get me wrong: i was that little kid who watched the sonny and cher comedy hour religiously each week. i loved their nasty spousal banter. and for reasons i do not understand to this day, i always looked forward to the weekly sketch V A M P: Vamp. but i always loathed when she opened her mouth and sang seriously. it’s probably unfair of me, but i always thought she was a much better comedian (and actress) than she was a singer. (moonstruck is still one of my all-time favorite movies.)

so yep – nothing half-good about any of her hits. throw them in your peace pipe and smoke ’em.

what would i say? how about what the fuck, for starters?

please dear Lord above, i do not mean to be unkind to the dead, as we lost norman hurricane smith only this year. but please, explain to me how a man who engineered nearly 100 Beatles songs, produced early Pink Floyd; and even produced one of the first rock concept albums by the Pretty Things, tell me: how did he also produce this saccharine piece of shit?

better yet — how on EARTH did it hit the Billboard Top 5?

i used to think this was Buddy Hackett on a dare. it wasn’t. apparently, the british mr. smith wrote this for another artist and ended up singing it himself. lucky for us, it was a major transatlantic hit.

luckier for us, the rest of his hits never made it across the pond.

G-d help anyone who rocks us like a hurricane. at least, like this one, who mostly rocks us to sleep.

it is who?

in 1973, the magical kingdom of spain hit second place in the annual crappiest song in the world contest eurovision contest with basque group mocedades and the song eres tu. (apologies; i haven’t yet figured out how to type accents. somewhere, my spanish-speaking college roommate is wagging her finger at me. somewhere, my old AOL localization folks are throwing dung my way.)

what the hell is the song about? some brilliant english scholars translated this as touch the wind, which mystifies little old, literal me. i may have muddled my way through the Zayres near Little Havana circa 1984 looking for a flea bomb (thanks to a girl in my dorm who brought in a stray cat), only to be greeted by employees who only spoke spanish (and to whom i only became understood once i said, and i quote: por matar los insectos — insectos, which may not even be a spanish word, i suspect) and who didn’t understand my initial query: como se dice Raid?;my daughter, a product of three years at a spanish immersion elementary school, may still be wildly embarrased by my american accent when i attempt to pronounce terms. but !caramba! i know eres tu is not about wind, unless someone is pointing a finger and implicating someone who recently tooted.

i especially loved learning about other translations of the song:

The song was re-released in English as “Touch The Wind” in later years. It was subsequently released in German: Das bist Du (“You are that…”), French: C’est pour toi (“It is for you…”), Italian: Viva noi (“Long live us”), and Basque: Zu zara (“You are…”).

it’s like an odd game of telephone.

any song entered into the annual eurovision contest is usually not something i want forcefed into my ears. i don’t know what the hell happens in the world each year when the worst in music somehow rises to the top of the eurovision experience. surely, all the best in music cannot be centered here in the US of A, right? luckily, we in america are often shielded from that. sadly, eres tu broke through that happy little iron curtain — i blame francisco franco, who was not yet still dead at that juncture, not sure — and became a hit in america.

and it has been haunting elevators ever since.

hold on to your genitals hats: it’s one of them there novelty songs.

in the fine tradition of benny hill and all those other comics who live for double entendres, meri wilson employed naughty little phrases to talk about her time with the guy who was supposed to putting in her phone. (i’ll spare you the need to listen to the song: the lyrics are here. gawsh.) apparently, it was based on a true experience. (and who says those penthouse letters aren’t true?)

now you may ask yourself: how does a song like this end up so popular? well, if david hasselhoff can be popular in germany; if the three stooges are actually considered funny, well, there’s a market for anything, i guess. this song is so many colors of awful; i can’t even bring myself to write about it. out of respect for the dead, i won’t go off on ms. wilson.

but you bet your ass i’m glad i live in times when the telephone man isn’t necessary when the phones go awry.

hey. i have a great idea. let’s write a top 40 smash hit. the topic?

a dead dog.

from the what the hell were they THINKING file: henry gross, a founding member of Sha Na Na, struck it out on his own and made an album. one of the songs on it was titled skin king. well, where do you go from there?

you change record companies, of course.

gross moved over to another record company, where he wrote this little ditty about the passing of beach boy carl wilson’s dog, shannon. i guess once you write a song with a title that might sound like a film vehicle for ron jeremy [warning, kids: don’t open that last link up at work or the bells will go off], where else do you go? as we learned as english majors reading john donne, there’s nothing closer to sex than death. so of course, in the classic tradition, gross made the leap… into an irish setter’s demise.

you old folks might remember the long distance dedication moment on kasem’s american top 40? well, someone wanted kasem to dedicate shannon to the requestor’s deceased dog snuggles. apparently, all hell broke loose when his coworkers programmed something upbeat before the doggy downer:

…I want a goddamn concerted effort to come out of a record that isn’t a fucking up-tempo record every time I gotta do a goddamn death dedication! It’s the last goddamn time; I want somebody who uses his fucking brain to not come out of a goddamn record… that’s up-tempo and I’ve got to talk about a fucking dog dying!

nothing like a dead-dog song to bring us all together.