Jukebox Wars

For the last month or so, ATL Malcontent has been counting down the 10 most annoying songs ever. So far, his list includes:

#10: Bush--Glycerine

#9: John Denver--Thank God I'm a Country Boy

#8: Darryl Worley--Have You Forgotten?

#7: Genesis--Tonight, Tonight, Tonight

#6: The Rembrandts--I'll Be There For You (aka the theme from "Friends")

#5: Soundgarden--Black Hole Sun

#4: Five for Fighting--100 Years

#3: Hootie and the Blowfish--Only Wanna Be With You

#2: Kenny Loggins--(Highway to the) Danger Zone

#1: R. Kelly--I Believe I Can Fly

I can't really disagree with any of the choices on the list, though I do generally like Soundgarden and also find Danger Zone to be hilarious in its awfulness. But then, I tend to find really awful music pretty funny overall.

Reading this list reminded me of an old bar trick some friends and I used to engage in about a year ago (maybe longer...the days in bars all blend together.) We never gave it a name, but I hereby christen it Jukebox Wars. I was talking about this just this past Friday night, after some friends were deliberately playing awful music in a nearly-empty Diesel, which was led off with the hilariously bad "Into the Night" by Benny Mardones. (Any song that begins with "She's just 16 years old / leave her alone they say" is gonna be uncomfortably awful by definition!)

Jukebox Wars started when the bartenders at Moe's and Joe's were bored and annoyed one Saturday night and started deliberately playing bad music in the hope of annoying patrons. They took turns seeing how bad they could make the songs, which as I drunkenly recall included the Spice Girls, New Kids on the Block, Chumbawumba, and that "Who Let the Dogs Out" song. Undaunted, my friends and I began doing battle to top their selections. For whatever $5 will buy in terms of download credits on the jukebox, we would pick our slate of the worst songs in the world. We quickly discovered that our lists were largely generational--the bartenders' songs were heavily from the 90's, mine were largely from the late 70's or 80's, and others' were from the 60's or 70's. Many of those in that last category I had never heard before, so I didn't have the same negative visceral reaction that others in the bar often did (such as when I was beaten with the selection "Season in the Sun." Dammit.)

I can't remember all 10 of the terrible songs I played, but I can remember most. They included Dan Hill's "Sometimes When We Touch," Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby," Taylor Dayne's "Love Will Lead You Back," Starship's "Sara" (a personal most-hated song for reasons I have described elsewhere...if you play it for me I will punch you in the throat), Alabama's "When We Make Love," and that goddamned "Breakfast at Tiffany's" song that makes me want to gouge out eyeballs. Just pulling together those links has made me think I should have won this damn battle...that's how bad those songs are! But alas, based upon the votes of others in the bar, I was defeated by even worse songs.

I also can't remember all the terrible songs that the person who beat me played, but I do remember some of the submissions of others included Muskrat Love, We Built This City, the Pina Colada song (which I unabashedly love), and Baby I'm a Want You.

The one song that both I and my competitor wanted to include, but couldn't because it was not available for download on that jukebox, was Convoy. This is quite simply the worst song of all time--listen and see for yourself! If ATL Malcontent doesn't make this #1 on his list I will be so disappointed.

So, this makes me wonder...what are your all-time top 10 worst songs ever? Feel free to leave a list in the comments. (Nothing that I have listed here is off-limits simply because I included it.)

Mood Music

One of these days
you'll go out of your way sometime

Mood Music: a Twofer

The song I previously posted was M. Ward, featuring Zooey Deschanel. They previously collaborated together as She & Him, and this song just gets under my skin and stays there for days.

Mood Music: Just like A-B-C edition

But now that I've been through that hell
I've got a story to tell...

Mood Music: Old school Lucinda edition

Shouldn't I have this
shouldn't I have this
Shouldn't I have all of this and...

Mood Music: a song and a story

It's been a weird week, folks. Thanks to Monday morning's email from the ex-boyfriend, I've had more occasion to think about my life in Tallahassee and Boston many years ago than I have in ages. This morning the following song came on my iPod and it immediately transported me to 2002.

But let me take you back even further, to the fall of 1995 when we first met. I was a young, inexperienced and woefully naive 20 year old FSU student. My roommate convinced me to run for student Senate, and while campaigning for our seats I met Gabe. I actually met him for the first time at the house just on the edge of campus that we used as our campaign HQ--known as the "House of Kaos." I was at a party there, and Gabe walked in. (He was also a student senate candidate.) It was one of those moments like out of a movie, when you see someone and for no apparent reason you realize they are going to be significant to you in ways you cannot possibly anticipate. A few days later, we spent an afternoon campaigning sitting at a table outside the English building talking to students who stopped by and wanted to know more about our party, the Progressive Coalition. I was intrigued by him, and the die was cast.

During the course of that senate campaign, I also met Susan, who was running for one of the other Arts & Sciences senate seats. We became fairly good friends almost immediately, and in the months that followed after we won our senate seats and took over the FSU student senate, we spent a lot of time together. Susan was there for the budding romance between Gabe and I, including the disastrous first date (wherein SOMEONE neglected to mention to me that he would be rooting for Miami until we arrived together at the FSU-Miami game), the dream I had that convinced me to give him another chance despite said disaster, and the growing realization that there was more than just a spark at work.

Susan probably also knew it would be an eventual catastrohic failure. In some very obvious and important ways, he and I were so different.

For reasons I've long since forgotten, Susan and I fell out of touch. Gabe and I moved to Boston for several years before we finally broke up at the beginning of 2002. At the end of that year, I bought Aimee Mann's Bachelor No. 2, and I can still remember the slow, sad smile that crept across my face as I listened to this song for the first time. It was just so right.

In a happy quirk of coincidence, Susan and I have now both ended up living in Atlanta, and last fall we reconnected via Facebook. There is something so wonderful about reconnecting with someone who knew you at such an incredibly important formative point in your life, and I am privileged to have her as a friend again. I have never told her this story of how this song has made me think of her for the past 7 years, but hopefully she will listen to it and smile as well.

Mood Music

Tuesday night I went to see U2 at the Georgia Dome. The show was fantastic. Though I was not surprised by it, they did not play my favorite song of theirs:



The doors you open
I just can't close...

An interesting Atlanta-centered legal dispute

The organizers of this year's Dragon*Con are working through lawyers to persuade the Guinness Book of World Records to grant them the record for the largest choreographed performance of "Thriller," with over 900 people. Watch it here:



The previous record was 242 participants, but unfortunately before the Dragon*Con dancers' record could be established, almost 14,000 Mexicans beat them out and were able to obtain the official Guinness record. I'm not really sure how much of a legal issue this is (is the Guinness system considered an offer of a prize for completion of a task in reliance upon the receipt of the prize?) but I am sure one of the other lawyers who reads here and who has burned away fewer brain cells since law school than I have can wax philosophical on that point.

At any rate, the Dragon*Con video is hilarious, if for no other reason than at one point you see the Flying Spaghetti Monster doing the Thriller dance. Mexico's got nothing on that!

Mood Music: No Shame Edition

There are so many fantastic Michael Jackson songs I could choose from to remember him by, but I have to go with this one. Six years ago I drove from Myrtle Beach to Atlanta with a good friend who I did not know very well at the time. We came across this song on a CD of hers, and she initially went to skip it to the next song until I told her to stop. We had that moment of understanding when you realize that someone else also loves the song that you love, that everyone else thinks is cheesy. And then we began belting it out at the top of our lungs together.

For six years we have kept that secret, refused to tell anyone else that we love this song. But today, I confess. I love this song, and it's just one slice of the oeuvre of an immensely talented artist. Whatever you think about Michael Jackson's personal life, his appearance, his criminal trial, or anything else, if you were a child of my generation then he held a huge place in your musical awakening. And we will all miss him.

Mood Music: Yabba Dabba Doo

The first time I searched for this song over a year ago there were no videos to post, but since that time someone has finally put it on Youtube for all to see. Enjoy.

500 Songs for Kids returns

For each of the last two years, the Songs for Kids Foundation has put on an amazing charity concert series at Smith's Olde Bar called "500 Songs for Kids." In 2007, they used the Rolling Stone list of the 500 best songs of all time, and in 2008 they assembled their own list of the 500 best sing-a-long songs. This year, 500 Songs for Kids is back with the 500 most passionate songs of all time, and it starts tonight and runs through May 9th.

If you go, you will see 50 artists or bands a night perform well-known songs in their unique way. Sometimes it will be awful, sometimes it will be hilarious, and sometimes it will be extraordinary. Well known acts such as Cracker, Cee-Lo, Drivin' and Cryin' and Shawn Mullins have performed in years past. This year the celebrity participants will include members of the Drive By Truckers, Angie Aparo, Arrested Development, Francine Reed, Shawn Mullins, Gavin DeGraw, and more still to be announced.

In each of the last 2 years I have discovered numerous bands that blew me away, and made the whole experience worth it. Shows start at 6:45 pm and go to the wee hours (it takes a long time to play 50 songs while changing setups between each one.) I urge you to stop by Smith's any night in the next 10 days and give it a listen, for a good cause.

Previous coverage here and elsewhere from 2007 and 2008:
Unexpected Finds
Tendaberry
500 Songs for Kids List Revealed
Songs for Kids at Smith's
Last Weekend of Freedom
Cool Music for a Cause

Mood Music

I've always identified so much with this song.


But I could never follow
No I could never follow
Well I never seem to do it like anybody else
maybe someday someday I'm gonna settle down
if you ever want to find me I can still be found
taking the long way, taking the long way around

Mood Music

This weekend, a group of friends were discussing the awful music that topped the pop charts in the late 70's and early 80's. We started perusing the charts from those years, and I ran across this song, which I absolutely love even if most people think it's terrible. I just had to post it.

Mood Music

Soldier on, soldier on.

Mood Music

Good morning America, how are you?

This video was inspired by my impending travel to a certain southern city this Friday. I bet you can guess which one.

Mood Music -- St. Patrick's Day edition

Driving back from Fayetteville today, I had my radio turned to Sirius where they were playing music by Irish artists. This song came on and I was instantly transported back to drunken nights at the Littlest Bar in Boston. Singer Mike Barrett does a version of this song called "the Lesbian Song," in which the singer wishes he were a lesbian instead of wishing to be a fisherman. Every single week, Mike hopefully dedicated the song to Samantha and I, and every single week we laughed and shook our heads that no, this was not going to be the week his dream came true. I love this song so much.



With light in my head
With you in my arms
(woo hoo hoo)

Mood Music

I don't like most of this song, but this part gets me every single time:

Go ahead and steal my heart
and make me cry again
'Cause it will never hurt
as much as it did then

Mood Music

Mood Music

Goddamn right.

I got nuttin' (again)

I'm going through another one of those mental dry spells when there just doesn't seem to be anything worth writing about. I've considered and discarded at least a half a dozen topics, but can't seem to get fired up or even interested enough in anything to spend the half hour it takes to compose a post. So, I give up. I'll be back when something strikes my fancy...hopefully.

For now, enjoy this wonderful song from an artist I just discovered.