In this week’s edition of Saturday Night Shut-In a thankful Mr. Moderator plays a varied mix of old, not quite as old, and even fairly new, reflecting along the way on electronics and Jimi Hendrix, who would have had a birthday later this month.
[audio:https://www.rocktownhall.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/RTH-Saturday-Night-Shut-In-54.mp3|titles=RTH Saturday Night Shut-In, episode 54]
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Ahhh Friday… As we run down the clock to Happy Hour, I would like to hear suggestions for songs which mention specific brands of beer, wine, and liquor.
A few rules:
Once the song is used, it is off the table. So, for George Thorogood’s “I Drink Alone” you can pick Budweiser or Jim Beam but not both.
I’m looking for brands, not types of cocktails, so answers like the Harvey Wallbanger and the Pousse Café do not count.
As always, one entry per post.
And let me suggest that this would be a golden opportunity for lurker to emerge from the shadows and claim the championship belt, if only fleetingly.
I begin with the only Humble Pie song that I really like: “30 Days in the Hole” – New Castle Brown.
Representatives for Josh Groban contacted Rock Town Hall’s Back Office last night to complain about the unfair treatment they felt their client received in a recent post we ran on a performance by Groban from a tribute concert to Neil Young. In part, their note read:
Why Josh’s heartfelt tribute to one of his musical heroes, Neil Young, a close personal friend of the artist, we might add, with whom Groban has performed at the artist’s fundraiser for The Bridge school, was posted for your community’s mockery is beyond us. And what does Josh Groban have to do with Jim Nabors, who surely was or maybe still is a great man? What’s the Moderator’s beef with our client?
Fair enough. Let me explain. One evening in the mid-1980s, while my bandmates and I were grabbing a bite between soundcheck and showtime a black guy stopped me on the street and asked the following question—and I only specify the man’s race in hopes that the hurtful thing he had to say was a matter of a possible “All white people look alike” mentality:
So much troubles me about this clip: the anachronistically grainy, washed-out look of it and the in-your-face camera angles for starters. The band must have been terrified to have some kid jamming his Hipstamatic video phone device in their faces. And what’s with that Deadhead backdrop? Does this thing take place in a club, a frat, a shrine to Jerry? No one in the crowd seems capable of generating any real energy, even after the main singer announces around the 3:30 mark that he wants to see more energy. Yet the crowd keeps dancing (badly), singing along (out of key), raising their plastic beer cups to the camera. The whole thing makes me nauseous, yet I can’t turn away from it. See if you can make it through. RTH Labs believes this may be the whitest crowd ever captured on video. I don’t think this is what Eric Burdon had in mind…
Sometimes it’s fun to go back into the RTH archives, back a few years to a date almost to the day. Today is just such a day, but before I got back as far as “November 18, 2008” I stumbled across this self-congratulatory post. See if you can’t appreciate its continuing relevance. Better yet, why not forward this to a friend in need, a friend who should take advantage of the Halls of Rock as an outlet for his, uh, interests. Rock Town Hall’s recruitment for 2012 begins now!
This post originally appeared November 22, 2008.
This is why we must must uphold our high standards of rock ‘n roll discourse at Rock Town Hall. I thank you, Townspeople.
The first few times I heard “Signs” by Five Man Electrical Band as a kid I thought it was really cool. It seemed to come on the radio no more than 3 times a year. It was An Event, loaded with the hippie credibility I got turned onto as a young boy. A few years later, well before some Hair Metal band covered it in the 1980s, the song had worn out its welcome. It was emblamatic of the embarrassing sides of hippiedom. I severely regretted ever liking it.
You may consider the type of song I’m looking for in this thread the opposite of a guilty pleasure. What’s a once-pleasurable song that you now feel ashamed for ever having liked—and leave your favorite Sesame Street songs out of it, OK? We’re talking rock ‘n roll.
It’s funny how you can be very happily married to somebody and still have significant behavioral differences that ought to drive you ape-shit crazy.
My wife, for example, is perfectly happy to sit and stare out the car window for hours at a time — whereas I require a fairly steady stream of conversational blather to stay happy (and awake). In order to bridge the gap between our preferences, and give us something to talk about, I frequently insist that we play a stupid game as I drive. Many of these, you probably know: “20 Questions,” “Ghost,” a non-Rock version of perennial RTH favorite “Last Man Standing.” But I am the proud inventor of another, lesser known, particularly idiotic game, somewhat awkwardly entitled “Guess What Song I Have In My Head for 20 Dollars.” It’s this game that I bring to RTH today, under the slightly cooler brand “Read My Mind.”
Here’s how the game works when my wife and I are on hour 6 of a 9-hour drive:
HVB: Hey, Catherine, guess what song I have in my head!
C: Sigh. Do I have to?
HVB: Come on, guess. I’ll give you 20 dollars if you guess without a clue!
C: How on Earth am I supposed to know what song you have in your head?!
HVB: That’s why it’s worth 20 bucks! If you don’t get it on the first guess, I give you a clue, and the prize money gets cut in half. You guess again. If you guess right, you get 10 dollars. You guess wrong, you get another clue, and the prize money gets cut in half, to five dollars. And so on.
C: Groan. Seriously?
HVB: Come onnnnnn… I gotta keep my eyes open. Come on, guess!
C: Okay, “Love to Love You Baby.”
HVB: (affecting best Alex Trebek impersonation, much to Catherine’s irritation) Oh, no, I’m soh-ryyyyy. For 10 dollars… this song was popular in the 1970s.
C: Uh… “Torn Between Two Lovers.”
HVB: Good guess, but NO. For five bucks: this song was an unexpected foray into disco music by a major rock artist.
C: Hmm… Oh, “Some Girls” by the Rolling Stones!
HVB: (barely concealing scorn) I think you mean “Miss You,” but (cheering up) wrong again! For $2.50 — this band starred in their own TV movie.
C: Oh, come on! How am I supposed to know? I don’t obsess over that stuff like you do!
HVB: Guess, come on!
C: I don’t know, the Partridge Family.
HVB: Now you’re not even trying.
C: Honey, I don’t know!
HVB: You give up?
C: (rolling her eyes) Yes, I give up.
HVB: (gleefully) It’s “I Was Made for Loving You” by KISS!
C: That’s nice dear.
Now, in fairness to my ever-tolerant wife, she frequently sticks it out until the very end of the game, when the “prize” goes down to 12 and a half cents or something, and the clues get ridiculously easy. I reckon you guys will be a bit more eager, and a lot more rock trivia-savvy. But the prize remains the same! I promise to mail you however much money you win by being the first to guess the song inside my head. Each clue will halve the prize money — so be smart with your guesses. One guess per Townsman, per clue round.
Are you ready? For 20 dollars — and no clue, in this first round — can you guess what song is inside my head?
