UNREMITTING FAILURE

No Shit, Our List of the Ten Worst Bands of ALL TIME

1. The Police--We can honestly say we've never liked a single one of their songs.  On the other hand, we have hated many of them.  And unlike most songs, theirs don't get more listenable as the passage of time turns despicable shit to amusing kitsch.  Way to go, Sting and Company!  You're No. 1!

2. Foreigner--Or as we prefer to think of them, "the damp spot on the pants of rock." 

3. Jefferson Starship/Starship--They built this city on rock'n'roll, but we're the ones stuck living in it.  Have you seen the size of the rats?

4. Stray Cats--Rockabilly is the last refuge of a scoundrel.  Or in Brian Setzer's case, a putz.  Their mannered nostalgia-mongering made them the 80s equivalent of Sha Na Na, without the laughs.  Neuter them!

5. Journey--The fact that nostalgia makes it possible for us to listen to "Wheel in the Sky" without projectile vomiting only goes to show you how dangerous nostalgia can be.  Are you listening, Brian Setzer?

6. Yes--No!  Had Yes stopped recording in the early seventies, they wouldn't be on this list.  Sure, their "classic" material is a triumph of faux mysticism, squirrely vocalizing, and neoclassical chopmeistering over music, but at least this stuff is good for a laugh.  Later Yes, which includes "Owner of a Lonely Heart", is bland commercial pap and proof that sometimes pretentious twaddle is still sometimes preferable to the Big Sellout. 

7. U2--We actually like some U2 songs, a lot.  So call us a hypocrite.  But something doesn't sit right with us about this band, never has.  We're talking about Bono, of course.  It's simply impossible to trust a filthy rich do-gooder, and when it comes to making do-gooding part of your corporate brand and hence good for your wallet, we put the talented Mr. Vox right up there with Oprah.

8.  Fugazi--Their much-vaunted principles go far towards obscuring the fact that they sucked.  The Humble Pie of the nineties. 

9.  Toto--Small potatoes, but no less annoying for it.  This "band" of crack studio hacks makes us think of that line, "The blues had a baby and they called it rock'n'roll and it pooped and they called the turd Toto."  We think it's from a Muddy Waters song.

10. Air Supply--Unfortunately, they always had one. 

We Have Decided

To start a new life on the nonsmoking ruins of our old one.   

The question is, who will we be this time?

Our first thought was to go dance club happy.  Reinvent ourselves as DJ Petulant Babyman, stay up all night every night until we collapse and die from glow stick poisoning, which we figure will take about a week.  But what a week! 

Our second thought was to go "family man."  You know, have the wife pump out a couple of kids and a white picket fence (hey, no use paying good money for the thing!) then settle down.  How loathsome.  But this is where our newfound life of useless health seems to be leading us, is life on Breeder Lane.  Once there we can get down to the hard business of really giving up.  Maybe buy a place by a cemetery, to shorten that last commute.

Or maybe we'll quit our job and "write a novel."  Yea, right.  Like anybody has ever written a novel without cigarettes.  Or gin, for that matter.  Well, maybe we could write something shorter.  Like a note to eternity explaining why we couldn't write a novel because we were a big pussy.

Our favorite recurring fantasy is of us as "freewheelin' motorcycle guy."  It will never happen, of course, if only because we're about as "freewheelin'" as a cold lump of mashed potatoes.  We're impulsive, but that's different.  A "freewheelin'" individual might take off one day and ride across the country.  We're the kind of person who finds himself standing outside a record store holding a $16.99 copy of the Doobie Brothers' greatest hits.

Liechtenstein Banned From Blockbuster

The giant Blockbuster video rental chain has banned the tiny european principality of Liechtenstein for life, according to a Blockbuster spokesperson.  In a prepared statement, Debra Fandoolie said, "Last Friday, employees in our Basel, Switzerland store noticed a rather large customer shoving a video into its pants.  The customer was later identified as the entire population of Liechtenstein.  Unfortunately, this was not the first incident involving the double-landlocked nation.  Employees at surrounding stores have come forward with allegations of candy theft, video box desecration, and tampering with the overnight return box.  As a result, Liechtenstein is no longer welcome at any Blockbuster outlet."

The nation of Liechtenstein, whose name starts with a lie and ends with a stone making it a stone liar, said only, "That video fell into my pants."

 

Liechtenstein wondering where it's going to rent Dante's Cove now

The Silence of the Chair

"And no one heard at all, not even the chair... " N. Diamond

And now we return you to VH1's Storytellers Psychoanalyzed, where host Dr. Hannibal Lecter is getting to the bottom of Neil Diamond's chair!

Dr. Lecter: Welcome back, everybody.  I'm speaking with Neil Diamond, singer-songwriter and a man tormented by a dark secret from his childhood.  Neil, after your father's murder, you were orphaned. You were ten years old. You went to live with cousins on a sheep and horse ranch in Montana. And...?

Neil Diamond: [tears begin forming in his eyes] And one morning, I just ran away.

Dr. Lecter: Not "just", Neil. What set you off? You started at what time?

Neil Diamond: Early, still dark.

Dr. Lecter: Then something woke you, didn't it? Was it a dream? What was it?

Neil Diamond: I heard a strange noise.

Dr. Lecter: What was it?

Neil Diamond: It was... screaming.  Some kind of screaming, like a child's voice.

Dr. Lecter: What did you do?

Neil Diamond: I went downstairs.  I crept up to the door to the livingroom.  I was so scared to look inside, but I had to.

Dr. Lecter:  And what did you see, Neil?  What did you see?

Neil Diamond: The La-Z-Boy.  It was screaming.

Dr. Lecter: They were slaughtering the La-Z-Boy?

Neil Diamond: And it was screaming. It was just a chair! It didn't do anything to anyone!

Dr. Lecter: You still wake up sometimes, don't you? You wake up in the dark and hear the screaming of the chair.

Neil Diamond: No.  The world is... silent.  It's as if I don't exist.  I call out, but no one responds.  No one hears me.  No one.  Not even the chair.

Dr. Lecter: Thank you, Neil.  Thank you.

tormented by the memory of an innocent la-z-boy

That Last Post

Is a crochety indicator of our sad state of mental health. 

We are fuming because our cigarette can't.

We have long feared that we are not the type of person who can live without a vice.  Our ambivalence towards existence requires a physical outlet, one that clearly says "No" to the whole idea of embracing this horrible charade called Life.

Oh, what a crock.  Life is horrible, and we sincerely hope for the sake of others that it doesn't exist anywhere else in the universe but here on this benighted orb, but we want a cigarette because we want a cigarette.

We hang onto life because we're terrified of the alternative.   Calling this experience "love of life" is like saying that a guy hanging by his fingernails from a 19th floor window is experiencing "love of windowsill."   

Our Theory of Religion

We have long entertained the suspicion that faith is the prerogative of the tiny-brained.  The seed of doubt cannot sprout in so small a pot. 

We're a Modern Guy, Of Course We've Had It in the Ear Before

When everything's going down in flames and the Nero fiddling on the roof turns out to be your mother, it's good to have music to turn to.  It's Halloween, so we recommend the spookalicious video for Aesop Rock's "Coffee", which feature our main man John Darnielle.  Or Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life," because any song where the singer boasts about having gotten it in the ear before is worth checking out.  Or, if you're reallllly in a ghoultide mood, Der Iggster's "In The Death Car" might just be your cup of eyeballs.  Personally, we'll probably spend the day listening to the Stooges' "Search and Destroy" REAL LOUD.  Because as Hunter S. Thompson once said, "When a man gives up drugs, he needs big fires in his life." 

Fire in the earhole!

Halloween Is Here

And we're scared.  As William Butler Yeats once said, "Fifteen apparitions have I seen, the worst an Asia album on a turntable."  Anybody who doesn't think Halloween is a time of supernatural evil is invited to explain why John Ford Coley, Vanilla Ice, and Larry Mullen all call it their birthday.  Such a dire confluence of musical malignancy cannot be written off as mere coincidence.

We fear Halloween because demons stalk the night.  Last year we saw the band Toto surround a tiny trick or treater and force him to purchase a copy of Tambu on CD.  That child will never be the same.  Later, we saw the Jefferson Starship "Jane" a guy to death.  It was awful.

When you're a kid, you believe demons are real.  When you're an adult, you hear Warrant for the first time and have proof. 

Don't go around tonight, it's bound to take your life.  You could go out a human, and come back a member of Quarterflash, maybe even the guy in the sweatbands.  It's not worth it.  Stay inside and lock your doors.  If you own an Asia album, put something heavy on it.  Then again, if you own an Asia album, you're probably already one of THEM. 

The Supersecret Genius Behind the Band Cream

Eric Clapton.  We all know him.  He's the guy who turned chinlessness into an art form and made a mint moaning about his dead relatives.

Ah, but once upon a time, and we're talking here about 40 or 50 years ago, Senor Slowhand was the front man in a little group called Cream.  There, he played such nimble guitar they called him God. He also sang.  But what he really did, and this is the supersecret part, is write great lyrics.

Oh, nobody will admit they're great.  But what else are you going to call "You've got that rainbow feel, but the rainbow has a beard"?  Or,

Its getting near dawn,
When lights close their tired eyes.
Ill soon be with you my love,
To give you my dawn surprise.

We can hardly wait, Eric!  Let's hope your "dawn surprise" is a volume of your collected verses, because you're the best kept lyrical secret in rock!

Oh, we always knew Eric had something going on.  He was, after all, the guy who in "Sunshine of Your Love" boasted, "I'll stay with you darling now, Ill stay with you till my seas are dried up."  As Mrs. UF said when she heard these lines, "Ewwww."

Cream is like THEE official sixties band you probably had to be there to appreciate, or so we say based on the fact that we have never in our whole life met a single real Cream fanatic and all of their songs sound impossibly dated, like they were recorded by guys in dayglo Nehru suits in mono sound using one-track mono stereo equipment that weighed 10,ooo pounds and regularly burst into flames.

But none of that matters now that we have finally come to understand that old Slowhand wasn't just an ace guitar-slinger, but the best poet of his generation.  Just take the complicated word play that opens "Badge":

Thinkin bout the times you drove in my car.
Thinkin that I might have drove you too far.

They didn't call the man God for nothing, folks.  Indeed, "Badge" might be Eric's finest composition, including as it does the exquisite couplet

I told you not to wander round in the dark.
I told you bout the swans, that they live in the park.

Not only does it rhyme, but it also reveals Eric to be one of the great educators, like Plato or Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society! Seriously, we always wondered where those pesky swans lived!

Like Wordsworth, only without a chin

Now That We've Quit Smoking

We don't know what to do with our hands.  Perhaps we'll donate them to charity. 

We quit smoking just so people would stop telling us how wonderful life would be if we just quit smoking.  Our favorite is, "Food tastes better!"  Whenever somebody tells us this we make a point of staring them in the eye and saying, "Do people taste better?"  It usually does the trick.

So far, we have yet to experience any of the joys of the nonsmoker, we've been so busy itemizing all the lowdown things we'd do for a cigarette.  It's a long list.  Yes, for example, we would stick a piece of gum in Stephen Hawkings' sip-n-puff wheelchair control system just as he was beginning a long downhill descent leading to a 4,000-foot cliff for a cigarette.  That's item 694. 

Smoking's insidious because at certain moments quitting suddenly seems easy.  So easy you say to yourself, "What have I been worried about? I might as well have a few more, and quit again tomorrow!" 

Then you find yourself doubled up in pangs of desire and need so intense it's like you're giving birth to your own death, and the only thing that can stop them is that thin tube of nicotine hanging on the cross in front of you as you pray, "Come down off that cross, jump into my mouth, and light yourself!  Now!!!" 

We would suck face with Ann Coulter for a cigarette.  That's item 420.