I could not be friends with someone who doesn’t like country music- not all of it, but much of it. It’s so important in my life!
How about the mid-70’s song “The Streak” by Ray Stevens… growing up our neighbor was Ethel…
It’s about the first day of college (and the weekend before it) for a freshman pitcher joining a good college baseball team at “Southeast Texas State.” He meets his new teammates; he meets some of his old teammates; he meets a lot of girls. He’s very cute, very catholic in his appreciation of different lifestyles and interests (and his musical taste), and secretly a little intellectual. Basically, he’s Mitch Kramer grown into Randy “Pink” Floyd, removed from the context in which he’s the BMOC, but pretty confident he can handle what life sends his way. He can do disco, he can do country-western, he can do punk, and he knows the words to “Rapper’s Delight.” Plus, when a girl accuses him of quoting Rod McKuen, he can say in his best aw-shucks manner, “Um, I’m pretty sure that was Whitman.”
Like Dazed and Confused if you saw it when it was first released, you have never seen any of the actors before. Of course, if you see Dazed and Confused now, it’s stuffed with familiar actors, and it wouldn’t surprise me if this one were like that, too, in a decade or so. Most of the actors are terrific. The cute girl is Lea Thompson’s daughter.
re: The Night Chicago Died
“Daddy was a cop. On the East Side of Chicago”
Uh, in the lake?
@MomofWildChild: “I could not be friends with someone who doesn’t like country music- not all of it, but much of it. It’s so important in my life!”
I get liking something, and having it be almost a backdrop to one’s life… but, really?
I would have had no friends at all if the people in my life needed to like Charlie Pride or Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson or any of the bluegrass music which was part of my pre-adolescent life while they were listening to Kool Moe D or whoever.
Come on, MOWC.
What’s the problem? There are a lot of things that define a person, and dismissing an entire genre of music tells me something about the person. It’s sort of like someone who smokes or never exercises- good chance they aren’t going to particularly appeal to me.
Oh yes, this coming from a person (man) who is 5’ 5" tall, “Short People” by Randy Newman. I actually found it funny, in poor taste, but funny.
I think that not liking something and dismissing it are different. One goes to determining it does not appeal to an individual, the other seems closer to a write-off that can come with little or no investment of time in seeking to discover if there is anything that may appeal to them.
I hear dismiss as the latter, and not the former. There is little to no sense of offense to the former (for me). Which are you talking about?
I’m not thinking about it that deeply. Sorry. I’m just saying if someone doesn’t like country music- and I don’t care how they come to that conclusion- they are probably not going to be “my people”. Just like if they don’t like animals.
I’ve been wanting to see the sequel, too. It seems to be getting good reviews.
Have you seen any of Linklater’s other movies? If so, did you like them?
I’m a big fan, but I always have a hard time finding someone to go see his
movies with.
I understand what you mean by this. I think in some cases, liking a certain type of music can reveal something about someone. In some cases, people who like the same type of music have something, however small, in common. But I’ve been surprised a couple of time when this turned out to definitely not be the case.
I was once into a relatively unknown band, and I was on a web site talking to all of the fans. I loved it, and spent tons of time on the site. I ended up meeting up with a bunch of them at one of the shows, and they were WEIRD, I mean, REALLY WEIRD. Maybe I’m weird in the same way, but just can’t see it, but I don’t think so.
The same thing happens to me with movies. I always assume that someone who thinks like me will like certain movies, and I’m always surprised by how often I’m wrong.
Everyone keeps mentioning horrible 70’s songs. I keep thinking of one. I think I can win with this one: “Billy Don’t Be A Hero” by Bo Donaldson and The Heywoods. I googled it and found out it was a remake of a UK hit. Blech. I distinctly remember one beach weekend junior year of high school when every time I changed the dial this horrible song was playing. It was the same weekend that Patty Hearst was rescued from the SLA and arrested.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Don%27t_Be_a_Hero
It was succeeded at the top of the Billboard charts by Terry Jack’s “Seasons In The Sun,” which was also gross.
One overplayed song during my early undergrad years which I instantly detested and forgot to list is Oasis’ Wonderwall.
Hate the exceedingly whiny voice of the singer, the droning tone, and the fact it seemed to be playing in the dorms/on the radio. .
How and why it became so popular in college dorms in the mid-late '90s, I’ll never understand.
Then again, this was followed up by the Spice Girls…more yecch…
All this talk of bad 70s music reminds me of a boxed set of CDs that I have - “Have a Nice Decade: The 70s Pop Culture Box.” It contains 164 of the worst songs from the decade, from “Billy Don’t Be a Hero” to “Brand New Key” to “One Toke Over the Line” to “Love Rollercoaster” to “Disco Duck.”
I love it. When I hear “Saturday Night,” I remember my sister’s crush on the Bay City Rollers. When I hear “Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)” I remember one of my first sock-hops. Yes, it’s a nostalgia-fueled drive down memory lane, and I enjoy belting out “ABC” or “Signs” in my car every morning.
“Brandy”? “Jungle Boogie”? “Kung Fu Fighting”? It’s all there, including “The Streak” and “The Bertha Butt Boogie.”
Now that my son’s in the army, “Billy Don’t Be a Hero” has taken on new meaning.
Edison Lighthouse! I still have a 45 of “Love Grows…” And I apologize. I was wrong–Disco Duck is worse than Kung Fu Fighting. Nice @scout59.
I hate that line, too. It’s like it’s saying that America is terrible, but at least I’m free. I suspect it’s just an artifact of a not-great lyricist trying to get to the rhyme-word “free.”
And speaking of bad lyrics aimed at the rhyme word, we can go back to “Horse With No Name,” which has the line “where there ain’t no one for to give you no pain.”
And to beat an already beaten horse, I went and listened to Ella Fitzgerald’s version of “Miss Otis Regrets.” I have to say that although she sings beautifully, and with some emotion, I still say that her interpretation of the song is all wrong, if you care about the lyrics (which I always do, with Cole Porter). The “character” singing the song is Miss Otis’ servant, who is explaining why she is unable to lunch today. The best version I’ve heard is by a man who delivers it like a stuffy butler–I think it’s on that same “Cole” album I mentioned before, but I’m not sure. I listened to several other versions, and I thought most of them just ignored what the song is supposed to be. Ethel Waters’ version is good, though.
Not a huge fan of The Devil went Down to Georgia. Or, You can Ring My Bell…horrible song from about 1979.
Dazed and confused was a great movie, the kid (Mitch Kramer) kind of gained new notoriety when Tim Linsecum of the SF Giants (before he cut his hair) was a dead ringer for him lol).
Some of the soft rock of the period was vile, thinking groups like 10cc and England Dan and John Ford Coley (the latter is used as the paradigm of music the record companies can’t stand but have to produce; in “Vinyl” the guy who is producing them gets totally wasted and coked out to be able to work with them…). Doesn’t mean soft rock itself was bad, the kind of groups I liked, like the Moody Blues, Chicago and ELO, were not hard rock and were in some cases looked down on by ‘the rock snobs’, but there also was a lot of music that was irritating or the equivalent of elevator music, there is music that is by taste, then music that fits the paradigm of ‘bad’ music as laid down by ellington, that there are only two kinds of music, good music and bad music:).
I am happy you listened to Ella’s version from the SongBook.