@waitingtoexhale Yes, that’s an odd one because “Desperado” is such a well-received song. There was a George Will article written about Max Weinberg, the drummer playing with Bruce Springsteen at the time, lamenting his hard life. Egads, sometimes his arms get tired, sometimes he even gets blisters! The whole poor, suffering artist schtick annoys me when they are hugely successful, staying in plush hotels, making bank, and fighting off the groupies.
Putting that schtick to a western theme made it all the more annoying. “You’d better let somebody love you, before it’s too late?” “Out riding fences?” Try going to Afghanistan for a year, you big babies.Try carrying 300 lb chunks of rough-cut iron up two flights of stairs for minimum wage, then going to your second full-time job. The song tries to evoke empathy for life on the road of a successful musician. Nope, not buying it, no empathy from me.
Yummy Yummy pairs with Sugar Sugar, and Chewy Chewy, another Ohio Express song AFAIR, as love songs for kids who have not yet passed the oral stage. They are in that “so bad it’s good” category for me.
Well, Macarthur park has one thing going for it, the Weird Al Parody “Jurassic Park” and the video (shows that Jimmy Webb, the songwriter, has a sense of humor, unlike a certain group with a big lipped main singer who are poster children for pretentious jerks…).
@Magnetron: Well, I took it as more of an elegy of sorts for the lonely cowboy, a la the television mini-series of the same name,starring a young actor (well, when we were young) from whom I have not seen much in years, Alex McArthur.
I was still able to fall in love then.
OMG, my youngest son just walked past me and he is looking rather like that young singer(?)/actor from the mid-late 70s…What was his name? Can’t think of it…Leif Garrett! (Ha!)
Sting does one song impeccably well. I couldn’t even believe it was Sting, save for the unmistakable voice: “Someone to Watch Over Me,” performed at one of the ASCAP awards in the '80s. An absolutely haunting rendition.
Seriously, as a result of this thread, I listened to the following playlist on my way into work this morning:
“Beach Baby,” First Class
“Cat’s in the Cradle,” Harry Croce
“Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes),” Edison Lighthouse
“ABC,” The Jackson Five
“One Toke Over the Line,” Brewer & Shipley
“I Am Woman,” Helen Reddy
“Signs,” Five Man Electrical Band
“Don’t Pull Your Love,” Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds
“Everybody Plays the Fool,” The Main Ingredient
“Cover of the Rolling Stone,” Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show
“Disco Inferno,” The Trammps
“I will Survive,” Gloria Gaynor
Awful and Awesome. All at the same time.
I’m only sorry that I didn’t have time for “Daddy Don’t You Walk So Fast” (Wayne Newton) - but then there’s always the drive home.
“Cat’s in the Cradle” = Harry Chapin. Although it did sound something like Jim Croce. There was a wonderful Goldbergs episode about the Chapin song.
“Disco Inferno” does not remotely belong on a list of bad songs, or of so-bad-they’re-good songs. It is a plain, flat-out brilliant song, in many ways a pinnacle of American popular music. Not kidding.
Actually, I feel similarly about “ABC” and “I Will Survive.” But please feel free to mock “Signs.”
My friend used to sing “Disco Duck” and he sounded just like Donald Duck and he had the funniest facial expressions when he did that.
I had one roommate who played disco songs all night long, and my other roommate played hard rock songs all day long (he drove a cab in Boston at night).
I lived in a very large room in my fraternity with three other roommates. Roommate #1, because he liked to dance, had gotten the “Mickey Mouse Disco” album as a gag gift but would put it on the record player to listen to it. We were studying in the room with the album playing, when roommate #2 walked in, opened the window, put a $10 bill on roommate #1’s desk, then grabbed the record and sailed it out from the 3rd story, never to be heard again.
The next year I lived in a room with the Black Sabbath and Judas Priest albums playing, quite the contrast.
