Friday, January 26, 2007

The "Thank God It's Friday" Random Ten

Today is a "professional development day," which means we sent out little thugs home after third period, and we'll sit through teacher meetings, the bane of my existence, all afternoon. Since we have to wait for the people from the South Side campus to get up here, I have time for lunch and my random 10.

1. Boogie Fever- The Sylvers
2. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For- U2
3. All LA Glory- The Band
4. Face on the Barroom Floor- Hank Snow
5. Is that Justice-Jon Wayne Texas Funeral
6. Carnival- Natalie Merchant
7. Living on a Thin Line- The Kinks
8. Generals and Majors- XTC
9. Long Way Home- Supertramp
10. Luther Played the Boogie- Johnny Cash

One More: Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan doing Elvis' first single, "That's All Right, Mama."

Notes:
1. How the hell did this get on my itunes? I can only thing of one redeeming quality for this song-- it proves that there could be stupider songs than Carl Douglas' "Kung Fu Fighting," and Rick Dees "Disco Duck"
2. Pre-suck-point U2.
3. From the Stagefright album.
4. The best story song since Lorne Greene's "Ringo."
5. The funniest song from the funniest album ever. "Is that justice? Is that proper?"
6. Why is Natlie Merchant always so serious? I think she needs to cover a couple of funny songs-- maybe "They're Coming to Take Me Away." Or "Kung Fu Fighting." Or maybe even "Boogie Fever."
7. I think that the Kinks are incapable of sucking. Except when my wife saw them live, and The Davies brothers got in a fistfight in front of thousands of people.
8.These guys jumped the shark with "Mayor of Simpleton." In the late seventies and early eighties, they rocked.
9. I know/they're only wimp-rock/ but I like it.
10. Johnny Cash-- now that's what I'm talking about!

6 comments:

Moderator said...

I like "Beautiful Day" by U2, but will agree they've seen better days. Although Bono deserves a Nobel.

Barbara Bruederlin said...

I didn't even have time to do a list today.

I love your wife's Kinks story. Nothing more fun than a scrapping band!

Dale said...

Ah, the XTC always makes me happy. I saw Natalie Merchant in concert on her Ophelia tour and although some of the music was a bit downbeat, Natalie herself was hilarious and engaging telling stories and was quite lively. She also popped up during and REM concert here and sang a couple with Michael Stipe.

Nice list Johnny and yep, thank God it's F day.

Johnny Yen said...

Grant-
I agree with you on Bono-- great guy, with the Jubilee thing and his eagerness to work toward a better world. But Beautiful Day is the song they lost me on, though. But I agree with you on "Every Breath You Take." I'm still not tired of it.

Barb-
She said it was one of the worst shows she ever saw. It was at Poplar Creek, a huge venue that is gone (Sears built their corporate headquarters on the site when they sold the Sears Tower). There must have been 15,000 people watching Ray and Dave duke it out. I thought my brothers and I were bad....

Dale-
Thanks!

XTC is a band whose old stuff has aged well-- still love it. That's funny about Natalie-- every interview I've ever read with her she comes across way too serious.

I think that she and Michael Stipe were a couple for a while. I like their duet "Photograph" a lot. It was from a pro-choice benefit album from a few years back.

Erik Donald France said...

Another fun list. I never think of XTC as wimp rock, though. "Making Plans for Nigel" was the coolest -- cf. with Devo's "Mongoloid"

Cheers'

Johnny Yen said...

Erik-
No, that was me accidentally switching around XTC and Supertramp comments.