Saccharine Overload (songs)

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Sir
Date: 13 Dec 97 - 04:05 PM

Not many older quasi-folk songs have been listed. How about "Just Before the Battle, Mother"?

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Gene E
Date: 13 Dec 97 - 06:30 PM

Funny my most hated list is almost exactly the list that Speed-1 likes: Carpenters Gordon Lightfoot Barry Manilow The Barney song Neil Diamond John Denver Puff the Magic Dragon Barbra Streisand, England Disneyland Infomercials by Ron Popiel and Tony Robbins The theme to Final Jeopardy New York in June Waltzing Matilda and the whole new genre, "Young Country"!!!!

If it ain't bluEs, it ain't nuthin'

Gene E (Very formerly Elwoodelta)

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Gene E
Date: 13 Dec 97 - 06:33 PM

Man, I'm really confused!

I think that Saccarine is the Overlord.

Gene E

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From:
Date: 13 Dec 97 - 10:07 PM

There is the story of how when Jerry Garcia died he found himself in a room with with Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison. He thought "Man, I never thought I'd make it to heaven!". Karen Carpenter then enters the room and and announces "Okay, boys, the breaks over. Let's take it from the top- 'I'm on the top of the world looking down on creation...'"

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: rastrelnikov
Date: 15 Dec 97 - 02:11 AM

There are certainly many saccarine songs I don't like. The only one I can think of that I've heard performed more than once by singers/musicians that I respect at jams is: From A Distance. Ugh! And All God's Critters (have a place in the choir). And for that matter, The Garden Song. Or how about that Cohen song, Hey, That's No Way to Say Good-bye. Can you imagine having the nerve to tell a woman that everything is still sugar and spice even though you're dumping her?

Regarding Lightfoot, I'd have to say that I think Edmund Fitz is a fourth rate song, but not too saccarine, and that Gordy has recorded a few first rate songs back when he had a voice, some of which are utter saccarine. Pussywillows, cat-tails, for instance. Great song. 100% saccarine.

One thing I can't stand though is sentimentality about war. Take 'Christmas in the Trenches'. Starts out great. Then it suggests that if only we remembered the common grunts in the other army are just like us, we wouldn't fight wars. Eep! Do wars usually get started because we're afraid of the differences in the common people of the other side or because the leaders of one side see weakness and an opportunity for profit?

Ain't it fun to vent?

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Joe Offer
Date: 15 Dec 97 - 04:58 PM

I think a number of the songs listed above don't deserve the criticism they've received here. We've listed a lot of pretty-good songs, and even a few wonderful ones. I think it's just a matter of familiarity breeding contempt. Either that, or we make the mistake of calling a song "profound" when it doesn't deserve the title.
"A Place in the Choir (All God's Critters" is a cute song, but people perform it in church and draw all sorts of deep meaning out of it - and that sort of treatment simply destroys a song. Same with "Waltzing With Bears" - call it cute, fun, whimsical - but PLEASE don't call it inspiring.
Once upon a time, I made a request at a John McCutcheon concert - that he NOT perform "Christmas in the Trenches." He didn't honor my request. I really enjoy his concerts, but I've certainly grown tired of that song. It's a nice song, all right, but enough is enough.
McCutcheon redeemed himself recently by writing "Johnny Don't Lick That Pipe," a song that explains why we Midwesterners are so attracted to pump handles in the winter. I had to move to California so that nothing dreadful could happen to me.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: Lyr Add: TOMMY DON'T LICK THAT PIPE (McCutcheon)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 15 Dec 97 - 05:21 PM

Here's the McCutcheon song I was talking about. I gave the kid the wrong name.

TOMMY DON'T LICK THAT PIPE
(c) 1995 John McCutcheon/Appalsongs (ASCAP) & Si Kahn/Joe Hill Music (ASCAP)

Winter is a-coming
And the weather's getting cold
I have to watch my brother Tom
He's eight years old
I never have to worry
That he'll slip on ice and fall
In fact there's only just one thing
That worries me at all

Tommy, don't lick that pipe
Your tongue will stick like glue
I've warned you twice
And I wish you'd mind
Don't you remember
What happened last time
You can do about anything else that you like
But Tommy, don't lick that pipe

Do you still remember Uncle Albert
Such scientific curiosity
He stuck his tongue out on the old pump handle
It took us two whole days to get him free

Do you still remember Grandma Dawson
She touched her tongue on to a waterspout
She said she thought that it was made of plastic
It took us until May to thaw her out

Do you still remember our dog Fluffy
He went outside to do his doggy thing
We found him frozen solid to a hydrant
We couldn't break him loose until the spring

Profound, isn't it?
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: rastrelnikov
Date: 16 Dec 97 - 01:39 AM

Just curious... anyone out there who hasn't seen another kid with their tongue stuck to something metal in the winter? I felt so surprised when the kid I saw was able to rip his tongue away with only a little blood. (sigh)

Twas Christmas in the schoolyard
Where the frost so bitter hung
Those bike racks there, so hard and cold
Lying await for some kid's tongue...

Love the song, love the memories. Thanks, Joe!

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Shula
Date: 16 Dec 97 - 11:58 AM

Dear Joe ,

When I suggested we list disgusting songs, the ones I had in mind were disgustingly SWEET. This discussion of tongue-ripping selections ought more properly to be included in a list of songs about maiming and bodily mayhem, or better yet, rank stupidity. ( Not even ol' Sanc wooda got hissef inta sech a tiklish fix uz thet thar'un!)

Dear rastrelnikov,

I, too, find songs that sentimentalize war suspect, but for the sake of argument, I will confess to a fondness for "I'll Be Home For Xmas," which is about as sentimental as they come.


Shula

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: GUEST,margaret
Date: 05 Mar 00 - 04:18 AM

The "old shep" my daddy use to sing is not the same-longer and sadder-the kid grows up, goes to war, comes home at night on a train, shep meets him and takes him home the long way.Next day mom tell him a flood washed the out and shep saved him from drowing but old shep been dead 2 weeks.If anyone has these lyrics pleas post.

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Willie-O
Date: 05 Mar 00 - 09:31 AM

Oh! That's why Steve Goodman made that comment about the perfect country song needing trains, prison, mom, and dead dogs like old Shep.

I was that kid with his tongue stuck--welded, in fact-- to a metal fencepost in the schoolyard. (Amazing the whimsical things your brain can convince you to do without sufficient consideration.) Matter of fact I re-enacted the scene awhile ago when I was out for a walk in the old neighbourhood with number one offspring. I have no recollection of how I got unstuck from the post--I suppose pouring hot water would do it, but I don't think that was it.

Another thing my brain talked me into trying, when I was old enough to know better, was a physics experiment to prove or disprove that well-known principle about riding a bicycle: that if you apply only the front brakes, while going down a hill at a good clip, you will go arse over teakettle rear wheel over front.

I"d had quite a bit to drink)

I'm hear to tell you, it's true. Luck for me it wasn't much of a hill--doesn't take much of one to achieve the effect, as it turned out.

Older, no wiser
Willie-O

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 05 Mar 00 - 11:32 AM

The once and future "King of awful songs": Waltzing with Bea.......arghhhh! Please forgive me folks.

Rick

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Art Thieme
Date: 05 Mar 00 - 12:18 PM

AMAZING GRACE----I, personally, was NEVER, and am not now, "a wretch". I've had personal insights that have helped me change my ways on occasion, but I've never been a terrible guy I don't think. Always have had a hard time singing along with this one. The religion of it don't grab me either.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Amos
Date: 05 Mar 00 - 01:15 PM

Art:

You're NOT??? Never been a card carrying member of the Profound Self-Abnegation International?

Not a student of Personal Techniques in Self-Nullification, nor yet a member of the Church of Perpetual Denigration?

Oh, for shame! For Guilt! For blame! For.... (urrrrp)...Self-denying propitiation!.

Are you really sure you're not a wretch?

LOL!

A

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Troll
Date: 05 Mar 00 - 01:25 PM

Amos: I AM! Sure am and, let me say, proud to be one!yessiree! I'm not a professional mind you, but I've managed to keep my old van running for...oh. You said WRETCH. I thought you said WRENCH as in mechanic. Sorry. Really,truly,sorry. How could I have done such a stupid thing, made such a dumb mistake. I'm always doing things like that and....oh damn.

troll *evil chuckle*

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: BlueJay
Date: 05 Mar 00 - 02:57 PM

Joe Offer If You See THis: You must have the same Steve Goodman CD I have, "No Big Surprise". You're right, I've played the ""Dead Girl" set to many friends, with the predictable, hilarious results. Funny how it started as a request for a COWBOY HAT, so he could sing "You Never Even Called Me By My Name", and since noone had a hat, someone gave him a motorcycle helmet, which led to ""Born To Be Wild", and thence, the dead girl songs. I saw Steve Goodman at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, about thirty feet away), a few years before he died. He made the same request for a cowboy hat, and someone threw him one that was probably five sizes too large, covering his eyes, and down past his ears. The he did the song "You Never..."I've considered petitioning the Legislature of the State of Illinois to rename the state, "The Land of Goodman", instead of the "Land of Lincoln". Do you think any Mudcatters would sign?

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: BlueJay
Date: 05 Mar 00 - 03:16 PM

By the way, for me the worst has to be "yummy yummy yummy ive got love in my tummy", (typos intentional).

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Art Thieme
Date: 05 Mar 00 - 09:01 PM

City of Chicago has been giving established streets "honorary names" recently. It's really confusing to people not used to driving around the town. Some folks have gotten lost and wound up in dire trouble. One guy has never been seen since he went looking for a certain address on one of these streets with 2 names.

BUT Lincoln Avenue, up on "da nort-west" side o' da town, has been ALSO named for STEVE GOODMAN. A new sign is along side the old one up where the new Old Town School Of FOLK MUSIC is located. (I've capitalized the words FOLK MUSIC bacause that venerable institution has gone far out of it's way to denegrate and diminish the words in it's new logo and stationary.)

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: GUEST,The Beanster
Date: 05 Mar 00 - 09:39 PM

Papa, Don't Preach, Madonna (the thought of offspring from this woman makes my hair stand on end)

Send In The Clowns, People, Evergreen, ETC., B. Streisand (makes me wretch)

Seasons In The Sun, Terry Jacks (this man should be boiled alive)

These are my Top 3. Gee, that was fun! lol

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: GUEST,Frank Hamilton
Date: 05 Mar 00 - 09:42 PM

Jon W.

It's an interesting footnote. Honah Lea is an early jazz expression meaning getting high (probably on poppy smoke).

Frank

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 05 Mar 00 - 10:39 PM

The worst song that The Everly Bros ever did was called Ebony Eyes. It was one of those "my girlfriend died" songs that was popular in the late 50's early 60's. Had memorable lines like
"My ebony eyes was coming to me
From out of the skies on Flight 1203"
. Anyway, he's waiting in the Terminal and the Flight's late, there's a ball of flame and it ends something like; the terrible sky
"had taken my life's most wonderful prize
My beautiful ebony eyes."
My cousin used to weep uncontrollably.

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: GUEST,The Beanster
Date: 05 Mar 00 - 11:53 PM

Ooooh I remember another one..."Please, Don't Just Stand There" by Patti Duke. Truly an abomination. And Lonesome EJ, you cracked me up!

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Troll
Date: 06 Mar 00 - 12:01 AM

How about "Patches" "Down by the river that flows through the coalyard...."

Bleeech!!!

troll

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 06 Mar 00 - 12:10 AM

Yeah Troll."Patches, my darling, of old shanty town."

And the one where the woman is waiting for her boyfriend to call her.

Let it please be him, Oh Dear God
It must be him, but it's not him
And then I die
and then I die

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: GUEST,The Beanster
Date: 06 Mar 00 - 12:10 AM

OHHHHHH PATCHES! YUK! LMAO

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Troll
Date: 06 Mar 00 - 12:14 AM

And remember "Teen Angel"? "They say they found my high school ring clutched in your fingers tight." Ring my foot! She probably went back to get her panties!

troll

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 06 Mar 00 - 12:24 AM

Just sweet sixteen and now you're gone
They've taken you away
I'll never kiss your lips again
They buried you today

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Troll
Date: 06 Mar 00 - 12:30 AM

'Sigh' They just don't write 'em like that anymore. Nowadays they either OD or get knocked off in a drive-by.

troll

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Metchosin
Date: 06 Mar 00 - 01:35 AM

Or "Honey" by Bobby Goldsboro?

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Lin in Kansas
Date: 06 Mar 00 - 04:44 PM

My vote goes to "Wreck on the Highway" (cough, choke)

or how about "Carroll County Accident"? (retch...)

or "Teddy Bear", to keep to my country theme? (hack, gurgle, hack)

or the one about the little girl in the wheelchair who goes to get her daddy out of the tavern and winds up dead (can't remember the title, thank the gods), a whole nother permutation of the "dead girls" songs. (pardon me while I go regurgitate)

Lin

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: pastorpest
Date: 06 Mar 00 - 05:22 PM

How quickly we have recovered from Christmas! Please spare me from another crooner drooling through White Christmas and scores of other carols. I hope I never see a Christmas disc by Celine Dion! Spare me also from opera sings with powerful and agile voices doing Christmas carols (folk songs) like they were opera arias with a whole orchestra to back them up on a complex arrangement. They remind me of the game we played as teens of how many people can we stuff in a VW bug. The folk song is the car trying hold it all.

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 06 Mar 00 - 07:45 PM

Hell, but there's a lot of sour-faced cynics around in this thread!

I like songs that go over the top. I don't like songs that are insincere about sad things, and calculating.But there's nothing wrong with songs that go,over the top.

But a lot the songs people have been slagging off here are good straight sincere emotional songs that sometimes get sung by insincere calculating singers. They don't need scorning, they need rescuing.

And I detest the idea that fashion has anything to do with the merits of a song.

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Lonesome EJ
Date: 06 Mar 00 - 10:56 PM

OK McGrath. Prove all of us sour-faced cynics wrong by being the first performer to do justice to that moving, over-the-top ballad "Patches."

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Troll
Date: 06 Mar 00 - 11:03 PM

Damnitall EJ! Ya beat me to it.

McGrath, go for it!

troll

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: GUEST,Dan Keding
Date: 06 Mar 00 - 11:36 PM

Any song by George W.Bush and that horrible "Honey" tune. Dan

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Metchosin
Date: 06 Mar 00 - 11:51 PM

McGrath, I "double dog dare you" to sing the following lines sincerely. Then again , maybe for some, it is possible.

She wrecked the car and she was sad
And so afraid that I'd be mad, but what the heck.
Though I pretended hard to be,
Guess you could say, she saw through me and hugged my neck

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: rangeroger
Date: 06 Mar 00 - 11:54 PM

"House on Pooh Corner"
rr

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Amos
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 01:33 AM

Que Sera, Sera and about 250 songs around its time on the pre-Elvis Hit Parade. Swear to god, popular music just before the advent of Rock and Roll -- outside of Country -- was the most saccharine, synthetic, Muzak-wannabe collection of falsely sweet drivel... Pat Boone, Love Letters in the Sand, Connie Francis, Love Forever True,Hot Diggety Dog Diggety, This Old House, even early sorta rock tunes like "Green Door" and "Hernando's Hideaway" were so much pseudo-dreck, to my mind. Not to step on any toes or anything.

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Lin in Kansas
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 02:24 AM

'Course not, Amos--you were your usual tactful self...

but that's my era, honey, and I kinda like Hot Diggety (Oh, what you do to me!) and This Old House. Most of the music then was meant to dance to, American Bandstand style, and wasn't intended by any means to be profound--but I wouldn't call the ones you listed saccharine, either.

Well, maybe "Love Letters" would qualify. But when that's the song you get your first kiss to, it do change your perspective on the music! (We were a lot more innocent then than teenyboppers are now...)

Lin

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Metchosin
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 02:41 AM

Amos, you forgot Tammy, but I do take exception to the inclusion of "This Old House". I grew up in a family that raised and hunted with cougar and 'coon hounds, so the song was very meaningful to me, when I was young.

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Homeless
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 07:33 AM

"Love Letters" was one of the first songs I learned when learning to play the organ. I rather like it, but I didn't know it had any words.

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Mooh
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 08:47 AM

I once quit a band over "Colour My World" or whatever that Chicago song was called. I didn't care how popular it was at the time, I just couldn't take it. I still have to do songs I don't care for but nothing that lousy. Sorry Chicago fans.

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Amos
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 08:53 AM

On a day like today
We'd pass the time away
Writing looooove leeeetterrrs
In the Sand.
How you laughed, when I cried
Each time we saw the tide
Take our loooove leeeters
from the sand...etc., etc..

Actua;;y, Homeless, I'll stop for fear of ruining a perfectly pleasant melody in your head.

Metchosing I understand the affection for This Old House -- I gre up in an old house myself, a sprawling colonia with parts predating the Revolution, and i loved it. But musically, I am sorry to say, it's in the Patti Page category. Well, ok, not quite...I won't argue about individual tunes. That postwar era, in a kind of massive post trauma syndrome of gleeful propriety and insincerity, was (for me, mind you) just so rich with saccharinity as to earmark the whole period as the Age of Saccharine. A mish mash of pseudo-victorian morals and hypocritical practices and smarmy public art modeled on the plastic flamingo... A land where the acquisition of Lawn Dwarfs was the pinnacle of social and financial success in many places....yuk. Don't me -- I'm just reliving my Gregory Corso period...

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Callie
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 08:55 AM

Lay off Walzing With Bears or I'll set Uncle Walter onto you.

If you want real Barf-a-rama, try these:

Anything by Phil Collins

The Rose (Spewwwww!)

The Ski Instructors' Daughter (where she loses her legs and the ghost of the ski instructor still roams the ski slopes looking for his daughter's legs)

The Australian national anthem which starts off "Australians all let us rejoice for we are young and free". They have to distribute airplane sick bags whenever the anthem is sung.

Anne Murray singing "You Needed Me"

Bryan Adams singing "Have you ever really loved a woman" (Barrrrf!)

That awful song "I've been to paradise but I've never been to me"

I have to go and take a laxative now.

--Callie

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 09:09 PM

Just checked with the DT - "Patches" looked fair enough, given the right tune. I've never heard it so I couldn't say. Break out the autoharp and a few Carter Family harmonies and there's nothing in the words you couldn't live with.

I'm not saying there aren't any lousy songs, just that being extra sweet or extra sad aren't in themselves ground for saying a song is lousy. And there's a fair number of pretty good songs in here.

And did I see someone being disparaging about the House at Pooh Corner? That's fighting talk...

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Metchosin
Date: 07 Mar 00 - 09:47 PM

Amos, the Rosemary Cluney version of This Old House would explain your dislike for it. We had it on a record by someone called Stuart Hamblin? or something like that, which just goes to demonstate Mcgrath's point, that it sometimes depends on the singer.

You are right, of course, about the Age of Saccharine. Thinking back to that time still makes my skin crawl, but the Victorians had the corner on the market until then, particularly their songs about fallen women and fathers who wouldn't come out of the pub.

The good thing about it was that it drove me and I'm sure others to Country and Western and folk music. Some of the 50's C&W was pretty saccharine too, but most of the singers got away with it, because of the honesty of their songs.

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Whistle Stop
Date: 08 Mar 00 - 02:41 PM

Obviously, there are plenty of saccharine songs out there that I would be happy to never hear again. But taking potshots at Barry Manilow and Bobby Goldsboro is too easy (and Judy Collins, and Karen Carpenter, and...). I absolutely love Bob Dylan, but does anyone else agree with me that we've all heard enough of "Blowin' In The Wind"?

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Troll
Date: 08 Mar 00 - 03:13 PM

Of course it's too easy. Thats the whole point. Any song idea can be done to death and badly.And a lot of the songs listed were and are. "Blowin'In The Wind" still speaks to a lot of people.To others it doesn't. There were singers and songwriters like Manilow and Goldsboro who seem to have made their whole career writing and singing really sappy material and so they have become natural targets.Theres little or no malice involved. It's just venting.

troll

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 08 Mar 00 - 03:33 PM

Venting is best done outdoors I always feel.

Subject: RE: Saccarine Overload
From: Wesley S
Date: 08 Mar 00 - 03:53 PM

Here are my 3 votes:

Me and You and a Dog Named Boo - by Lobo

Funny Face - by Donna Fargo

I Honestly Love You - by Olivia Newton John.

I'd rather listen to nails on a blackboard. How ANYONE could listen to that song and not retch is beyond me.