Worst Song?

Subject: RE: Worst Song?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Apr 06 - 08:20 PM

It is beyond the pale as far as I'm concerned. Downright embarrassing. I wrote a parody of it in retaliation against those who will not stop performing it at our gatherings.

Subject: RE: Worst Song?
From: GUEST,Joe_F
Date: 21 Apr 06 - 09:05 PM

I regret to inform this company that "Streets of London" is on my Top 300 list. It has chord progressions and a moral.

--- Joe Fineman    [e-mail]

||: Little things console us, because little things afflict us. :||

Subject: RE: Worst Song?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Apr 06 - 09:27 PM

There are many really obnoxious and fatuous songs which have chord progressions and a moral.

Subject: RE: Worst Song?
From: Mr Fox
Date: 22 Apr 06 - 12:52 PM

'Streets of London is OK early McTell. Not the best song he's ever written (That would be 'Jesus Wept' or 'Peppers and Tomatoes') but not the worst either. It's just been done to death.

Subject: RE: Worst Song?
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Apr 06 - 02:26 PM

A friend of mine once wondered what a truly bad song was.

I told her that it's the kind of song that, when you're rolling paint on a high ceiling from a ladder, you have to stop, climb down, and change the radio station, then climb up again. If you have to visit the bathroom between the down and up, it's really, REALLY bad!

Sue

Subject: RE: Worst Song?
From: Danks
Date: 22 Apr 06 - 03:34 PM

One thing that classical music followers can do, and followers of most other styles of music find difficult, is listen to a piece of music and judge it with an historical perspective. For example, no classical fan would critize Mozart for having a very narrow harmonic pallet as compared to, say, Wagner. So when we critize "The Streets of London", we must do it in the context of its conception - in the 60s. Then it was fresh, made you think, and had a lovely clawhammer ( that's what we called it then) guitar accompaniment. I can still remember the tremendous buzz it caused on the folkscene. Long before I heard it - and before it was recorded, the word went out about this great new song by Ralph McTell. Interestingly, Ralph can't be blaimed for the tune! It appears ( it has been alleged) that he lifted it - unwittingly, from Al Stewart's song " Samuel, Oh how you've changed!"

Subject: RE: Worst Song?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Apr 06 - 09:52 PM

Yes, it is a pretty blatant copy (musically) of that little Al Stewart tune.

You're right, it was fresh and seemed quite relevant at the time. It has become an overplayed cliche in the decades that followed. That can easily happen and often does with hit songs.

Subject: RE: Worst Song?
From: melodeonboy
Date: 23 Apr 06 - 08:28 AM

I have to say that I thought it naff the first time I heard it (I think it was mainly the style of singing that got to me), which was a long, long time ago; probably about the time that others were finding it fresh and exciting!

Subject: RE: Worst Song?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 24 Apr 06 - 05:48 PM

I never liked it much other. It seemed just, well, a bit trite or contrived. Kind of like one of those black velvet paintings or something.

Subject: RE: Worst Song?
From: Wilfried Schaum
Date: 25 Apr 06 - 05:19 AM

Where have all the flowers gone - arrgh!

Subject: RE: Worst Song?
From: greg stephens
Date: 25 Apr 06 - 06:05 AM

Definitely "Streets of LOndon". And the more people turn up saying how meaningful it is, the more it makes want to heave. And I may say that I have a great admiration for Ralph McTell: everyone's entitled to an off day.
I experience a similar medical reaction to "Imagine", they really ought to issue brown paper bags with thw record.

Subject: RE: Worst Song?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 25 Apr 06 - 08:49 AM

For pure hypocrisy, I vote for "Don't Think Twice, That's All Right," by the supposedly liberal Bob Dylan. Every time I hear:

I don't say you treated me unkind
you could've done better but I don't mind.
You just sorted of wasted my precious time.
Don't think twice, that's all right.

Talk about sticking the knife in and twisting it!
----------
And when he sings that he'll be walking on the dark side of the road, I figure it's so he won't have to pay child support.
----------
I also agree about "Green Green Grass of Home". That song is sick.

Speaking strictly musically, I vote for The Gambler, a strong contender for The Modern Song Closest to Having One Note.

Subject: RE: Worst Song?
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 25 Apr 06 - 10:05 PM

The song from the heart that is never sung.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Are we playing D&D here?????....this question was a "no-brainer."

Subject: RE: Worst Song?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 Apr 06 - 10:25 PM

I like the Dylan approach in that song, leeneia, because it was shockingly honest....at that time in songwriting history...to so clearly state those kind of feelings, those contradictory and self-serving impulses, which so many people indeed have in real life, but would not have thought of admitting to in a popular song until Bob Dylan came along.

It was his ability and willingness to write just such stuff as that which demolished Tin Pan Alley's inane hold on the songwriting business, and opened the door to songs that exposed every level of real human motivation...both light and darkness.

Remember, love songs back then were of a few totally predictable and cliche formula varieties. Dylan broke the mould. He dared to expose his own fickleness, as well as that of other people, and he laid bare the contradictions that can arise in a close relationship.

How many of us have felt (in some bitter moment) that someone "wasted our precious time" in the wake of an intimate relationship? Just about all of us, I'd say. And yet in another moment we may feel tender about them, we may miss them, we may feel all kinds of regret. He expressed all of it, and he wasn't afraid to.

That's what makes the song so damn powerful. That's why so many (including females) have covered it. Same deal for "It Ain't Me, Babe". Those songs were just stunningly honest at the time they came out, cos no one else had said it so straight as Dylan did. No one else had expressed the complexities of attraction and rejection as he did. His awareness of his own as well as the other person's dark side is what gives his songs the strength they have.

You can love people...and hate them...and want them...and want to get away from them forever...and it can ALL be carombing around inside your skull at one and the same time! That's why he said it. He was not writing to the commercially accepted formula that delivers just one simple, dumb message...as if that was all there was to say about the matter.

Subject: RE: Worst Song?
From: Boab
Date: 26 Apr 06 - 02:01 AM

"British Grenadiers" by a mile!

Subject: RE: Worst Song?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Apr 06 - 02:39 AM

Let me add the one about the Battle of New Orleans. It is the classic example of tobaccy-chewin' and a-spittin' and a-grinnin' and a-scratchin' Ay-merican hillbilly chic bravado, and I hate it.

Makes me sick. Anyway, Andrew Jackson was a murdering S.O.B. who broke treaties, exterminated Indians and stole their land, and I don't admire him one bit.

Subject: RE: Worst Song?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 26 Apr 06 - 05:27 PM

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Music/04/25/worst.songs/index.html

Subject: RE: Worst Song?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Apr 06 - 06:03 PM

"The Night Chicago Died" and "Billy, Don't Be a Hero" were written by the same songwriters -- Peter Callander and Mitch Murray.

Whoa! The songwriting team from hell.


The Abracadbra song is simply dreadful, by the way.

Subject: RE: Worst Song?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Apr 06 - 08:23 PM

But what's so objectionable about "Midnight At The Oasis"? (other than it being overplayed on the radio)

Subject: RE: Worst Song?
From: catspaw49
Date: 26 Apr 06 - 09:44 PM

Always a winner thread topic.........

Okay........ANYTHING ever done or thought about being done by Red Sovine........"Giddy-up go Daddy...Giddy-up Go."............yeah right.....just take all of Red's bullshit and giddy it's ass up and on outta' here. What crap!

And I can't let one of these go past without mentioning Bobby Goldsboro and "Honey."........Ain't that just the sappiest piece of shit you ever heard? Makes for good parody though........
See my stiff dick, I'm so afraid
That since you're dead I can't get laid
And I needa' fuck!


Then of course there's the David Bowie thing about Major Tom the psychotic astronaut.........
Ground Control to Major Tom
You really have fucked up
........or words to that effect. It's aptly titled "Space Oddity".........now ain't that the truth? Little Hawk will be along to explain the deeper meanings of this winner and it's relationship to the Cosmos, the Tri-Lateral Commision, and a Lithuanian pants presser named Harold.........Whatever it is, YOU figure it out!

Spaw

Subject: RE: Worst Song?
From: Ferrara
Date: 26 Apr 06 - 10:39 PM

Does anybody have a recording of Allen Dameron singing "Fort Worth"? I would love to have a copy. Don't think he ever put it on a CD, he just said he loved to sing it because it was such an awful song. Supposedly it's being sung by a guy hiding from the law --

Forth Worth is such a lovely place to disappear into --
On the muscle of my arm
There's a red and blue tattoo
Saying, "Fort Worth, I love you!"

Allen (who lived in San Antonio) used to introduce the song by saying "Fort Worth is like a giant exhaust fan -- if you stand in front of it, it blows; and if you stand behind it, it sucks."

Subject: RE: Worst Song?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Apr 06 - 10:39 PM

"Space Oddity" is of course brilliant, and does not need me to defend it. ;-P

I have to agree about Red Sovine, though. Hoo-wee! I listened to Giddy-Up and Go and here I am awash in tears...

Here's a beaut from Dell Reeves, 1965:

Girl On The Billboard

WHO IS THAT GIRL
WEARING NOTHING BUT A SMILE

AND A TOWEL IN THE PICTURE

ON THE BILLBOARD IN THE FIELD

NEAR THE BIG OLE HIGHWAY?


ROLLING DOWN THE HIGHWAY IN MY JIMMY,

HAULING FRIEGHT FROM CHICAGO TO ST. LOUIE;

LAWD, I SEE HER EVERY DAY.


A DOUBLE CLUTCHING WEASEL LIKE ME

HARDLY GETS A GIRL ANYWHERE

WHO`LL LOOK AT ME THAT WAY,

LIKE THE GIRL

WEARING NOTHING BUT A SMILE AND A TOWEL

IN THE PICTURE ON THE BILLBOARD

IN THE FIELD NEAR THE BIG OLE HIGHWAY.


WOW!, WHAT A GIRL

WEARING NOTHING BUT A SMILE AND A TOWEL

IN THE PICTURE ON THE BILLBOARD

IN THE FIELD NEAR THE BIG OLE HIGHWAY.

I BET IT WOULDN`T TAKE HER VERY LONG TO GET GONE

IF SOMEONE WOULD PULL A DIRTY LITTLE TRICK

AND TAKE HER TOWEL AWAY.


I SLOW MY JIMMY DOWN TO TWENTY,

THAT`S HOW MANY WRECKS I SEE THERE EVERY DAY,

CAUSED BY THE GIRL WEARING NOTHING BUT A SMILE

AND A TOWEL IN THE PICTURE

ON THE BILLBOARD IN THE FIELD

NEAR THE BIG OLE HIGHWAY.


I LOVE THE GIRL WEARING NOTHING BUT A SMILE

AND A TOWEL IN THE PICTURE

ON THE BILLBOARD IN THE FIELD

NEAR THE BIG OLE HIGHWAY.

I GUESS I`M GETTING BOLDER

`CAUSE I`D RATHER KISS AND HOLD HER

THAN JUST KEEP A-LOOKING AT HER EVERY DAY.


AT FOUR FORTY FIVE COFFEE DRINKING - EATING TIME,

JIMMIE SHIMMIED WHILE I WOKE UP THE ARTIST

THAT PAINTED THAT DISPLAY OF THE GIRL

WEARING NOTHING BUT A SMILE AND A TOWEL.

DOG-GONE THAT GIRL

WEARING NOTHING BUT A SMILE AND A TOWEL

IN THE PICTURE ON THE BILLBOARD

IN THE FIELD NEAR THE BIG OLE HIGHWAY.


THE SLEEPY-HEADED PAINTER SAID THE GIRL WASN`T REAL,

AND I`D BETTER GET THE ( COO- COO) ON MY WAY.

ON ROUTE 66 FROM THE BILLBOARD TO CHICAGO,

YOU WILL FIND TINY PIECES OF MY HEART

SCATTERED EVERY WHICH-A-WAY,

SHATTERED BY THE GIRL

WEARING NOTHING BUT A SMILE AND A TOWEL

IN THE PICTURE ON THE BILLBOARD IN THE FIELD

NEAR THE BIG OLE HIGHWAY.


IN THE PICTURE ON THE BILLBOARD IN THE FIELD

NEAR THE BIG OLE HIGHWAY.