August 2020 Challenge Thread - The Dog Days of Vinyl Playing

Day 13 - Scary (Catch Up)

Good variety of songs on this album but some are decidedly creepy. The intro of Hi Diddle Dee Dee, and Tom Waits doing Heigh-Ho in particular. Bonus in getting to listen to the Replacements version of Cruella De Ville.

Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films - RSD 2018 Black Friday edition


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Day 18: Bad Poetry Day - Play an album with terrible lyrics. Bonus points for posting your favorite cringe-worthy lyric.
Bruce Springsteen - Born In The U.S.A.
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Specifically “Glory Days”

I had a friend was a big baseball player
Back in high school
He could throw that speedball by you
Make you look like a fool boy

Bruce supposedly is a big Yankees fan, I say supposedly because anyone who is a baseball fan or player would never refer to any type of pitch as a “speedball”. Fastball, Curveball, Change Up, Slider, etc.. any 2 syllabic pitch would have worked fine there but he went with Speedball? A speedball to the best of my knowledge is a Heroin-Cocaine combo that kill John Beluchi. A speedball seems more like a descriptor used by someone unfamiliar with the sport that heard someone reference a Fastball but didn’t remember the wording precisely. Bruce is typically such a great wordsmith that such an off word choice really stick out like a sore thumb.

...It’s still a good song though.
 
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August 18 - Bad Poetry Day - Play an album with terrible lyrics. Bonus points for posting your favorite cringe-worthy lyric.

Moorrissey "Low in high school"

I've decided to pick this record solely for the lyrics of "Spent the day in bed". While I like the arrangement of that song, the lyrics are quite weak by Morrissey's standards and especially I can't agree to his "recommendation to stop watching the news as they make you feel afraid and frightened" . I think it's utterly important to know what's going on in the world. I know @Joe Mac recently also criticized late Morrissey especially for this song.

So these are the lyrics:

"Spent the day in bed
Very happy I did, yes
I spent the day in bed
As the workers stay enslaved
I spent the day in bed
I'm not my type, but
I love my bed
And I recommend that you
Stop watching the news
Because the news contrives to frighten you
To make you feel small and alone
To make you feel that your mind isn't your own
I spent the day in bed
It's a consolation
When all my dreams
Are perfectly legal
In sheets for which I paid
I am now laid
And I recommend to all of my friends that they
Stop watching the news
Because the news contrives to frighten you
To make you feel small and alone
To make you feel that your mind isn't your own
Oh time, do as I wish
Time, do as I wish
Oh time, do as I wish
Time, do as I wish
Oh time, do as I wish
Time, do as I wish
Oh time, do as I wish
Do as I wish
I spent the day in bed
You can please yourself
But, I spent the day in bed
Pillows like pillars
Life ends in death
So, there's nothing wrong with
Being good to yourself
Be good to yourself for once
And no bus, no boss, no rain, no train
No emasculation, no castration
No highway, freeway, motorway
No bus, no boss, no rain, no train"

View attachment 61954
No no no

This is a work of staggering genius ..

Who wants to watch biased news on Fox ...
Who wants to read the Daily Mail ....
Who wants to read the Mirror ..


Stop watching the news and make your own mind up ...that’s the point

And who doesn’t dream of no bus, no boss, no rain, no train ...

Simple lyrics but lots of layers
 
Day 18: Bad Poetry Day - Play an album with terrible lyrics. Bonus points for posting your favorite cringe-worthy lyric.
Bruce Springsteen - Born In The U.S.A.
View attachment 61991
Specifically “Glory Days”

I had a friend was a big baseball player
Back in high school
He could throw that speedball by you
Make you look like a fool boy

Bruce supposedly is a big Yankees fan, I say supposedly because anyone who is a baseball fan or player would never refer to any type of pitch as a “speedball”, Fastball, Curveball, Change Up, Slider, etc.. any 2 syllabic pitch would have worked fine there but he went with Speedball? A speedball to the best of my knowledge is a Heroin-Cocaine combo that kill John Beluchi. A speedball seems more like a descriptor used by someone unfamiliar with the sport that heard someone reference a Fastball but didn’t remember the wording precisely. Bruce is typically such a great wordsmith that such an off word choice really stick out like a sore thumb.

...It’s still a good song though.


Reminds me of the Cymbals Eat Guitars song where he says "Notre Dame's playing" but pronounces it like the cathedral. I'm pretty sure he just googled "sports teams of Indiana" when writing the lyrics 😂
 
Reminds me of the Cymbals Eat Guitars song where he says "Notre Dame's playing" but pronounces it like the cathedral. I'm pretty sure he just googled "sports teams of Indiana" when writing the lyrics 😂
But they are FROM Indy aren’t they? Everyone in Indiana has surely heard Notre Dame referenced thousands of times growing up, right? Even if sports aren’t your thing.
 
But they are FROM Indy aren’t they? Everyone in Indiana has surely heard Notre Dame referenced thousands of times growing up, right? Even if sports aren’t your thing.

Yeah, you would certainly think so - it's just so confusing. Maybe he just insisted on pronouncing it the French way? Like the papier mache woman on Seinfeld? 😂
 
Reminds me of the Cymbals Eat Guitars song where he says "Notre Dame's playing" but pronounces it like the cathedral. I'm pretty sure he just googled "sports teams of Indiana" when writing the lyrics 😂
LOL I was wrong. CEG are a New Jersey Band (which makes a lot of sense thinking back about it) I guess I always assumed that if they had a track titled “Indiana” that they were likely from the Hoosier State. I guess I should have known better Sufjan did make a whole album dedicated to Illinois.
 
Day 18: Bad Poetry Day

J. Cole - 4 Your Eyez Only


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Most of this album’s lyrics are good/decent, with the exception of a lyric in “She’s Mine Pt. 1”, a song where he’s expressing love and tenderness towards his girlfriend (whether from his or his friend’s perspective I can’t tell):

Every time you go to sleep you look like you in heaven
Plus the head game is stronger than a few Excedrin


Way to kill the mood, bro.
 
(Flow)
My favorite dish is fish, mother flipper
And I eat it for the hell of it
A nice bit of halibut
That's not the only fish they got
Mackerel! (Mackerel!)
I can take more than a snackful
Salmon with some jammin’
I can drink it by the tapful
Haddock all is radical
I eat the fins, I eat the gills
Pollock, cod, flounder, guppy
All fish is delicious, sue me

(Hook)
There's not enough fish in the sea, baby
There's not enough fish for me
(Fish is delish!)
There’s plenty of fish in the sea, baby
But there's not enough fish for me
Ahahahaha this is hilarious.
 
Bruce is typically such a great wordsmith that such an off word choice really stick out like a sore thumb.

That does seem odd to choose the word speedball. Sometimes when in the studio and a word just isn't sounding quite right, or the singer is tripping on it, it's changed for ease of annunciation. I obviously don't know, but maybe that's it?
 
Catch-up

DAY 17 - WORRRRK

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If you love what you do, you will never work a day in your life.

DAY 18 - CRINGE POETRY

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Here's an excerpt from "Walnut House":

My leather daddy dancing very near
Like a sweetheart would
Hurting my butthole
Like a sweetheart would


I wonder how many different ways he tried to say that third line before he landed on that couplet. I mean really? "Butthole" is the best he could come up with?

EDUT FOR CLARIFICATION: I don't know any adults who would use the word butthole when they could say asshole or any other number of different terminology. Children or teenagers, yes, but not adults. Because of this, it leads me to wonder if the narrator is underage and being taken advantage of.
 
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Day 18 - Bad Poetry Day
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Murder of the Universe

I think if you like them, the campy lyrics are part of the fun, but this album especially.

I am bereft of two human things
Two things that a cyborg can never do
Two things that I strive for
Two things between myself and mankind
Death
And
To vomit
I want the perspiration
I want the nausea
I want to be sick
I want to feel the hot piquant nuggets
I want it to find passage through my cold figure
I want to make a mess
I want the odour
I want the spectacle
And I want it again
I want it all

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Day 18 - Bad poetry day

Mannie Fresh with one of my all time favorite rap bars:
McGuyver ain’t liver than a Big Tymer
Big dick, a million dollars, and a Pathfinder


Hung, rich, and owner of a Nissan Pathfinder - It literally doesn’t get any better than that.

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DAY 18
BAD LYRICS
Weezer - Weezer (The Red Album)
This day was always going to be Weezer, the only question was which album to go with. I heavily considered Hurley due to "Where's My Sex?" and "Smart Girls" alone, but I think the bad lyrics on here are more entertainingly awful and bewildering. This album is weird as hell but I have a strange affinity for it, it's probably the most ambitious Weezer album even if a great deal of that ambition falls flat on its face. That said, there's no defending some of the lyricism on here. I'm just gonna throw out some highlights, but there's plenty more where this came from.

Pretty much the entirety of "Troublemaker" but special mention goes to "Movies are as bad as eating chocolate ice-cream" and "Marrying a beeyotch, having seven keeyods"

"You try to play cool like you just don’t care
But soon I’ll be playin’ in your underwear
"

I actually like "Heart Songs" in a cheesy kind of way but the name drops are pretty clumsy. This is the first verse (and yes nearly the entire song is written like this)
"Gordon Lightfoot sang a song about a boat that sank
In the lake at the break of the morning
A cat named Stevens found a faith he could believe in
And Joan Baez, I never listened to too much jazz
But hippie songs could be heard in our pad
Eddie Rabbitt sang about how much he loved a rainy night
Abba, Devo, Benatar were there the day John Lennon died
Mr. Springsteen said he had a hungry heart
Grover Washington was happy on the day he topped the charts
"

Again, "Cold Dark World" is basically a black hole of bad lyrics but have to give a special shout-out to
"I'm not like the others, I'll be like a brother
I will protect you, never disrespect you
But if you need love then I'll be here to sex you
"

And saving the best for last, I present the best opening lines to any song ever, from "Everybody Get Dangerous"
"When I was younger
I used to go and tip cows for fun, yeah
Actually I didn't do that
Because I didn't want the cow to be sad
"

Incredible.
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(The album cover also kind of sucks.)
 
Day 13 - Scary

Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Honestly, I was stumped on this for awhile. I don't have any horror movie soundtracks (thought about using There Will Be Blood) and nothing all that scary. But I remember as a kid, listening to this record (it was my older sister's, this is the actual copy) and being scared of the opening couple of minutes of this. The title was scary, Funeral for a Friend, and the howling wind and other effects were chilling to me. And yet I'd always play it, to get to the music right after because it was/is so great.

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Day 18

Bad lyrics

if I had madman across the water I’d be playing that today because levon with its cartoon balloons selling bullshit.

Anyhow, this is pretty dumb. My wife came in at the start of side two (the title track) and said is he just singing about dogs?

This is how side one starts:

C'mon, baby,
Do the dog.
Do the dog.
Do the dog.
Do the dog.
Do the dog.
Everybody's doin' the dog.
C'mon, baby, c'mon chil',
Do the hound dog.
Do the hound dog.
Do the hound dog, baby.
Do the hound dog.
Do the dog.
Everybody's doin' the dog.

C'mon, baby, c'mon chil',
Do the bull dog.
Do the bull dog, yeah-yeah.
Do the bull dog, baby.
Do the bull dog, yeah.
Do the dog.
Everybody's doin' the dog.

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Rufus Thomas - Walking the Dog
 
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