Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Tuesday Tuneage
Mott the Hoople - “Ballad of Mott the Hoople (March 26, 1972 – Zurich)”
1973


I'm on staycation this week, sitting at home with a book, Netflix, music, sitcom reruns, and booze. On Saturday, I got motivated to go to the coffee shop and write, but now that I'm solidly in the slackerdom of midweek my only motivation is to get to the CC Club sometime soon for a burger basket. So this week's song is kind of a repeat: A much-beloved Mott the Hoople song I wrote about years ago.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Tuesday Tuneage
Loverboy - "Turn Me Loose"
1980


So thirty years later, it dawns on me that this tune is about a male prostitute wanting freedom from his pimp. You know: punk rock. Apparently the band name and that photo on the cover of the album weren't enough of clues for me.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Tuesday Tuneage
Freddie and the Dreamers - "Do The Freddie"
1965


Heard this catchy ditty Friday on satellite radio, then checked out the band doing the song on YouTube. Oh. My. Lord...

1) An attempt at an early-sixties dance craze?

2) At least two guys in the band appears to be in their forties, which must have been a rare occurence for pop bands of the sixties.

3) Check out The Temptations and think about how white Freddie and the Dreamers were.

4) Then again, Lester Bangs in The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll: "Freddie and the Dreamers represented a triumph of rock as cretinous swill, and such should be not only respected, but given their place in history."

Tuesday, October 05, 2010

Tuesday Tuneage
The Baseball Project - "Don't Call Them Twinkies"
2010


It's a weird Tuesday night here in Minneapolis. The Vikings had a bye last weekend so talk about them has dropped amid the Twins opening their American League Divisional Series against the big bad Yankees tomorrow night. But a few hours earlier tonight, everything went haywire. Rumors hit the Internet that the Vikings are talking with the Patriots about trading for Randy Moss.

Despite the lovefest over Target Field and the Twins having actually scored the feat of having won world championships, this is a Vikings town. So I wouldn't be surprised to wake up Wednesday to hear that the Vikings have made their acquistion of a malcontent and that these twin towns are abuzz over a 1-2 team that is early in its season with a long way to go for any Super Bowl appearance that would inevitably result in getting utterly destroyed by a vastly superior AFC team.

But hey, I stay at home to write on Wednesdays, so I can drink my coffee and hopefully find something to read about the Twins somewhere. Maybe the New York papers?

As for this week's song, you can listen to it and read its backstory here. The Hold Steady's Craig Finn wrote the lyrics and sings it. It has a reference to Mudcat Grant, states that "we don't buy our titles", (in your face wherever you are George Steinbrenner!) and contains an oh-so-Midwestern "please" in the chorus.

Nobody has written such a song about the Vikings yet. Then again, "thirty-four total points in four Super Bowl appearances" isn't much of a hook.