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Let's Put A Smile On That Face "Personality
Crisis" by the New York Dolls popped up on my iPod the other day. While
listening and suppressing a grin - I was at the gym, where like at the bar,
smiling to yourself while alone comes off to others as a sure sign of mental
instability - a thought occurred to me: That sometimes a vital ingredient in
the rock 'n' roll I typically love is not just guitars and drums and a gutsy
singer and a rhythm that moves me ... the hidden ingredient, the one that I
don't credit enough because of a forest-for-the-trees thing, is humor. And we're not talking about just being funny
here. I admire a certain type of humor from my rock 'n' rollers. Witty
instead of forcing the funny, witty instead of humor that makes it a novelty
song. Humor that doesn't overshadow the rest of the tune. The sound of the
song should mostly stand on its own but the lyrics are the icing and ice
cream on the cake. And please: Nothing contrived and nasally like the
horrible They Might Be Giants. We're talking rock 'n' roll here, not crappy
bands with shitty vocals and wuss rhythm sections. (TMBG's annoying white-boy
"singing" in Malcolm in the Middle's theme song is the main reason why I ended up
watching exactly one episode of the show.) To define it much more would be to
put up rules, and rock 'n' roll is enjoyed best when barriers are dropped. So
I started to think of my favorite funny rockers. It's no coincidence that
these artists are ones that I have spent quality time with the past few
years, playing them over and over. Like the Cheap Trick Summer of 2004, the
Coasters December of 2003, and so many late Friday nights with the two Dolls
albums blasting on my headphones. Hence,
my Top Ten Favorite Funny Rockers, also listing a fave funny moment: Bob
Dylan. "Tombstone Blues" (on Highway 61 Revisited) - His first three rock 'n' roll albums -
Bringing It All Back Home, Highway
61 Revisited, and Blonde on
Blonde - mixed garage rock,
Chuck Berry licks, and Beats-influenced lyrics that made him the funniest
rock 'n' roller of the sixties. So of course, ponderous self-absorbed boomers
ignored the jokes and tried to make him into a prophet, avatar, messiah, etc.
There is a theory that Dylan's blazing mid-sixties rock 'n' roll was done
under the influence of speed. Listens to the hilarious "Bob Dylan's 115th
Dream" and "Subterranean Homesick Blues" tend to confirm this.
All I know is that I want take whatever pill that led Dylan to write these
lines about LBJ from "Tombstone Blues": The Commander-in-Chief answers him while chasing a fly
Saying,
"Death to all those who would whimper and cry" And dropping
a bar bell he points to the sky Saying,
"The sun's not yellow it's chicken" The
Replacements. Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash - The 'Mats first album tends to be overlooked,
most likely because Paul Westerberg hadn't gotten "serious" yet.
(Though check out the morality tale of "Johnny's Gonna Die.") Their
debut featured songs about a bad concert at the St. Paul Civic Center,
needing cigarettes, being in love with the girl who works at the store, being
lazy, making fun of rivals Husker Du, and loving somebody until Friday (been
there!) Listeners to "Hangin' Downtown" might be baffled why
Westerberg keeps yelling "bus stop!" until they think about the
likelihood of the narrative taking place from the point of view of a northbound
bus on Hennepin Avenue. This song also features the classic 'Mats stumbling,
bumbling moment when Westerberg yells "everybody!" when going into
a chorus and absolutely nobody else joins in. He tells us in the liner notes
that they wanted to use a car horn to cover up the mistake, but "none of
us own a car." He also assures us that they're thinking about taking
music lessons. Run-DMC.
"You Be Illin'" (on Raising Hell) - First, honorable-mention props have
to go out to these lines from their landmark rap-metal fusion, "Rockbox",
unleashed a couple of years earlier: Your
Calvin Klein's no friend of mine Don't
want nobody's name on my behind "You
Be Illin'" features disses on a clueless sort who orders Big Macs at
KFC, yells "touchdown!" when Dr. J scores, eats dog food by accident,
and all along insists that "I be chillin'." Buoyed by an
irrepressible bass-and-sax rhythm, this one showed them to be the sons of the
Coasters. Cheap
Trick. "He's a Whore" (on their self-titled debut album) - This
one's about servicing, all while forcing a smile, a woman with a face that
could stop a clock and has green teeth. Cheap Trick's first album had a
grimmer, darker humor than, say, what they eventually got to with "Dream
Police." And lyrics like: (He's
a whore) I'll do anything for money (He's
a whore) Look at the things that I write foreshadowed
Cheap Trick's career in the eighties. Alice
Cooper. Alice Cooper's Greatest Hits (1974 Warner Bros. edition) - Originally the band was
called Alice Cooper and the name of the singer was Vincent Furnier. He's the
guy we now all know as "Alice." This is important knowledge, as it
shows why these lines from "Be My Lover" are funny: She asked me why the singer's name was "Alice"
I said, "Listen, baby, you really wouldn't understand"
This
anthology captures the original Alice Cooper band in all its catchy hard rock
glory. Their stage show was steeped in shocking theatrics, but these singles
are just PG-13 fun. "Elected" announces "the formation of a
new party, a third party, the WILD PARTY." (In your face, Libertarians!) The protagonist in "No
More Mr. Nice Guy" is so nice that he aggravates his reverend into
punching him in the nose. "Under My Wheels" tops the Stones's
"Under My Thumb." "School's Out" is hands-down, the
all-time greatest rock 'n' roll song for kids. It promises your school being
"out forever" by being blown up, plus has lyrics that admit: "We
can't even think of a word that rhymes". J.
Geils Band. "Love Stinks" (on eponymous album) - Geils was
probably funnier live, with Peter Wolf rapping away between songs about
telling his old lady that he was "just friends" with that other
gal, then wondering aloud: "Who's that chick with the long hair?"
and immediately a band member yells "Rapunzel!" But this hit of
theirs from '80 - which went Top Ten while yours truly was fourteen and hung
up on a girl I was convinced was perfect even though I barely talked to her -
is a gem. Sentiments like: I've
had the blues, the reds, and the pinks All
I can say is: "Love stinks" are
the fun alternative to Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart,"
released exactly eighteen days later. Van
Halen. "IÕm The One" (on their self-titled debut album) - Van
Halen were dismissed by critics and other smugniks in the late seventies for -
among other alleged transgressions against rock 'n' roll - singing about
drinking and sex and not taking the world and life seriously. As a wise man
once said: Well excuuuuuuse me!
Thankfully, younger generations ignored the tired cultural elitism of the
boomers and gladly adopted the joyous anthems of Van Halen. "I'm The
One" has patented Roth braggadocio along with breathtaking playing and
harmonies. Towards the end, Eddie's patented guitar stylizing leads up to the
VH boys going straight into bring-down-the-curtain Showbiz by harmonizing
repeated sounds of: "bop bahda shoobie doo-wa." Then they jump
right back into the song like nothing happened. Moves like this made amateur
pranksters like the Ramones just sound dated. The
Rolling Stones. Selected early singles - One crucial difference in the
eternal Beatles vs. Rolling Stones debate is that the Stones in song were
funny, while the Beatles were merely cute. (And inventive, brilliant, etc.)
The Beatles were rarely funny in song, and if "A Little Help From My
Friends" is your idea of rock 'n' roll humor, then you probably still
buy Ringo solo albums. And then look at the Stones. They had genuinely
humorous numbers in their early days: "The Spider and the Fly",
"19th Nervous Breakdown", "Mother's Little Helper",
"The Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man", "Get Off Of My
Cloud", etc. (And high praise goes to "Who's Driving Your
Plane?", which is also a Blonde on Blonde knockoff.) And these songs feature a humor I'd
probably appreciate even more if I were English because then I would get all
the class references. But the Stones hit a wall musically and humor-wise with
their attempt at psychedelia, Their Satanic Majesties Request. They soon rebounded with "Jumpin' Jack
Flash" through Exile on Main Street, but the humor of the earlier days disappeared. They came up with
a shtick - the country American bumpkin who drawled through the likes of
"Country Honk" and "Dear Doctor." By this time they were
arguably making their best music; but just as "Sympathy for the
Devil" wasn't as evil as "Paint It, Black", "Dear
Doctor" wasn't as funny as "Mother's Little Helper." The
New York Dolls. "Looking for a Kiss" (on their self-titled debut
album) - How bizarre the New York Dolls must have sounded back in the
early seventies: Fuzzy MC5 riffs that the Sex Pistols nicked a few years
later, girl-group stylings, a lead vocalist who threw ongoing commentary into
the very songs he was singing, the band not caring the least bit about chops
or hot licks. This song starts out quoting the Shangri-Las "Give Him A
Great Big Kiss" (their next album would be produced by Shangri-Las
svengali Shadow Morton) and ends with a loud kiss. In between are lyrics
about being out on the streets avoiding smack and searching for a smooch.
There's also a nice taunt at the hipster set: Everyone's
going to your house to shoot up in your room Most
of them are beautiful but so obsessed with gloom In
the end, David Johansen admits he wants both a kiss and a fix. I assure you: The Schlitz beer that is
on the album cover is not a gateway drug. The
Coasters. The Very Best Of
The Coasters - These
Lieber and Stoller-penned vignettes are a series of comic masterpieces
released a half-century ago. They are now so familiar but still hilarious:
The put-upon kid in "Yakkety Yak", the goofball in "Charlie
Brown", the guy watching an old western on TV in "Along Came
Jones", the (STD-infected?) girl in "Poison Ivy." Then there's
the class resentment of "What About Us?" and "Shoppin' For
Clothes." What else could I do at this point but quote lyrics and ask
you to sing them in deadpan-funny voices? This stuff is required listening
for anybody who claims to be a fan of rock 'n' roll. |
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