Archie
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Eraserhead son or Inland Empire daughter?
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Post by Archie on Mar 28, 2020 20:01:01 GMT
I feel like so much of early REM's music is added to by Michael Stipe's bizarre sense of humor, and how creatively he works it into his music. They really had an ironic hilarity that was often sorely lacking from many popular indie bands around that time. Also I have to disqualify The 'Mats here because they can get terrifyingly real sometimes  |
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 28, 2020 20:23:20 GMT
Great thread topic. REM had a wonderful sense of humor and then (to me at least) none at all suddenly - they turned very dour and serious post Document (though there was still Stand and Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight too) - but Little America is a very great song: "Jefferson I think we're lost" - that's Jefferson Holt I guess but it could be Thomas Jefferson, or Jefferson Davis too - a line that has 3 levels of a joke to it. I mean come on...... |
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 28, 2020 20:39:50 GMT
I mentioned before that bands with a sense of humor is part of my criteria for greatness - The Stones, Dolls, Modern Lovers, Faces, Damned, Dylan, Ramones, Costello are all favorites and all funny too. The 'Mats to me were the funniest of them all and the song I always pick for them is yet another one that's never been released - which is their claim to infamy too. I think Viced and Mattsby might know the exact amount of great lost songs because I have f'n lost track  This track was played a lot live in their peak period 84/85 - where's the studio outtake Paul? Beats me....... It sums them up almost better than any officially released track - a blues song specifically about how dumb they are - that's funny (and sad) just as an approach for Godsakes.
"Hear you been to college/there isn't anything they can teach me there"
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Post by DeepArcher on Mar 28, 2020 21:05:53 GMT
Oh yay another thread where Pacinoyes gets to make a new post in every single day ... lol ...
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Post by countjohn on Mar 28, 2020 21:12:14 GMT
I view most Sex Pistols songs as being jokes which is why I like them so much. A joke on over sensitive squares and the people who forgot what rock music was supposed to be about and were trying to turn it into a slick corporate product at various points in the 70's. I listen to them and laugh.
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 28, 2020 21:15:27 GMT
Oh yay another thread where Pacinoyes gets to make a new post in every single day ... lol ... yeah......the music threads are the only pleasure I get right now tbh - hopefully I've turned people on to some good stuff. Here's another humorous one so that's 3 posts in one day:  |
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Post by countjohn on Mar 28, 2020 21:19:15 GMT
Husker Du also stuck this in the middle of one of their big, loud albums which makes me laugh every time
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Post by Viced on Mar 28, 2020 22:19:48 GMT
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Post by mhynson27 on Mar 29, 2020 0:49:26 GMT
Eminem
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Post by The_Cake_of_Roth on Mar 29, 2020 2:09:42 GMT
Mr. Bungle could be hilariously crude in their lyrics (like in "Squeeze Me Macaroni"), but a lot of their humor came from their creative integration of different styles. This track can only be described as schizophrenic, almost like a cartoon in song form:
And for something completely different.... this is one of my favorite instances of a composer parodying another composer through quotation - Debussy lifts the famous motive from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, obviously poking fun at him given the context of the quotation (at 1:16):
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Post by countjohn on Mar 29, 2020 4:47:34 GMT
Some heavy metal band did this and released it as an actual physical single with one groove, would play it as an encore at their shows, and made a 1 second video for it with a little girl getting shot
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Post by countjohn on Mar 29, 2020 4:57:52 GMT
The grindcore band Anal C*** who normally did songs with titles like "Beating Up N****** That Sell Fake Crack", "I'm Gonna Give You Aids", "Kicking Your Ass and Fucking Your Bitch", "I'm Hitler", and "Get on Your Knees C***", decided to change it up and do songs with really nice lyrics for one album, like "I Respect Your Feelings as a Woman and a Friend". This is the highlight. Skip to 1:53 if you want to hear something truly beautiful. The first time I heard it I cried. |
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 29, 2020 9:46:21 GMT
Another thing I tend to beat into the ground is that Ike Reilly is the best America lyricist of the 2000s. He's also batsh it funny - the very first song on his first great (arguably his best) album is a joke - where he tells his lover that he doesn't think she'll mind about his drunken and disappointing sexual performance because he's funny (sort of) and then proceeds to tell his whole offensive (not really) joke/life story to illustrate it.
If you ever see him live (you should), it will make you want to drink everything in the liquor cabinet (you shouldn't), and throw away your f'n Joanna Newsom records (maybe you should?).
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 29, 2020 14:35:10 GMT
Look there's a pandemic going on ok? Shouldn't you be listening to a DOCTOR for Godsakes? Dr. Frank Portman - a doctor of love (um) - fronted the darkly funny Mr. T. Experience which basically was him and whoever backed him up - and he'd charmingly introduce every song live with an intro that went "this is a song about a girl!"..... This is a hilarious put down of a girl but mostly it's a put-down of himself....... and every sensitive jerk with an acoustic guitar ever - in a little over a minute. Ray Davies would totally approve... Mattsby and chris3 - two fans of his on here that I know of ..... |
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chris3
Badass
I just ordered a slice of pumpkin pie...
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Post by chris3 on Mar 29, 2020 15:55:53 GMT
Ha, MTX was a life preserver for me in high school. I always felt like this one was underrated. It always makes me laugh.
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 29, 2020 18:37:43 GMT
There is no more influential American band than The Ramones (go ahead - name 1, I'll wait ....) and at their best few bands were better but the fact is that when they emerged they were perceived initially (now?) as an unfunny joke. But like many things specifically and gloriously American it took a while to get (take that UK and Finland - happiest country my ass).....in their case one of their funniest jokes was all the things they didn't want to do at first at all (including Go Down To The Basement, Walk Around With You, and obscurities I Don't Wanna Be Learned.......heck they had a song called "I Can't Be" even).
The only thing the early Ramones wanted to do (besides be your boyfriend) was ......well you know ....because you have to have a purpose.
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 29, 2020 22:21:38 GMT
Before Jay Z started rapping about the designer blanket for his f'n baby and his f'n wife like a joke he occupied a position not too different from Bob Dylan at his peak.
He was the man, could eviscerate you in a song and was a lyrical freak - he could do it all off the top of his head........the difference was that Jay Z got his ass handed to him by Nas and that never happened (or could have) to Dylan.
Nas "Ether" is a hysterically funny song because unlike Jay Z's equally brilliant The Takeover - Nas didn't spit facts in this feud, he just didn't like Jay and dissed him the way a Rock song would ....there could be no legit response - in this song when he refers to Jay with "how much of Biggie's rhymes is gonna come out your fat lips" and "you 36 in a karate class" - it was hysterically over.
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Post by DeepArcher on Mar 30, 2020 23:05:36 GMT
Like always I obviously have to mention The National -- and that's in spite of the rumors Pacinoyes will spread about them being exclusively "dour" sadbois (paraphrasing here) -- not as outwardly funny as some things mentioned here, certainly not in any vulgar or graphic way either. They have more of a dry wit to them that gets conveyed in a lot of tongue-in-cheek lyrics throughout their oeuvre, but even more often the humor comes from how they supplement their music.
Matt Berninger on a Youtube live stream today: "Wrote this about John Kerry, but it's been handed down" ... lol ...
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 30, 2020 23:33:13 GMT
Like always I obviously have to mention The National -- and that's in spite of the rumors Pacinoyes will spread about them being exclusively "dour" sadbois (paraphrasing here) -- not as outwardly funny as some things mentioned here, certainly not in any vulgar or graphic way either. They have more of a dry wit to them that gets conveyed in a lot of tongue-in-cheek lyrics throughout their oeuvre, but even more often the humor comes from how they supplement their music. I will say they always tossed out snazzy one-liner jokes and in their pacinoyes approved great period : Alligator/Boxer (2000s top 50 list contenders - get your ballots into Joaquim dammit!) they had a lot of great drunk lines pop up. My favorite National song - one of their loudest (that's not a coincidence is it?) has a great one-liner "you're the (low)life of the party"..........and also a great clever drunk line "I try to untie Manhattan" (as opposed to "tie one on") and a funny swipe at themselves & their fanbase in 2005 "And everything surrounds you, and it doesn't fade
Nothing like this sound I make
That only lasts the season
And only heard by bedroom kids who buy it for that reason"
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Post by pacinoyes on Mar 31, 2020 12:34:02 GMT
The Exploding Hearts (their name is a cheery pop-joke too) album "Guitar Romantic" - a top 10 of the 2000s and a perennial Summer classic - assuming you can ever go out again I mean - was a throwback to the Dolls/Ramones which made it funny but also made it timeless too. In "Boulevard Trash" - one of their best songs - they are the trash they are giddily, obliviously singing about and they come up with comic examples that are the same as a "visual cue" would be in a movie ......... "they don't do the dishes no more they just throw them away"........"a $100 reward is out for him (since he was 10!), so he has to turn himself in" to get it. |
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Post by pacinoyes on Apr 1, 2020 13:55:28 GMT
Paul Westerberg (him again ) - used to do an insightful routine comparing his band to Van Halen - it went something like this (paraphrasing) - "They do 30 minute albums, so do we. They play drunk, so do we. They have brothers in the band, so do we. They sell 20 million records......we sell 20." No hard rock or metal band was ever as loose or funny as the original Van Halen with David Lee Roth and Westerberg could have added that early Van Halen knew their way around an obscure cover ............ just like his band. |
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Post by pacinoyes on Apr 2, 2020 6:01:10 GMT
"One thing the blues ain't, is funny." - Stephen Stills
I heard that quote from a live album long before I fell in love with the Blues and it was only later I realized how wrong he was. Sonny Boy Williamson may be the funniest artist in American music history, period - a guy who could BS his way out of anything and often get taken to the cleaners for it to so maybe not. His songs often spin out of control with irony.
This great song is typical about his cheating ways and its humorous until the 3rd/last verse where it then suddenly isn't - his cheating and money catches up to him .........and maybe that's what Stills meant.....
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Post by pacinoyes on Apr 2, 2020 14:49:39 GMT
American national treasure Tom Waits - Emotional Weather Report - "weather" is something that used to happen in what used to be called "outside".......
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Post by pacinoyes on Apr 3, 2020 12:52:21 GMT
One of the bands that explicitly has a sense of humor as part of their act The Hives named an album- Your New Favorite Band for Godsakes.
I post this song fairly often - one of the 21st century's best and funniest Rock songs....... Thank you Mr. CEO .....
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Post by pacinoyes on Apr 5, 2020 19:27:45 GMT
To really have a good sense of humor, you have to have it when things you love are mocked........think of this board - who really has a good sense of humor on here when their favorite movie gets made fun of? Um.....  Well, Pavement had a jokey comic mean streak but if you like The Smashing Pumpkins you maybe didn't think it was so funny ........but it really kinda was and you'd be hard pressed to find a song that takes a swipe at a band who is not actually the primary topic of the song even either - totally uncalled for! |
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