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Post by pacinoyes on Apr 8, 2020 20:42:03 GMT
Blessed with a dry wit, dapper and charming Nick Lowe is a patron saint of this sort of thing - producer of Costello's first 5 (!), The Pretenders, The Damned - he made every one of them better just by keeping the mood light and on his own songs or with Rockpile he wrote slyly titled jokes like "All Men Are Liars", "Lately I've Let Things Slide" etc.
His first record (an all-timer) was particularly funny and included this one "Marie Provost" - about the silent film star eaten by her dogs.......that story isn't true but the rumor of course is and Nick wouldn't let that stand in the way of a good joke or song. Heck the album has a funny title (Jesus of Cool) and a funny cover .........
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Post by pacinoyes on Apr 12, 2020 15:15:05 GMT
Almost insanely painfully funny/sad especially for his peer group of Southern California mellowheads - he could go far darker and far funnier and sadder........ and just better.
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Post by pacinoyes on Apr 21, 2020 20:26:52 GMT
Mark Richardson at $hitfork once wrote a great line about the differences between The Replacements and Nirvana - that I wish I wrote dammit - legitimate differences about what made them both great - that they were (in some ways) opposites:
"Cobain was enamored of capital-a Art and all its pretensions; he thought of himself as a feminist and obsessed over childhood...... Westerberg thought "art" was short for "Arthur" and values in his songs were traditional"
His solo sense of humor was also weirder than in his band (covered earlier!) where he was with his drunken buddies - solo its like he jokes to himself and that may be why he doesn't say the F word here which is kind of funnier in a way......and maybe Cobain would call this song sexist, which may be true..... but I think Paul would find that really funny tbh.....
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Post by pacinoyes on Apr 30, 2020 16:21:21 GMT
The NY Dolls one of America's 10 greatest bands and a band who almost single-handedly kept humor in Rock and Roll in their magnificent 2 album run - released at the height of self-serious hard Rock and ponderous Progressive rock - even funny doing other peoples songs.
This song by Sonny Boy Williamson takes his hip urban patter which was hilarious to start with but not as hilarious as white kids in makeup who loved it (and they really did) and spitting it back out.
This is almost 50 years old and their are still people who don't get the joke or the band or this record.....
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Post by Mattsby on May 24, 2020 19:26:45 GMT
I Shall be Free is one of the funniest songs ever and this alt take which I've never heard before adds two more hilarious bits - One night when it got late I decided gonna lose some weight So I loaded up on my old horse Went to Reno, and got a divorce Lost 120 pounds! In two hours! and the very last line as it fades out, after "Catch hell from Richard Burton" which is where the album version ends
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 21, 2020 18:30:45 GMT
March 1975 - The ONLY new Punk band signed to a major label - Patti Smith would follow soon - this album sold nothing, didn't chart (!) they had to endure sh it thrown at them from an audience who got them less than the earlier NY Dolls .......but they were genuinely funny - like comedians with guitars - and provided a recorded output for the Ramones to incorporate and speed up. American punk Rock is unthinkable without the Dictators and their spectacular and inevitable failure and their professional wrestling intro is still funny by itself 45 years later....you may not get the joke if you're too young but they would say maybe your generation might be the joke if that's the case....... because they were really jerks like that....which is why they didn't sell anything and people threw sh it at them.....
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 22, 2020 9:40:03 GMT
Oh yay another thread where Pacinoyes gets to make a new post in every single day ... lol ... So true......sorry I've been lagging here, I can assure you it that will be corrected .........how is this only on page 2? Randy Newman who could have had several different musical careers including this one as a satirist which he did superbly and then eventually stopped because he was getting typecast as merely that........he was too funny for his own good.......
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 23, 2020 16:55:55 GMT
Who was the best band in the UK in the late 70s?
Lots of contenders....Joy Division......The Clash.....but the correct answer was The Attractions who not only could play as well as anyone else AND they could raise the level of songs that were already great without them.
Here they are playing and improving a song that they didn't record .........and the song itself a riotously funny song about masturbation is even funnier because it's more pissed off and frantic which is implicit to the joke in the song itself.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 24, 2020 18:27:43 GMT
The Kinks were not only one of the funniest bands, they were one of the best bands ever period too from 66-70 and this from their best record Arthur (!969) was one where outrage/humor and keen observational detail all intersect. Not only humorous but lead genius Ray Davies acts the song out by applying a different voice.......like a musical actor.
You'd be hard pressed to find a more sardonic individualistic song .....
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Post by DeepArcher on Jun 24, 2020 19:41:14 GMT
Was just thinking last night about how this very fucked-up song is also really fucking hilarious ... no one is able to straddle that line quite like Nick Cave:
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Post by futuretrunks on Jun 25, 2020 4:08:16 GMT
John Mayer, clearly, even if it tanked his career after Continuum. You can see why Dave Chappelle is a staunch friend.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 25, 2020 10:04:23 GMT
The Queers - a band that I've often argued were not only occasionally, sporadically, genuinely great (along with partners in crime the Mr. T Experience and Screeching Weasel) but were in many ways the most complicated, subversively funny/offensive band of those 3........Their very name is a joke itself - they're straight and the name here mocks the "arty" music scenes of the upper Northeast US where they're from.....often songs are built around jokes that start when you've had one drink too many. The album title is an offensive wordplay that mocks album titles.....and just look at the amount of beers ON the cover. When you see them live this track is sung by the audience like it's a mantra while mocking that very audience and male adolescent attitudes about sexuality ...........see I told you they were complicated........and damn it.......we're excited.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 26, 2020 10:18:01 GMT
Scott McCaughey has had a pretty amazing run - I mean his band played Westerberg's wedding (!) and was the 'Mats perennial opening act (NOT easy ).....he was Pete Buck of REM's buddy and is even now (and was a de factor 5th member of REM at times too) and he almost died from a severe stroke a few years back.......instead he completely recovered. In the 1980s his band - the poppy/noisy, joking/not joking - The Young Fresh Fellows were pretty wonderful and here is exhibit A - he wrote this searing "hey, fnck your (boyfriends) band" song (Killdozer) - one of the great band disses ever and a mercilessly sexist (not easy but not impossible) "airhead girl" song too that also dissed a specific groupie-type who said the songs exact title to him irl and....... she meant it....... and he did all of that in way under 2 minutes. Put it this way - if McCaughey posted on MAR and wanted to have a posting war of wits with pacinoyes - who is no slouch in that stuff mind you......well.....I'd cut my losses and run away from him in fear.....
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 27, 2020 16:51:05 GMT
The last true Rock Star who with his duo made at least 2 greeeeeeeeeeat albums (and 1 solo) and he never made a bad one either and was hilarious and idiosyncratic in the ways all his favorite blues records were. He believed in Rock and Roll and was ruthless and ruthlessly jovial (or mean) about it.
"I ain't saying I'm innocent, in fact the reverse, but if you're headed to the grave, you don't blame the hearse."
Damn straight...
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 28, 2020 10:34:59 GMT
I'm not too big a fan of the last 2 albums the original Pixies made - both acclaimed - Bossanova and Trompe Le Monde - but their first 3 releases Come on Pilgrim, Surfer Rosa and Doolittle form the heart of a remarkable and remarkably jokey 87-89 run. The Pixies had barely played any shows at all before they fell ass-backwards into a record deal and that sort of dumb luck went into the skewered worldview - often songs were non-sequiturs and lyrics sometimes not sung in English or recognizable and whispered and screamed with alternating male/female vocal accompaniment - they didn't just have a sense of humor .........they had a sense of derangement. This song from their last original lineup record shows that they were still at heart the same band even if I liked them less and even though they had been around they were still slightly cracked too here with a song that lampoons their audience, themselves and their own alma mater - they could have written this in '87 - with lyrics that tell you you're gonna hear "That's Educational!" - precisely 5 more times......
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 29, 2020 10:41:59 GMT
Johnny Thunders famously derided Joe Strummer as "Joe Bummer" and while funny was kind of a mean middle finger cheap shot - The Clash could be very funny and made an effort to be too. This song from their 2nd album was a narc busting put down of young authoritarian wolves in sheep's clothing.....this was their humor a young girl acting like no one young should.
The Clash always tried to throw curveballs like this which their politically active fans might call filler - but which were slyly political and served as breathers on their albums more obvious "serious" songs.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jun 30, 2020 9:44:19 GMT
Yeah some of you knew this was coming....I always champion Mr T Experience and The Queers (both already posted) as bands that were singularly funny and under the mainstream (and alternative!) rock radar in the 90s......and now I finally get to the 3rd of those bands Screeching Weasel who together formed the heart of a trinity that pre-dates - and artistically tops - Green Day or any of the pop-Punk vanilla copies of Green Day that made millions post '95. Screeching Weasel were the biggest of the 3 bands, and they made a genuine Rock classic album with 1991's My Brain Hurts and could be really really mean and specific as in this famous track from that record - or are they just telling it like it is - the way a kid would without guile, fake empathy or adult lies...... Screeching Weasel created Rock exactly like a genuine teenager would not a 20 something "recreating" their teenage years would. ..........and it was, for a time at least, fncking great....
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 1, 2020 10:00:40 GMT
Gil Scott Heron - a sort of Bob Dylan of the Black American experience could be painfully and stinging funny.....this song - one of his most famous is humorous (and pointedly not) in a way that is reflective to the absurdities of his life and his cultural situation.
He was for a time in the late 60s/70s a very fine poet ......and with Brian Jackson made several crucial albums. I still go through periods, usually in the Summer where I play just those records and nothing else for a few days.....
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 2, 2020 10:02:00 GMT
The 4 great UK bands of the 60s - Beatles, Stones, Who, Kinks all were fully formed people - never a given in bands - which is one of the reasons they were special and popular - there was nothing cultish or eye-brow raising weird about any of them. People who argue the Velvets or Stooges as "better" bands (who came later btw)....well, ok......but they were also removed from daily life and normalcy. You could have a beer with Keith Richards and Roger Daltrey.....Lou Reed and Iggy maybe not as much and they might crack you over the head with the mug and take your wallet. The Who used humor slyly and were very aware of satire, parody and exaggeration - they did a classic song entirely about masturbation (Pictures of Lily) a whole album on commercials and selling you stuff (The Who Sell Out) and here in one of their very best songs - they exaggerated the role of being a boy and being feminized by a domineering mother.....this song has non-binary choices, toxic masculinity and gender roles a full 50 years ago (um) - imagine any song today being this conceptually smart or funny - particularly in its ending which declares the obvious in stirring fashion.
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Post by bob-coppola on Jul 2, 2020 14:02:50 GMT
For solo acts, I don't think you can get funnier than Lily Allen. I'd love to get shitface drunk with her someday, she seems completely bonkers
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 3, 2020 9:14:40 GMT
Their debut single (!) - a classic that mercilessly mocks the DEMOCRATIC "progressive" governor of Cali, and links him to Hitler and changes from hysterical to genuinely frightening in mere seconds. Can you imagine that today (?) - The Dead Kennedys - Leftists who mocked Right and Left and were mercilessly honest in their satire of both.
Few bands ever fused Rock and politics successfully - The Clash, The Minutemen, Gang of Four ...........and The Dead Kennedys who were maybe the funniest too.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 4, 2020 10:19:48 GMT
The Strokes - don't often get credit for how funny they can be - usually in dry and (very) witty single lines - but when they made the occasionally inspired but mostly dour 3rd record "First Impressions of Earth" (that title, ugh - that's some Bowie-level unfunny pretension) you really missed the laughs. That's especially true since the last time we heard from them they had left us with the very funny "f-you" on a great closer - "I Can't Win" where they list a litany of things that go wrong ("You told me that these girls were easy!") or cleverly dismissive ("Good try, we don't like it!") - and then pull the rug out from under us/themselves with the stupendous musical rim shot closing line "I'll be right back" ..........before calling it a night (and an album).
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 5, 2020 9:58:07 GMT
Quick who's the best 70s American Rock band who is not "Punk" in any way?.........well um, besides Big Star that's tough .......maybe for a while NRBQ or Blue Oyster Cult or better yet Cheap Trick maybe but J.Geils Band would be a contender too. Funny and tight, and particularly great live as party band with a wildly charismatic front man (Mr. Faye Dunaway: Peter Wolf) they were funny because Wolf was and they found humor in their own songs and covers too.......this cover is owned by them and still sounds fresh and fun too..........they own this cover because Wolf owns it....
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 6, 2020 16:57:58 GMT
In American music history it's often Punk Rock that has the most sardonic and smart ass humor.......even bands that weren't thought of for their humor if they were in that scene had to have it.......if you were a Punk band without any humor at all you invited being laughed at........in the wrong way.
Black Flag in its earliest form(s) was insanely aware of everything that might lessen their impact and made sure they communicated specifically - they could really play and showed off, they had political viewpoints and when they did it - did it forcefully - and where they played live meant as much as where they didn't .........and the length of their hair - at various points short and long - was a big deal ........and they also had a jokey side that they didn't always push.......but that they made sure to display so you knew it existed.
For many people, for a time, they were the only band worth listening to.......or to see live.........or to wear on a T-shirt.
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Post by pacinoyes on Jul 7, 2020 9:52:05 GMT
What really is a sense of humor anyway? Is it just making a small joke or is it creating a whole absurdist world where many people would miss the humor ENTIRELY?
Roxy Music played the short AND the long con and did it in conception, recording and performance. Part of the reason is the original band had a genuine mad genius (Brian Eno) AND a preening Bowie-like (better in some ways) attention whore (Bryan Ferry). The two were humorous in the way that really smart Art students (naturally) always are and their songs begged to be misunderstood or assessed simply when they were definitely not simple - and like almost all such partnerships it didn't last long.
This is not just the best Eno/Ferry "collaboration", it is one of the greatest songs of its whole era, and most people would use the words "scary" or "creepy" rather than "humorous" and that is exactly what they'd want ......with much wit in the lyrics and a tremendous acting performance here by Ferry (almost all of it non-blinking, and non-human) that should have been nominated for Best Actor - a ghastly sense of humor, that makes it funnier......and of course scarier and creepier.
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