The Hungry Mom Song (Sunday Morning Open Thread)

Back in the days before you could just plug an iPod into your car stereo, we used to listen to CDs. On one family road trip (with dogs riding INSIDE the vehicle), I was playing DJ, and my daughter, who was about four years old at the time, asked to hear the “Hungry Mom Song.” We had no idea what song she meant, but after getting her to sing a few bars of it, we realized she meant Bob Marley’s classic, “Them Belly Full.”

Them belly full but we hungry.
A hungry mob is a angry mob.

The poor kid mistook “mob” for “mom.” We laughed our asses off. There are entire sites devoted to misheard song lyrics, of course, but I never tire of the topic. What’s the funniest one you’ve ever heard? Open thread.

Did the old songs taunt or cheer you?

What’s the best song ever about immigration/diaspora? This one may be my favorite.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Update. Also too:

It’s embarrassing to listen to prosperous 21st-century Americans with Irish surnames lavish on Mexican or Central American immigrants the same slurs — “dark,” “dirty,” “violent,” “ignorant” — once slapped on our own, possibly shoeless, forebears. The Irish were seen as unclean, immoral and dangerously in thrall to a bizarre religion. They were said to be peculiarly prone to violence. As caricatured by illustrators like Thomas Nast in magazines like Harper’s Weekly, “Paddy Irishman,” low of brow and massive of jaw, was more ape than human, fists trailing on the ground when they weren’t cocked and ready for brawling.

Open Thread – Hot Swedish Girls…

I have no idea where I am. This happens quite frequently and, I suppose, is to be expected after about 80 years or so of intemperate dedication to the pharmacopoeial pleasures. However, there is loud music and I have a 40 dollar cocktail in one hand and Brad Pitt in the other, so wherever I am it’s fancy.

Brad keeps bitching because Angelina got turned away by the bouncer for wearing open toed shoes, although I suspect it had more to do with the fact she smells like a civet on heat when you get up close. Brad, frankly, looks like shit. Nineteen kids and a girlfriend with both daddy and brother issues will do that to you. However, I’ve given the poor thing a pill, so he should perk up soon.

Gloria and Anderson are off trying to find coke, if they can stop arguing for five minutes about which of them is taking home the twin Albanian sailors who Gloria picked up earlier at Katie Couric’s party. Leitenant Prek and Leitenant Preng (for those are their names – what can you expect from a place that had a king called Zog?) are on shore leave for a few weeks and on the make in New York, and Katie hired them to serve as shirtless waiters because (apparently) “it’s my party, and I want it to be special”. More »

Song of the week

Aaron Neville, “Wrong Number (I Am Sorry, Goodbye)” (1966)
I’m just not sure you can ever go wrong with this guy. What have you been liking this week?

Open thread: It’s a wonderful surprise to see your shoes and your spirits rise

One of the many joys of being as filthy rich as me is the ability to declare your weekend begun at 10am on a Friday morning, or indeed at about 9.15 on Monday, concepts like “weekday” and “weekend” being essentially arbitrary anyway.

Happy weekend to all. Time for a drink and some music then. First, courtesy of the always lovely Popbitch – Rebecca & Fiona’s Dance, a perky little thing with some lovely female vocals and lots of lovely buzzy beats, that just cries out for a trance remix.

Also The Temper Trap’s Sweet Disposition, by reason of a further viewing of the delightful (500) Days of Summer. I haven’t been able to get Hall and Oates out of my head all week.

You will be pleased to know that preparations for the Convention in August are progressing well. The girls, on the whole, seem to think that Marge and I should just front up at the first Santorum “meet the delegates”, get some other old dear with a hat and a grudge to slip Ricky a shitload of laxatives hidden in a slice of chocolate cake, release Marge’s squirrels into the room and then make a break for it. I think that’s rather unsubtle. We shall see. More »

Song of the week

Bruce Springsteen, “Jack of All Trades” (2012)
Hearing a lot of good things about the new Springsteen album, but then seems we always do when they’re new. Still, “best since Tunnel of Love” tends to get one’s attention. Here he is on Fallon this past week. What do you think? Worthy or more of the same? Or share your own recent favorites. Or treat as an open thread.

BTW, how did the Seattle meetup go? I had good intentions of making it from Olympia but we all know how good intentions go. I hope a good time was had by all.

Open Thread

I am currently feeling no pain while playing Mass Effect 3, which is really, really good, but at the same time pisses me off in a number of ways. I need a mini-map, and I need the option to zoom out, damnit.

Regardless, this is what I am listening to:

Everyone always wants to boil the Cars down to Candy-O and Moving in Stereo, but they were really one of the quintessential rock bands of the late 70’s and early 80’s. They were every bit as good (and in some regard, better) than a lot of bands like Van Halen (before that Hagar abomination). It was good, timeless, mellifluous rock and roll.

I’m no longer in the closet. I love the Cars and have every album. And Rick Ocasek married Paulina Porizkova, so what other validation do you need?

Open Thread

I’m off to bed. Here is one of my all time favorite songs:

Here’s another, from someone who I consider the most under-appreciated musician of the last 30 years, Delbert McClinton:

He’s a genius, and his voice just makes the hairs on my arms stand on end- the falsetto “Just a losin’ my mind” at 2:36 makes me want to hold a lighter over my head. The Hammond B-3, my favorite all time instrument, is just the icing on the cake. So good. Just so damned good.

Either I’m too sensitive or else I’m getting soft

That earworm thread was one my all-time favorites, especially these two comments, so I thought I’d try another one like it on this crappy, rainy afternoon.

My favorite genre of music is songs that give you that kicked-in-the-gut, can’t-move, can’t-breathe, something-awful-is-happening kind of feeling: stuff like “Love In Vain”, “I’d Rather Go Blind”, “Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground”, “I’ve Got It Bad”, “I Loves You Porgy” (“don’t let him touch me with his hot hands” gets me), and, even though I’m not such a high-brow guy, the ending part of “Madame Butterfly”. (My second favorite genre is the “I’ve been kicked in the gut and I can’t breathe, but fuck it, I’ll try to have fun anyway” type.) But there are some songs like this I literally cannot get all the way through, because there’s too much of a gut kick—“For The Good Times” (I can’t get past the “tomorrow and forever and ever and ever” part) and “Simple Twist Of Fate” (I can’t listen to “I still believe she was my twin”) are the two main examples.

What are your favorite kicked-in-the-gut songs and what songs are you unable to get through?

Late Night Open Thread: The Obama Campaign Playlist

Cause the last one’s filling up (watch Cole pop up within the next 20 minutes). Via Dave Weigel, “the ultimate Jack Tapper post” reports that “President Obama’s re-election campaign even has an official soundtrack.”

Worms crawl in, worms crawl out

What are the worst ear-worms you have ever experienced?

For me, it’s John Mayer’s “Daughters”, which has afflicted me for the better part of the last decade (the “girls become lovers who turn into mothers” part), “Sister Golden Hair”, which threatened my already tenuous hold on sanity last fall (the annoying guitar intro part), and a battery commercial Stevie Wonder did in the early 80s (“you can depend on me”, don’t pretend you don’t know it, fellow oldsters) that my therapist suggested I try to forget.

Song of the week

Roots, “I Don’t Care” (2004)
This came up on shuffle this week and sounded pretty good. Here’s a link in case the video embed doesn’t work again. Still working on that one. Also, somebody requested Junior Kimbrough last week, so here’s his “Keep Your Hands Off Her.” What sounded good to you this week? Or treat as an open thread.

ETA: Video embed success! Huzzah!

Early Morning Open Thread: Mardi Gras

Welcome Shrove Tuesday, last chance for all pious Christians to indulge in rich foods and other base pleasures before bidding Carne vale—farewell to the flesh. Christian or not, enjoy your favorite high-fat, high-calorie baked sweets (is it a coincidence that Girl Scout cookies are in season?), but keep in mind the sad fate of King Adolf Frederick of Sweden, who “died of digestion problems… after consuming a meal consisting of lobster, caviar, sauerkraut, smoked herring and champagne, which was topped off by fourteen helpings of hetvägg, the king’s favorite dessert.”

Sunday Morning Open Thread

According to Google Translate, the song is called “Tight-fisted Girl”. I can only hope the lyrics aren’t hideously inappropriate/embarrassing, or at least that no one among the Balloon Juice commentariat will tell us if they are.

On a completely unrelated topic, the NYTimes’ doggedly pragmatic Nicholas Kristoff finds the answer to a question that has been raised by a number of you:

... I wondered what other religiously affiliated organizations do in this situation. Christian Science traditionally opposed medical care. Does The Christian Science Monitor deny health insurance to employees?

“We offer a standard health insurance package,” John Yemma, the editor, told me.

That makes sense. After all, do we really want to make accommodations across the range of faith? What if organizations affiliated with Jehovah’s Witnesses insisted on health insurance that did not cover blood transfusions? What if ultraconservative Muslim or Jewish organizations objected to health care except at sex-segregated clinics?

Song of the week

Hi everybody, thanks to DougJ for hooking me up with posting privileges. Here is your song of the week. Feel free to criticize, celebrate, suggest your alternative song of the week, or treat as an open thread.

Elvis Presley, “Blue Moon” (1954)
It’s about time the King made an appearance around here. Recorded in 1954 at Memphis’s Sun studios, with Sam Phillips producing, and Scotty Moore and Bill Black providing support on guitar and bass, this unassuming little thing almost always requires a twist of the volume knob. It sneaks in like one late to the curtain, and then somehow becomes the show itself. It was never a hit of any kind, though it showed up here and there often enough: thrown onto Presley’s first album along with other unreleased Sun material; then released as the A-side of a no-hit single in September 1956, a casual afterthought for RCA, busy by then spewing out Elvis product in every direction, and finally, 20 years later, on the Sun Sessions album. It’s really weird, but it’s good.

Update: Hmm, it doesn’t seem to want to embed for me. User error, no doubt. Here’s a link. I will get it figured out next time! Thanks for your patience…