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Wednesday, May 28, 2008
BAD BOY
Eddie Taylor
Vee-Jay : 1955
Available on: Bad Boy
Charly : 1993
[Buy It]
BAD BOY
The Jive Bombers
Savoy : 1956
Available on: Savoy Chart Busters
Savoy Jazz : 2005
[Buy It]
BAD GIRL
The New York Dolls
New York Dolls
Island : 1973
[Buy It]
BAD GIRL
The Zakary Thaks
J-Beck : 1966
Available on: Form The Habit
Sundazed : 2001
[Buy It]
BAD MOTORCYCLE
The Storey Sisters
Cameo : 1958
[Out of Print]
BAD MAN FORWARD, BAD MAN PULL UP
Ding Dong
Available on: The Biggest Ragga Dancehall Anthems 2006
Greensleeves : 2006
[Buy It]
My bad. *My bad what?* I've always wanted to ask, since I was on vacation or something when that phrase hit the street. Anyway, I am bad, truly. Alex asked me to post, oh, *ages* ago, and I'm only stepping up to the plate now. I've always been bad with deadlines - *superbad* with deadlines, in fact, as a legion of aggrieved editors will tell you. But that's okay, because we all know that "bad" means "good." I believe that this has been traced back to a specific usage in Yoruba, I think it is. But some of us who grew up encased in the mantle of certain religions I won't name here had intuited the concept even before Shaft and James Brown sent entire roomfuls of Andy Rooneys to sputtering outbursts of distress and confusion and ire a generation ago. And for some of us, it all started with "He's a mean motor scooter and a bad go-getter," which is a line from "Alley Oop" by the Hollywood Argyles (1960) that immediately transcended its context and became common if precious coin in the schoolyard vocabulary. Naturally, there's bad and there's bad. If I say, "I think that milk is bad," will that cause you to drop everything and go guzzle it? I mean, you're welcome to do so, and I'll make sure we have some frosty cold bad milk on hand whenever you drop by. And if you hear it said of someone, "He's a bad man," you're likely to think that he cruelly pokes animals and makes merciless fun of small children. But if the same party should be called a "bad boy" instead, all sorts of romantic notions may possibly come rushing into your head. As for bad girls...at my advanced age I'm ambivalent, having seen one of them absquatulate with priceless family heirlooms, and having forsaken at least one European throne for the hand of another. Believe me, good girls are just as hot. But I digress. We also know that bad art is sometimes so bad it's good - in fact it's better than good art, which risks being so good it's bad. Let's face it, badness accounts for a major portion of the cultural history of the past fifty years. Is it running out of fools, or is it just getting started?Labels: blues, doo-wop, garage rock, luc, punk, reggae, rockabilly
posted by Luc
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Wednesday, June 20, 2007
STRANDED IN THE JUNGLE
The Cadets
1956
Available on: Doo Wop Box, Vol. 3: 101 More Vocal Group Gems from the Golden Age of Rock-N-Roll
Rhino : 2000
[Buy It]
STRANDED IN THE JUNGLE
The New York Dolls
Too Much Too Soon
Universal : 1974
[Buy It]
STRANDED IN THE JUNGLE (live)
The New York Dolls
From Paris with L-U-V
Sympathy for the Record Industry : 2002
[Buy It]
THOSE CONGA DRUMS
Jonathan Richman
Jonathan Sings!
Warner Bros. : 1983
[Buy It]
JUNGLE LION
The Upsetters
1973
Available on : I Am the Upsetter: The Story of Lee "Scratch" Perry: Golden Years
Trojan : 2005
[Buy It]
"Stranded in the Jungle," in its original version(s) -- it was written and recorded by the Jay Hawks in 1956 and quickly remade into a hit by the Cadets -- is a novelty single, a piece of comedy, like "Run, Red, Run" or "Alley Oop." Half of it is told by a man who has been captured by cannibals and whose girlfriend is still at home. In the other half, which takes place "back in the States," the romantic rival of the castaway comes on to his girlfriend. Your man's finished, he tells her, so you might as well choose me. The two halves of the song are played in entirely different styles -- the States is slick doo-wop, while the jungle is native-sounding drums, animal noises, and scary booga-booga cannibals. (As many people have pointed out, it's not exactly a Civil Rights anthem, though there's more than a little Fanon: "The zone where the natives live is not complementary to the zone inhabited by the settlers," etc.) It's a song about opposites that can't be reconciled, but it's also a song about reconciling them. Last time I wrote about the Bee Gees's "Gotta Get a Message to You," one of the Scriptural songs about mis- or non-communication. "Stranded in the Jungle" is another one.I crashed in the jungle
While tryin' to keep a date
With my little girl
Who was back in the States
I was stranded in the jungle
Afraid and alone
Tryin' to figure a way
To get a message back home The deeper and hotter the hot water gets, the more preposterous the idea of "getting a message back home" becomes. As long as the man is in the jungle, his girlfriend will hear nothing, and as long as she hears nothing, she's vulnerable to the advances of his rival. So he does what any man would do. He breaks loose from the cannibals, hitches a ride on a whale, makes it home, and reclaims his lover.Baby, baby, your man is no good
Baby, baby, you should've understood
You can trust me as long as can be
So come back pretty baby where you used to be
'Cause I love you, 'cause I love you
'Cause I love you, 'cause I love you
'Cause I love you It's a nice story. Who doesn't like a happy ending? It's also a solution to the whole "Gotta Get a Message to You" quandary. The only real message is the one you deliver yourself. If you want someone to talk to you (or love you, or trust you), talk to them. Simple. Imagine if the Bee Gees' song, which has a similarly dire circumstance (melodramatic, not comic, but still), ended this way, with the condemned man hightailing it away from Death Row. And then imagine that Death Row and the jungle are metaphors for romantic separation.
As for the song, the Jay Hawks’ version is hard to find (it's available on an Ace UK import called "The Golden Age of American Rock & Roll, Vol. 5") and fairly tame. The Cadets insta-cover is more assured and funnier. As fine as it is, it's blown clear out of the water by the New York Dolls' version. It might not be David Johansen's best performance. There is, after all, "Frankenstein," and there's "Pills." Oh, and "Bad Detective." But it's up there: the jungle is deeper and darker than the Cadets' jungle, and the States are hellishly bright. And the animal noises sound less like nature and more like the terrifying hoots and howls of uncivilized punks. Which, of course, they are.
I'm including as overgrowth Jonathan Richman's "Those Conga Drums" (which I've always thought of as a half-cover of "Stranded in the Jungle") and the Upsetters' "Jungle Lion" (which is an instrumental cover of Al Green's "Love and Happiness" and also has terrifying animal noises).Labels: ben, cannibals, doo-wop, punk
posted by Ben
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Tuesday, September 06, 2005
SHEET METAL WORKERS
Brighter Than Life
Wharton Tiers Ensemble
Atavistic Records : 1997
[Buy It]
NINE TO FIVE
Nine to Five and Odd Jobs
Dolly Parton
RCA : 1980
[Buy It]
WORK
originally from No Matter How Long the Line Is at the Cafeteria, There's Always a Seat!
Big Boys
Enigma : 1985
[Buy It]
I AM A SCIENTIST
Guided By Voices
Bee Thousand
Scat Records : 1994
[Buy It]
It's a hard time in America, a lot is unknown. But for us lucky ones with dry homes, one thing is as sure as death and taxes this week. Back to school. Back to work. Even if you have nothing to do with school, or even if you've had very little vacation this summer, your job has probably gotten just a bit more or a whole lot more busy and pressured today. If you're like me, getting to sleep last night was hard. Typical Sunday night blues/insomnia times a million.
My most alternately lovely and painful memory of this time is the purple Caldor corduroys and heart-patterned turtleneck outfit I desperately wanted to wear for the first day of school. Even though it was doubtless still eighty degrees in early-September Massachusetts, I wore that shit, sweated it out, loaded down with a new backpack filled with a shiny plastic-covered Velcro-closing notebook (if anyone remembers the brand name, let me know; it's driving me crazy that I can't remember), and new Erasermate pens (what happened to that whole erasable ink idea, anyway?). I hated school, but there was always a little bit of hope each year, that this grade would be better than the last.
Now it's just all about work. Those people I've been exchanging emails with saying "after Labor Day," those phone messages I've been neglecting to return, it'll all come home to roost this week. No more pretending to be in the Hamptons or Croatia. No more free Tuesday evenings (therapy!).
So. Songs about work. Get to it friends, make your country and your parents proud. I counted (and believe me, I included Columbus Day, Veteran's Day, and Thanksgiving): it's only 75 work/school days till Christmas vacation.
P.S. I was looking for a Tuesday work song, googled "tuesday song," came up with this.Labels: country, holidays, indie, joanna, punk
posted by Joanna
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