Earlier today on the Songfight forums, someone posted an original lyrical snippet containing a B.F. Skinner rhyme.  I immediately thought of this Dead Milkmen song, which also has a rhyme involving B.F. Skinner.

Of course, often when I put up a Dead Milkmen tune I will refer back to this post, which gives my general band spiel.  That song, like this one, comes from Eat Your Paisley.  Eating paisley?  Please explain that concept to me.  I mean, sure it involves some wordplay having to do with parsley, other than that, there must be some high concept here that's going over my feeble head.  I guess I need an art student to clarify this.  Wait, no, scratch that idea.  Art students lose me the exact instant the word "dadaist" comes out of their mouths.

Eh, forget it.  It's just a cool Dead Milkmen song.  This is a song blog after all.  There's no cosmic wisdom here.

Hear "Where the Tarantula Lives" on GrooveShark.

Right now I just want something to bang my head against the desk to.

Hear "Life Sentence" on YouTube.

Watch a live performance.

Watch another one.

Two years ago I put up a wonderfully nutty little number called "Dog Police", by a band of the same name.  It's always been a big novelty fave.  So yesterday I receive the following:

Dog Police says "Thanks Max"!!!!
Woof Woof Woof Woof

So, did an actual band member (or at least someone closely affiliated with the band) actually show up here?  We can only hope.  I will make that assumption until further notice.  If that was indeed a genuine comment, I can only say this:

Max says "Hey, no problem Dog Police"!!!!
BOW WOWWWWWW

So, in conjunction with what I at least hope is our latest celebrity blessing, here's another Dog Police, ahem, classic, called "1-800."  As you can imagine, it totally lampoons the cheezy commercials for useless crap that always ended in a 1-800 number and featured all of those tried and true catchphrases.  Not available in any store!  NOW how much would you pay??  I guess they still have those, except now you get a web page instead of a 1-800 number.  Or maybe you do still get one?  I watch so little TV now it's not like I'd know.

There was a video made for "1-800", and I saw it on AL-TV (I discuss AL-TV in a previous post) in 1985.  I truly believe it was the only time that video ever aired anywhere.  I had it on a Beta (yay Beta!) tape and watched it like crazy.  In addition, I just discovered that the entire Dog Police album has just been made available for download on CDBaby.  So, if you happened to wake up this morning and tell yourself that your expansive musical catalog was sorely lacking in mid-80s synth-driven wackiness, take note.

The video is on The Tube Possessed by You, but the quality is beyond crappy.  So even though I'm really hesitant to do this, I'm gonna do it anyway (sigh) - I'll post a moonshine MP3 file as well.  God, I feel so dirty.

Watch the video (in pretty piss-poor quality) on YouTube.  See?  There's Al!  Someone else happened to catch it on AL-TV.  Except he probably used a VHS tape.

Remember Robert Palmer?  Yeah, the "Addicted to Love" guy.  Six years ago today he, uh, assumed room temperature.

Remember my recurring "songs I like from albums I don't like" theme?  Way back in the day (well, maybe not the day, just some random day in the 80s), I had Palmer's 1980 album Clues on vinyl.  I got it because I liked  "Looking for Clues" and I really liked "Johnny and Mary."  The rest of it?  Bleh.  Nonetheless, I am now posting the latter.

GOOGLE SEARCH HIT OF THE WEEK:  "i what to make a song to day"

Watch the video for "Johnny and Mary" on YouTube.  Sorry, this clip does not feature beautiful English models with blank stares.

Wiki

John Bonham died 29 years ago today.  Perhaps it would have been better to wait another year so I can have a nice round number of 30, but I'm too damned impatient.

So, if I'm gonna post an appropriate Zeppelin tune, well really, what other choice do I have?

Watch a live performance of "Moby Dick" on YouTube, featuring an extended John Bonham solo.

Quick entry.  The 1989 Big Audio Dynamite album Megatop Phoenix?  Pretty cool.  Here's my preferred track from it, called "Union, Jack."

Actually, it could be that I am overrating Megatop Phoenix because of the bad taste in my mouth left by No. 10, Upping St., which I absolutely hated.  But hey, even if Megatop isn't really as good as I seem to think it is, at least I dig this track.  So here ya go.

Watch a fanvid for "Union, Jack" on YouTube.

John Tesh????? OH NOES!!!!!!!

The topic of "guilty pleasures" has come up recently on the online forums I frequent the most, Songfight and McCovey Chronicles.  Typically, someone will ask people to name the artists, bands, albums or songs that they like - that they really shouldn't like.  Invariably it evolves into some sort of contest, as in, who holds the guiltiest pleasure?

All I have to do is mention that I own a copy of John Tesh's 1995 CD Live at Red Rocks, and I win those contests.  Every time.

The opening sentence from the album's Amazon review says it all - "John Tesh's name is often associated with the notion of bad music."  However, the second sentence reads "This is an unfortunate and unfair perception since Tesh actually exhibits commendable skills in a little-explored musical niche--the pop-rock instrumental."  That reviewer hit it right on the head.  Make no mistake, John Tesh is a skilled musician.  Most of the backlash stems from nothing more than an intense genre bias.  He performs a style of music that has been largely deemed unmarketable, at least to any significant contemporary demographic.

Or perhaps it's the actual target audience itself that turns people off.  It's like I'm required to hate on John Tesh because his stuff is only enjoyed by "old white people with no soul" or whatever.

I never concern myself with such things anyway.  I just enjoy the Red Rocks album.  It's a finely crafted performance of some intricately composed music.  Period.  I'm not gonna write it off just because MTV or Rolling Stone tells me it sucks.  So here is "Garden City."

Just don't get me started on John Tesh's singing.  Ugh.  He totally lost me when he started singing.  He is not exactly a songbird.

Watch the Live at Red Rocks performance of "Garden City" on YouTube.  Go ahead, click it.  No one has to know.

I'll have those days where I am either unable or unwilling to go through the trouble of picking a song and instead just vomit out some knee-jerk tune from one of my several fallback options.

Today is one of those days.  And the soundtrack to Interstate '76 is one of those options.

Hear/download "Vigilante Shuffle"