Holiday Weekend Listomania (Special Schvitzing in my Shorts Video Edition)

Well, it's Friday and you know what that means. Yes, my Oriental testicular chaperone energy policy consultant Fah Lo Suee and I will be spending a quiet Memorial Day weekend at home, engaged in nothing more than quiet self-contemplation and a few light snacks. So there will be no sniggering jokes at the expense of Sarah Palin or Michael Steele for at least another week.

In any case, posting by moi will necessarily be sporadic for a while.

But in my absence, here's a fun project for you all to contemplate:

Best or Worst Post-Elvis Summer Song -- Which is To Say Either a Song About Summer or One With the Word Summer in the Title!!!

Self-explanatory, I think, and in the interest of holiday comity, I'm imposing absolutely no arbitrary rules of any kind.

And my totally top of my head Top Nine would be...

9. Two Live Jews -- Oy, It's So Humid!



"Doesn't Myrtle have air conditioning?" "What -- you mean Octagenarian Mutant Ninja Myrtle?..."

8. The Hollies -- Bus Stop



"Bus Stop, wet day, she's there, I say, please share my umbrella...All that summer we enjoyed it, wind and rain and shine..."

And don't tell me about that Rihanna "Umbrella" shit, because I don't want to hear about it. Deep thought: It occurs to me that this song has made even more appearances in these precincts than the Smashing Pumpkins.

7. The Smashing Pumpkins -- Summer





And speaking of which, it occurs to me that Billy Corgan's pretentious dyed-hair noggin has been absent from these precincts for far too long. Actually, a pretty nice song; no video, alas, but you can listen (and download) the thing by clicking the link above. Apparently, unlike with RapidShare, the authorization will never expire, which is a kind of frightening prospect.

6. The Jamies -- Summertime, Summertime



An arifact that has irked me since the late 50s. It's like a Chimpmunks record, but done straight. Or something. In any case, words can not express how annoying I think those harmonies are.

5. The Zombies -- Summertime



The Gershwin song, of course, and between Colin Blunstone's gorgeously breathy vocal and a brilliant Rod Argent piano solo pretty much my favorite take on the tune in the whole wide world. Honorable mention: Billy Stewart's r&b glossolalia version from a year later.

4. The Beach Boys -- Girl Don't Tell Me



"Hi, little girl, it's me -- don't you know who I am? I met you last summer when I came out to stay with my gran...."

From their 1965 pre-Pet Sounds masterpiece, and oddly, the most Beatle-esque record they ever made.

3. Chad and Jeremy -- A Summer Song



I only found out recently that they actually played all the beautiful guitar stuff on this one themselves; you'll see them do it in the performance at the end of the interview. Just as sweet and lovely a pop song as there is, so naturally, my crappy high school rock band used to sing it as "Planes, crashing into mountain sides, with the loss of many lives...."

2. Bananarama -- Cruel Summer



Because, frankly, you just can't have too much Bananarama, even with crappy synth drums.

And the most memorable summer song -- summer being defined as hot, sweaty and fly-infested -- obviously is....

1. Mick Farren -- Let's Loot the Supermarket Again (Like We Did Last Summer)



Typical first generation 70s Brit-punk snarl, although Farren himself had been through one or two too many youth cultures by the time he conned Stiff Records into releasing this. Not in itself a particularly fabulous record, but you gotta admit -- the title's brilliant.

Awrighty then -- what are your faves?

[Shameless Blogwhore: My parallel Cinema Listomania -- theme: best holiday flicks -- is now up over at Box Office. As always, if you could find it in your heart to head over there and leave some sort of desultory comment or other, it would help convince management that I'm worth the exorbitant freelance rate that has made me the envy of the film-crit business. Thank you.]