Weekend Listomania (Special Four Legs Good Edition)

Well, it's Friday and you know what that means. Yes, my Oriental [insert your own outlandish double entendre here -- I'm all out] Fah Lo Suee and I will be heading for my local Hell Octaplex where we plan to set the record for most consecutive viewings of The Twilight Saga: New Moon. Dunno about you guys, but I just can't get enough of a movie about vampires not fucking.

As a result, posting by moi will be sporadic for a couple of days at least.

But in the meantime, here's a fun little project for us all:

Most Memorable Post-Beatles Song Referencing Members of the Animal Kingdom in the Title or Lyrics!!!

No arbitrary rules, you're welcome very much, and I just checked and, yes, I did an animal list last year. But since I've lost countless brain cells since then I'm reasonably sure my choices this time will be totally different.

Oh, and if you try to sneak a band named after an animal into the list I will come to your house and kill you. I'm serious about this. Also: I don't care if it's approaching the Christmas season, but if anybody nominates that "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" thing they're similarly dead.

And my totally top of my head Top Six are:

6. Al Wilson -- The Snake




"You knew I was a snake before you brought me in." You gals know the feeling, I'm sure.

5. The Fools -- Psycho Chicken



When this came out in 1980, I remember thinking it was a long-overdue skewering of David Byrne's pretentious anxiety attacks. In retrospect, it's basically just a sort of sophmoric Weird Al record, which is to say only moderately amusing or smart, and I'm somewhat more forgiving of Byrne's neuroses.

4. Bruce Springsteen -- Pretty Flamingo




A great song, obviously, but I've been looking for an excuse to post this particularly gorgeous 1975 live version (from the Roxy bootleg) for ages. You're welcome.

3. The Killers -- Neon Tiger



As noted last week, I'm not nuts about this band but I always like to include something recorded during the current century. In any case, these guys seem to have replaced Billy Corgan's pretentious cueball noggin as my go-to weekly injoke.

2. The Hollies and Peter Sellers-- After the Fox




Even Burt Bacharach's joke songs are gorgeous. Seriously, that piano-riff-with-the-vocal-hisses is just a killer hook, isn't it?

And the numero uno post-Fab Four ode to those below us on the food chain obviously is --

1. Gilda Radner -- Let's Talk Dirty to the Animals



Written by the late great comic genius Michael O'Donoghue. I mentioned this over at Box Office last week, but the movie of which this is the opening number -- Gilda Live -- is finally out on DVD and can be ordered here. Cheap, I might add.

Alrighty, then -- what would your choices be?

[Shameless blogwhore: And speaking of Box Office, my parallel Cinema Listomania -- theme: best and worst film-to-tv or tv-to-film adaptations -- is now up. As always, if you could see your way to going over there and dropping a little snark, it would help justify my ridiculously exorbitant freelance rate to management. Thanks!]