But in the meantime, here's a fun little project for us all to help wile away the hours:
Best or Worst Post-Elvis Pop/Rock Song Referencing a Body Type in the Title or Lyrics!!!
No arbitrary rules this time out, you're welcome very much, but when I say body type I mean exactly that, which means that songs referencing a specific body PART are disqualified. In other words, we're talking short, fat, tall, skinny, etc. So don't try to sneak in any of that "Bette Davis Eyes" crap, okay?
And my totally top of my head Top Six are:
6. The Easybeats -- Good Time
"Boney Maronie's gonna be with Jim/Long Tall Sally's gonna be with Slim/Short Fat Fannie's gonna be there too..."
You know, sometimes I think this record contains the secret of the Universe.
5. The Kingsmen -- The Jolly Green Giant
It really was all downhill for this bunch once they kicked out the guy who actually sang lead on "Louie Louie." And as for this rather appalling song, I suspect it was the inspiration for that famous Johnny Carson ad-lib: "I'd like to see somebody run up to the Jolly Green Giant and say, 'Ho Ho Ho yourself, you big queer!'"
4. Sir Mix-a-Lot -- Baby Got Back
I can't help it, this song still cracks me up. And I would like to say that I was delighted to live in a world where Sir Mix-a-Lot was a celebrity, however briefly.
3. The Cure -- Siamese Twins
Ah, the ever sunny-dispositioned Robert Smith. Upbeat as always.
2. Stewie Griffin -- My Fat Baby Loves to Eat
Have I mentioned lately that Seth McFarlane is a goddamn genius?
And the Numero Uno musical paean to physical diversity simply has to be and I will brook no dissension in that regard...
1. The Rainmakers -- Big Fat Blonde
He's talking "six-foot Swede/40-30-40/Amazon bombshell/Tall damp and dirty." Not to mention "hubba-hubba. HUBBA."
Alrighty then -- what would YOUR choices be?
[Shameless Blogwhore: My parallel Cinema Listomania -- theme: black and white movies you really, really hope nobody ever colorizes -- is now up over at Box Office. As always, if you could see your way to leaving a comment over there despite the clunkiness of the new commenting system, it would make it easier for me to hit management up for a bonus and thus facilitate my upcoming return trip to Dayton Ohio, France. Thanks!]
26 comments:
Your rule means I can't cite the line I sing to myself about every third female I see - "I don't want no woman with no skinny legs."
How about "She's a brick... house."
Dylan's "Tough Mama" - "Meat shakin' on your bones." A great Dylan/Band track.
And who did the original "Long Tall Texan," covered by Lyle Lovett and, believe it or not, the Beach Boys.
Well, it's obviously Spinal Tap's "Big Bottom." Or the Fabulous Poodles' "Bionic Man." (the Poodles were tres awesome.)
Gotta be several Zevon songs in there but drawing a blank...
Got to be "BBW (Chunky Girl" by Dan Bryk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHAcN_45FHI
Pete:
Funny you should mention "Tough Mama" -- I've been thinking about that song and that album all week. Bob's most underrated record, I think; just about everything on it is sensational, at least one of the songs ("Forever Young") is among Dylan's most covered, and yet the album itself is mostly dismissed as a throway.
"Long, Cool Woman in a Black Dress" and "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother" by the Hollies (okay, I admit the second one is a stretch).
Jonathan Coulton does a white boy version of Baby Got Back that will leave you laughing on the floor, gasping for air.
Well, kinda.
Trey
Margie the Midget - Martin Mull
If the compendium of body parts described in John Cooper Clarke's I Married A Monster From Outer Space doesn't qualify, then "Her new boyfriend/A Blob of Slime" should bring it in under the line;>
Steamline Woman - Howlin' Wolf (may be outside the time frame, so what?)
Bang A Gong - T Rex ("built like a car, oh yeah.")
Night Moves - Bob Seger ("Points of her own, settin way up high")
Fat Bottomed Girls - Queen, though it seems too obvious
Sugarboy Crawford's "She Got to Wobble When She Walks" ("three hundred ten pounds [red hot], three hundred ten pounds [red hot], a long lean gal aint worth doodly squat)
Your fave Frank Zappa's "Big Leg Emma"
And my fave: "39-21-46" by the Showmen, redone by Jimmy Jones as "39-21-40 Shape"
The only thing that springs to mind is that song Short People by Randy Newman.
Oh wait, Long Tall Sally isn't just a lyric, it's a Little Richard song.
And just remembered Howlin Wolf, Three Hundred Pounds Of Joy.
Well, there's always Ballad of a Thin Man
Never heard that Easybeats song. Wow! Nice.
Just for balance, the Grassroots' version of Ballad of a Thin Man can round off the Worst side of the list.
AP
Tiny Montgomery says hello and mentions Randy Newman's "Davy the Fat Boy"
Admit I had to google this one to get the name of the song, but Mamas and Papas "Creeque Alley" has that lyric, "No one's getting fat except Mama Cass."
Also Joni Mitchell, think it was Ladies of the Canyon had that lyric about baking brownies and kids that went something like, "all are thin and none are fat."
Larry Williams covered the bases with both "Short Fat Fannie" and "Bony Moronie".
And from this century, we have the Old 97's with Rollerskate Skinny "Nobody's gonna see eye-to-eye/With a girl who only stands collarbone-high..."
Since the Bruce version is one of Steve's faves: Pretty Flamingo
Oh, and by the way, Steve, thanks for posting The Rainmakers - there's an album that definitely needs to be reissued on CD.
Well done, Steve! I'll add "Black Dog" by Led Zeppelin for the line "I dunno, but I been told, big legged women ain't got no soul."
"Big, Bad John" ... just so we have another guy in this list. :-)
Not sure if that Rainmakers album is on CD, but it certainly should be.
Joe Tex ain't gonna bump no more with no big fat woman. Or so I hear.
Crack the Sky's "Suspicion":
He's a big big man
He's a big big man
He's much bigger than me, I can
tell by the way she walks
"I got a long black eel
And I know where to stick it!"
- "Barefootin' With the Wicked Pickett," Black Randy and the Metro Squad
thanks Steve, the tunes from the Easybeats and Rainmakers were new to me, great!
may I suggest a slightly off-kilter body type, straight from "Planet Claire" (courtesy of The B-52's):
"no-one ever dies there -
no-one has a head!"
now also available in a Foo Fighters cover version...
Fat flabby Annie from the Kinks "Skin and Bones"
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