Weekend Listomania (Special Doctor, My Eyes Video Edition)

Well, it's Friday and you know what that means. Yes, my Oriental fille de joie handmaid's tail Fah Lo Suee and I are off to scenic Palau, where we'll be checking out the hotel accomodations for the Gitmo detainees about to be released into the lap of luxury by our communist negro president. Here's hoping the cable TV comes with Showtime -- that new Edie Falco series about the junkie nurse is a pip!

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

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

Best or Worst Post-Beatles Song or Record Referencing Illumination of Some Kind (Either Literal or Metaphorical) in the Title!!!

No arbitrary rules this time, you're welcome very much. Basically, it can either be a song or record about an inner, spiritual kind of thing, or an actual, possibly heat-producing, light source.

And my strictly off the top of my head Top Seven is:

7. Jimi Hendrix -- Burning of the Midnight Lamp



My favorite Hendrix riff bar none. Honorable mention: The Byrds' "Oil in My Lamp."

6. Paul Westerberg -- Sunshine





The Jonathan Edwards hippie anthem, from the Friends soundtrack. Frankly, I had never considered the song anything but borderline counter-cultural camp, but damned if Westerberg didn't locate the kick ass guitar protest song lurking within.

5. Kevin Salem -- Lighthouse Keeper





The closest thing to vintage Television ever heard by sentient mammalian ears in the 90s. Incidentally, if the download thingies for this or the Westerberg don't work, just e-mail me for the mp3s.

4 The Bangles -- Eternal Flame



As awful a commercial sellout in its way as, oh say, Starship's "We Built This City," I am convinced that this piece of crap actually killed the Bangles career. Incidentally, according to Wiki, co-writer Billy Steinberg described it as "The Beatles meet The Byrds," which only goes to show that Billy Steinberg is a very large idiot. Honorable mention: Cheap Trick's "The Flame," a suspiciously similar piece of crap which did similar damage to their street cred.

3. The Smashing Pumpkins -- By Starlight



Billy Corgan's pretentious cueball noggin rears its ugly, er, head, yet again. From the Mellon Collie album, of course, and in case I haven't mentioned it before, that's the goddamn stupidest title since The Moody Blues Cure Cancer.

2. Todd Rundgren -- I Saw the Light



From Something/Anything, of which, as Cameron Crowe famously said of a certain Beatles album from 1968 -- you still can't buy a better record.

And the number one tune inspired by the Illuminati, please it's not even an issue, obviously fricking is --

1. Firetown -- Carry the Torch



Two of the guys from Garbage in 1989 (not '86, despite the clip) with as soaringly anthemic a piece of Rickenbacker folk rock grandeur as was heard that year.

Alrighty then -- what would your choices be?

[Shameless Blogwhore: My parallel Cinema Listomania -- theme: best or worst black comedy -- is now up over at Box Office. As always, if you could see your way to going over there and dropping a comment, as the kids say, I'd be profoundly grateful, if not demonstrably so.]