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May 18, 2007
Word Association: Explanation and Inauguration
So there's a new feature we've been tossing around the ol' idea park for a while now, which I think is finally ready to see the light of day (the idea park is only open at night, also it doesn't exist).
Since this site's inception the roster of contributing writers has ballooned from a meager 3 to a whopping 7. As our continuing domination over the increasingly lively comments section shows (readers please keep it coming, by the way), we're all pals and we like to continually tease, encourage, mock, and just generally pick fights with each other over music quite a bit. Which is why we're all here. But I have to think that beyond the occasional after the jump grousing, there has to be a better way for all of our contributors to interact more significantly. A way for us to develop the kind of continuing bar stool banter that occasionally develops in our non-virtual lives.
The premise is simple, each week one member of the MS crew will lay down a challenge to another contributor, calling them out by name. The challenge can be a totally straightforward musical query ("best drum solo"), a less straightforward musical query ("robot make out music"), or a complete and utter non-sequitur ("turkey club"). The challenged will then have roughly a week to respond with the best musical answer that they can muster, and a couple paragraphs in defense of their choice. When successfully completed, they will throw down the guantlet to someone else. This guantlet will be continually thrown down in perpetuity until it doesn't know why it bothers to get up anymore. Hopefully the result will get us to post things we'd have no call to otherwise, and result in profound entertainment for all.
To give you an example of how this will go, I will indulgently throw myself an alley-oop. Pretend someone else had said...
To Jeff: Worst Song Ever
Declaring something the worst of all time is just as tricky as deeming something the best. They're both extremely strong words, and you better be prepared to back them up. For mental cases like us who've heard who knows how many songs, you have to power past simply dumb, inept, or boring to find the truly musically offensive. Cheesy pop songs are too easy, avant garde noise torture too ambitious, and personally disliked genres too subjective to be the absolute nadir of musical achievement. No, we need to dig deeper, looking under rocks much fouler than "My Humps" or "Nookie". We're gonna need a novelty song.
The playlist of Dr. Demento and his ilk is bad enough, but the worst Ray Stevens can throw at us pales in comparison to the horror that is the British novelty song (for example see the Crazy Frog debacle). Well, I've gone one step beyond even that. Not only is my choice a British novelty song from the 70's, it's the sequel to a British novelty song from the 70's! Pop hack Johnathan King is to blame here, as the middling success of his 1971 parody "Johnny Reggae", recorded under the name Piglets, inspired this 1976 bullshit, "Baby Reggae". This time it was billed to the infinitely ickier sounding Big Pig with Little Porker. This is the worst sort of parody for many reasons. For one, because it seeks to simultaneously capitalize on and belittle a thriving cultural force, while completely watering down the sound it seeks to emulate with horrible cheesecake production. Other sins include being a blatantly soulless cash in on a non-hit (like the song equivalent of Anaconda 2), and forgetting to even attempt being funny. More than anything it's downright creepy. Mr. King lowers his voice a few octaves to limit his recognizability, presumably out of shame, and the result is a man named "Big Pig" in an off kilter deep baritone singing "Baby Reggae, giggle for me," to which a disembodied baby sound ("Little Porker"?) obliges. Any time a novelty song reminds you of pedophilia, it's a bad sign. Its worst sin, however, is probably being so completely bereft of ideas that it can only fill one minute and forty seconds of its excrutiating two minute and twenty-two second run time before resorting to a fart joke, and deciding to run out the clock.
Let's review. Novelty cash in, culturally condescending, wildly annoying, toilet humor, vaguely remiscent of pederasty, and most of all, bloody awful. I think we have a loser.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the worst song of which I am aware...
Big Pig w/ Little Porker - "Baby Reggae"
So there's an example. Going forward, the abstractness of the answer will probably be directly proportional to the abstractness of the trigger phrase/question. As eager as I am for this feature to blossom into complete randomness, I'm gonna keep it strictly musically related at the onset. If I dropped the Dada bomb right away, there'd be no sense of delight when someone finally has to scramble to find the perfect musical expression of "napalm trousers", or whatever. So slow start it is, but in order to allow for a wider spectrum of strange answers, I throw it to Mr. Obscurer Than Thou himself, David Klein.
To David: Overrated Band, Underrated Song
P.S. No backsies...
Posted by Jeff Klingman at May 18, 2007 01:40 PM
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Comments
Sounds like a song you might hear on Nickelodeon...while on drugs. Mr. Klingman, you did the best job of picking the worst song.
Posted by: Kelli Douglas at May 18, 2007 02:10 PM
An aural ice cream headache. I had to turn it off. Fantastic choice, Jeff. And a fine opening gambit. This will keep me up nights. But in a good way.
Posted by: david at May 18, 2007 02:27 PM
I guess "Great Balls of Fire" would be too obvious a reply to "napalm trousers".
Posted by: Randall Monty at May 18, 2007 02:43 PM
Hideously delightful this sunday morning.
Posted by: Kate at May 20, 2007 08:14 AM
