Category: Music

Sitting here on Day 2 of America Held Hostage (I know, it’s a rip-off of the ABC series of the same name during the Iran Hostage Saga) I cannot stay perpetually glum and pissed off that I am out of work because the government is shut down. Or maybe it should be pissed off and glum. Who gives a rats ass anyway? So I decided to compile a list of terrible songs. Now I know many of these have found their way onto the Internet. It is surprising to find what some folks thing of as bad songs while millions of others buy these songs and their albums or CDs off the wall.

Some people think the Eagles’ “Hotel California” is bad. I think a lot of the dislike stems from what certain listeners believe are excessively cryptic lyrics. Examples: “Her mind is Tiffany twisted.” While some imagined a spoiled Valley Girl named Tiffany twisting some poor soul’s head, the reference is to a famous jewelry shop. In other words, the wealth that allows the woman who “drives a Mercedes-Benz” to shop in the glamor of such places as Tiffany’s. Also twisting some minds was the line: “Warm smell of colitas rising up in the air.” I think it was later explained by Don Henley or one of the other band members that “colitas” referred to a marijuana bud although folks had many other interpretations. One particularly hilarious meaning appeared in the early Internet days:

“There was this fireworks factory just three blocks from the Hotel California . . . and it blew up! Big tragedy. One of the workers was named Wurn Snell and he was from the town of Colitas in Greece. One of the workers who escaped the explosion talked to another guy . . . I think it was probably Don Henley . . . and Don asked what the guy saw. The worker said, “Wurn Snell of Colitas .  . . rising up through the air.”

Given tastes in music runs in many dimensions, I present My Unfavorite 10 Songs Of the Last Two Centuries:

1. Feelings — Morris Albert. I can’t remember how many bars I visited during my Navy enlistment in the mid-70s, but at least half had this God awful song playing. “Feelings,” I can just imagine singing, “I shot the piano player playing Feelings … ” I once had a trailer park neighbor who I heard playing a solo “Feelings” on a saxophone. Fortunately, he was a nice guy and I didn’t have to kick him in the nethers.

2. Havin’ My Baby — Paul Anka. I like Anka and many of his songs even though many of the songs I like are really by Neil Sedaka and not Paul Anka. It just somehow doesn’t sound right, “Havin’ My Baby,” as if Anka was ready to pop.

3. You Light Up My Life — Debby Boone. It might have been a good song for all I know. It just remembers me of a lonely birthday night in Guam during which I heard this young woman practicing this song over and over and over … “You make me sick, you make me die, you light up my gun …. “

4. We Built This City — Starship. Now I am a long-time fan of Jefferson Airplane and its parts and evolutions, Jefferson Starship, Starship, Grace Slick. Real hippie music. I also like singer Mickey Thomas, particularly his Elvin Bishop Group hit “Fooled Around and Fell In Love.” But there was something disquieting about “We Built This City.” When my friend Warren and I pal-ed around after graduating from college, we would hear the song on the radio or in the bar and I would always join in: “We built this city. We built this city on a garbage dump … “

5. Funky Town — Lipps Inc. This disco-esque electronic tune made me want to destroy any electrical implement handy.

6. Those Were The Days — Mary Hopkin. Not the happiest song to begin with, this was a song sad enough to make puppies cry. My Dad, a very bizarrely comedic man, would tire of the repeated ending saying that it sounded as if it should say: “Turn it off, turn it off, turn it off … “

7. Sukiyaki — Kyu Sakamoto. The first hit Japanese record (and maybe the last) presented a pleasant-enough tune but the words sort of defeated its purpose. If this isn’t bad enough, the title as I later discovered, had nothing to do with the song. Kind of like my headlines do here sometimes. The title, which bears the name of a Japanese hot-pot dish, was a translation that said one columnist: ‘like issuing the title Moon River in Japan as Beef Stew.’ “

8. Ice Baby Ice — Vanilla Ice. Just the concept of Vanilla Ice, the white rapper,  is confounding.

9. I’m Too Sexy — Right Said Fred. I’m too sexy for my own good. That’s what this annoying song implies. I’m too sexy to listen to this crap.

10. Last Kiss — J. Frank Wilson. I suppose I should be happy for any artist from my home area of East Texas. But this Lufkin native perpetuated the dreaded “tragedy tune.” You know “Teen Angel” “Leader of the Pack.” “D.O.A.”  “Where oh where can my baby be, the football captain took her away from me … “

Well, there is more. But the longer this damned lockout goes on, the more idle hands in the Devil’s Workshop.

Web surfing can be quite a learning experience provided one does not take every sentence as fact. Likewise, surfing the WWW provides sort of a spontaneity that I like as a writer. This is exceptionally true since I hardly ever write under deadline these days. It was just a few moments before deciding upon what subject, or person in my case, I would write. And Ta-DA! It is Hoyt Axton.

My selection of singer, songwriter and actor, the late Hoyt Axton, came some 30 minutes after reading about  Canadian musicians. Let me make it clear, Hoyt Axton was not a Canadian. He was in the U.S. Navy, which has nothing to do with Canadian musicians except for the fact I remember one stormy day on the Pacific hearing the sea chanty-like “High And Dry” recorded by Canadian folk-king Gordon Lightfoot. Okay time for me to focus.

Axton was born in Oklahoma. That fact likely had some kind of unconscious guidance in my clicking on Axton’s Wikipedia page. You see, I had intended starting my post about musicians from the Great North with something like: “Well, I never been Winnipeg, but I kind of like the Guess Who … ” That paraphrases one of many popular Axton songs which were recorded by other artists. In this case, “Never Been to Spain,” released in 1971 by Three Dog Night.

In reality, I’ve never been to Red Deer, Terrace or a Medicine Hat, places in western Canada mentioned by the popular rock group The Guess Who from Winnipeg, in the song “Running Back to Saskatoon.” I’ve never been to Winnipeg or Saskatoon either. Nor anywhere in Canada for that matter. Okay, I’ve strayed off track here again, damn it.

I admired the versatility in songs Axton wrote. I suppose he came by that honestly since his mother, Mae Boren Axton, was known as “The Queen Mother of Nashville.” She co-wrote the initial Elvis Presley hit “Heartbreak Hotel.” Other of hit songs by Hoyt Axton included tales of his own struggle with cocaine addiction. It took quite awhile for me to grasp that Hoyt Axton wrote the anti-drug hard rock songs “The Pusher” and “Snow Blind Friend,” both recorded by Steppenwolf. Axton also penned the lighter but still anti-coke “The No-No Song,” which he recorded but was made famous by solo ex-Beatle Ringo Starr.

Though anti-cocaine, Axton apparently took up pot at some time. He and his wife were arrested with a little more than a pound of reefer at his home in Montana. His wife supposedly later chalked up the drug usage as a means to help control stress and pain Axton suffered after a stroke in 1995. They were, according to his Wikipedia site, fined and given deferred sentences.

The identity of Hoyt Axton may have also been uneasily grasped because his early songs were of the folk genre. He wrote “Greenback Dollar,” for example, which was a hit for the Kingston Trio. Acting, as well, came early in his career. Axton often played a folksy-type character in TV shows ranging from Bonanza and WKRP in Cincinatti. He also had big screen credits, among them the 1984 horror-comedy film “Gremlins.”

Axton sang in a distinguishing baritone-bass voice which were easily noted in his few hit records. Those songs included “Bony Fingers,” the Top-40 country duet with Linda Ronstadt “When The Morning Comes” and my favorite “Della and the Dealer” (and a dog named Jake and a cat named Kalamazoo.)

He died in 1998 at the young age of 61 after never fully recovering from his stroke.

Oh, he also wrote “Joy To The World” likewise made famous by Three Dog Night. Just to bring something a bit less heavy to the end. Although, in reality, Hoyt Axton brought plenty of joy to the world in his music and other artistic endeavors.

Like Axton in life and song — again “Never Been To Spain — I have been to Oklahoma. I’d also like to see Spain someday and definitely would like to visit Canada. I hear they have some good musicians up there.