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drspecialOriginally published at billydechand.com. You can comment here or there.
The Bill & Frantz Show wants you. We wrote a little theme song, and want you to record a version. It could be video or just audio. If we like it, we might just use it in one of our shows!
You can look at our song sheet (PDF) and/or hear a version we did ourselves at the beginning of BFS Episode 209.
Don't feel obligated to make it the same as our version. Originality is encouraged. Be yourself.
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I keep coming back to this album. In 1981, Ray was spending ample time with Chrissie Hynde (his wife?). The Kinks do the Pretenders: melodic, well-crafted punk/pop (aka rock).
The hits are "Destroyer" and to some, "Predictable". These follow Davies' long tradition of character songs portraying everyday lives in modern society. The whole album has a hell-in-a-handbasket theme, but it's more interesting than sad, especially since some of it was of its time. (We've replaced our Cold War anxieties with new ones.) And its rockingness also makes it pretty fun. The first two songs are just all out bar-room brawl type songs; in the title track, there's a point where Ray bellows, "Hey mom, there goes a piece of the President's brain!"
"Killer's Eyes" is an imaginary conversation with a serial killer, an attempt to rationally persuade him not to murder. Sort of. "Art Lover" is a portrait of a guy who sits in the park looking at little girls. Creepy for sure, but also darkly funny and even compassionate. One of my favorites is "Yo-yo", where the emotions of lovers and loners rise and fall, wreaking havoc on themselves and others. There are many more great songs.
It finishes on a positive note with "Better Things", which reminds me of the Pretenders' first single, "Kid".
Like the Stones' Tattoo You from the same year, it's their last great album. MTV changed everything.
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POST-POST MODERN MAN
Words and music by Billy Dechand
© 2006 Bucktooth Music (ASCAP)
I figured it out – up is down
What once was old is young again now
I’m a physical man in a spiritual world
A modern man in a post-modern world
I’m a post-post modernist man
In a post-post-post-modernist world
I’m a post-post-post-modernist man
In a post-post-post-post-modernist world
That is one heck of a gain
One whale of an oil stain
Here comes that coal train!
Over and over .. and over again
A mechanical man in an electrical world
I’m a space age man in a digital world
A windblown man in a static world
I’m a solar-powered man in a nuclear world
I’m a post-post modernist man
In a post-post-post-modernist world
I’m a post-post-post-modernist man
In a post-post-post-post-modernist world
From the album POST, © 2010
available on iTunes, Android Music, etc.
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This was strategically released for the present election year, and does a great job of turning the issues upside-down. Members of the FOP all clamor for their lost days of old, when common sense ruled, eagerly anticipating his return to politics. Of course the Republican Party of the early 20th Century was the party of progress (They here still the party of Lincoln, opposed to good old boys club, the Southern Democrats. Goldwater fixed that decades later.), so he breaks from their expectations in amusing ways. He speaks of the world with great old-fashioned language, and we feel plenty of pathos too. Taft 2012 is funny, original, and with just enough depth to make it worthy of your attention.drspecialdrspecial
drspecialdrspecialBehold, the last issue of Mother Earth, presented as a Flash comic. Full frame-by-frame reading, and FULL SCREEN MODE!
RECOMMENDED: View in Full Screen Mode
drspecialdrspecial"Neither Mr. Edison nor anyone else can override the well-known laws of Nature, and when he is made to say that the same wire which brings you light will also bring you power and heat, there is no difficulty in seeing that more is promised than can possibly be performed. The talk about cooking food by heat derived from electricity is absurd."
-- John T. Sprague, England, c. 1878
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