It's easy to spot the glam-rock peacock in the crowd: Who's wearing the feather boa? While many rock stars live an extravagant lifestyle and the female divas certainly put the glitz and glamor over the top, there is a certain breed of male performing artist who goes for the rhinestones and animal prints just a little too much for good taste.

Which is not to point fingers and ridicule, here. Heck, if you're pulling down eight figures a concert, you might as well enjoy it, right? And also not to single anybody out for being gay - some flamboyant male artists are straight or at least bi; many gay artists don't go in for the flash and glamor any more than the rest of the batch. But the flamboyant flamingos of rock do seem to make a preference for being androgynous at least, simply because that's just one more artistic statement to make.

No, no, we're here to salute them! These are the fabulous people who let you know the party has started as soon as they walk in the door. The world needs them, too.

 

Counter-example: George Michael

Just to show that openly-gay != flamboyant flamingo, we present The George. Openly out of the closet, but stubbornly anti-glam. A little hairspray and lots of black, but still, a Rhinestone Factor of zero.

 

Elton John

Damned near blows everybody else out of this category. Legendary for his glitzy styles over the years, and notorious for having, of all things, a shopping addiction. And then there's the stars... and the sequins... and the colors... and the glasses, glasses, GLASSES!

 

David Bowie

The personification of androgyny. Though he's toned it down a lot in recent years, he'll never live down his various incarnations over the decades when he always kept us guessing. The makeup, the Ziggy Stardust phase, and the Goblin King phase. Bowie took whatever was over-the-top for the current decade and make it his trademark.

 

Freddie Mercury

While he was usually quite content to go butch, he certainly had his moments. If anything, even Mercury at his most conservative looked like he was sorry to have missed out on that Village People thing. But who cares, it's sweaty sequin time!

 

Prince

The Prince of Pout, the Purple Primrose, the Pink Satin Pompadour - you can never be as over-the-top in describing him as he can in getting dressed in the morning. Scowly single-handedly kept the animal print and Victorian revival markets alive during the '80s. His boots alone could have their own documentary. You could paint every house on the block with the eye-shadow he's worn. When he changed his name to a symbol, even the symbol was androgynous and ornamental!

 

David Lee Roth

Sure, you know he's the biggest ham on the planet, but you're used to thinking of him as butch. But then you stop and think about it... leather chaps is metal - leather chaps with the metal studs is glam. Day-glo surfer gear in the '80s is metal - still doing it now is glam. And then there's the angel wings. Just look at that pout! He's saying "Aren't I beautiful?"

 

Boy George

Funny, he's the first person everybody thinks of for flamboyant, and yet when you stack him up against the others on this list, he's really not that gaga after all. Meh, some eye-shadow and lipstick, sure, and enough feathers to make a nest for the Spruce Goose, but after that he's actually not even that androgynous.

 

Liberace

What, you forgot all about him? Honey, he started this whole flamboyant thing in the first place! And he's never been matched. Nobody has had more glitter, more fur, more clothes than the King of Camp. There's a museum in Las Vegas devoted to his wardrobe - suck it, Elton! And check this out: How many of us could appear onstage with a Muppet and still have more feathers?

Honorable mention: Marilyn Manson makes the top page photo, and yet he's more goth than glam. He's going for "scary," not "pretty." See the difference now?

 

Nothing annoys those of us who write in music more than seeing urban legends and myths posted in the comments section. Irrepressible 14-year-olds with their minds permanently stuck in the gutter post on every song "This song's about titties! Hee hee hee!" Invariably on the wrong songs.

Look, folks: The POINT of double entendre, a half-French phrase meaning "two intentions," is to leave it ambiguous as to which meaning you intended. Dwell and meditate upon this wisdom. If you just say "sex," that's not double entendre, because that word doesn't have any non-sexual meaning. If you say "pussy," that certainly can be a cat, but in our wised-up age will undoubtedly be taken for the other meaning. Say "kitty" and now we're getting somewhere. Also, the kind of mistake we rave and rage against is the kind of mind that reads double-entendres into everything. There are not, nor probably will there ever be, sexually-charged double meanings to phrases like "reading the newspaper," "forecasting the weather," or "responding to a court summons."

Rule of thumb: If Beavis and Butthead aren't chuckling, it wasn't a double entendre.

So here's some of the right songs, where they really were talking about what you think they're talking about:

 

"Cherry Pie" - Warrant

See how this works? This is very obviously a song about sex with a young gal, so there's no need to play around with coy references. But Warrant does it anyway, just for funsies: "So I mixed up the batter, and she licked the beater!" This was actually an unusual song for Warrant; pity that it's their most famous one, to their disgust.

 

"Peacock" - Katy Perry

When it comes to Perry, the innuendo isn't there to be cute so much as to dodge the censors. She does her very sparkling best with this song, though, what with getting away with repeating the syllable 'cock' until it's funny. "Are you brave enough to let me see you peacock? Don't be a chicken boy, stop acting like a bitch. I'm a peace out if you don't give me the pay off, Come on baby let me see whatcha hiding underneath."

 

"Given the Dog a Bone" - AC/DC

AC/DC mastered the art of thinly-veiled references to sex in hard rock decades ago. "She blowing me crazy 'til my ammunition is dry... She's using her head again." Suffice it to say that this song has nothing to do with pet ownership.

 

"The Captain's Wife's Lament" - Paul and Storm

A novelty act who are tailor-made for Dr. Demento replays, these guys quite deliberately milk the homonyms "seamen" for "semen" for all it's worth and a nickel more. (Beevis: "Heh, he said 'milk', he he he" Now they've got me doing it.) It starts out with naming locations like the hallway and fireplace, but then it gets to seamen in hair and underwear so it leaves no doubt. Adorably animated in this machinima in what looks like World of Warcraft:

 

"Love Game" - Lady Gaga

Like Katy Perry, it's tough narrowing down Lady Gaga's songs to just one example. "I wanna take a ride on your disco stick." is both obvious and ridiculous, and in case your were still too thick to get it, she actually has to say later, "I'm educated in sex, yes, and now I want it bad." Boo! No points awarded for style.

 

"My Ding-A-Ling" - Chuck Berry

Practically the most famous song by ol' Chuck by now. It was, in fact, his only #1 single, and wouldn't you know it's his only novelty song. Needs no explanation here, but in the time it was made, it stands as a masterpiece in the art of double entendre. Berry even innocently clarifies in the first verse that it was "silver bells upon a string." By the way, at this writing, Chuck Berry is still alive at age 86 and reportedly still feisty as ever. He toured as recently as 2008, and still makes regular stage appearances at Blueberry Hill restaurant in St. Louis, Missouri. How's that for a living legend?

 

"Brand New Key" - Melanie

Certainly the coyest effort on this list. You really might hear this song as a youngster and think she's actually talking about a key for her roller skates. Yet it's brimming with fresh, confident female libido, and at the same time using wholesome words throughout, even in context. Here's the same song used in a commercial about a globe-traveling baby just to underscore that fact:

 

"Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo" - Bloodhound Gang

Finally, we leave you with another novelty act that takes double entendre to an art form, and accompanies it by a video that would make Andy Warhol plunge his Sticky Fingers into his Velvet Underground:

You like how we slip that word "cult" in there? Pretty sneaky, eh? That excuses us from having to list the expected Great Art classics. No Chariots of Fire or Sound of Music here. Nor will John Williams get called to the stage. These are films where the soundtrack is enthusiastically dialed into the iPod on its own, even by people who have never seen the film it came from.

Further disclaimer: We rave about Quentin Tarantino all the time here, so our research staff corralled the Tarantino nerd, who is now hogtied in the breakroom until this article is posted. Granted, every film released by Tarantino is a cult film soundtrack and also the greatest. You all know that. Why repeat it?

 

Clerks

Kevin Smith blew most of the budget for the soundtrack, but nobody can argue that it wasn't money well-spent. The soundtrack is chock-full of cutting-edge (for the time) punk, alt, indie, and grunge music that have since been recognized as top-notch standards. Because we know you'll love us for it, here's the entire "Star Wars" scene, from Pringles to Babyface Bambino, with Supernova's "Chewbaca" used perfectly just to sink our point:

 

The Nightmare Before Christmas

We almost had to tie up our Danny Elfman fans, too, but we'll allow it one more time. It's tough to pick a Danny Elfman soundtrack that isn't a raging cult hit. There's the Men in Black series, the Spider-Man series, Batman series, Pee-Wee Herman series, Beetlejuice... Danny Elfman can do no wrong by film soundtracks. But The Nightmare Before Christmas simply wins hands-down as his magnum opus, since the whole point of that film was to be a musical.

 

Pi

Darren Aronofsky's debut and the true uber-geek film, a one-of-a-kind mathematical thriller (tell us that isn't breaking new ground), wouldn't have half its atmosphere if not for composer Clint Mansell's tense and fiendishly brilliant original score, an intellectual electronic soundscape that matches the title character's sweaty, anxious, paranoid genius. Mansell's career was launched from this soundtrack, and he's since been well-recognized for composing the scores to Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, 11:14, and many more uber-geek films.

 

Natural Born Killers and Lost Highway

Both assembled by Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor. Notice that both of these films' soundtracks are cutting-edge compilation works for their time, and both, while using similar bands and genres, each keep true to the mood of their respective films. The music in Natural Born Killers is an evocative post-modern gorefest, shocking you as sharply and shrilly - but just as self-mockingly - as the film it supports, while the music for Lost Highway perfectly meets the broody, post-industrial tone for Lynch's romantic, melancholy nightmare.

 

Pretty Woman

We know, you barf by reflex at the mere mention of this sick, sick movie that glamorizes prostitution and insults both genders about equally. We know you also hate it for launching Julia Roberts' delusion that she was a sex object (she got better, but at the cost of many, many ruined films). You have good taste for hating this movie! But don't let that stop you from picking up the soundtrack, because Red Hot Chili Peppers, Robert Palmer, Roxette, David Bowie, and need we remind you Roy Orbison, deserve your attention.

 

Heavy Metal

We loved this one so much, we already wrote a whole article about just this film. What kind of music blog would neglect that?

While we're linking to our past articles, there's also the films that are perfect at capturing their time, here and here. They belong on this list, too.

 

Harold and Maude

Cat Stevens composed original songs just for this film, and their quirky individuality and carefree spirit fit perfectly with this achingly sweet misfit black comedy. This film was daring and original in a dozen ways for 1971, and it's even still risky for a few concepts right now. Here's one loving tribute to its timeless message, celebrating what a beautiful thing it is to be human and alive depite what an utter mess we are:

 

Oh, be sure to check out 7 Big Rock Talents Who Have Scored Films and All Grammy, No Oscar - Five songs from films where the song was a bigger success than the film while you're here. We have to untie our Tarantino geek before he goes Medieval on our ass.

 

 

Previously in the Leitmotif series: (part 1), (part 2), (part 3).

Once again, what is a leitmotif? It's a snippet of music that gets reused over and over in video media, be it film, TV, commercials, cartoons, or even video games. The way it's used is that it becomes a shorthand cue to invoke something specific. A few bars from the leitmotif will play in the background to be the subject's theme or invoke a reference to the subject. For instance, "Here Comes the Bride" is a wedding leitmotif and "Jingle Bells" is Santa Claus' leitmotif.

The teasing part of these songs is that you hear them over and over again, but never know what they are called or where they originated. They become embedded in our culture without anyone noticing it. Ask any fifth-grader to hum some "Egyptian music" and they'll probably hum "Streets of Cairo" (aka "There's a place in France where the naked ladies dance" and a hundred other variations). So this series exists to finally answer that burning question you've always had: "What the hell is that song I always hear?" On to the featured leitmotifs of the day:

 

Misirlou

To kick things off, I'm sure you've heard the theme from Pulp Fiction:

What, you don't recognize it? Just listen to it for a few minutes, it will click. "Misirlou" is a folk song dating back to the early 20th century. Originally it was Greek, but passed around in various versions through Egypt, Arabia, and the general Mediterranean. You know it better by the shockingly modernized version Dick Dale released in 1962, which turns the tune into surfer rock and thence Pulp Fiction's theme. Anyway, the old version is used to invoke the Ottoman Empire area, while the newer version invokes, duh, surfing.

 

Alouette

Instantly recognizable by tune alone, ever if you don't understand the words - too bad, the words might help explain why this boy is thrilled to beans to be plucking this hapless captured bird. Anyway, the song is used for the stereotypical French setting, especially French Canadians.

 

Dixie

"Dixie" is the leitmotif for the south-east United States, especially the Bible Belt or Cotton Belt territory. It's also frequently heard in reference to the American Civil War, and anywhere where the Confederate Flag is a common sight. It pops up in everything from Warner Brothers cartoons to commercials, and note also that the "General Lee," the car from the '80s TV series The Dukes of Hazard (pictured above), has both a Confederate Flag painted on the roof and a custom musical horn that plays "Dixie"! The folk song (and region) is named after the Mason-Dixon Line, dates back to the Civil War era and traveling blackface minstrel shows, and might have even been written by a damned Yankee! Be warned, the song is seen as politically incorrect in this day and age for romanticizing black slavery.

 

The Mexican Hat Dance

Performed with aplomb by this class:

Used to invoke Mexico, of course, especially in the US, and especially in commercials for Mexican food. Somewhat more stereotypical even than "La Cucaracha." Also gets some heavy soundtrack use to suggest "chicanery," by association with Chicanos, the actual term for US citizens of Mexican descent. But "chicanery" means a tricky, deceitful, wily, crafty, or sly performance, such as several people hustling at once to pull off a heist or a fast con. Even appears in print - in the Heinlein novel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, a character refers to an entire restaurant's act of quickly and efficiently making all evidence of a murdered patron disappear as a "Mexican Hat Dance."

 

Colors

As American military bugle calls go, most people can identify "Reveille" (rise and shine!) and "Taps" (lights out, and also funeral), but few who have never been in the service can correctly name "Colors," the call traditionally issued when raising the flag. It's also used quite extensively in any media depicting the US military, sometimes mistakenly played for a mess hall call or a call to charge. No really, there's dozens of these bugle motifs, and here's the Wiki on them so you never mix them up again.

 

Baby Elephant Walk

This one has a variety of uses. First, it's the leitmotif for elephants, and usually a circus in general by extension, sometimes played when they're setting up or breaking down the tent. It's also used to invoke an elephant-like gait for clumsiness, awkward action, drunkenness, balancing a precarious load, and so on. Composed by the ever-amazing Henry Mancini, who penned more leitmotifs than you can shake a trunk at. It was custom-made for the classic 1962 John Wayne film Hatari, about big-game zoo-keepers in Africa.

 

Continued from part one, here's some more songs that aren't just one-hit wonders for their performers, but intriguing stories behind them as well. When we say "one-hit", of course, we mean as far as the US Billboard charts go. Even so, we're all that more fascinated when it applies to any chart in the world.

 

"Don't Close Your Eyes" - Kix #11 (1989)

Reason: Failed to stand out from the 20,000 other late-80s hair metal bands.

This anti-suicide ballad song deserves to be better known than it is, even by today's standards. Check it out:

With the vocal power of a thunderstorm, Kix should have gone on to fame based on lead singer Steve Whiteman's talent alone. And the rest of Kix were a pretty solid cast as well. They even charted some more modest numbers on the US Rock tracks, but this was their only appearance above 40 on the Billboard. A number of vague forces conspired to hold Kix back: (1) The world was literally saturated with hair/glam metal bands right at their peak; they would rain from the sky. (2) Grunge was waiting around the corner to kill metal. (3) This is a very serious, slow ballad song, from a band who was otherwise known for their lighter fare.

 

"Hocus Pocus" - Focus #9 (1973)

Reason: The world just doesn't need that many Dutch progressive yodeling metal band songs.

You really can't say much more about this group than that. Here they are on The Midnight Special, a show we all miss so bad it hurts:

According to interviews, they made the song mostly as a lark, and couldn't have cared a fickle or a fig if they'd never charted. Despite this, the song has had enduring pop culture influence, popping back up in commercials, sports specials, and TV show themes well into the 2000s. The thing that gives the song its staying power is how much it stands out from the crowd, similar to Iron Butterfly's "In A Gadda Da Vida."

 

"Crush" - Jennifer Paige #3 (1998)

Reason: We're just as baffled as you!

The single "Crush" went to world-wide hit status, hitting single-digit chart numbers in most of the industrialized world. It was certified 2x Platinum in Australia, Gold in the US, and Silver in the UK and France. "Crush" got her an audience with the Pope and Prince Albert of Monaco. And then, she continued to release singles throughout the turn of the century into 2002, from two albums, and scored... dooly-squat. Hasn't had anything close to a hit since, though she hits close to Velvet Underground numbers here and there. What happened? Enigmatically, her personal website, in the 'bio' tab, seems to blame the US 9/11 disaster for her disappearance from the spotlight. It also seems to suggest that she turned to film soundtrack and voice-over work in favor of her own music. Still, for somebody who seems absolutely born to be a top-charting artist on today's scene about equal to Katy Perry, her absence from the airwaves is a mystery. We suspect foul play, possibly an ancient conspiracy.

 

"Bitter Sweet Symphony" - The Verve #12 (1998)

Reason: One good scandal sank their battleship.

While they continue to record, tour, and occasionally chart here and there around the world, the scandal of the lawsuit for plagiarism brought by The Rolling Stones, plus their subsequent garnishment of all royalties, soured their name forever as far as US audiences were concerned. That and being inextricably ingrained with the teen-trash film Cruel Intentions. The Verve hung it up after 2000, but reunited back in 2007 and have appeared to meander on mostly unhurt (though with some shoulder padding from all those people crashing into them on the sidewalk).

 

"Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" - Crash Test Dummies #4 (1994)

Reason: Too altie for the mainstream.

Let's face it, "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" is an almost un-Google-able title. Was it "Mm Mm" or "Mmmm Mmmm"? Wait, wasn't it called "Once There Was A Boy Who"? Add to that that the band went through some disputes with their label and left, formed their own indie label, and lead vocalist Brad Roberts suffered a near-fatal car crash in 2000, and you have a recipe for a band that was lucky to have ever charted at all.

 

"Holiday in Cambodia" was the second single released by the Dead Kennedys and one of the most definitive Dead Kennedys' songs. While it barely charted at the time, it got included on their first album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables and is seen today as one of their signature songs. It also has enduring popularity: Foo Fighters covered it onstage at the 2007 MTV Music Awards, it's gotten cover versions by Atreyu since then, and it's been part of the soundtracks for the films Class(1979), Neighbors(1981), and Spider and Rose(1994), as well as recieving its due in the 2007 documentary film Punk's Not Dead.

It's a song that depends upon historic events for its context, so the point may whoosh over the heads of modern listeners. Let's see if we can clear things up...

First, the history: Khmer Rouge was the radical Communist party of Cambodia, who imposed a totalitarian regime on the country throughout the second half of the '70s, after winning a military coup - including a good old fashioned revolutionary assassination of previous general secretary Tou Samout. Led by Pol Pot and a group of his "brothers", they wrecked havoc on the country with a bloody dictatorship that shocked the world. Between one and two million citizens died under Khmer Rouge, either through execution, starvation, or disease.

The chilling part is the details and methods. If you've paid attention to recent American news and socio-political movements - Occupy Wall Street, "the 1%", hacktivism, Anonymous - you'll notice the similarities in ideology.

Khmer Rouge set out to create a classless society ruled by an iron fist. Money was abolished, books were burned, religion was outlawed, private enterprise was outlawed. Khmer Rouge rounded up and shot every intellectual in the country - doctors, teachers, librarians, professors, writers, artists, journalists, anybody with a white collar career. They were the ones Khmer Rouge called "elitists". Then they enslaved the entire rest of the population and forced them to work in farms. The farms didn't do too well, which beget a deadly cycle of starvation, soldiers blaming the problems on subversion, rounding up peasants to be shot for undermining the farming, more starvation, etc. People could be imprisoned, tortured, or shot (usually all three in that order) for having sex, communicating with a family member, or what the hell, even eating with anything but a spoon.

Hence the name of the event, "The Killing Fields". An excellent recap of the atrocities there, let's not dwell on it. On to the Dead Kennedys' song:

Jello Biafra's lyrics address the American, white, college student, and their tendency to protest first and think later.

• "So you been to school for a year or two, and you know you've seen it all. In daddy's car thinking you'll go far back east your type don't crawl." - Sound like Occupy Wall Street so far? Of course, this was in 1980, but they had their version of the OWS to varying degrees - the Yippies, the Wobblies, the Weather Underground.
• "Braggin' that you know how the n*****s feel cold and the slums got so much soul." - Yes, Jello drops the N-bomb here; subsequent releases tend to substitute 'blacks' or 'brothers'. Jello was talking about the attitude of college males, who attempt to identify themselves as "cool" by appropriating black and ghetto culture, when they don't know the first thing about the culture itself.
• "Don't forget to pack a wife!" - When you got imprisoned, tortured, and shot in Khmer Rouge's notorious S-21 prison death camp, your wife and children frequently shared the same fate just for being related to you.
• "Where people dress in black..." - Every subject was issued plain black pajamas. Yes, the entire country was either soldiers or black prisoner uniforms.

The song is a warning of the dangers of populist extremism, particularly applied with all ideology and no common sense. Pol Pot, named in the song, was an admirer of Chairman Mao of "Great Leap Forward" fame, and we all know how well that ended. Khmer Rouge stands today alongside the Chinese "Great Leap" disaster and the Soviet famine under Stalin as political disasters. Modern audiences might grin when the banks get blown up at the end of Fight Club, but forget just how grim the track record is for countries where revolutionaries try to truly reboot their system from scratch.

To quote the child of one victim of Khmer Rouge: "The Khmer Rouge legacy should not be neglected or overlooked because it was the past. It should be a monumental lesson for our future generation. Such an atrocity should never be allowed to reoccur. But it should never be forgotten."

 

As predictable as the tide, American media follows every single report of a violent mass tragedy with finger-pointing at their favorite scapegoat targets. Music is one of the perennial favorites. This goes back in history almost to the dawn of mankind, by the way. Every new generation's music is blamed by the previous generation for every imaginable ill of society and ten more they have to make up. If the very next headline you clicked on was "Herpes is caused by dubstep, says local pastor", you'd not be the tiniest bit surprised.

There's some music artists that get blamed every time there's a mass violence tragedy. They've quit protesting this years ago, and just take it in stride:

• Marilyn Manson - The poster child for "media scapegoat". Named after every school shooting since Columbine. So much so, that he has quite a chunk of screen time in Michael Moore's excellent (and always relevant) documentary Bowling For Columbine in an interview speaking his piece about the phenomenon.
• Eminem - The unexpected second-runner. Being a rapper, trust that he gets blamed more for the "glorifying drugs and gangs" angle.
• Ozzy Osbourne - Typically, he gets blamed for the teen suicides. One of the few artists to have actually been a defendant in court for just this charge.
• Judas Priest - The other band that gets blamed for teen suicides. Also have actually been defendants in court for just this charge. Don't forget the whole "Satanic messages recorded backwards thing", too.
• AC/DC - The old guard, blamed for serial killers over the past several decades.
• The Beatles - Don't forget that, since Charles Manson invoked them quite often, they were likewise held up as scapegoats for the Manson murders.

 

The fascinating question is: What is it about certain bands and artists that draw this kind of fire from media motormouths? There's all kinds of music more popular, more hedonistic, better selling, and so on, that never draws the scapegoat card.

Just for an example of how old this is: Wagner. Yes, we mean the Ring Cycle opera Wagner. Wagner's opera were popular in Germany and hence popular with a certain Fascist movement in the 1940s you're sure to be familiar with - so after the war, guess whose music was frowned upon as tainted in the media?

A few music celebrities have the grit to strike back. Among them:

• Insane Clown Posse - In their song "Terrible", they actually call out specific incidents of scapegoating other music acts and ending up with them daring the media to come after them - because they "could use the money!"
• GWAR - in their song "The Morality Squad", which pretty much says it all in the title right there. While we're name-dropping GWAR, here's GWAR on the Joan Rivers Show being absolutely hilarious.
• Amanda Palmer - calling out a related trope, video game scapegoating, in her song "Guitar Hero". Which we already blogged here.

 

It's doubtful that we'll ever be rid of these superstitious fools who blame tragedies on random, unrelated things. After all, even before music, the human capacity for magical thinking manifested itself in the idea of "bad luck" - and so we get black cats crossing your path, walking under ladders, and spilling salt.

Think it will ever get better? Here's actress Suzanne Summers blaming the Newtown massacre on nutrition and household toxins:

 

"Babylon" is a name with heavy historic significance, and even heavier significance in myth and legend. There's the skiffy show Babylon 5, Kenneth Anger's sordid gossip book Hollywood Babylon, and uncountable scriptural references, not the least of which "the whore of Babylon" being a cultural shorthand for a destructive woman. And let us not forget the "Tower of Babel", forever the symbol of global language diversity.

Babylon is also one of the most continuously inhabited places in human history, going back to Mesopotamia (where both the wheel and handwriting were invented). Nestled between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, it is regarded as the "cradle of civilization" and is also currently within a country we know today as Iraq... which has no shortage of generating news lately! So you see that the area still gets people fired up.

"Rivers of Babylon" was first recorded by The Melodians, a reggae group from Kingston, Jamaica. It was released on their album Nightflight to Venus. Here it is for your YouTubein' pleasure:

It should come as no surprise that the lyrics and premise come directly from the Bible, specifically the Old Testament book of Psalms, both Psalm 19 and 137. Psalm 19 gives the line "Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer." This was a kind of closing phrase frequently appended to Psalms (literally "songs" or poetry) as a kind of closing "amen". But the rest of the lyrics, from Psalm 137, take some more explaining.

In the first place, who's "King Alpha"? That isn't how the Melodians originally phrased it (they used the traditional "the Lord"), but subsequent covers by Boney M. and Sublime changed it to this. King Alpha and Queen Omega are - so to speak - the Rastafarian concept of a dual God. This page explains it too well to rehash here.

In addition, Rastafarian faith frequently refers to any oppressive authority figure as "Babylonians", the same way the British would say "Big Brother". The original Psalm 137 was a song of lament for the children of Israel being invaded and captured by the Babylonians. That's just the first four verses - the remainder of the Psalm gets into some pretty bloody Old Testament oaths of vengeance. "Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones" rates right up there with anything Samuel Jackson said in Pulp Fiction when it comes to ominous scripture.

Now to explain some of the action. Babylonians come and invade and conquer, carrying away Israelites in captivity. And apparently the captors mocked the captives, jeering at them to sing one of their songs. Perhaps they were daring them to pray to the Hebrew God? Perhaps testing this deity to see if He was all that high and mighty? Or just using the prisoners for some cheap entertainment? The motives of many bit players of scripture are cloaked in such mystery.

Anyway, not bad legs for a nice little pop-reggae song, is it?

 

In October of this year, The Beatles' first hit single "Love Me Do" got a 50th anniversary re-release. The story of that's here, but we're not here to gush about the music legends' continuing influence. No, we're here to recommend adding the animated psychedelic masterpiece Yellow Submarine to your holiday viewing traditions, right alongside your old VHS copies (we know you have them) of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! and Rankin/Bass' works.

 

Here it is on YouTube:

 

Now, this film has nothing to do with Christmas, this is true. But it has a number of aspects that make it perfect viewing between Christmas and New Years':

• It isn't played to death on cable and satellite.
• It's full of Beatles' music! Some of their most-beloved hits.
• It's funny and beautiful.
• It's very family-friendly. The most kid-friendly Beatles production of them all, we'd say.
• Like every good classic, it's full of those little gems that you forgot about until you view it again.

The film's fantastic look, unmatched even by graphic design and CGI of modern times, is the responsibility of one artist: Heinz Edelmann, who passed away just three years ago at age 75. As his NYT obituary explains, Edelmann never quite mentally fit himself into the psychedelic art movement of the late '60s, and yet he was more typical of the style than most.

Roger Ebert, pulling himself out of spoilsport-mode for a moment, gave Yellow Submarine a glowing review. He zeroes in on the important element of the script; the laconic, sardonic, witty script is just the perfect setting for both the artwork and the soundtrack. Without the constant whimsy and puns, it just wouldn't be the same story. That this script was written by committee makes it that more amazing, because usually having a whole pack of writers is a death sentence for a script.

One more reason this is a great film is that it has so far withstood the Hollywood Idiot Grinder that eventually destroys all other works. An awful troll has proposed remaking the film in CGI. Fortunately, the side of the angels won this time and the idea was shot down dead. Look, we're all geeks now, computers are wonderful for sure, but just because we can make something digital does not mean that it looks or sounds better digital. What next, re-release remixed Beatles albums with autotuning to make them sound like our modern tin robots?

Anyway, it's a tribute to this film alone that it resisted the attack of the trolls.

What sets this film apart is that it was made as a labor of love, not to make a quick buck. The Beatles were at the peak of their creativity and put their best effort into the songs, the artwork is inspiring and imaginative, the script was written to be fun, and you can even sense the director and producer were having fun at it. This is the womb from which great art is born. Only a Blue Meanie wouldn't love it.

 

What was the epitome of craziness in pop music culture history? You could nominate a few incidents - The Beatles' out-of-context quote that they were "bigger than Jesus", Lady Gaga showing up in a meat dress, or The Monkees' Head. Those are all good. But for me, what tops it is Michael Jackson's period between Captain EO and the last gasp of his Moonwalker days.

What makes this so special is that Jackson's ego had inflated to the point where he could play space buccaneers and mystical fantasy superheros and take it all seriously. At the same time, it is crucial to note, he was really, really good at it and everybody loved him for it. The more outrageous he got, the more popular he became, and nobody was on the sidelines saying "Oh for God's sake this is ridiculous!" the way they were long about Elvis' 13th movie or so.

Michael Jackson sweated cool in the '80s. He could do no wrong. His legal troubles and scary masked eccentricities were in the future yet, but he was still having a blast being the outrageously rich playboy.

 

First, he became a ride at Disneyland:

Captain EO, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, was a 3D quickie which played at Disney amusement parks for about 8 years starting in 1986. It also bears the unmistakable hand of George Lucas, who executive produced and therefore the mandatory spaceships having a laser-battle chase down a Death-Star-looking trench was included by holy writ. The whole thing is a special-effects orgy, even by today's standards, which made full use of the 3D technology as well as having in-theater effects like a fog machine and such, similar to other Disney experiences like Star Tours.

While it isn't 3D, here's the full thing:

Captain EO was little more than an extended music video at 17 minutes. However, the production cost a whopping $30 million.

You'll notice a common theme through all these works: Michael Jackson plays a character whom is only empowered by music. And when thus empowered, he can shoot some kind of energy beam out of his hands. He also makes his enemies join him for a dance, through some kind of mind-control or just the sheer power of his charisma. Oh, and a perfectly executed moonwalk amidst the dance numbers. You'll see all of these tropes again.

 

Then he became a straight-up mythical figure

Moonwalker premiered in 1988, to squealing fans everywhere. It grossed close to $67 million worldwide, after production costs of $22 million. During this time, Jackson had slowed the pace of his recording career; Thriller was 6 years earlier, and Bad had just come out, with Dangerous still 3 years in the future. But he still maintained his magical energy and popularity.

 

And then he became a video game

It seemed Jackson could even outdo KISS at self-promoting hyper-marketing. No, don't go thinking that Jackson alone would be the only rock star to have his own video game - there's the arcade Revolution X (Aerosmith), the Genesis pinball game Crue Ball (Motley Crue), and KISS arcade pinball, and that's not even touching the dancing / rhythm games.

But most other rock-star-themed video games had, up to that point, but cheap knock-offs of on-rails shooters or pinball machines. Big deal, you took an existing games and added decals / sprites plus changed the soundtrack. But with Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, you had a completely original game, with cutting edge production values for 1989. Jackson reprises his character from the "Smooth Criminal" segment of Moonwalker, being a dancing, singing, beam-shooting figure who defeats various henchmen on his way to rescue kids from Mr. Big (rather cliched name for a villain, no?).

Here's a whole play-through on the most superior version, the arcade machine:

And that's still playable today, given the right install of the XMame emulator and a bootleg ROM. (Ssssh, didn't hear it from us!)

 

It was shortly afterward that Jackson truly began his fall from grace. While a few murmurs of scandals had begun to dog him, and he was already responding to them in the "Leave Me Alone" segment of Moonwalker, he still had to together enough to be on top of the world, even if a little eccentric. Perhaps we all simply... loved him too much?

Somewhere in the ancient sutras (whether Hindu or Buddhist), there must be a word for the level Jackson reached during this period. He tapped into a cultural undercurrent, and merged with it perfectly. We don't get to see this often, no matter how many pork chops Lady Gaga wears.

 

Pirates have captured the world's imagination for decades, but, like cowboys and Santa Claus and hackers, their popular depiction bears no resemblance to reality whatsoever. Never mind; "pirate" is now an archetype character as much as a zombie or a vampire is. It's a Halloween costume, signifying its complete absorption into Western pop culture.

It also has a new meaning, thanks to the Internet age. That meaning being the illegitimate acquisition of digital media for the purpose of mutual peer-to-peer trade. Like the classic definition, this is an international collaboration and hence very difficult for any individual government to reign in. Right about the time digital piracy got to be a "thing" in popular culture, the song "You Are A Pirate" came out. The video, at 1.5 million views on YouTube:

The song comes from the Iceland-based children's TV show LazyTown, which has gained worldwide popularity for its colorful characters, catchy songs, and overall appeal to all age groups. But aside from that, this song from the 12th episode of LazyTown, titled "Rottenbeard," came out in 2004, right when the rising popularity of digital file-sharing clashed with big-media industry's attempts to curtail it. The song accidentally became an anthem for digital pirates everywhere, even to the point of mashup videos including the name "LimeWire" (a peer-to-peer file-sharing site) just in case you'd miss the reference.

Fans of the show probably know that the series is written, directed, and produced by Magnus Scheving, but for this song, the name to know is the very Icelandic name of Mani Svavarsson, who composes these catchy tunes. Svavarsson (be careful not to break your lips pronouncing that) won Daytime Emmy award in 2007 for "Outstanding Achievement in Music Direction & Composition". The songs have had such stand-alone popularity that LazyTown soundtracks sell quite well on their own - the single version of the show's closing theme, "Bing Bang (Time to Dance)", even charted to #4 in the UK.

The lyrics are quite tricky. They sound strained and awkward on paper, but fit perfectly once you hear the music. A few terms to know:

• "Booty" is a slang word for "treasure" (get your mind out of the gutter!) as in a treasure chest full of gold and valuables.
• "Yar har" is a stereotypical pirate exclamation, but "fiddle dee dee" doesn't fit at all. It's more appropriate to Gone With the Wind.
• "Dinky-dink-dink-a-dinkadefast" - We have no idea what's going on here, appears to be either filler text or untranslated Icelandic.
• "The black flag at the end of the mast" refers to the familiar skull-and-crossbones pirate flag, properly called a "Jolly Roger."

And now, for the cover version by Alestorm, who bill themselves as a "pirate metal" band and we can't disagree:

Seek out a few other songs by Alestorm (oh, "Rum" for instance) and you'll have to agree that even for a novelty act, they have this pirate metal thing nailed.

While you're here, you also might like our article on Scrumpy and Western, which explains a lot about where our misconceptions about pirates (particularly the way they talk) comes from.

 

Last time in the land of fictional cartoon bands, we covered The Archies and all their spin-offs. This time we'd like to explore some unrelated bands from the cartoon and comic world. So grab your Jolly Ranchers and join us for this strum down Saturday morning cartoon land...

Note that we're not going to include every time a real-life band appeared in cartoon form - that would take a book. These are fictional cartoon bands. We also aren't including every time a regular animated series had a character launch a music career for just one episode or sing a song as part of a musical presentation in just one scene - just the Simpsons and South Park episodes alone would fill a book. We mean fictional animated characters that were portrayed as having their own band / music-career and performed at least one song per episode on average.

 

God tier: These acts rise above the rest by virtue of being their own original trendsetters.

Alvin and the Chipmunks

The whole "speed up a voice by playing it faster" thing was a special effect practically born with the first record player, and had a long history with novelty songs before Alvin was ever heard from. But these are the most successful of this genre. The cartoon series ran from 1983 to 1990 and spawned a few films and TV specials, along with a whole franchise.

 

Betty Boop

Bet you'd forgotten about her, didn't you? This flapper-era acetone diva wooed movie theater audiences with her pouty charm, brought to life by the legendary Fleischer brothers Dave and Max. Betty Boop was practically the first recognized cartoon character ever, starting in the 1930s and staying solid through WW2. She's got seniority around here, so don't diss her!

 

The California Raisins

They would be much lower on the totem pole, if they hadn't had the sense to license the top Motown hits for their performances. They claymation pitchmen were led by the voice of Buddy Miles, a Jimi Hendrix alumni as well as founding member of The Electric Flag. The little wrinkled brown guys went on to market a whole line of merchandise, and appear in everything from comic books to video games.

 

Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids

Being a Filmation series, of course it had to have the characters organized into a band to sing a song at the end of each episode! Filmation sledgehammered this trope into every single product it possibly could - it would be worth the while to find out what horrible threats Gene Roddenberry used to keep their trademark trope off the animated Star Trek series. Anyway, this one makes God tier solely on the strength of The Cos.

 

Space Ghost: Coast to Coast

Yeah, CT knew how to serve up Space Ghost! Here's the crew of Space Ghost, Brak, and Zorak. Are you sure you've been good enough to deserve this?

 

B-sides: Keep your hat on, because it's all downhill from here.

The Brady Kids

The only thing worse than the Bradys living light-years past their jump-the-shark date was coming back as a wacky cartoon with just the kids and singing even more mediocre, tepid, fill-in songs. Here they are in all their groovy '70s glory with "In No Hurry."

 

The Impossibles

Barely a blip on the radar, these guys filled out the bottom half of a combination Hanna-Barbera double-bill TV series, Frankenstein, Jr. and The Impossibles. Both mini-shows were about crime-fighting superhero cartoon characters; the latter actually used posing as a Beatles / Monkees type band as their secret identities. The Impossibles were Fluid Man (who could turn into water), Coil Man (hopping around on a spring), and Multi Man (who could duplicate himself indefinitely. Here's the Big Cartoon Database entry to prove that we're not making this up or stark raving bonkers.

 

Jem and the Holograms

It ran for just three years in the late 1980s and even '80s kids don't seem to remember it, but Hasbro put the same merchandise-franchise machine that succeeded with G.I. Joe to work to try to market to the female demographic. It only party worked, and though it has a niche cult following today, Mattel fought back by making Barbie an idol singer too, and the sales of both suffered. Here's its Hub page. Surprisingly, the songs were above par for this kind of production, with the series hosting several bands and individual characters with their own styles, genres, and songs.

 

Lizzie McGuire

A Disney channel combo: half live-action and half-animation, with the main character a hapless, awkward teen who fantasizes of becoming a rock star, and said fantasies are shown as animated sequences. We all remember it only too well, as it just came out in the 2000s. Even less successful as a franchise than the above-mentioned Jem.

 

Sonic Underground

Yes, Sonic the Hedgehog, the video game, became a cartoon, and said cartoon depicted the characters in a band. Nobody knows why.

 

So obscure they've never even heard of themselves: From here, it gets ever sillier!

The Beagles

 

Our research staff just starting curling up on the floor in the fetal position and bawling at about this point. But yes, there was a rip-off of The Beatles in animated dog form, done by CBS as a direct time-slot competitor to the animated Beatles running on ABC. Furthermore, the doggy duo impersonated Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, to the bafflement of all. Good thing ToonTracker found a video on YouTube for us, or you'd never believe it.

 

The Cattanooga Cats

We'll just dump you off on Wikipedia's doorstep for this one. You're on your own. The series only lasted for nine episodes between 1969 and 1971, having a career shorter than The Velvet Underground, which is really saying something.

 

The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan

Even more obscure. Your first relationship with your junior-high-school crush lasted longer than this series, where a group of child detectives based on the character of Charlie Chan solved crimes and had a band. But one phone cam recording it off the TV is out there, so now we have to include it.

 

Meatballs and Spaghetti

And you thought that '60s media was strung out on drugs. The gimmick with this late-'80s clunker was the White-Stripes type male/female duo, with the big fat guy as Meatballs and the skinny woman as Spaghetti. This credits sequence is literally the only proof we could find that this show existed, so watch it gently. Toonarific shares your hallucination.

 

Jabberjaw

A late-'70s entry from Hanna-Barbera rounds off our list, and is rightly at the bottom because even the nostalgic ones have to admit that this show sucked. Their band was The Neptunes, and the show was basically Josie and the Pussycats underwater with a shark mascot who... get ready to facepalm... stole his whole shtick from Rodney Dangerfield right down to the "I get no respect!" line. Lasted an amazing 16 episodes, a full year's worth. Oh, and there was a comic book...