Five Song Friday: How Old Are You Now?
Episode #136: Baggy Brain Cells, Resurrection Guitar and Irredeemable Bastards
That’s it. Song’s over. It’s GO time.
Keep cool. Stay focused. Eyes on the prize.
No pressure. It’s only a birthday wish.
Just pick one of your greatest hits and let it rip.
Wish for happiness and good health for the next twelve months.
A winning lottery ticket. Overnight washboard abs. Two dozen bagels.
Whatever.
Blow out the candles and let them clap. You’ve done this dozens of times before.
You GOT this, big man.
Look out fire! Here come the wind!
You’re stumped?
Okay, but here’s the thing, you don’t really need to think of anything. It’s just part of the game. Wishes smishes. Who needs ‘em.
Magical thinking is for babies.
Right now, you have one job to do.
You want to milk the moment? Cool. Cool. There’s nothing wrong with a dramatic pause. Silence is golden. Staring is caring.
Birthday boy is ready for his close-up.
Everybody loves watching you play statue. Super fun. Super duper fun.
But the clock is ticking and you’re kind of stretching the concept of a pause.
Just blow and go buddy.
Blow. And. Go.
Look sport, we’re getting close to a situation here.
Completely understand you want to drag your feet and avoid getting older. But letting these candles burn forever isn’t going to stop the clock.
The wax is dripping into the frosting and everybody is looking at you like you have a problem.
See the frowns and wrinkled foreheads? This is getting awkward my man.
Your cake is more flames and smoke than sponge and sugar.
Not 100% sure those sprinkles won’t ignite.
It’s time to pull the trigger.
Exhale and extinguish. Expel that air. Empty those lungs.
Let’s get that round of applause you’ve been waiting for all year.
Bro.
Seriously.
This is getting ridiculous.
Five Song Friday #136: Happy Birthday to Me Edition
A handful of my all-time favorite jimmy jams in no particular order.
“I Wanna Be Adored” - The Stone Roses
I always worried that the laser in my CD player would vaporize this disc if I played it too many times. But it turns out that my fears were unfounded. That’s not how compact disc technology works. Instead I was afforded roughly a million listens until the music fused with my brain on a molecular level. I know there are neuroscientists out there who might call bullshit, but I’m convinced that inside my skull there are at least a few hundred thousand brain cells in baggy pants with shaggy hair and glow sticks who only come alive when they hear the opening train of this track.
“Miss World” - Hole
I didn’t have much in common with Courtney Love, but something about this album really hit me in the feels when it arrived in 1994. Maybe I felt like a badass grunge goddess with runny mascara and a perpetually lit cigarette who stumbled around in a haze of grief growls and girl fights. Maybe I felt like my parts were doll parts. Maybe lines like “I made my bed, I’ll lie in it” made sense to me at the time. I can’t explain it, so the best that I can do is put on my tiara and scream along with all the subtlety and skill of a hound dog howling at a fire truck.
“The Skills to Pay the Bills” - Beastie Boys
“Making mountains out of molehills and rockin’ some mo’ skills / Butt naked beats with butt naked fills” I very much enjoy how these three young men made sure that a song about them having the skills to pay their bills actually shows that they indeed have said skills to pay said bills. Or are they TELLING? Showing or telling, it doesn’t matter. When you drop lines like “I’m selling sex rhymes by the pound” and “I’m an epilectic, a skept-a-cleptic” you can do what you want.
“Bury Me ” - The Smashing Pumpkins
It shouldn’t surprise you to know this song features prominently on Pete’s Funeral Playlist. Why do I have a funeral playlist? Because I have a playlist-making problem and occasionally get obsessed with death. Selfishly, I include this way-too-on-the-nose track on my post-life jams because part of me believes that if there is any one song that could rouse me from eternal slumber for one more round of air guitar and imaginary drums, this is that one song. I can see my me now, irrevocably asleep in that body box with a stupid rigor mortis grin on my face. Once the bass and drums kick in, my leg starts twitching and all heck breaks loose! He is risen! He is rocking!
“Gentlemen” - The Afghan Whigs
Some singers have the voice of an angel. But Greg Dulli, the lead singer of Afghan Whigs is all devil. He’s the smolder-voiced troublemaker with a shimmer in his eyes that says, if you come with me, there will be trouble. Good trouble? Maybe. Depends on how you define good. I listen to him and feel like a lurker in a leisure suit, a rascal who just wants to watch the world burn from the way back booth of a dive bar. He makes music for irredeemable bastards who have done bad things to good people or good things to bad people. And when he asks you to sign over your soul and join his dark crooner circus, the only right answer is, “Do you have a pen?”
“Nice guys finish first. If you don't know that, then you don't know where the finish line is.” ― Garry Shandling (Born November 29, 1949)
Thanks for reading!
Sincerely,
DJ CrankyPete