Five Song Friday: Picking Up Weirdos

This Week: Big Foreheads, Swedish Fish and Macho Gambling

Pete Humes

Apr 15, 2022

Hitchhiking used to be cool.

For those too young to remember, hitchhiking was a lot like Uber, but instead of an app, you used your thumb.

There was no driver verification. You just got in and prayed that you didn’t get murdered.

Yeah, it was dangerous, but back then, we didn’t have many options.

If we were stuck in the middle of nowhere and nobody could come get us, we could always rely on our thumbs.

And knowing that we could always bum rides from strangers gave us a kind of fearlessness to do things that didn’t always make sense.

For example, if a friend offered you tickets to see the Rolling Stones at RFK Stadium for their 1989 Steel Wheels tour and you were 98% sure that your piece-of-crap car wouldn’t survive the trip from Richmond to DC and back, would you go anyway?

Even if you didn’t have the money to get your car fixed (or towed) and you’d almost certainly have to remove the license plates and abandon it forever on I-95 somewhere near Doswell?

Of course. Because it was the Rolling Stones and you could always hitch a ride back.

You don’t see as much hitchhiking these days.

That’s probably because studies have shown that in 2022, anybody hitchhiking is definitely a murderer. And anybody picking up hitchhikers in 2022? Also a murderer.

My thinking is that all these murderers kept canceling each other out.

“YOU were going to kill ME? I was going to kill YOU!” [nervous laughter]

After years of awkward front seat standoffs, all the murderers were just like, “This isn’t as easy as it used to be, let’s go back to the rest areas.”

But when it comes to music, there’s nothing better than hitchhiking to expand your horizons.

You need to be willing to give weirdos a ride. The more the merrier. Pile ‘em in like a clown car.

Give yourself permission to go cruising for strangers. Pull over, open the passenger door and pat the empty seat with a smile.

Throw caution to the wind and see what happens!

[IMPORTANT: This is an ANALOGY and by “strangers,” I mean bands and songs that may be unfamiliar to you, not actual people you’d find on the side of the road.]

Sure, musical hitchhiking is still risky.

Just like real-life hitchhiking, you might pick up someone who is super annoying or painfully dull. You might give a ride to someone who scares you or swears too much or prominently features the name of a casual dining chain restaurant in their lyrics.

Stuff like that is going to happen.

Then again, you could also stumble on an artist who opens your heart or blows your mind. You might even find the song that saves your life.

To be honest, I doubt any of these tracks will save your life.

But I know for sure that none of them will kill you.

Thanks for reading.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Sincerely,

DJ Crankypete

Five Song Friday 009

“Everyday” - Bumcello

What happens when a classically-trained cellist (Vincent Segal) and a singer/drummer (Cyril Atef) join forces and decide to make improvised music in bars in Paris?

You get a band called Bumcello.

Where did the weird name come from?

In one interview, Atef said, “I'm the bum, he's the cello.”

Which seems kind of sad, because all I can think about is that brainstorming session…

“I have a cello, so we can put that in the name.”

“Yes, and I sing and play the drums, so maybe… Singcello? Or Drumcello?”

“Nah, I’m not feeling it. Maybe something about how you never pay for stuff?”

“What’s that now?”

“You don’t pick up the tab when we go out. Like EVER. And when was the last time you put diesel in the Renault? Do you even know how to fill it up?”

“Where is all this anger coming from Vincent?”

“I’m tired of picking up the slack, Cyril. We’re going to be BUM-cello. How do like them apples?”

“I’m so sorry Vincent, I never realized that—”

“BUMCELLO!!!”

“Shoot You Down” - APB

Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz called this song “a punk dance-floor classic.”

Just because I sought this tune out after reading that, doesn’t mean I believe EVERYTHING that Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz says.

I have my own thoughts and opinions. I am capable of thinking things that Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz didn’t think or say first.

Sure, there was that one night on Jimmy Fallon, when Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz said, “I feel like I have a big forehead.”

Yes, I yelled back at the TV, “Me too!”

But I’ve always felt that way. It’s not like Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz invented the concept of big foreheads.

And when he said “I don’t use coconut enough, in food or on my body,” I also agreed.

That doesn’t make me his puppet or anything. Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz is NOT the boss of me.

But he was definitely right about this song.

This 1981 single by the Scottish post-punk band APB saw heavy rotation in NYC's underground dance clubs. Which means that some of the hippest people on the planet used to groove to this song. People like Madonna, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Sylvester Stallone, John Travolta and… Penny Marshall!

I’m not saying that when I dance to this song I feel cooler, but I’m also NOT not saying it.

“The Spot” - Your Smith

Let’s get our Smiths straight.

Minnesota singer/songwriter Caroline Smith records and performs as Your Smith.

Your Smith is not the same as My Smith, Our Smith, Their Smith or The Smiths.

Your Smith has nothing to do with Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the 2005 action movie where Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie first created the beast with two backs known as “Brangelina.”

Your Smith is also NOT related to Bubba Smith, the former NFL football player who appeared in Miller Lite beer commercials with fellow NFL veteran Dick Butkus, a man whose name many 12-year-old boys (and at least one 51-year-old man) find hilarious.

Your Smith is also not related to Will Smith, the fabulously wealthy actor who slaps people for telling jokes with outdated pop culture references.

Do we have that all straight? Good.

Now I forgot what I was talking about.

“Sugar Town” - ShitKid

I was going to tell you that Åsa Söderqvist is from Sweden, but all of the funny marks in her name probably gave it away.

Åsa performs under the moniker ShitKid, which 12-year-old boys (and at least one 51-year-old man) find hilarious. This song is from her debut full-length album, Fish, released in 2017.

“Sugar Town” is a twangy, crunchy little number that sounds like… a punk-lounge band fronted by Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) from Twin Peaks making up new lyrics to the Munsters theme song.

It sounds like… if the Powerpuff Girls were a go-go trio held captive by the Yakuza in a deleted 1960s flashback scene from Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill.

Okay, no, I got it. It sounds like… if Veruca Salt (the character from Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, not the 90s band) channeled the trauma of her chocolate factory experience into a solo musical career as a punk guitarist and chanteuse who plays mostly dive bars in Munich and wears way too much eye makeup.

I could keep going, but maybe it’s better if you just listen for yourself.

“Lady Luck” - Richard Swift

Richard Swift died in 2018, leaving behind a legacy of great songs worth checking out.

“Lady Luck” is from his 2009 album, Atlantic Ocean.

The first time I heard “Lady Luck,” it felt like I’d been listening to it my entire life.

There are parts of the song I swear I remember hearing through headphones on long family road trips. Trips where I’d lean my forehead against the glass and watch the world go by until my Walkman batteries ran out, usually right before the best part of “Mr. Roboto.”

“Lady Luck” sounds like a song with an old soul. I would have bet big money that it was a faithful cover of some long lost seventies soul classic, but I would have lost that money.

And then I would have to come home and explain why I lost so much money. My wife would be like, “You did WHAT? Why would you bet on something like that?”

Then I would have to explain that I bet on things like that to feel more like a man.

I’d tell her that a big part of my masculine identity is tied up in knowing things about music and movies that have no practical value in the real world.

My voice would crack when I bring up how people used to come to me to ask “Who was that guy in that movie with that thing?” And then IMDB came along and… people STOPPED asking me.

So now I bet on things like this song being a cover of an older soul song and sometimes I’m wrong and sometimes that means we can’t pay the mortgage this month.

I’M SORRY, okay?