Watching a thing called Charli XCX stink up the stage on “Saturday Night Live” I was reminded of one of my favorite Thomas McGuane references, from “Nothing But Blue Skies,” in which another Frank (Copenhaver) muses, “I feel sorry for the young people of today with their stupid fucking tuneless horseshit; that may be a generational judgment but I seriously doubt it.”
Thus today’s Zappadan 2014 selection, from “We’re Only In It For the Money.”
Mad Blog Media 
A couple of weeks from the Big Five-Oh, I’m realizing that every song I ever need to hear has already been written.
I still await every fresh Tom Waits release with bated breath. But yeah, I know where you’re coming from.
Can’t recall last musician on SNL I liked. So, instead, I found a YouTube video of Big Mama Thornton singing “Ball and Chain.”
Mark Ronson, Bruno Mars and Mystikal had us tapping our toes with “Uptown Funk” and “Feel Right.” No question there’s a lot of derivative stuff going on here — James Brown, P-Funk, Michael Jackson, etc. — but shit, at least you can dance to it.
Hee, hee. When/if I can stay awake long enough to watch SNL the “musical” portion is when I hit the bathroom, remembering back-in-the-day eagerly awaiting someone like David Bowie’s appearance. Face it folks, we’re OLD. The music’s not that much different than when four guys on Ed Sullivan sang those thought-provoking lyrics – “She loves you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.” and my grandfather saw his barbering business going down the drain. Has there ever been a geezer generation who said anything different about the music young people enjoy? If it doesn’t piss off the old-farts, it can’t be any good, or have you forgotten?
That’s the thing … it doesn’t piss me off. It just bores me.
Hey, I hated the Beatles when I saw them on Ed Sullivan that first time. I was coming up on 10 years old, an Elvis man*, and I remember sneering something like, “Look at those haircuts. Listen to that crap. They’ll never last. Not like the King.”
I don’t recall getting interested in them until “A Hard Day’s Night,” when it began to dawn at me that these weren’t just four Moes without Larry or Curly.
Then, in quick succession, came “Help!”, “Rubber Soul,” “Yesterday and Today,” and “Revolver.” And that was that. I was hooked. Elvis who?
The Beatles were innovators, not just pirates. I’m not sure what Charli XCX is. A dime-store shoplifter? For sure a bore, as Steve notes. Whatever she is, I bet Chrissie Hynde, Joan Jett, Patti Smith and Siouxsie Sioux are laughing their asses off.
* Weird thing is, I loved my parents’ music too. Man, that Glenn Miller cat could swing.
One of our favorite movies is “The Glenn Miller Story.” I guess every musician is looking for “that sound.”
Oh, yeah. That was a good one.
Man, if I were a musician I would never, ever get into an aircraft of any sort. Or onto a motorcycle. Just keep to the studio and the stage.
Of course, sometimes you’re not even safe there.
Ugliest part of your body is your brain. At least for Dick(less) Cheney.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/12/14/370779708/cheney-on-enhanced-interrogation-id-do-it-again-in-a-minute
Amen brother. Amazing how he never denies what was done, or qualifies it as torture, although he makes an exception for water boarding. Hides behind acronyms and doublespeak while ducking the basic questions. Every technique they used meets the definition for torture. We as a nation should never do it for any reason.
I hope Patrick deletes my two previous comments. Thank you sir. This is the song I meant to link to.
What can one say about an a-hole like Dick-less? This sadistic chicken-hawk didn’t have the balls to go to war when he had the chance to put his own ass where his “patriotism” was, but now has no problem with pretty much anything as long as it’s done to those “other people”. Before ol’ Beelzebub skewers and roasts him on a spit in hell, let’s hope he gets a bit of rectal feeding and a dose or two of waterboarding, just so he knows how it feels.
Everybody’s interviewing this representative of the walking dead as though he had been the preside. … Oh, yeah. Right. Never mind.
His SS detail must get hazardous-duty pay. I keep hoping that the mom of a grunt killed in one of this asshole’s poli-sci projects catches him out in public and slaps some of the rabies out of him, but Santa seems to have other priorities.
Makes it pretty obvious why the good ol’ USA wants nothing to do with anything called the International Criminal Court, doesn’t it? War crimes, genocide, etc. are always what “those other people” do, never us. Ya wonder if any of Dick’s SS guys ever think, “Geez, am I really putting my life on the line to protect this miserable piece-of-s__t?”
If anyone ever needed SS guys (angular SS’s with a skull) it’s The Dick.
The S.S. worked for the National Socialist Party of Germany. Not the Republican or even the Democratic Party.
Its the Socialists that might not have the best record, and by the way, how many people in the past fifty years drown swimming from the U.S. to Cuba?