Weirdest Band You Love
The King Prawn ·
April 30, 2012 at 3:05pm
Lance does an amazing job putting music up for us to all enjoy. A lot of it is out of my taste range, but sometimes I wonder why. There was a band I listened to in the '80s that is just plain strange. Even now I pull up the youtubes when I need a fix of "Don't Be a Hippie" or "All the Pretty Girls." The band is The Judys. These guys, The Dead Milkmen, and other off beat bands created the sound track for my teenage years. When I saw Elizabeth's post about Jim Jones and Kool Aid this song immediately started playing in my mind:
Anyone else have strange music from the past that just keeps cropping up?
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Aug '10
Re: Weirdest Band You Love
- TMBG didn't write Istanbul (not Constantinople). It was originally recorded by The Four Lads in 1953. I do not think there is any political intent in the lyrics. It's merely a silly song about how cities change their names. Hence, the line about old New York once being New Amsterdam.
- If I don't understand German, am I still a Nazi for listening to Rammstein? By your friend's standard, I suppose I shouldn't listen to Wagner either. How about Joy Division?
Edited on April 30, 2012 at 4:57pmAug '10
Re: Weirdest Band You Love
I didn't include bands where I like one or two songs. It doesn't feel like they qualify as a favourite band. I do love that song, tho'.
In the same category would be Mastodon's song, Linoleum Knife (CofC violation warning).
Also, Machines by Lothar and the Hand People.
Also, Here Comes The Judge by Pigmeat Markham, considered by some to be the very first recorded rap song (recorded in 1968).
In the mood for some Soviet Electronica from 1984? No?
Then how about British electronica from 1969? No?
Then how about Dutch Electronica from 1958?
Edited on April 30, 2012 at 5:20pmRe: Weirdest Band You Love
Misthiocracy · 9 minutes ago
Edited 9 minutes ago
1) I had no clue about this.
2) The Four Lads version is *fantastic.*:
Jul '11
Re: Weirdest Band You Love
Dinosaur jr.
Apr '11
Re: Weirdest Band You Love
Misthiocracy ·
1. When Jimmy Kennedy was writing the lyrics, ethnic tensions were at their peak. The "Istanbul Pogrom" came a couple of years later. With New York having a fairly large new Greek population (not unrelatedly), the tensions in Istanbul were much in the news.
If it hadn't been a cover, if TMBG had written it in 1990, I'd agree that the it was medieval history being discussed, but TMBG are very into the history and meaning of their songs, and when the Four Lads were singing, it was not academic.
2. Wagner was on her preferred list of what I should have been describing as German music, along with Europop, rap, and Beethoven (particularly for Cologne). Much like having a shaved head, listening to Rammstein (particularly, as we explained, non-habitually), does not make you a Nazi, but is, apparently, correlated.
Aug '10
Re: Weirdest Band You Love
James Of England
Wagner was on her preferred list of what I should have been describing as German music...
Is she aware that Adolf Hitler shared that opinion?
Apr '11
Re: Weirdest Band You Love
I have always been a big fan of the music of Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart. I never considered them to be weird, though.
Apr '11
Re: Weirdest Band You Love
More purely musically, one easy way of making "weird", listenable, music is to play a song from one genre in the style of another. I thought that this blues interpretation of LMFAO's "I'm Sexy and I Know It" by Todd Park Mohr was a pretty good example of this. The link is to the original video, which should be seen first. The LMFAO video should carry a warning for being pretty offensive, but I think it's funny enough to be worth it. My wife disagrees.
For music video weirdness, I'm fond of this example of Mormons being weird enough to confuse the Japanese.
Edit: I initially had a bad link for the LMFAO video.
Edited on May 1, 2012 at 12:26amApr '11
Re: Weirdest Band You Love
Misthiocracy
James Of England
Wagner was on her preferred list of what I should have been describing as German music...
Is she aware that Adolf Hitler shared that opinion? · 12 minutes ago
Yes. I gather quite a lot of modern German Nazi culture rejects much of Hitler's aesthetic, just as Hitler would be mildly uncomfortable with a lot of modern Nazi culture. I think that the same is true of the KKK successors being skinheads with cranial swastika tattoos; I can't imagine Senator Byrd approving when he was a youth.
Edit: It's worth noting that Wagner enthusiasts have gone to quite a lot of effort to encourage the gap, and one can't talk Bayreuth with a fan for very long before being reminded of Jewish involvement. It's just about the only time Germans have anything nice to say about Israeli culture.
Edited on April 30, 2012 at 5:41pmApr '12
Re: Weirdest Band You Love
"The Shaggs" My Pal Foot Foot http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR9d4ESlpHY , sounds like it's being played backwards until you hear that the lyrics are being sung forwards, doesn't it?
Weirdo Rock also-rans: The Jickets (less popular contemporaries of TMBG) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHELB5E1ac0
and of course "The Residents" and, going way back, Yma Sumac.
But maybe I know too much about this.
Aug '10
Re: Weirdest Band You Love
Some of these songs likely violate the CoC, but I find myself listening to them fairly frequently.
The Dwarves -- Anybody Out There
Headswim -- Devil in My Palm
Dead Kennedy's -- California Uber Alles
Electric Frankenstein -- Demolition Joyride
Taco -- Puttin' On the Ritz
and the best song of all time.
Wall of Voodoo -- Mexican Radio
Sep '10
Re: Weirdest Band You Love
http://player.vimeo.com/video/35081538
Circo Paleo; Jenny O'Connor, Joshua Amyx, Kelly O'Connor, Jay Elkins
They are dear freinds, wonderful people. This video was created by one of their fans, synced to a track from their CD - but believe me, they sound great live. Weird - not really.... Check them out!
http://www.circapaleo.com/
Sep '10
Re: Weirdest Band You Love
Nov '11
Re: Weirdest Band You Love
Wesley Willis.
Jun '11
Re: Weirdest Band You Love
Being a devotee of Hindustani classical music gets me weird points among many of my peers, as does my unending fascination with William "Bootsy" Collins, but both of those are genuinely pretty conventional, in the right context. Same for Yes, although Tales From Topographic Oceans will strike the neophyte as at least "weird". Steely Dan definitely has eccentric lyrics but is pretty polished and normal musically, if not common.
But in terms of music I still personally consider weird, there is Mahavishnu Orchestra - Birds of Fire, which is genuinely weird in a musically admirable sense, and for genuinely weird in a straight-up weird sense, you can't beat the forebears of Rammstein...the Slovenian group Laibach. Laibach is one of those groups I'd almost have trouble confessing to listening to, they are so strange. I think the idea of German tanzmetal just amuses me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zSRcFxZVAA
Edited on May 1, 2012 at 4:58amMay '12
Re: Weirdest Band You Love
The Judy's! Yea!
This was the final straw that led me to join. I'd been chided by the boys on the flagship podcast for a year or so, and it was only a matter of time. Mention of The Judy's finally pushed me over the edge.
As I recall, The Judy's were from around Sugarland, outside Houston. Other Texas (or regularly visiting) bands from that time were Joe King Carasco ("Party Weekend"), Omar and the Howlers and Webb Wilder and the Beatnecks (later with the Nashvillians). Later came Dallas bands like the Rev. Horton Heat and the Old '97s. All worth a listen.
Thanks for the memories.
Feb '11
Re: Weirdest Band You Love
Actually saw Devo in concert at the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, and they showed these intensely strange music videos along with their music. Mothersbaugh went on to give us theme music for two of my favorite Saturday morning shows when the girls were young--Pee Wee's Funhouse and Beakman's World! TMBG's "Flood" is one of my desert island disks--there are no clunkers and "Birdhouse in Your Soul" and "Whistling in the Dark" are wonders.
Dec '10
Re: Weirdest Band You Love
Ex Tex: The Judy's! Yea!
This was the final straw that led me to join. I'd been chided by the boys on the flagship podcast for a year or so, and it was only a matter of time. Mention of The Judy's finally pushed me over the edge.
My work is done here.