Have Mercy, Baby, On A Poor Girl Like Steve
Classic rock is officially now boring. It probably has been for quite some time, yet it occurred to me today, while flipping the FM dial past a perfectly acceptable Van Halen track that I always would have settled upon before, that all surprises have been bled from this music. This isn't to suggest that the Led Zeppelins and Pink Floyds aren't still gods in my eyes, only that the days of listening to this music 24/7 are long gone - and that the songs I've always hated are all the more excruciating now (seriously, how is it that I still hear ELO's "Don't Bring Me Down" every goddamn day? Are this many people burning up the radio station hotlines to request it? Really?).
But don't despair. These thoughts reminded me of a number of diversions my colleagues and I have developed over the years to make such music much more interesting, or at the very least tolerable. If nothing else, the following should renew your appreciation for these dinosaurs ye have forsaken, and make the next cookout where someone is rockin' these rad tunes an altogether different occasion:
- Lovin'
This beauty was discovered purely by accident one afternoon whilst Matt and I were still employed as meat cutters, cranking these gems on a tinny transistor in the back room where we brandished knives. Bachman Turner Overdrive, possibly the worst band ever, was at that moment infesting our eardrums with "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet", the absolute nadir of their putrid catalog. During one spot where Randy B is warbling about this mysterious concept of "lovin," I instead blurt out, "...any pussy is good pussy, mmm hmm, woo hoo..." and just like that, a fresh new pastime is born.
For the rest of the day and many thereafter, we are obsessed with listening - not actively looking up online, say, which would be cheating - for any spot in any song where the word lovin' is used as a noun. While when used as a verb, it doesn't really make sense (think of the Scorps and "Still Pussy You", for example), we discover countless examples where this simple switch fits perfectly and causes the song in question to shine with an altogether brighter light. It helps too, of course, that what these guys are actually singing about is pussy, not "lovin," when you get right down to it.
Though many highlights are discovered, my personal two way tie for first place comes down to 38 Special lamenting "good pussy gone bad" and Huey Lewis boasting about "hot pussy every night."
- Crash
I can't take credit for this gem. You need at least one great drinking game to go along with this music, and a long forgotten friend, some fifteen years ago, introduced the undisputed king into our lives one night while we were all knocking back sodas at a favorite neighborhood bar. The object is to take a drink of your beer every time a cymbal crash sounds out on the jukebox (or Muzak, or whatever happens to be playing), which seems much tamer in practice than it is in actuality. Somewhere around the 3rd or 4th song, let's just say you start...questioning some things, to put it mildly. Particularly as, if your buddies are anything like mine, all parties involved are tripping over themselves to spin an ever more wicked cut.
Expert Tip: there is no more maniacal song to foist upon someone than CCR's version of "I Heard It Through The Grapevine." Don't even bother searching for it. It doesn't exist. For that reason alone, this game, while also known as Nice Job, Crash, it more commonly referred to as either Grapevine, I Heard It Through The Grapevine, or I'll Bet You're Wondering How I Knew 'Bout Your Plans To Make Me Crash.
- Moustaches Per Capita
More a companion piece ideal for when hanging out bored and/or half wasted, listening to classic rock while either everyone is huddled around a computer screen, trolling the internet, or sprawled around a couch, shouting out band names that one or more persons is pulling up on a smart phone. This baby in fact traces its roots yet again to a day on the job where Dan and I this time were flipping through some hilarious 1970s music guide, and he proposed we tried to figure out which group had a highest percentage of moustaches. Though it surely exists, in that particular book we found no evidence of a 100%, although the Doobs scored pretty damn high and helped us kill a good half hour.
- Steve
Okay, one insight I'm taking away from writing this is that we clearly do more screwing around while on the job than I ever realized. But whatever the case, Steve, sort of the yin to Lovin's yang, sits at the polar opposite from that particular pursuit, in that you will not be searching for opportunities to play; at some point, you will struggle in futility to shut down your mind from thinking about it.
Steve originated, once again in our meat cutting days, at the hands of this hapless idiot who manned the counter. He was never involved in the composition of these parodies, he was merely the subject. It began one day with Victor cranking up "Pina Colada" in the backroom and declaring, "...I was tired of my lady...so I went to Steve...," which soon sparked a full blown phenomenon. Even our district merchandiser got in the mix. Unlike lovin, words that rhyme with Steve are found everywhere, and you soon discover that often merely the correct syllabic window allows you to make a make a perfectly hilarious and logical substitution.
Soon, the craze extends to all manner of song, not just classic rock. To cite some actual examples belted out over top of a buzzing bandsaw, Steve can magically transform Gary Puckett and the Union Gap into edgy performers again ("young Steve, get out of my mind....you're much toooooooooooo young, Steve"), or make Lifehouse sound interesting and cryptic ("I can't keep my eyes off of you...and Steve...and all other people..."), it can add another whole layer of sadness to Connie Francis's ancient tearjerkers ("where the boys are...someone waits for Steve"). Occasionally, it can express a basic truism that perhaps we have not considered before, such as when Toto point out that Steve isn't always on tieEEEahHAHAeeAYEEiHIhime.
Do with this information what you will. Perhaps reading this will spark up your own creative means for approaching these songs from a slightly different angle (such as my wife and I and our more scholarly - ahem - recent searches for tunes that include the word "perhaps," without using it in the title. So Cake is eliminated, as far as we know, meaning thus far we're stuck on Blues Traveler and the Thompson Twins). Now if someone could just figure out a way to make Bruce Springsteen palatable, we'd really be on a roll.