Sean Daily is an English major from New Jersey now living in Las Vegas, the Other City of Lights. "I consider 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' to be comfort reading, I like the al pastor tacos at Tacos Mexico and I count among my literary influences the Chainsaw from 'Doom'. 'RRRRRR! You don't like that, do you, Mr. Undead Marine! RRRRRR!'"
Shanoah Alkire is our Discordian at large. "Born in Santa Cruz, I grew up in Grass Valley and the Bay Area, and now lurk in Las Vegas. My literary influences include Ray Bradbury,
Lewis Carroll, and Douglas Adams. I also program as a hobby,
and currently maintain the Gtk port of Angband. You can find
a rather old bio of me here."
Well, no new deaths today that I know of, though I haven’t really checked too closely. It’d be pretty eerie if a new celebrity started dying each day for a blog theme, after all. Like Michael Jackson, who is now confirmed to have died of a heart attack. (The default method of dying from having your name written in the notebook from Death Note, as I recall.)
Don’t think we had a firm established theme before that, so I’ll fall back on what I had been doing: posting Frank Zappa songs.
This one’s a rather nice rundown of televangelists and other religious groups, Jesus Thinks You’re A Jerk. Includes jabs at Jim & Tammy, and the Ku Klux Klan, among others. Pity the lyrics shown are occassionally misspelled, or incorrect. (Bush for Pat was one noticed, for example.)
It’s a fun song lambasting various people and groups that need it, anyways. And no, not work safe.
Didn’t John mention UFO’s in conjunction with Yoko Ono in Out The Blue, too? Interesting when there are recurring themes.
To give todays John Lennon song proper perspective, I’m going to do something rather unusual for this blog lately; play a song not by John Lennon. Here’s Bob Dylan with Gotta Serve Somebody.
All right, got it? Well, John Lennon heard this song. Apparently it upset him a bit, so he wrote this song, Serve Yourself, sung in psuedo-Dylan style. Rated not work safe for bad language, and stuff offensive to closeminded people of most major religions.
Theres a 8 minute version with less bad language, and without him trying to imitate Bob Dylans voice, too.
I always liked that song, actually, Sean. Though, you know, the video you posted of it cut off the opening lyrics. Which is a pity, because they were probably the most relevant ones to your post.
"God is a concept by which we measure our pain.
I'll say it again:
God is a concept by which we measure our pain."
Since we’re on the topic, here are a few other things John Lennon’s said:
I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It’s just that the translations have gone wrong.
I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?
I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.
I echo the sentiment. On all three quotes, really, to differing degrees. And given that last, I thought it appropriate to play John Lennon’s Working Class Hero. We play a lot of songs about heros here, don’t we, Sean? Hadn’t noticed that. Surprised Joni Minstrel isn’t in the list…
You may recall, with The Exorcist, that I’d been posting house dj music. I thought I’d continue the theme by playing DHS’s The House of God. I rather enjoy the animation on this, anyways.
And as long as I’m at it, there certainly are hooligans in the house of god, so why don’t I play The Ragga TwinsHooligan 69? I always did like the audio from the opening of Prince’s Let’s Go Crazy…
Well, you know, if we want music for this epic battle, we could do worse then to go to the Polish group ich troLe.Their youtube page describes them like this:
Polish neoroots music – the non-accidental effect of the meeting of two friends of heavyfolk, biometal, folkmetal or hardfolk… A fascination for Slavonic and Celtic music, folk, punk, rockmetal, acoustic transtechno, drum’n'bass, dub, chillout and ambient music… Sounds from reconstructed ancient instruments, recent inventions, plus archaic or contemporary vocal techniques.
In other words, exactly the type of music I tend to like. Check out this recording of Polka Pierdolka from a live appearance on the Kuba Wojewodzki show in 2004:
Well, if we have the apocalypse going on, and Jesus and the Devil going at it, we clearly also need David Bowie in on it as well. Though I can’t say which side he’d be coming in on. Or neither, come to think about it.
But you’d get one impression watching him steal babies, and doing voodoo here, in the Labyrinth. This is the song Dance, Magic Dance.
But then listen to him in this clip with Bing Crosby, singing Little Drummer Boy. Purely amazing, and quite different from the impression you get above.
That may be one reason why I like David Bowie. He’s clearly Chaotic Neutral.
But Sean, if it’s an apocalypse, it’s Armageddon, and we need Jesus to make an appearance.
As such, I present the song “All For The Best” from Godspell, featuring his disciples as hippies, and a Jesus that reminds me of Richard Simmons. Here we have them doing an all-singing, all-dancing number, Jesus and Judas as leads, on top of the twin towers.
You know, I was going to keep on the topic of War, and then one youtube video led to another, and another, and somehow my precious war theme had turned into Boy George. Doen’t you hate it when that happens?
The Church of the Poison Mind – Culture Club (1984)
Actually, Boy George did do a song called “The War Song” about war. I just liked this song better. For those unfamiliar with Culture Club, Boy George is the one with the bow in his hair. He’s backed by Helen Terry here. I just find the phrase “the church of the poison mind” very evocative. And Helen does great backup on this song.
Not to mention that they start out acting like a somewhat normal new-age type religion. You don’t find out about the space aliens sharing your personal body space till later, when you’ve spent thousands of dollars on it.
But I’m in a musical mood right now, so let’s play some clips from Wicked:
The Wizard and I
Here we have a young and naive Elphaba starting school and showing the ambition that later gets shattered, and eventually leads to a bucket of water being thrown in her direction. As you can tell, she’s been rather discriminated against because of the color of her skin…
Something Bad
Elphaba starts to learn about the steamy, nasty, bigoted undertones lurking in the land of Oz under the iron fist of the Wizard of Oz. The lady in the wheelchair at the beginning is her sister, btw, who later gets a house dropped on her.
What Is This Feeling?
Elphaba and her snooty roommate Galinda[1] express their true feelings for each other. Idina Menzel does such a a great job of playing the wicked witch…
[1] They eventually manage to resign her to being called Glinda. But it’s so lower-class.
