Another dance-on-the-tractor favorite. Sometimes when this song came on I'd stop the tractor so I could hear it better. Then I'd take a leak after the song was done so I had at least a little better excuse for stopping. Maybe that's why I feel the urge to pee after hearing this song.
I'm a little confused by the juxtaposition of the lyrics and the video. In the song, he's inviting us to "Put on your red shoes and dance the blues." But in the video, he seems to be warning that if you put on those red shoes, you'll set off a nuclear explosion in the Australian outback. Since Australia doesn't have nuclear weapons, I'm guessing the bomb would be detonated by radical kitten-heel terrorists.
Oh, 1983, how I miss your nuclear paranoia. And Dabney Coleman's mustache.
Lyrics about a London riot that broke out after the police ignored a black kid that had been stabbed and lay bleeding on the street. Not so good.
Still couldn't resist turning it up and singing along and dancing in my seat while driving...the tractor.
This is one of the songs I remember enjoying while discing the hell out of the fields by Mormon Canyon. There are a lot of them coming up on the countdown, so prepare yourself for plenty of summer-of-'83 flashbacks.
While the Chippendale's dancers skit för "Wörking för the Weekend" kind öf ruined the söng for me, the cöwbell skit för this söng just made me like it even möre.
Will Ferrel and Christöpher Walken are hilariöus!
But yöu knöw what isn't hilariöus? A live versiön öf the söng that DÖESN'T feature the cöwbell!
Argh! Can such things be?! Hey, Blue Öyster! While yöu're at it, why dön't you thröw away all the guitars and just play harps instead?!
That sucked! But it can be even suckier. Höw aböut a hörrible a cappella versiön?!
80. "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" by Meat Loaf
Sheldon is the reason I still like this song so much. I have a vivid memory of Sheldon laughing about these lines at the end of the song:
I swore that I would love you to the end of time!
So now I'm praying for the end of time
To hurry up and arrive
'Cause if I gotta spend another minute with you
I don't think that I can really survive
I'll never break my promise or forget my vow
But God only knows what I can do right now
I'm praying for the end of time
It's all that I can do
Praying for the end of time
So I can end my life with you!
Besides the memory of Sheldon, I still find the entire original video of the song to be entertaining, but it's the end of the song where Meat Loaf's rock-opera acting skills really shine.
"Bat Out of Hell" is a classic rock album, and so much different from everything else that was coming out in the late 70s. But out of all the songs on the album, this song is the best. In fact, I'd say that "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" is, without a doubt, one of the very best in all of rock 'n' roll.
(If you didn't watch the video to the very end, you need to go back and watch it. Why? Because it is, without a doubt, one of the very best in all of rock 'n' roll.)
Am I the only one that is a bit creeped out by Meat's groping of the lady during the baseball play-by-play? And am I the only one that thinks the older he is, the creepier it gets? When I watched the baseball part of the video below, I found myself wondering when the Dateline guy was going to show up.
I can't believe he grabs her like that! Who does he think he is? The President?!
Speaking of going almost all the way, here's somebody else that Meatloaf groped.
Poor Mitt. After that performance by Meat Loaf, there was no way he was going to win. You just couldn't get elected President in 2012 without the Pro-Busey vote.
But as with everything else that was upside-down about the 2016 election, Meat's endorsement helped carry the election for the Donald. Meat Loaf loves Trump, and Trump loves Meat Loaf!
The Donald actually let Martha touch his meatloaf!
Yet another reason why Melania is praying for the end of time to hurry up and arrive.
While I was working on a grant between Utah State University and the Utah Department of Public Safety, I basically worked from home. The idea sounds nice at first. But the problem with it is that at some point you realize that you're never away from work when you're at home. That work mostly consisted of writing a training manual for people that trained first responders throughout the state. To add a little fun to my spend-all-day-in-the-unfinished-basement job, I bought a bunch of secret agent music and played it while I typed because it made me feel like I was a spy on a top-secret mission and had to hack into a mainframe computer to keep the world from blowing up. And the best spy song that I discovered was "Espionage" by Green Day. They wrote it for the Austin Powers movie.
About a week after I finished writing the training manual, they put in new leadership at the Utah Highway Patrol, which was the agency I worked with on the grant. They promptly fired me as part of their budget restructuring. And they changed all their plans for offering training to first responders. I don't think they ever used my training manual. The whole job turned out to be a huge waste of time. But at least I got a good song out of it.
82. "Battle Without Honor or Humanity" by Hotei Tomoyasu
This is the song by Hotei Tomoyasu's that is most likely to be recognized by Americans, as it's the song from the Kill Bill movie soundtrack. But Hotei has done a number of different versions of the song besides what you hear on the soundtrack, including some jam sessions with other musicians in which they take turns playing their own guitar solos.
Here's the movie soundtrack version.
And here's a performance he did on the telly. His form of guitar showmanship includes a variety of stances and moves with his legs. Most of them just look goofy--like he wants to finish up his guitar solo because he really has to go to the bathroom. He's got legs, but he doesn't know how to use them.
He had a composer/conductor friend that wrote a symphonic version. While the rest of the symphony had sheet music to cue them on what to play and when to play it, Hotei has to do everything from memory, since he doesn't read music. The video on this is super-choppy on purpose to avoid detection from the YouTube copyright bots, so you may want to just listen and not watch it.
This concert version is played at the regular tempo at first, but then it shifts into funky overdrive at the end.
And here's a concert with Brian Setzer from The Stray Cats and Char, a Japanese guitarist that has collaborated with Hotei on other songs. Setzer's the guy not wearing a pink cowboy hat with feathers in it.
Here's another version with some really famous jazz guitarists that I've never heard of.
The only jazz guitarists I know by name are Earl Klugh, George Benson, Pat Metheny, and Sonny Sharrock.
And now that I've named them, I feel obliged to share some of their music.
I was introduced to Earl Klugh by Elder Anderson on my mission. He's the one that played the guitar song on that tape I sent you from Sweden. He said, "I am Earl Klugh" to psych himself up before he started playing. One of Earl's greatest hits was the following George Benson tune "Living Inside Your Love."
George Benson's soft guitar jazz triggers a lot of memories from the 70s and 80s. Breezin' and Give Me the Night are the two songs I remember best. Here he is playing Breezin' on The Old Grey Whistle Test, which is widely known as the most difficult of all the standardized college-entrance exams.
Pat Metheny--did the soundtrack to the movie "The Falcon and the Snowman" which featured this little ditty in collaboration with David Bowie.
Sonny Sharrock--the man behind the music of Space Ghost Coast to Coast! When Sonny died back in the 90s, they had a whole episode where they played long blocks of his music. If you listen closely, it sounds like Earl Klugh is playing in the background when Space Ghost and Zorak are flying to work in The Phantom Cruiser.
