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Rock You Like A Hurricane Album: Love At First Sting (1984) by Scorpions In an interview with Scorpions guitarist Rudolf Schenker, he said: "I think 'Rock You Like A Hurricane' is a perfect rock anthem, which talks about attitude and sexuality. It's very important to recognize the tension between the verses and the chorus. I think Klaus (Meine) went over the lyrics around eight or nine times because the first lyrics of the song went something like 'blah blah blah blah.' And we said, 'No! The song is not feeling right.' But at the ninth or tenth time, it came. The lyric goes: 'The bitch is hungry, she needs to tell, so give her inches and feed her well.' This was the tension between the 'Rock You Like A Hurricane' chorus, and the words to the verses. This is what makes the song great. And the funny thing is, the girls, when they're talking about 'Rock You Like A Hurricane,' they say, 'Oh, I love your song 'Rock Me Like A Hurricane.''" The video for Rock You Like A Hurricane, which features a leopard, a black panther, women wearing next-to-nothing, and the band inside a makeshift cage which is being rocked back and forth by the crowd outside, was targeted by Tipper Gore in an interview about her reasons behind co-founding the PMRC (Parents Music Resource Center). Stated Gore, in an interview with Gary James, "At that time, there was Van Halen's 'Hot For Teacher,' Motley Crue's 'Looks That Kill,' The Scorpions' 'Rock You Like A Hurricane' - I mean, there were some very violent images. Through the eyes of a 6 or 8-year-old, when they see these scantily clad women kind of rounded up by the band members and put in cages, and there's whips, and there's a sort of menace and there's a sort of a sexuality, they pick up on that." The PMRC was founded in 1985 by four wives of powerful political men. They became known as the "Washington Wives." Their objective was to have record companies voluntarily place warning labels on records that contained sexually explicit or violent lyrics or images, or which were suggestive of drug use. Although many recording artists testified against the use of any labels on their material, citing their rights to freedom of speech and no censorship, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) began placing warning labels on its merchandise, and continues to do so. The RIAA represents the US recording industry, and count among its members record labels and distributors responsible for the creation and distribution of 90% of recorded music sold there. The video was directed by David Mallet, who had done AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long" and Billy Idol's "White Wedding." Rudolf Schenker credits him with capturing the essence of the Scorpions, saying in I Want My MTV, "He said, 'Don't be serious, let's get crazy.' That video is about attitude, craziness, and sexuality. That's how we survived into the video generation." This song is played at the home games of the National Hockey League's Carolina Hurricanes as they take the ice. It was #31 in the 2006 installment of VH1's "40 Greatest Metal Songs," and is considered as one of the most influential rock anthems in history. This song is played in Adam Sandler's film Little Nicky during the scene when Nicky (played by Sandler), upon returning to Hell, says to his mother, "I'm gonna rock that place like a hurricane!" The Scorpions are by far the most successful German rock band in America and the UK. Says Schenker: "In the beginning of our career, we had a problem in Germany because nobody expects a German band to play rock music. With rock music, there are more bands from England or America, which are more exotic than the Scorpions, who are from Germany. But when we went to America in '79, we became the exotic ones. They said, 'Hey, what kind of crazy guys are these?' (laughs) We were already exotic, with a different view, and we also play our rock music with a little bit of an ethnic touch. You'll notice that Americans come from the blues side, whereas we come from the classical side, which is different." "Rock You Like A Hurricane" shows up in TV commercials from time to time, often for comedic effect. In 2008, it was used in an Allstate commercial where NASCAR driver Kasey Kahne does a dance routine to the song. In 2014, it was used in a spot for General Mills Fiber One cookies where a nerdy employee's shipment of the tasty treat is met by delighted female customers, leading him to wrongly conclude they're checking him out. "Be the man that every woman wants with new Fiber One cookies," the ad claims. In the TV series Scorpion, a group of geniuses works under the name "Scorpion," and uses this as their theme song. Something we learned on the show: a group of scorpions is called a cyclone. This introduces the character Billy Hargrove in the season 2 premiere of Stranger Things, "MADMAX." Rock You Like A Hurricane plays as he steps out of his car in the school parking lot and the girls admire his posterior.

In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida Album: In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (1968) by Iron Butterfly Jarosław Jaśnikowski iron butterfly inagita davita One of the most blissfully indulgent rock songs, "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" is animal-instinct rock and roll, playing out for just over seventeen minutes in its unabridged form and taking up an entire album side. The mysterious title is one of the great legends in rock. You might think it has a deep, mystical meaning, but it's really a translation error. The title was supposed to be "In The Garden Of Eden." Drummer Ron Bushy wrote it down as "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" because he couldn't understand was vocalist Doug Ingle was singing. Their record company was OK with the title because it sounds exotic and Eastern spirituality was big at the time, with The Beatles going to India and The Rolling Stones experimenting with Indian instruments. As for the meaning of the song, it's just a guy affirming his love for his special girl. This was written by Doug Ingle, Iron Butterfly's vocalist and keyboard player. His father was a church organist, which influenced the drawn-out organ riffs in this song. When he wrote the song, Doug Ingle didn't intend for it to be over 17 minutes long, but that's how it played out when the band recorded it at what they thought was merely a soundcheck to test levels for engineer Don Casale while they waited for producer Jim Hilton to arrive. Casale, though, kept tape rolling, and the band got in a groove. After the rehearsal was completed they agreed that the performance - filled with mistakes but also with raw energy - was of sufficient quality that another take wasn't needed. The single was edited down to 2:52, shaving over 14 minutes off the song! Some pop stations played the single, but much of the airplay came from progressive FM stations that played the long version, which wasn't available as a single (a 45 RPM vinyl disc couldn't hold nearly that much music). So to get the full song, listeners had to buy the album, and they did. In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, the album, ended up selling over 4 million copies. Until Led Zeppelin came along, it was the best selling album in the history of Atlantic Records. The band's original guitar player quit before this was recorded. He was replaced by Eric Braun, who had only played the guitar for three months. The title loosely translates as "In The Garden Of Life." This was the first hit song that could be classified as "heavy metal." The phrase was introduced that year in the Steppenwolf song "Born To Be Wild." Iron Butterfly would have performed this at Woodstock, but they didn't make it because they were stuck at the airport. Hip-hop artist Nas has two different songs that sample "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida." The first is "Thief's Theme" from his 2003 double album Street's Disciple. The second is the title track of his 2006 album Hip-Hop is Dead. >> Danny Weiss of Iron Butterfly was recommended to Al Kooper by David Crosby (of Crosby, Stills, & Nash), right when Kooper was forming Blood Sweat & Tears. As given in Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards, "I loved the guitarist, introduced myself, and explained this concept to him. He thought it was a good idea, but insisted that he was committed to the band he was in. His name was Danny Weiss, and his band was Iron Butterfly. He left soon after we met anyway, and joined the great but doomed band Rhinoceros." Ron Bushy's drum solo is not as long as people think; it only runs about 2 1/2 minutes, from 6:30 to a little past 9 minutes. Doug Ingle's organ solo immediately follows. The song was used in The Simpsons episode "Bart Sells His Soul," where Bart switches a hymn out for this song and convinces the Reverend Lovejoy it is penned by I. Ron Butterfly. The whole 17-minute version is played by the First Church of Springfield's exhausted church organist. There are only 30 different words in this song, even though it is 1022 seconds long. Jaroslaw Jasnikowski was born in Legnica, Poland in 1976. He is a prolific painter of modern surrealism. His themes have a wide range, but some of his finest and most evocative imagery focuses on machines of flight. Jasnikowski has a large following in his native Poland, and has had numerous solo exhibitions of his meticulous fantasy paintings. I have the access to a huge, magnificent world, which is totally different from the one which surrounds us. I stroll and admire its veiled secret landscapes. I inhale its smell and taste its fruit. I talk to the creatures eho live there and from time to time I set windows, so the old people from grey streets could look through them and admire this splendid world too. The Alternative World.... In the earliest years in my life I was fascinated by the subject of the future. I used to wonder where we were headed and what the world was going to look like in 10, 100, 1000 years. It was then that I had the visions of space conquest, star journeys and a completely automatised world relying on highly advanced techniques. Although the more grown-up I became the less the vision appealled to me. The world in the future can more or less be foreseen, therefore, I was just searching for something more profound and original. At the age of 18, I have discovered the surrealism of Salvadore Dali and I have noticed the huge possibilities before me. In a gadda da vida, honey Don't you know that I'm lovin' you In a gadda da vida, baby Don't you know that I'll always be true Oh, won't you come with me And take my hand Oh, won't you come with me And walk this land Please take my hand In a gadda da vida, honey Don't you know that I'm lovin' you In a gadda da vida, baby Don't you know that I'll always be true Oh, won't you come with me And take my hand Oh, won't you come with me And walk this land Please take my hand

Son of a Preacher Man Album: Dusty In Memphis (1969) Spooky Single: (1968) The Windmills of Your Mind Album: Dusty In Memphis (1969) by Dusty Springfield Son of a Preacher Man was written by John Hurley and Ronnie Wilkins. Dusty's version is the most popular, but it has been covered by many artists, including Elvis Presley, Bobbie Gentry, Foo Fighters, Chet Atkins, Joss Stone, and Natalie Merchant. The song was originally offered to Aretha Franklin (who is a preacher's daughter), but she turned it down because she thought it was disrespectful. She subsequently changed her mind and did a cover version of it. Dusty Springfield was born Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien in London on 4/16/1939. She died in 1999 or breast cancer. Shortly before her death she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and was given the Order of the British Empire (OBE). Some famous preachers' sons: Marvin Gaye, Wyclef Jean, Tim Curry, John Hurt, John Ashcroft, Martin Luther King Jr. The backup vocals were by a female group called the Sweet Inspirations, who were made up of Cissy Houston, Sylvia Shemwell, Myrna Smith and Estelle Brown. They were the sought-after female backup vocalists in the New York area, having performed on albums by Aretha Franklin, Wilson Picket, Van Morrison and many others. With four singers, they could create a rich, soulful sound that suited this song perfectly. Later in 1969, the Sweet Inspirations went to work for Elvis Presley, touring and recording with him. Cissy Houston left the group at this time so she could spend more time with her children, including her young daughter, Whitney Houston. There is a drink called a "Son Of A Preacher Man." It's made with peppermint schnapps, vodka or gin, and lemonade. Son of a Preacher Man was used for a key sequence in the movie Pulp Fiction, which made the song popular again in 1994. Director Quentin Tarantino said he would have cut the scene if he hadn't been able to get the rights to the tune. The rap group Cypress Hill sampled Son of a Preacher Man at the beginning of their song "Hits from the Bong." Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's son Jay Bakker has written an autobiography titled Son Of A Preacher Man. The Bakkers were televangelists who were disgraced in the late '80s when it was revealed that Jim had a sexual encounter with Jessica Hahn and bilked his followers out of lots of money. Jim Bakker went to jail for tax evasion. This was also featured in the 2000 thriller Frequency, starring Dennis Quaid and Jim Caviezel. The song is skipping on a record player in a dead girl's apartment. Son of a Preacher Man was used in a 1997 Dr. Pepper commercial, where a preacher's son uses the soft drink to woo his crush. In The Office episode "Baby Shower" (2008), Jan Levinson sings Son of a Preacher Man to her baby. It was also used on Sons Of Anarchy in the 2008 episode "Seeds" and on Ally McBeal in the 1999 episode "The Green Monster" (sung by Courtney Thorne-Smith). "Spooky" is originally an instrumental song performed by saxophonist Mike Sharpe (Shapiro), written by Shapiro and Harry Middlebrooks Jr, which first charted in 1967 hitting No. 57 on the US pop charts and No. 55 on the Canadian charts. Its best-known version was created by James Cobb and producer Buddy Buie for the group Classics IV when they added lyrics about a "spooky little girl". The vocalist was Dennis Yost. The song is noted for its eerie whistling sound effect depicting the spooky woman. It has become a Halloween favorite. A version of "Spooky" was recorded by Dusty Springfield in 1968, released as a single worldwide except in the US. This gender-flipped version was featured prominently in the Guy Ritchie film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Springfield's version was certified silver by BPI in 2022. Jerry Wexler, president of Atlantic Records, heard "The Windmills of Your Mind" on the soundtrack of The Thomas Crown Affair and championed having Dusty Springfield record the song for her debut Atlantic album Dusty in Memphis, overcoming the singer's strong resistance; Springfield's friend and subsequent manager Vicki Wickham would allege: "Dusty always said she hated it because she couldn't identify with the words." During the first sessions for the track at American Sound Studio in Memphis, problems with getting the proper chords down arose, and at Springfield's suggestion the song was arranged so the first three verses were sung in a slower tempo than the original film version. In April 1969, the third A-side release from Dusty in Memphis was announced as "I Don't Want to Hear It Anymore" with "The Windmills of Your Mind" as the B-side. However Wexler was prepared to promote "Windmills" as the A-side if it won the Oscar for Best Song, reportedly instructing mailroom clerks at Atlantic Records' New York City headquarters to listen to the Academy Awards broadcast the night of 14 April 1969. Hearing "The Windmills" announced as the Best Song winner was the clerks' cue to drive a station wagon loaded with 2500 copies of a double-sided promo single of Springfield's version – identified on the label as "Academy Award Winner" – to the New York City general post office, where the copies of the single were mailed out to key radio stations across the US. Although its Hot 100 debut was not effected until the 5 May 1969 issue of Billboard and then with a No. 99 ranking, Springfield's "The Windmills" made a rapid ascent to the Top 40 being ranked at No. 40 on the Hot 100 of 24 May 1969 only to stall over the subsequent three weeks peaking at No. 31 on the Hot 100 of 14 June 1969 with only one additional week of Hot 100 tenure, being ranked at No. 45 on the 21 June 1969 chart. On the Cash Box chart, the song rose as high as No. 22. Local hit parades indicate that Springfield's "Windmills" had Top Ten impact in only select larger markets: Boston, Southern California, and Miami. The track did reach No. 3 on the Easy Listening chart in Billboard, a feat matched by Springfield's third subsequent single "Brand New Me" which therefore ties with "The Windmills" as having afforded Springfield her best-ever solo showing on a Billboard chart. Dusty Springfield was born Mary O'Brien to a Catholic family in North London, England. She was considered to be a tomboy and was given the nickname Dusty because she liked to play soccer with the boys. Later, her distinctive smoky voice earned her the nickname "The White Queen of Soul." Showing tremendous diversity, Springfield recorded in numerous genres, including rock, pop, folk, and country. Buddy Rich and soul and pop singing icon Dusty Springfield played a residency together in New York City at the Basin Street East club in 1966. Buddy Rich is known to this day for his wild temper and his tendency to behave abusively toward his own band. PerTrack Drummer, a secret recording made by one of Rich's bandmates — known in some circles as simply "The Tape" — is filled with the bandleader's ridiculously profane and insulting rants directed at the rest of the band after a set and while riding a tour bus. Rich expected perfection from the people he played with, and when they didn't live up to his outsized demands, he'd explode and denigrate them at the top of his lungs. The very first sentence of a 1974 article in The New York Times about Rich's karate hobby that may have helped tame his wild temper noted Rich's reputation for screaming insults, breaking furniture, throwing cymbals, and getting in fights in the very first sentence. Dusty Springfield had her own reputation for expecting perfection from her musical collaborators and behaving in an explosive, sometimes violent manner, although it doesn't come close to that of Buddy Rich. The 2019 Daily Express article noted her penchant for throwing food, dishes, and even her famous wigs when she was upset. A former girlfriend, singer Julie Felix, recalled Springfield once hitting her in a jealous, alcohol- and drug-fueled rage. In an interview that ran in the British magazine Melody Maker in 1966, Dusty Springfield described her feud with Buddy Rich during their joint residency at the Basin Street East club in New York. "Mr. Rich is a little difficult to get on with — and that's the British understatement of 1966," she explained, saying that the drummer had taken up most of the rehearsal time that was supposed to apply to the both of them. This forced her to go on stage without having rehearsed half of the songs with Rich's band, who were also backing her up during her sets. Springfield alleged that Rich was upset that she had received top billing over him during the residency and therefore attempted to sabotage her performances, including "telling the trumpet section not to play high notes for me and standing in front of the stage shouting during my act." Springfield claimed she offered to switch places with Rich and perform first, but Rich allegedly didn't like that idea either, complaining the band would then be too tired to perform well with him. She kept her top billing but said, "I'd rather be on before him because I never know what he is going to pull or what he will tell the audience about me — his introduction is very patronizing to say the least." Dusty Springfield didn't speak to Melody Maker about how she came to slap Buddy Rich, but the story circulated and exists to this day with few inconsistencies. In her 1999 obituary published in The Independent, journalist Keith Altham claimed that the two performers got into an argument regarding billing and the sizes of their names on the marquee outside Basin Street East, with Rich's name appearing in larger letters than Springfield's. According to The Independent, Dusty decided to take matters into her own hands and climb a ladder up to the marquee to change it, at which point Rich called her "a name," and she "whacked him one" in response. According to The Telegraph, the name Rich used to describe Springfield was "a f****** broad," and it made her so angry that she responded by hitting him hard enough to make his toupee fly off. Salon told a slightly different version of the story, claiming that Springfield confronted Rich in his dressing room about his tendency to insult her during his time on stage (as alluded to in the Melody Maker interview) and his refusal to give her enough rehearsal time, which ended with the slap. Whatever preceded the physical altercation, the incident made such an impression on Buddy Rich's backing band that at the end of the residency, they presented Springfield with a gift addressed to "Slugger Springfield" — a pair of boxing gloves.

How's It Going To Be Album: Third Eye Blind (1997) Semi-Charmed Life Album: Third Eye Blind (1997) Never Let You Go Album: Blue (2000) by Third Eye Blind On the HBO show Reverb, Stephan Jenkins of Third Eye Blind described "How's It Going To Be" as "The emotional side of mortality, as played on a zither." He explained: "'How's It Going to Be' started with an autoharp that Kevin was playing. It's an antique instrument, and it inspired a nostalgic, emotional condition in me. And the lyrics really came out of that very quickly. I think the song's just about the fear you have when you've been close friends and that gets knocked back to becoming acquaintances again. So I think it's sort of a song about the emotional side of mortality." In an interview with Third Eye Blind lead singer Stephan Jenkins, he said Semi-Charmed Life is "about falling apart." It relates specifically to a drug-induced high that makes everything fleetingly better. Said Jenkins: "Perfection is the moment right before gravity comes back in." Semi-Charmed Life describes a drug user's descent into crystal meth addiction. The line, "I want something else..." contains a reference to crystal meth in the song. Stephan Jenkins explained on the HBO show Reverb that they intentionally put a chipper melody to the dark lyrical content. Said Jenkins: "When I wrote 'Semi-Charmed Life,' the guitar riff was intended to have this sort of bright duh-nuhnuh-nunt, this shiny thing, because that was a feeling of speed. You know, it's sort of a bright, shiny drug. And we all were sort of into hip-hop, and so it has a hip-hop flow over it." The line: "Doing crystal meth will lift you up until you break" was a little racy for some radio stations, who played an edited version with the words "Crystal Meth" distorted. Talking about the deeper meaning of Semi-Charmed Life on Reverb, Jenkins said: "It's a song about always wanting something. It's about never being satisfied, and reaching backwards to things that you've lost and towards things that you can never get. I think everybody has some identification with that. The story line between the people, the demise of this relationship, is just an extreme example of that condition. I think that's what makes people really relate to 'Semi-Charmed Life.'" The band has admitted that they borrowed the "doot doot doot" part of the song from Lou Reed's "Walk On The Wild Side." This was Third Eye Blind's first single. The group's name could be a reference to a penis, but The Third Eye is also a metaphysical term in new age spirituality referring a state of enlightenment and is associated with the pineal gland. The original line on Semi-Charmed Life was "I want nothing else..." but when the song was eventually released, it was changed to "I want something else." No explanation has ever been given for this, however recordings of the original can be found. Semi-Charmed Life was played in the Norm MacDonald movie Dirty Work as Norm's character, Mitch, returns home after being fired to find his girlfriend is also kicking him out. In 2015, when asked Stephan Jenkins how he felt about Semi-Charmed Life, he replied: "I don't feel like it's really mine. It's participating in the experiences that other people are having with it." "Never Let You Go" is a song by American rock band Third Eye Blind. It was released on January 4, 2000, as the second single from their second album, Blue. The song peaked at number 14 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and spent three weeks at number one in Canada. It also reached number 26 in Iceland, number 15 in New Zealand, and number six on the UK Rock Chart. Jenkins commented in the liner notes of the band's compilation album A Collection that it was written about a muse of his at the time (allegedly Charlize Theron), and it was written to "freak her out" when she heard it on the radio. The writing credits of the song are a subject of debate among frontman Stephan Jenkins and former bassist Arion Salazar. Despite Jenkins being credited as the sole writer of the song, Salazar claims to have written the bass melodies, bridge, and chord progressions. In an interview with RIFF Magazine, Salazar claimed that Jenkins approached him, stating, "I really want to get the credit on [Never Let You Go]. Maybe if I give you a little more percentage [of the song's profit] I could just leave my name on it?". A music video for Never Let You Go was released in January 2000, directed by Chris Hafner. It features the band performing on a metal platform high in a sunset-filled sky. Interspersed with the platform scenes are scenes of the band eating in a dimly-lit Chinese restaurant with several girls, going to a nightclub, and lead singer Stephen Jenkins meeting a girl backstage at a concert. During the first verse, Jenkins hangs from the bottom of the platform while his bandmates and several girls hang onto him, looking down apprehensively. In the first chorus, another girl dressed in a black latex outfit and matching thigh-high boots appears and climbs this human ladder up to the platform. Meredith Gottlieb of MTV News referred to the video as "abstract". Stephan Jenkins – vocals, guitar Kevin Cadogan – guitar Arion Salazar – bass Brad Hargreaves – drums

Get It Right Next Time Album: Night Owl (1978) Night Owl Album: Night Owl (1978) Right Down The Line Album: City To City (1978) by Gerry Rafferty "Night Owl" is the title track to Gerry Rafferty's third solo album, the follow-up to his best-seller, City To City. At the time, Rafferty had left his native Scotland and relocated to England. Night Owl was released as a single backed by "Why Won't You Talk to Me?" Like the rest of the album, it was written by Rafferty and produced by Hugh Murphy on the United Artists label. The album was recorded at Chipping Norton Recording Studios, Chipping Norton, England. The Los Angeles Times called the songs of Night Owl "concise, wry tales of love and ambition, inventively arranged and sung in a dry whine that carries just the right amount of detachment." The Lyricon solo was played by Raphael Ravenscroft, the guy who performed the famous sax solo on "Baker Street." The Lyricon is a breath-controlled analog synthesizer invented by Bill Bernardi and Roger Noble of Computone Inc. in Massachusetts in the early 1970s. It was the first electronic wind instrument to be constructed. Gerry Rafferty enjoyed some success with his group Stealers Wheel, particularly the single "Stuck In The Middle With You." However, after the band disbanded, legal issues meant Rafferty could not release any material for three years. Once the disputes were resolved, he released his smash hit "Baker Street." "Right Down The Line" is the follow up. Rafferty married his fellow Scot, hairdresser Carla Ventilla, in 1970, and here he pays tribute to how she stuck by him through thick and thin. He praises Carla for helping him through all the bad times and tells her every day he loves her more and more. Rafferty had always been partial to a drink or two, which he alludes to in his 1979 single "Night Owl." But a growing alcohol problem placed his marriage under an intolerable strain, and Carla divorced him in 1990, though they remained close. "Right Down The Line" peaked at #12 on the Hot 100 and also spent four non-consecutive weeks on top of the adult contemporary chart. In Canada, the song reached number five on both the pop singles and adult contemporary charts. Bonnie Raitt covered Right Down The Line for her 2012 Slipstream album, adding a faux-reggae groove. Released as a single, it reached #17 on the US Adult album alternative chart. Right Down The Line plays in the first episode of the second season of the American teen drama TV series Euphoria.

Original Prankster Album: Conspiracy Of One (2000) Army of One Album: Let The Bad Times Roll (2021) You're Gonna Go Far, Kid Album: Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace (2008) by The Offspring The main riff played in the intro, verse and bridge all contain samples from "Low Rider" as performed by War, a popular funk group from the 1970s. Although the sample is quiet, it acts as a foundation for these sections of Original Prankster. The title Original Prankster is a play on the 1991 Ice-T song and album "O.G. Original Gangster." But instead of keeping it OG, The Offspring are keeping it OP, retaining their sense of humor in a world that takes everything too seriously. That's the rapper Redman delivering the "original prankster" line in the chorus. He also appears in the video. In an early effort at digital music distribution, this song was made available as a free download from the band's website before the album was released. Fans who downloaded it were entered in a $1 Million sweepstakes. The money was given away on MTV's Total Request Live. The two finalists agreed to split the money before the final question was asked (The question: Who is the oldest member of The Offspring). Originally, the video Original Prankster, directed by Dave Meyers, was banned from MTV. It contained a scene with two naked schoolgirls on the lap of their principal, who is holding a paper that reads: "Principal arrested for molesting students." MTV objected to the word "molesting" and made them take it out before they would air the video. Another scene had to be altered as well: A kid puts dog poop on his father's sandwich. MTV would not let them show the man biting into the sandwich, but would let them show him spit it out. A spokesman for the channel said, "At MTV, we don't eat s--t." Original Prankster was the first single from the album Conspiracy Of One. The band originally planned to make the whole album available as a free download, but could not because of contract obligations. The "You can do it!" line that repeats throughout Original Prankster comes from the 1998 movie The Waterboy, where Rob Schneider's character says it. To the best knowledge, Original Prankster is the first Hot 100 hit to get the word Prozac in the lyrics ("Prozac can make it better"). The lyrics mention Janet Reno ("Rockin' like Janet Reno"), the first female Attorney General of the United States. She was nominated by President Bill Clinton for the position in 1993 and served until 2001. Track 4 Army of One is on Let the Bad Times Roll which is the tenth studio album by the Offspring, released on April 16, 2021. Produced by Bob Rock, it is the band's first release on Concord Records, and their first studio album in nine years since Days Go By (2012), marking the longest gap between two Offspring studio albums. Let the Bad Times Roll also marks the band's first album without bassist and co-founding member Greg K., who was fired from the Offspring in 2018. Even though new bassist Todd Morse had already joined the band and appeared in the video for the album’s title track and "This Is Not Utopia", bass guitar accompaniment was provided by guitarist and vocalist Dexter Holland. It is the second and last album to feature drummer Pete Parada, who was fired from the band in July 2021 for refusing to get a COVID-19 vaccination, due to suffering from Guillain–Barré syndrome. The band's tour schedules, lineup changes, legal issues and the search for a new label after their split with Columbia Records, who released the Offspring's previous six albums, contributed to a years-long delay behind Let the Bad Times Roll. The band started recording new material for the album with Rock as early as the summer of 2013, and after re-recording it at various studios and at various periods between 2013 and 2020, it had been completed by 2020 and was ready for release later that year. However, due to the aforementioned issues, other inner disputes and the COVID-19 pandemic, the album's release was pushed back to 2021. Let the Bad Times Roll received mixed to negative reviews from music critics, appearing on multiple worst of the year lists. Offspring frontman Dexter Holland explained the meaning behind "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid" in an interview with the Argentina's Pagina 12: "The guy from 'Pretty Fly' was hooked on the latest fashion culture and [the guy from] 'You're Gonna Go Far, Kid' is busy manipulating other people. You can take him as a high school kid who tries to form his own social group, but on the way he manipulates others with a behavior disorder that will never leave him. You might see that guy later as a United States deputy or running a corporation. Even if that boy has grown up, his idea of manipulating will always be with him." Bob Rock, who is best known for his work with Motley Crue and Metallica, produced this song along with the rest of the album. You're Gonna Go Far, Kid reached #1 on the US Modern Rock tracks chart. The lyrics of "You're Gonna Go Far, Kid" mention Lord of the Flies, William Golding's 1954 novel about a group of British schoolboys who resort to savagery after being stranded on an uninhabited island. The few rational thinkers who resist the descent into chaos are dealt with violently by the others. You're Gonna Go Far, Kid was used during the opening credits of the 2009 comedy National Lampoon's Van Wilder: Freshman Year.

Green Eyed Lady Album: Sugarloaf (1970) Don't Call Us We'll Call You Album: Don't Call Us, We'll Call You (1975) Rollin Hills Album: Spaceship Earth (1979) by Sugarloaf Who is the green-eyed lady? According to lead singer Jerry Corbetta, it was his girlfriend at the time, Kathy, who is bandmates referred to as the green-eyed lady. He wrote the song with producer J.C. Phillips and a songwriter named David Riordan. Since "Green-Eyed Lady" gets almost daily play on US radio stations to this day and none of their other songs do, many will be surprised to know that Sugarloaf is not a one-hit wonder; their other hit is "Don't Call Us, We'll Call You" from 1975 at #9 on the Billboard Hot 100. "Green-Eyed Lady," at #3, is their best-known (and somewhat overplayed) single. One of the reasons that the hook is so catchy is that it's based on a piece of a scale exercise that frontman Jerry Corbetta found in a book. The band was originally called "Chocolate Hair" but after getting signed to a record label, they had to change their name because managers were nervous about the potentially racist interpretation of that name (that and the name would have permanently branded them as '60s psychedelics). They chose "Sugarloaf" after a small mountain west of Boulder, Colorado. Jerry Corbetta played the organ solo on this track in addition to singing lead. He played it in the style of jazz musician Jimmy Smith, his idol. In the single version of Green Eyed Lady, which is all you'll hear on the radio and also in most compilation albums, the song length is about three and a half minutes. The album version is extended to seven minutes for Corbetta's lengthy - but dazzling - organ solo. Sugarloaf was formed from the remains of the band The Moonrakers, with five members of that group carried over. Interestingly, "Moonraker" doesn't just refer to a James Bond film, but also to a nickname for people from Wiltshire in South West Country England. The story goes that the people there were discovered running a rake through a pond at night, trying to retrieve treasure. When a revenue man asked what they were up to, their excuse was that they were trying to retrieve a wheel of cheese from the pond (the reflection of the full moon). The revenue guy walked off chuckling at their simple-mindedness, and the villagers didn't have to pay taxes. Sugarloaf found themselves without a label in 1974. They made some calls, trying to find a taker, but couldn't get much interest. This song recounts that experience, using many industry clichés they heard along the way. A big part of the game was getting a foot in the door by buttering up the A&R guys at the label, with lines like, "I got your name from a friend of a friend." The reply is the classic blowoff: "Don't call us, we'll call you." The group ended up getting signed to the Claridge label, which was rewarded when Don't Call Us We'll Call You became a hit, reaching #9 in 1975. One of the labels that turned down the band was CBS Records. Sugarloaf got retribution by revealing the unlisted phone number of the label in this song by playing the sound of the touchtones when the number is dialed. Listeners with good ears could identify which tone corresponded to each number, and called it to find out where it led. After the song became a hit, CBS changed their number. At the end of the song Don't Call Us We'll Call You, there's another set of tones; this one led to the main number at the White House. They didn't change their number, but the band got a visit from a State Department official trying to figure out why they were getting so many calls talking about Sugarloaf. Sugarloaf frontman Jerry Corbetta wrote Don't Call Us We'll Call You with John Carter, who co-wrote the Strawberry Alarm Clock hit "Incense And Peppermints." Don't Call Us We'll Call You kept Sugarloaf out of one-hit wonder territory, making them ineligible for all those playlists, specials and books on the subject. Accordingly, little is known about the band, which formed in Colorado and took their name from a nearby mountain. "Rollin' Hills" has harmonica and country vibe to it as he sings about those rollin' hills, sunshine and his friends the trees.

Glycerine Album: Sixteen Stone (1994) Comedown Album: Sixteen Stone (1994) Swallowed Album: Razorblade Suitcase (1996) by Bush Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale wrote "Glycerine" about his relationship with his girlfriend at the time, a model named Jasmine Lewis, who is credited as a backup vocalist on the Sixteen Stone album. Rossdale dated her for about five years before their breakup, which was exacerbated by busy schedules that kept them apart. Gavin's next relationship was with Gwen Stefani, whom he met when her band No Doubt was opening for Bush on the Sixteen Stone tour. They got married in 2002. Glycerine is a chemical used in perfumes and medicines and also to preserve food. The title comes from the explosive applications of glycerine to stabilize nitro. Rossdale said the song was about how love was like a bomb. This song came together very quickly for Rossdale, who wrote it in his London flat. When he played it for the band, he felt there was something "ancient and mystical" about it. "I was like a conduit," he told Entertainment Weekly in 2017. "Something about it was bigger than anything we were doing." The video, directed by Kevin Kerslake, won the Viewer's Choice Award at the 1996 MTV Video Music Awards. Kerslake directed four Nirvana videos, and also worked with Soundgarden, R.E.M. and Stone Temple Pilots. When a popular producer named Desmond Child heard this song, he thought Rossdale was singing "Kiss The Rain." When he found out that wasn't the title, he started writing a song called "Kiss The Rain" for Billie Myers. It became her first single and hit #15 in the US. The Beatles song "Strawberry Fields Forever" is referenced in the line, "We live in a wheel where everyone steals, but when we rise it's like strawberry fields." Bush loved The Beatles and it was John Lennon and Paul McCartney who inspired them to form a band. Gavin Rossdale talked about his Beatles reference and the meaning of the song in an interview with Fuse: "In 'Glycerine,' it's a cynical world. 'Strawberry Fields' is a Beatles reference because when people think of that song it makes them happy: it elevates you and it lifts you up. For me, it's like a soft pillow. Most of my lyrics and most of the songs that I've written are about rising up against struggle and what you do within problems like the human condition. How we can screw up and how we can make up for it and what we can escape from and what we can win." Lead singer Gavin Rossdale wrote Comedown about his ex-girlfriend, Suze DiMarchi. She was lead singer of a band called Baby Animals. Rossdale had written songs with other people, but Comedown was the first one he wrote on his own. It gave him a lot of confidence and inspired him to keep writing. Rossdale said of Comedown: "It was written in the context of half regret, half celebration and just being objective about the situation of coming down from that high and dealing with those intense emotions." Reflecting on Comedown in 2017, Rossdale told Entertainment Weekly: "I liked the idea of euphoria. But having that euphoria has a comedown. It's inside your brain and just says, 'I'm having the greatest time, and I don't want to stop.' But most of the time, people lose that zone and it changes and you're like, 'No, I didn't want this.' And that's such a common feeling. I watched it being sung every night - it's one of the songs where I can step back and let the people sing. It's the best feeling in the world as a songwriter." The video was directed by Jake Scott, who used perspective and other camera tricks to create some odd optics, as the viewer sees the band performing as if looking through a peephole. Swallowed was written in response to the success of Bush's multi-million-selling debut album Sixteen Stone after years of failure. Frontman Gavin Rossdale told NME: "When you first climb that ladder if you're lucky enough, and I was lucky enough to have that insane success with it, it's a bit overwhelming in some ways. I didn't go to school where you learn how to prepare for any kind of success, I was English, I'd failed for many years, I was not used to being successful – and there's something about being swept up in that success that's daunting and really overwhelming... it wasn't a complaint, it was just an observation." Rossdale added that "Swallowed" was a bit like his version of "Help!," although he was quick to say he's not "as good as The Beatles." The video of Swallowed, directed by Jamie Morgan, shows the band performing at a house party with some odd characters. The neon crucifix later appeared on the cover of the band's 1997 album Deconstructed. Swallowed was nominated for a 1996 Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance, but lost to the Smashing Pumpkins' "The End Is the Beginning Is the End." Asked about his favorite lyric from Swallowed, Rossdale replied: "There was a girlfriend I had at the time, and the line 'heavy about everything but my love' – it's that thing where you have a girlfriend who's talking to everyone else about things but you think 'where am I?' It was just that line. It always tickled me a bit." Rossdale explained in a 2017 interview with Entertainment Weekly: "I didn't even know it was possible to get as successful as we got. 'Swallowed' was a sense of getting lost in that tidal wave. I mean, it's the greatest tidal wave you'll ever be in. But at the same time, there's something... when you're doing it constantly and you tour for three years and you're strung out and disconnected from everyone you know and your relationship is suffering because you're away, I just felt like this sense of being swallowed up and eaten up by the life and lost to it. I mean, it's such a high-class problem that now you talk about it and go, 'Really?'"

Would I Lie To You Album: Be Yourself Tonight (1985) Sweet Dreams Album: Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) (1982) Sexcrime Nineteen Eighty Four Album: 1984 (For the Love of Big Brother) (1984) by Eurythmics For Eurythmics third album, Dave Stewart set out to make a "killer R&B riff." He found it one morning when he was having breakfast with his acoustic guitar on his knee. He took the riff to Annie Lennox, who wasn't sure about it at first, since it didn't fit their sound. As Stewart explained in The Dave Stewart Songbook: "When we started putting it down Would I Lie To You had a lot of energy and inspired Annie to come up with the great lyric, 'Would I Lie To You" and a melody with very odd answering harmonies, 'Now, would I say something that wasn't true.' These harmonies are very unusual and Annie is a genius at working them out very quickly in her head. The song started to be a fusion between Stax type R&B and Eurythmics." Lennox sings this from the perspective of an angry girlfriend who walks out on her cheating lover. It was not directed at Stewart, although they were a romantic couple before forming Eurythmics, but inspired by the breakup of her first marriage, to a Hare Krishna named Radha Raman. "I was always looking for a good relationship, and you can see it in the songs, all this unrequited love," Lennox told Q magazine regarding her songwriting during this period. "I was never in one spot, so my emotions were in turmoil." Eurythmics recorded Be Yourself Tonight in a small room they set as a recording studio in the suburbs of Paris. Lennox and Stewart lived in apartments on top of each other while they were making the album. Benmont Tench from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers played the Hammond organ on Would I Lie To You; he and Stewart previously worked together on "Don't Come Around Here No More." Martin Dobson was brought in for horns. In the book Annie Lennox: The Biography, Lennox explained that Sweet Dreams is about the search for fulfillment, and the "Sweet Dreams" are the desires that motivate us. "Sweet Dreams" is a song of contrasts, with a heart-pumping beat but a lyric that carries a dark undercurrent. Listeners have adapted it accordingly. In a 2022 Songfacts interview with Dave Stewart of Eurythmics, he explained: "A lot of people use it as a very uplifting dance record at EDM festivals and raves and parties. When the DJ puts that on there's always a lot of hands in the air. But it's actually a very sort of existential, spooky record asking if this is what the world has come to. Is this what our dreams are made of? And then some people want to use you, some want to abuse you. So it goes into a topic that could go massive if you want it to. Eurythmics songs always had a bit of that in it, a juxtaposition between the music and the lyric." "I suppose it was reality, basically, what we were writing about," he added. "It wasn't a Disney kind of world." Eurythmics are British: Annie Lennox hails from Aberdeen, Scotland, and Dave Stewart is from the Northern England city of Sunderland. They came together in London, where Lennox went to study at the Royal Academy of Music. "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)" is the title track to their second album and their breakout hit, but it took a while to get noticed. "We thought we'd made something really special but we had no idea, really, the impact it would have," Stewart told Songfacts. "Neither did the record label, which didn't even think it was a single." Three other songs from the album were released as singles in the UK before their label, RCA, finally issued "Sweet Dreams." When they did, it took off, climbing to #2 in March 1983 behind "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" Bonnie Tyler. After it became a UK hit, RCA put it out as Eurythmics' first single in America, where it shot to #1 in September 1983. Like many early '80s British acts with synthesizers (Human League, A Flock Of Seagulls), it was MTV that broke Eurythmics in America. The duo was well equipped for video age: Dave Stewart was always coming up with concepts, and Annie Lennox had a striking look and talent for acting. The innovative video for "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)," directed by Stewart with Chris Ashbrook, presented Lennox with close-cropped orange hair and a tailored black suit, making it the first popular video presenting an androgynous female. The cow in the video was Dave Stewart's idea - he was a big fan of surreal artists Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel. Said Stewart: "A few people were saying, 'Dave, why the cow? Annie is so good looking.' Those people should go buy a copy of Purple Cow by Seth Dogin, about how to make your business remarkable. It was written 20 years after I had the purple cow in our video - which certainly did the trick and made my whole life remarkable." The cow, while very eye-catching, posed a logistical problem because most studios can't accommodate them. Eurythmics found a basement studio in London with an elevator big enough to transport the animal. Lennox recalls the shoot with the bovine walking around as being one of the more surreal experiences of her life. Regarding what it all meant, she said in the book I Want My MTV: "The video is a statement about the different forms of existence. Here are humans, with our dreams of industry and achievement and success. And here is a cow." Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart were a couple for about three years while they were members of a band called The Tourists. They only wrote one song together in this time (an instrumental), but when The Tourists broke up, they formed Eurythmics as a duo and began writing together. A short time later, Lennox and Stewart broke up. Stewart tells the story in The Dave Stewart Songbook: "When we broke up as a couple for some strange reason it was like we were always going to be together, no matter what. We couldn't really break that spell so we just carried on making music. This causes many problems, yet through all of this we ended up writing a lot of great songs, some were about 'our' relationship and some were about our relationship with the world around us. Whatever we wrote always had a dark side and a light side and in a way I describe it as 'realistic music,' full of the ups and downs of real relationships and life itself." In the New York Times October 30, 2007, Annie Lennox recalled that this was written by the duo just after they'd had a bitter fight. "I thought it was the end of the road and that was that," she said. "We were trying to write, and I was miserable. And he just went, well, 'I'll do this anyway.'" Dave Stewart came up with a beat, Annie Lennox improvised the synthesizer riff, and suddenly they realized they had a potential hit. The first Eurythmics album made little impact, so they had to bootstrap to make their second. They were thrilled when a bank gave them a loan to buy some equipment to make it. They made the most of their meager budget, using an 8-track recorder and a complicated drum machine Stewart drove 200 miles to procure. They made the most of their eight tracks, with Stewart's Roland synthesizer and Lennox' Kurzweil keyboard added to the drum pattern Stewart created, forming the basis for the song. As Stewart tells it in his Songbook, Lennox was a bit depressed, but coming up with this track snapped her out of it and she quickly came up with the "Sweet Dreams are made of this" and "Some of them want to use you" lyrics. In a 2008 interview with Stewart, he said: "I suggested there had to be another bit, and that bit should be positive. So in the middle we added these chord changes rising upwards with 'Hold your head up, moving on.' To us it was a major breakthrough. It just goes from beginning to end and the whole song is a chorus, there is not one note that is not a hook." The song ends with a keyboard fadeout, but when Eurythmics played it live, they changed the arrangement and ended the song with the lyrics "Keep your head up" so it would end with a sense of hope. In November 2007, Annie Lennox was interviewed extensively by Malcolm Bragg on The South Bank Show. In this program she said she didn't regard "Sweet Dreams" as a song but as a mantra. She added that people have identified with it over the years and that it's open to interpretation; it contains an overview of human existence; whatever it is that makes you tick, that is what it is. When "Sweet Dreams" went to #1 in America, Eurythmics became a sensation there, appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone and playing sold-out shows. Stewart fell in with the Los Angeles music scene and bought a house there. He and Tom Petty became good friends and wrote three songs together for Petty's 1985 album Southern Accents, including the hit "Don't Come Around Here No More." Stewart's house became a hang-out for Petty, George Harrison, Bob Dylan and Jeff Lynne, who teamed with Roy Orbison to form the Traveling Wilburys in 1988. They recorded their first album over two weeks using Stewart's house and attached studio. Stewart couldn't participate because he was working on the Eurythmics album We Too Are One. Hands up those of you who think Annie Lennox sings here: "Sweet dreams are made of cheese, who am I to disagree?" Relax, it's not just you. This tune's lyrics came top of a 2013 Spotify poll to find out which songs music fans most commonly hear people singing incorrectly. Marilyn Manson covered this song in 1995, giving it a much darker tone. Weezer did a lighter version for their 2019 Teal Album. Nas sampled it for his 1996 song "Sweet Dreams." That big computer Dave Stewart taps on in the video is actually a drum machine - that's what they looked like in 1983! Movies to use this song include: Ready Player One (2018) X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) Sucker Punch (2011) TRON: Legacy (2010) Under the Salt (2008) Slipstream (2007) American Wedding (2003) Duets (2000) Big Daddy (1999) Striptease (1996) Roommates (1995) Bitter Moon (1992) Portfolio (1986) Sweet Dreams also appears in episodes of Parks and Recreation ("Telethon" - 2010) and The Simpsons ("Half-Decent Proposal" - 2002) In 1978, Squeeze had a UK hit with "Take Me I'm Yours," which features the line "Dreams are made of this" in the chorus. This song is discussed in the 2013 romantic comedy I Give It A Year after Rose Byrne's character angers her husband by flubbing the lyrics. She sings, "I travel the world in generic jeans," instead of, "I travel the world and the seven seas." Pomplamoose, a band that has been sustaining themselves mostly on YouTube since 2008, mashed up "Sweet Dreams" with "Seven Nation Army" by The White Stripes in 2019. It works surprisingly well; the video has over 25 million views. Eurythmics wrote and recorded this song for the film adaptation of George Orwell's novel 1984, for which they were working on the soundtrack. Just one problem: another musician (Dominic Muldowney) was also doing a soundtrack to the film, something the film's producer Simon Perry and director Michael Radford didn't tell the Eurythmics. Perry and Radford disavowed the Eurythmics soundtrack, with Perry calling it "crass rubbish." This didn't sit well with Dave Stewart of Eurythmics, who said, "Basically the producer is a two-faced rat." Richard Branson, head of Virgin Films, insisted that the Eurythmics' soundtrack be used, so their songs made it along with some of Dominic Muldowney's work. The soundtrack album, 1984 (For the Love of Big Brother) was released ahead of the film and "Sexcrime" released as a single. Eurythmics were vindicated when the song became a big hit in the UK, where the film went to #1 at the box office. Eurythmics wrote and recorded Sexcrime Nineteen Eighty Four for the film adaptation of George Orwell's novel 1984, for which they were working on the soundtrack. Just one problem: another musician (Dominic Muldowney) was also doing a soundtrack to the film, something the film's producer Simon Perry and director Michael Radford didn't tell the Eurythmics. Perry and Radford disavowed the Eurythmics soundtrack, with Perry calling it "crass rubbish." This didn't sit well with Dave Stewart of Eurythmics, who said, "Basically the producer is a two-faced rat." Richard Branson, head of Virgin Films, insisted that the Eurythmics' soundtrack be used, so their songs made it along with some of Dominic Muldowney's work. The soundtrack album, 1984 (For the Love of Big Brother) was released ahead of the film and "Sexcrime" released as a single. Eurythmics were vindicated when the song became a big hit in the UK, where the film went to #1 at the box office.

Metal Health (Bang Your Head) Album: Metal Health (1983) Slick Black Cadillac Quiet Album: Riot II (1978) Highway To Hell Album: Highway to Hell (2016) by Quiet Riot "Metal Health", sometimes listed as "Metal Health (Bang Your Head)", "Bang Your Head" or, as it was listed on the Billboard Hot 100, "Bang Your Head (Metal Health)", is a song by the American heavy metal band Quiet Riot on their breakthrough album, Metal Health. One of their best known hits and receiving heavy MTV music video and radio play, "Metal Health" was the band's second and final top 40 hit, peaking at #31 on the Billboard Hot 100. Being about the headbanging subculture, the song caught the attention of many heavy metal fans on its release. The single contained both the studio-recorded version and a live version, which was later released on their Greatest Hits compilation. The lyric, "well now you're here, there's no way back", eventually became the title for Quiet Riot's documentary, released in 2015. The song title is a play on the phrase "Mental Health," and is a celebration of the rebellious nature of heavy metal and fans who bang their heads to the music. Lead singer Kevin DuBrow wrote the lyric, which is based on the slights he heard throughout his life. DuBrow, who died of a drug overdose in 2007 at age 52, did indeed have a "mouth like an alligator," as he would always speak his mind. Thanks to a video that got lots of airplay on MTV, this song helped bring heavy metal music with a pop sheen into the mainstream, paving the way for photogenic hair bands of the '80s like Mötley Crüe and Twisted Sister. Quiet Riot had been around for a while, releasing their first album in 1977 with Randy Rhoads, who later became Ozzy Osbourne's go-to axeman, on guitar. By the time they released their third album, Metal Health, they were polished and poised for stardom. "Metal Health" was the first single, but it went nowhere. Their cover of the Slade song "Cum On Feel The Noize" was released as a follow-up, and that one caught on in America, going to #5 in November 1983, the same month the Metal Health album topped the chart, becoming the first metal album to do so. With the band now established, "Metal Health" went up the chart, landing at #31 in February 1984. Guitarist Carlos Cavazo and drummer Frankie Banali are the co-writers on this track along with Kevin DuBrow. "We were huge fans of AC/DC, so we wanted something that had a very simple, straight ahead groove at a certain tempo," Banali said in a Songfacts interview. "It went through a lot of different changes, and what I mean by 'changes,' a lot of that song has to do with the tempo. I listen to a lot of classical music and jazz, and the thing that I found interesting about both classical music and jazz is that certain parts of a song only work at a certain tempo, and they don't work at another tempo. With jazz, they shift gears - the same thing with classical. With rock 'n' roll, you basically start at a tempo and you end at that tempo. So the tempo on that record is not slow, but it really digs into the groove. It didn't work at that tempo live, which is why we actually played it a little faster live - because it gets the energy of the audience. So that is something that we paid attention to. And at one point, Metal Health was much longer than it is now. Kevin was really good about trimming fat." The video, directed by Mark Rezyka, is a case study on how to make a memorable clip on the cheap. It was the band's first video, and the budget was very tight. They got a community collage to let them film it there for free, and recruited student to form the crowd in the stage scenes. As opposed to many early MTV favorites, it has a cohesive storyline: Kevin Dubrow is strapped into a straightjacket, wearing a Hannibal Lecter mask, trapped in a padded room. He makes a daring escape from the asylum, then drops from the rafters to rock the crowd at the concert. MTV loved it, since zeroed in on their target demographic of young male rock fans, but it didn't do well at first. After "Cum On Feel The Noize" (also directed by Rezyka) took off, the network revived "Metal Health." Dubrow's asylum look became one of the iconic images of MTV. On the album, the song is listed as "Metal Health." The single was released as "Bang Your Head (Metal Health)" in most territories, and a version of the song is published as "Metal Health (Bang Your Head)," which Frankie Banali says is the official title. This song provided not just the title track for the album, but also the visual presentation. The album cover shows DuBrow in a straightjacket and mask, as later seen in the video. The mask became a kind of talisman for the band, showing up in their promotional materials and on later album art and videos. The songwriter/producer Spencer Proffer produced the album, including this track. Proffer owned a recording studio and was key to giving Quiet Riot their start, but much of his later work was far less Metal: he was the music consultant on the show Sabrina, The Teenage Witch, and produced the TV series Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child. The song can be heard in the movie Footloose, playing in car of the character Ren. It was also used as the entrance theme for Randy The Ram in the 2008 movie The Wrestler. In 1998, Kevin Dubrow sang on an acoustic version with The Neanderthal Spongecake that appeared on their album The Side Effects Of Napalm. Cevin Soling of The Neanderthal Spongecake explained how this came together: "Eric Clapton had done his cover of 'Layla,' of his own song. I thought it was just atrocious, doing this mellow version and that acoustic thing. I thought it was an abomination, and so as sort of a joke I played this acoustic version of Quiet Riot's 'Metal Health.' And so, I was working out in the studio while we were working on our album, and it just started coming out really, really well - an acoustic version of the ultimate headbanging song. But it came out brilliantly, and I started adding strings and a choir, and it got pretty insane. But the problem was the original concept of the vocals was supposed to be this hard core kind of slacker vocals over this acoustic sound. But the music was just too good to sort of do that to. So I managed to get in touch with Kevin Dubrow, the lead singer of Quiet Riot, and asked him if he was interested in singing on it. His initial response was no, because I guess Marilyn Manson was responsible for getting the band back together again, and then they were actually going to be cutting a new version of that song to sort of exploit it. But he agreed to listen to it anyway. And then after I sent it out to him, he called me immediately and said, 'I have to sing on this. Please let me sing on this.' Because it was such a radical departure, and so unexpected. He was working as a DJ out in Vegas at the time, and so I flew out to Vegas and recorded with him, and Lindsey Buckingham's son actually was the engineer there. The whole experience was just a lot of fun, working with him. And he was great. I wasn't so much into the heavy metal music, but he was telling me how he had this terrible reputation, but I didn't know anything about his reputation or anything about him being difficult. Because he could not have been easier to work with, could not have been more professional. The whole thing was a pleasure. And I thought, hey, this could be kind of fun to do this kind of concept for a whole album. But not necessarily having people do their own materials, pairing people up with the least likely song that you could imagine them doing. The main riff/structure of the song come from an older track entitled "No More Booze," which was originally performed by Snow, Carlos and Tony Cavazo's pre-Quiet Riot band. A live version of the song can be heard on the At Last recordings, which finally received a release in 2017. Quiet Riot II is the second studio album released on December 2, 1978. The album's opening track, "Slick Black Cadillac", was re-recorded by Quiet Riot for their 1983 breakthrough album Metal Health. As with Quiet Riot's debut album, Quiet Riot II was released only in Japan, and to this day has never been officially released anywhere else. This is the final Quiet Riot album to feature lead guitarist and founder Randy Rhoads, who departed the following year to join former Black Sabbath vocalist Ozzy Osbourne in a new group. Although bassist Rudy Sarzo is credited and pictured on the album cover, Quiet Riot II was recorded before he joined the band, and the work of bassist Kelly Garni is featured on the album. Tensions between Garni and vocalist Kevin DuBrow boiled over during the album's recording, with Garni hatching a plan to shoot and kill DuBrow at the studio. Garni was arrested and immediately fired from Quiet Riot. Quiet Riot chose to cover Highway to Hell to pay homage to AC/DC and showcase their musical prowess. Quiet Riot Kevin DuBrow – lead vocals Carlos Cavazo – guitars, backing vocals Rudy Sarzo – bass, backing vocals Frankie Banali – drums, backing vocals Chuck Wright – bass The Killer Bees – backing vocals

Gotta Go Album: Something's Gotta Give (1998) Riot Riot Upstart Album: Riot Riot Upstart (1999) by Agnostic Front Gotta Go is one of Agnostic Front's most popular songs, "Gotta Go" became a hardcore anthem. The group's lead singer Roger Miret wrote the lyrics; he told us: "It's one of those songs like you've just got to leave the situation. You've got to get out of it. Whatever it is, I've got to go, I don't want to hear it, I don't want to hear this, I don't want to hear that." Riot, Riot Upstart is the sixth full-length studio album from Agnostic Front. It was released in September 1999 on Epitaph Records and follows Something's Gotta Give released the previous year. The album was produced by Lars Frederiksen of fellow punk band, Rancid, and the title track appeared on a volume of Epitaph Records' Punk-O-Rama compilation series. https://www.agnosticfront.com/ Agnostic Front is an American band from New York City. Founded in 1980, the band is considered an important influence on the New York hardcore scene, as well as a pioneer of the crossover thrash genre. Formed in 1980 with Vincent "Vinnie Stigma" Capuccio (formerly of the Eliminators) on lead guitar, with Diego on bass, Rob Krekus (aka Robby Crypt Crash) on drums and John Watson on vocals. Despite being billed at their first concert as the Zoo Crew, Stigma introduced them as Agnostic Front, saying that the poster had been made prior to deciding on the name. They soon added Ray Barbieri, aka Raybeez, on drums and Adam Mucci on bass. After Watson was arrested, the band hired James Kontra as their vocalist, who eventually quit before a performance at Great Gildersleeves after a disagreement with Capuccio about how to hand out stickers. Although never having spoken to him before, Stigma told some of his friends to ask Roger Miret (former bass player of the Psychos) if he wanted to be the vocalist of Agnostic Front, because he liked his style of slam dancing. In 1983, this lineup recorded their debut EP United Blood. The EP was officially released later that year, however by that point Mucci had departed from the band, and been replaced by Todd Youth. During its initial phase, the band consisted entirely of skinheads. Although this would change over time, Agnostic Front would continue to feature skinheads as part of their lineup. This led to a belief among some that the band espoused ultra-nationalist or fascist politics, an assertion denied by vocalist Roger Miret in a 1985 Flipside interview: "...We're skinheads. And the skinheads in England have a very bad name like with the fascists and stuff like that. But this is America not England. Just because the skinheads are fascists over there doesn't mean we got to grow our hair out if we don't feel like it.... We love our country — but not necessarily how our government works." Agnostic Front Roger Miret – vocals Vinnie Stigma – guitars Rob Kabula – bass Jim Colletti – drums Production Recorded at Big Blue Meenie Studios, Jersey City, New Jersey Produced by Lars Frederiksen Engineered by Tim Gilles

Your Party Album: La Cucaracha (2007) Buckingham Green Album: The Mollusk (1997) The Rainbow Album: Chef Aid: The South Park Album (1998) by Ween "Your Party" was written by Gene Ween, who also sings the lead vocals. The track features guest musician David Sanborn on alto saxophone. Gene Ween has stated that the idea of "tri-colored pasta" was the germ of inspiration for the song. He said he always thought that style of pasta had a "fanciful and exciting flair". David Sanborn Appearance: Gene brought this song to the studio one night and played it for me on acoustic guitar. It sounded like something from Al Stewart's "Year of the Cat". We both agreed that it was a good tune but needed a smooth jazz kind of approach. That's why we asked David Sanborn to play sax on it, which he did, and he did a great job. I never said anything to Gene but I was trying my best to get it to sound like the 70's Bee Gees, at least musically. And here is Dean again, speaking on a different occasion: Ok, let me first start off by saying that we vowed never, ever, ever, would there be horns on a Ween album. As teenagers we always used that as a yardstick to determine when our favorite band was starting to suck, when their new record came out and it had horns on it (this rule applies only to rock music and white people). But there has always been one provision to this rule, and that was we would only use horns if we could get David Sanborn to play some sexy saxophone on a Ween tune. We finally wrote a song worthy of him, contacted his manager and it turns out he was a Ween fan and immediately agreed to do it. So that, in and of itself, means that we have accomplished one of our lifelong goals as a band. "Your Party" dates back to at least January of 2007, when Gene Ween played the song several times at solo acoustic shows, nine months before the release of La Cucaracha. Ween began playing the song with the full band later that year, and it has remained a common live Ween song ever since. In addition, Gene Ween has played "Your Party" very often individually, both solo acoustic and with his band Freeman. It was even played a handful of times by the Dean Ween Group. "Your Party" was used in an episode of the show Sex Education (season 3, episode 3). The Mollusk album version of "Buckingham Green" features lead vocals by Gene Ween and a guitar solo by Dean Ween. The song's title may have been inspired by a shopping center called Buckingham Green in the town of Buckingham, PA, near New Hope. "Buckingham Green" is significantly older than its appearance on The Mollusk and dates back to 1992. Three separate demo recordings of "Buckingham Green" were made during the sessions for Chocolate and Cheese, all three of which can be found on the bootleg Chocolate and Cheese Demos: Summer 1992. A version labeled "Buckingham Clean" or "Buckingham Green Take 1" is a short and simple rendering of the song's three verses, with a repeat of the first verse as in the Mollusk version. The simple arrangement features only Gene's vocal over an accompaniment of "clean" guitar (i.e. without distortion) with a simple guitar solo. A version labeled "Buckingham 2" or "Buckingham Take 2" is especially notable, as it features an extended middle section containing a spoken narration by Gene that is not found in any other version (see Lyrics section below). The instrumentation and arrangement of this version is also unique. It features a heavy, distorted guitar solo, which foreshadows the Mollusk version, although the solo itself is quite different. A version labeled "Buckingham Hiss" or "Buckingham Green Hiss" is similar to "Buckingham Clean" but is recorded with noticeable tape hiss. The first known live performance of "Buckingham Green" was at a 12/9/1992 show on the Pure Guava tour by Ween as a duo with DAT-deck accompaniment. This recording has been officially released on the At the Cat's Cradle album. The song was played fairly often in the years after this debut, and especially since the Mollusk tour it has become one of the most common live Ween songs ever, across almost every era (with the notable exception of the 12 Golden Country Greats tour). Additional officially released live versions include a 7/7/2000 recording from the White Pepper tour (Live at Stubb's), and a 11/7-9/2003 recording from the Quebec tour (Live in Chicago). "Buckingham Green" has also been played live numerous times individually by both Gene Ween (both solo acoustic and with his band Freeman) and Dean Ween (with the Dean Ween Group). "Homo Rainbow" was originally released on the 1998 soundtrack album Chef Aid: The South Park Album (listed as "The Rainbow"). The lead vocals are sung by Gene Ween. Gene Ween has spoken fondly of working with South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone: "They're fans of Ween, and we're fans of them - we're friends. Ween debuted "Homo Rainbow" live in the summer of 1998, about a month before the "Chef Aid" episode of South Park aired. They played the song commonly for about three years afterward; a 7/7/2000 recording from the White Pepper tour can be heard on the album Live at Stubb's. In later years, they have continued to play the song occasionally. It has also been played live individually by both Gene Ween (solo acoustic) and Dean Ween (with the Dean Ween Group). At the song's second performance, Dean Ween introduced it by saying that it was "About those stickers you see on the side of vans." 1987-2012 Dean Ween Vocals, guitar Gene Ween Vocals, guitar Dave Dreiwitz Bass Claude Coleman, Jr. Drums Glen McClelland Keyboards Ween's first show was closing a talent show in 1987. The band played an unusual cover of Jimi Hendrix' "Purple Haze." In 2002, Ween drummer Claude Coleman, Jr. was involved in a near-fatal car accident. Coleman was hospitalized for 35 days for multiple pelvic fractures and severe brain injuries. He was in a wheel chair for two months while he healed and was finally able to play the drums again after four months of recovery. Ween started out as a two-person band with a drum machine. Later, following the advice of Shimmy Disc records founder Mark Kramer, they became a full band, initially performing as The Ween. Ween guitarist Dean Ween is very good friends with Josh Homme from Queens Of The Stone Age. Ween actually plays guitar on three tracks on QOTSA's Songs for the Deaf album, "Mosquito Song," "Gonna Leave You," and "Six Shooter." Jam band Phish has been known to cover Ween's "Roses Are Free" in concert since 1997. When asked about the cover, singer Gene Ween told Now magazine "I like (Phish frontman) Trey Anastasio as a person, but as far as the music goes, all that jam band s--t makes me want to puke." Gene Ween (real name Aaron Freeman) married his long time girlfriend Sarah Poten 1996. The couple had a daughter named Ana in 1999 but divorced a couple years later. Most of Ween's 2003 album Quebec is about Freeman's dealing with the divorce. Ween guitarist Dean Ween says the band writes around 50 songs for every album they make. Ween says it's been that way since the band first started when he was just 14 years old. When asked by The A.V. Club how many songs he's written over the years, Ween said: "I have no way to know. I tried transferring just our four track tapes and I couldn't do it. It was just such a massive undertaking." Ween drummer Claude Coleman, Jr.'s dad is a very well respected police officer. After rising to the position of director of Newark, New Jersey's police and fire departments, Coleman Jr.'s dad became a judge. Ween was signed to Twin/Tone Records after opening for another band on the label, Skunk, at a showcase for the label's A&R guy. The concert was held in the basement of Skunk's bass player's mother's house. Skunk's drummer, Claude Coleman, Jr. would later become a full-time member of Ween. Following the breakup of Ween and his own divorce, Claude Coleman, Jr. relocated from New Jersey to Asheville, North Carolina. He began performing and touring with several bands, including the Dean Ween Group, and Amandla. "Ween was like every band in the world, so when Ween broke up, when that ended, I need like seven bands to make up for that," he said in his Songfacts interview. "I need a country band, I need a heavy band, I need my soul funky jazz band, I just need it all." Ween are known for their eclectic and genre-defying style. The only album they've recorded on which they played only one specific genre was 12 Golden Country Greats, released in 1996. The music on the record was pure country, featuring fiddle, banjo, mandolin, and pedal steel guitar, combined with Ween's trademark tongue-in-cheek lyrics. In 2012, Ween parted ways, but the band came back together for an epic reunion in early 2016. In an interview, founding member Dean Ween talked about the reunion: "The music means so much to so many people, and I think that when we got back together this year, the realization of it - I was getting the love, and Aaron [Gene Ween] was getting the love, solo, but nothing compared to the love we got when we started loving each other again." In an interview, drummer Claude Coleman, Jr. shared his thoughts about the band, post-reunion. "We'd been doing it for so long, you know? Then we took three-and-a-half years off and when we got back together, it was just like, 'Hey, what's up?' and then we were playing again. It wasn't much different than that, just the way we went about it was a lot more careful, more considerate and thoughtful. It's a more purposeful thing now, and it's good. It's a great thing. That's not to say that we take ourselves seriously, but we take ourselves a little more seriously now."

Spanish Fly Album: Van Halen II (1979) Little Dreamer Album: Van Halen (1978) Mean Street Album: Fair Warning (1981) Sunday Afternoon in the Park Album: Fair Warning (1981) by Van Halen “Spanish Fly” is the seventh track on Van Halen II, released in March of 1979. It is a flamenco-style acoustic guitar piece, as well as Eddie Van Halen’s second studio-produced solo—considered to be a sort of follow-up to 1978’s hugely influential “Eruption” from Van Halen I. According to the official Van Halen News Desk, producer Ted Templeman was hosting a New Year’s Eve party in December 1978 when he witnessed Eddie “fooling around” on an acoustic. Surprised that he was just as skilled with nylon strings, he asked Eddie to record something for their sophomore effort. Later, in Guitar World magazine, Eddie recalled the moment: Ted Templeman walked in and said, ‘You can play acoustic?’ I looked at him, like, ‘What’s the difference? It’s got six strings!’ I ended up coming up with ‘Spanish Fly.’ It was also common for Eddie to incorporate sections of Spanish Fly into his live guitar medleys. The recording Little Dreamer and this debut album with producer Ted Templeman began August 29, 1977. The tracks were recorded quickly during sessions between August 31 and September 8, 1977. Work on the album ended October 4 with the final mixing of "Little Dreamer" and "Eruption" (titled simply "Guitar Solo" on studio documents). Overall, the album cost approximately $54,000 to produce. "We didn't have a ton of material," recalled bassist Michael Anthony, "so we basically just took our live show and all the songs we knew and went for it. The whole album only took a couple of weeks. Ted Templeman wanted to make a big, powerful guitar record, and he had all he needed in what Eddie was doing." The subsequent tour began March 3, 1978 at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago with the band opening for Journey and Montrose in the United States. They later opened for heavy metal band Black Sabbath in Europe and the United States. Mean Street David Lee Roth grew up in New Castle, Indiana, where the streets were certainly not mean, but he made his way to Los Angeles, which likely inspired his lyric about toughing it out in a desperate part of town. That's where Van Halen made their rise. Another Hollywood transplant from Indiana is Axl Rose, whose "Welcome To The Jungle" lyric for Guns N' Roses was inspired by the seedy areas of that town. "Mean Street" is the first track on Fair Warning, Van Halen's fourth album. It came at a very creative time for the band when they were in a groove, creating an album a year with producer Ted Templeman. The song is quintessential Van Halen, opening with Eddie Van Halen doing some tapping on his fretboard - a sound he innovated. It also has the harmony vocals of Michael Anthony, a monster guitar riff from Eddie, and an interlude where David Lee Roth gets to change gears. It's this section where he evokes the name of the album: Somebody said "Fair warning" Lord, strike that poor boy down "Mean Street" wasn't released as a single but became one of Van Halen's most popular album cuts and one of their live favorites. When they toured in 2012, Wolfgang Van Halen got to do some guitar dueling with his dad. "Sunday Afternoon In The Park" was no picnic for Eddie Van Halen when it came to its inspiration and sound. According to Eddie's ex-wife Valerie Bertinelli, this near two-minute long instrumental from Van Halen's 1981 album Fair Warning was inspired by the stress of their upcoming wedding, which took place on April 11th, 1981. The following is an excerpt from her 2008 book Losing It – and Gaining My Life Back, One Pound at a Time: "We only had a small window in which to schedule the wedding. After One Day [her TV series One Day At A Time], I went straight into the TV movie The Princess And The Cabbie, which was shot in San Francisco; then, starting in May, Ed was to tour for the rest of 1981. The stress of planning the wedding got to both of us. I remember Ed snapping, 'God, can't you just leave me alone?' I don't blame him. Ed told me that I'd inspired the song 'Sunday Afternoon In The Park,' a heavy, grinding instrumental. He said it was us fighting all the time. 'I'm so glad I inspire cheerful songs,' I said." On "Sunday Afternoon In The Park," Eddie used an Electro-Harmonix Micro-Synthesizer to create the demonic sound of the track. According to Paul Reno, the Micro Synthesizer was developed by electronics engineer and designer David Cockerell. The instrument creates different timbres by modifying the input signal into different circuits. It was inspired by the sound of the 1970s analog synthesizers like Moog, Arp, and Oberheim. The first Micro Synth was released in 1979; along with Eddie Van Halen, it was used by John Frusciante (Red Hot Chili Peppers), John Mayer, James Shaffer (Korn), Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth) and Matthew Bellamy (Muse). While Sunday Afternoon in the Park wasn't the first time Eddie used keyboards on a Van Halen song (1980's "Everybody Wants Some!!" being the first), it's one of the few from the band's pre-synthesizer-heavy 1984 album days. Back then the inclusion of keyboards on Van Halen music was not at all welcomed by Eddie's bandmate David Lee Roth and producer Ted Templeman. They preferred he stay focused primarily on playing the guitar since, after all, he was known as a "Guitar God." As a result, Eddie became increasingly frustrated and even considered quitting the band because he couldn't express himself creatively. His angst would ultimately be injected straight into Fair Warning, the band's darkest and most aggressive-sounding album. Eddie did, however, manage to get some synthesizers on the record. He and engineer Donn Landee would wait until the band and producer left the studio to record music. It was around the time "Sunday Afternoon In The Park" was written that Eddie came up with the keyboard riff he eventually used on the band's number one single "Jump." By the time that song was recorded, however, Eddie had built his very own studio he called 5150 Studios. It's with that creative leverage he would go on to complete "Jump" and create the synthesizer riff behind another hit single from the band's forthcoming 1984 album: "I'll Wait." Van Halen brought this Roth-era song back during the Sammy Hagar era during the 1991-1992 For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge Tour, where it was included in Michael Anthony's bass solo.

Southern Rock Opera Act One The Drive By Truckers originally this piece was a direct complaint to Elon because my fake account was nuked for using the ("N WORD") so it was n word heavy at the beginning, and since my satire is basically only funny to me (which explains a lot... also I don't care because this is the internet and not real) this has been re-edited and school friendly, as it's a rocket scientist's life... Now with 119% MORE Elon Memes. Happy African-American Day from the richest nigger there is! Southern Rock Opera is the third studio album by the American rock band Drive-By Truckers, released in 2001. A double album covering an ambitious range of subject matter from the politics of race to 1970s stadium rock, Southern Rock Opera either imagines, or filters, every topic through the context of legendary Southern band Lynyrd Skynyrd. The record was originally self-released on Soul Dump Records. The album was re-released on July 16, 2002 by Lost Highway Records. The album was financed by issuing promissory notes in exchange for loans from fans, family and friends of the band. The album's artwork was done by Richmond, Virginia artist Wes Freed. The idea for Southern Rock Opera pre-dates the band's formation in 1996. Southern Rock Opera began in a long discussion between Drive-By Truckers' frontman Patterson Hood and former Truckers bassist and producer Earl Hicks, during a road trip. The pair discussed writing a semi-autobiographical screenplay about growing up in the South and about the plane crash that almost ended the career of the rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, taking singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, and Gaines' back-up-singer sister Cassie Gaines. Soon after this discussion, Hood formed Drive-By Truckers. The Truckers recorded two studio albums and one live album during the four years between their formation and the actual recording of Southern Rock Opera. During these years, Drive-By's principal songwriters Hood, Mike Cooley, and Rob Malone continued to contribute songs to "The Rock Opera", as they had come to call it. After the release of their live album Alabama Ass Whuppin', Drive-By Truckers began recording what they hoped would be their magnum opus: Southern Rock Opera. According to Patterson Hood, "(the album) was recorded in Birmingham, upstairs in a uniform shop during an early September heat wave, with no air-conditioning. We had to turn the fans off when we were recording, and we worked from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. So Southern Rock Opera was fun to write, but we had a miserable time making it." After the album was finished, however, the troubles continued for The Truckers when they ran out of funding for the immense project. To resolve the problem, and to avoid "any fine print crap", as Hood put it, the band took a non-traditional approach. The Truckers made a prospectus and solicited investors, with a promise of 15% interest, to pay for the manufacturing and distribution of Southern Rock Opera. The approach worked. Through their fan-based online news group and by sheer word of mouth, The Truckers were able to raise $23,000. This allowed them to print about 5,000 copies of the album, and buy a "new" used van for touring. Notably included in the group, dubbed "The DBT Investors", was Widespread Panic bassist and fellow Athenian Dave Schools. Southern Rock Opera was finally released on September 12, 2001 on Soul Dump Records. One day after September 11 attacks. September 12, 2001. Disc one: Act one: Betamax Guillotine "Days of Graduation" Hood 0:01 "Ronnie and Neil" Hood 2:36 "72 (This Highway's Mean)" Cooley 7:29 "Dead, Drunk, and Naked" Hood 12:53 "Guitar Man Upstairs" Cooley 17:46 "Birmingham" Hood 21:01 "The Southern Thing" Hood 26:05 "The Three Great Alabama Icons" Hood 31:10 "Wallace" Hood 38:04 "Zip City" Cooley 41:27 "Moved" Malone 46:39 Personnel Band Mike Cooley – lyrics, guitar, ambience, vocals Earl Hicks – bass Patterson Hood – lyrics, guitar, ambience, vocals, storytelling Rob Malone – lyrics, guitar, ambience, vocals Brad Morgan – drums Guest performers Kelly Hogan – backing vocals on "Cassie's Brother" and "Angels And Fuselage" (as Cassie Gaines) Anne Richmond Boston – 1st group vocal Jyl Freed – 2nd group vocal Amy Pike – 3rd group vocal

Peaches Album: The Presidents of the United States of America (1995) Lump Album: The Presidents of the United States of America (1995) Dune Buggy Single & Album: The Presidents of the United States of America (1995) by The Presidents Of The United States Of America First theory: It's just a song about how peaches are great. Perhaps a little commentary about how natural peaches are better then canned stuff. Second theory: It's about women's private parts and cunnilingus. The Presidents Of The United States Of America also have a song called "Kitty," which is about a cat (or is it?). They insist these songs - which they're well aware are full of double meanings - are about the literal explanations. In an interview with Presidents lead singer Chris Ballew, he told the story behind Peaches. "The key line, 'Moving to the country, going to eat a lot of peaches,' I overheard a homeless man who was walking by the bus stop where I was waiting for a bus," he said. "He was saying it under his breath over and over again: 'I'm moving to the country, I'm gonna eat a lot of peaches.' And I thought, 'That's interesting. I've never heard a homeless guy talk about his future and peaches and the country like that.' I was on my way to my girlfriend's house and I didn't have a guitar there but the phrase stuck with me. I later got home and put it to a little music. All I had was that, then I was trying to be Nirvana in the verse, gnarly and growly. So I had a verse and a chorus, and the verses were about how I had taken some hallucinogenic drugs and gone to a girl's house that I had a crush on. I was intending to tell her how I felt but she wasn't home, so I sat in her yard under a peach tree, having a psychedelic experience smashing peaches in my fist, literally like I say in the song, and watching the juice dribble and watching the ants run around. She never showed up, so I never got to tell her, but I bottled it and turned it into that song." "Peaches" was written by the three band members: Chris Ballew, Dave Dederer, and Jason Finn. Dederer came up with the part that closes out the song: Millions of peaches Peaches for me Millions of peaches Peaches for free "The song sounds like two different songs," Ballew said. "It's got my verse/chorus/verse/chorus, and then Dave's end part." "I love that that song was so popular because it really was a collaborative thing," he added. "Dave and I depended on each other to make that song work. Growing up as I did in the shadow of Lennon and McCartney, I thought it was cool that we had that collaboration." The Presidents Of The United States Of America were one of the many Seattle bands signed to a major label when grunge hit. Unlike most of these bands, they panned out, selling over 3 million copies of their debut album on Columbia Records. Their first single was "Lump," which got a lot of airplay and some spins on MTV. "Kitty" followed, then "Peaches." The album was released in July 1995, and the band promoted it relentlessly, making the rounds on radio stations in the mornings while they toured. "Peaches" reached its chart peak in April 1996; they put out their next album, II, in November. That album didn't produce any substantial hits but still sold 500,000 copies. By this time, the band was burned out, and in early 1998, they called it quits. They reunited from time to time, and lead singer Chris Ballew found an audience as Caspar Babypants, a maker of music for kids. From 1997–2004, their cover of "Cleveland Rocks" was the theme song to The Drew Carey Show. The band name is ironic, meant to contrast their lo-fi sound with the gravitas of the highest political office in their home country. It ended up being a great marketing tool, especially on Presidents' Day. On that holiday in 1996 (February 19, 1996) MTV aired a 30-minute concert of the band performing from Mount Rushmore. The music video of Peaches was directed by Roman Coppola, son of The Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola. Most of it is just the band performing in an orchard, but it takes a hard turn when a group of ninjas show up and attack them. According to Ballew, Coppola had been watching ninja movies and was keen to shoot a fight sequence. The peach was a symbol of immortality to the ancient Chinese. They placed bowls of peaches in the tombs of close family members to prevent the bodies from decaying. Giving the fruit as a gift was a sign of friendship. (From the book Food for Thought: Extraordinary Little Chronicles of the World by Ed Pearce) Lump follows the story of a woman named (or nicknamed) Lump who lives in a boggy marsh. She's not too bright, but has managed to attract a mate ("Lump slipped on a kiss and tumbled into love"). Presidents frontman Chris Ballew came up with the lyric. "It was just a visual, an image I had in my head," he said. "When I thought of 'she's lump, she's lump,' I wondered, 'What could that be?' and I just wanted to paint a very surreal picture. It's a little bit 'Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.'" Growing up with Sgt. Pepper's being such a massive part of the landscape of my imagination, I think it was sort of my 'Lucy In The Sky,' you know, 'Lumpy In The River.' I just saw this scene, this weird jungle with this woman in a housecoat, an overweight, 50-something woman with her hair in curlers smoking a cigarette, sitting in the river and dumbfounding the piranhas who normally would eat her, but they can't make heads or tails of her. Everyone would always say, 'What is 'Lump' about?' I'm like, 'Just listen to the lyrics. That's what it's about.' It's literally about this vision, a fancy flight of imagination." "Lump" was the first single from The Presidents Of The United States Of America, which had the good fortune of forming in Seattle in the early '90s when the music scene there was red hot. In 1994, they released an independent album and were building a following. The record labels came calling, and they chose Columbia, which issued their debut album in 1995. In America, "Lump" wasn't sold as a single but was pushed to radio and MTV, a strategy that encouraged album sales. The song is a bit of a novelty, but unlike, say, Green Jelly ("Three Little Pigs"), their quirky hit was not their last. Presidents also landed with "Kitty" and "Peaches." The album ended up selling over 3 million copies. Their next album was less successful but still sold 500,000. By 1998, the band was burned out and called it quits, but viewers of The Drew Carey Show could hear their cover of "Cleveland Rocks" every week as the theme song. The band re-grouped from time to time, and in 2016 announced they were stepping down. Lead singer Chris Ballew emerged as "Caspar Babypants," a maker of music for kids and families. Caspar tracks like "Run Baby Run" and "Stompy The Bear" have streaming counts in the millions. A cello player named Lori Goldston (who played on Nirvana's MTV Unplugged special) had a hand in the development of "Lump." She was Chris Ballew's neighbor, and when Chris hit on the idea for the song, she let him borrow her 4-track recorder so he could work up the demo. Lump music video takes place in a swamp, and we never see Lump. Instead, we see the band in their presidential suits performing the song in the water. It was directed by Roman Coppola, who went on to co-write the screenplay to the movie Moonrise Kingdom. Because it was the band's first video, they wanted to be the focus so fans could get a good look at them and see what they're about: high energy and good vibes. It's easy to understand every word in this song. That's by design. Presidents had a unique sound, with lead singer Chris Ballew playing a 2-string guitar through a bass amp, and guitarist Dave Dederer playing a 3-string guitar through a guitar amp. Sonically, this opened up a big hole for the vocals, which come through loud and clear. Weird Al Yankovic did a parody of this song called "Gump" with the lyric reworked to be about the movie Forrest Gump. In the video, Al portrays lead singer Chris Ballew, but performs in a fountain instead of a swamp. When Lump took off, a popular narrative was that the band's arrival signaled the end of grunge and a homogenization of the Seattle sound. Chris Cornell came to the band's defense, explaining that the city has always had groups representing a wide array of musical genres, but any that weren't grunge got overlooked in the early to mid-'90s. Presidents even opened two shows for Soundgarden at Mercer Arena in Seattle in 1996. "Lump" was ineligible for the Hot 100 chart because it wasn't sold as a single, but it did go to #21 on the Billboard's Airplay chart, and also topped their Modern Rock chart. The song is short and sweet, clocking in at just 2:14. Around this same time, Weezer was on the charts with one of their quirky hits: "Buddy Holly," which runs 2:39. "Lump" comes in hot, with a drum hit immediately followed by vocal. It also has a cold ending, which means disc jockeys couldn't talk over the song at all. "I was trying to imitate a Buzzcocks song," Chris Ballew said of Lump. "Originally the guitar and the bass were in from the very beginning, but I wanted it to sound like a song where the beginning of it could sound like it's already been going on for three minutes, like it just drops and it's on. But Conrad Uno, the guy that helped produce the first record, had the idea of muting the guitar and the bass at the beginning and have it just be drums. So that was a great decision because it's iconic, the way it starts." "Dune Buggy" is a song released as the fourth and final single from their self-titled debut album (1995) on July 8, 1996. The song reached number two in Iceland, number 15 in the United Kingdom, number 16 in Australia, and number 29 in Ireland.

Southern Rock Opera Act Two The Drive By Truckers originally this piece was a direct complaint to Elon because my fake account was nuked for using the ("N WORD") so it was n word heavy at the beginning, and since my satire is basically only funny to me (which explains a lot... also I don't care because this is the internet and not real) this has been re-edited and school friendly, as it's a rocket scientist's life... Now with 119% MORE Elon Memes. Happy African-American Day from the richest nigger there is! Southern Rock Opera is the third studio album by the American rock band Drive-By Truckers, released in 2001. A double album covering an ambitious range of subject matter from the politics of race to 1970s stadium rock, Southern Rock Opera either imagines, or filters, every topic through the context of legendary Southern band Lynyrd Skynyrd. The record was originally self-released on Soul Dump Records. The album was re-released on July 16, 2002 by Lost Highway Records. The album was financed by issuing promissory notes in exchange for loans from fans, family and friends of the band. The album's artwork was done by Richmond, Virginia artist Wes Freed. The idea for Southern Rock Opera pre-dates the band's formation in 1996. Southern Rock Opera began in a long discussion between Drive-By Truckers' frontman Patterson Hood and former Truckers bassist and producer Earl Hicks, during a road trip. The pair discussed writing a semi-autobiographical screenplay about growing up in the South and about the plane crash that almost ended the career of the rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, taking singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, and Gaines' back-up-singer sister Cassie Gaines. Soon after this discussion, Hood formed Drive-By Truckers. The Truckers recorded two studio albums and one live album during the four years between their formation and the actual recording of Southern Rock Opera. During these years, Drive-By's principal songwriters Hood, Mike Cooley, and Rob Malone continued to contribute songs to "The Rock Opera", as they had come to call it. After the release of their live album Alabama Ass Whuppin', Drive-By Truckers began recording what they hoped would be their magnum opus: Southern Rock Opera. According to Patterson Hood, "(the album) was recorded in Birmingham, upstairs in a uniform shop during an early September heat wave, with no air-conditioning. We had to turn the fans off when we were recording, and we worked from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. So Southern Rock Opera was fun to write, but we had a miserable time making it." After the album was finished, however, the troubles continued for The Truckers when they ran out of funding for the immense project. To resolve the problem, and to avoid "any fine print crap", as Hood put it, the band took a non-traditional approach. The Truckers made a prospectus and solicited investors, with a promise of 15% interest, to pay for the manufacturing and distribution of Southern Rock Opera. The approach worked. Through their fan-based online news group and by sheer word of mouth, The Truckers were able to raise $23,000. This allowed them to print about 5,000 copies of the album, and buy a "new" used van for touring. Notably included in the group, dubbed "The DBT Investors", was Widespread Panic bassist and fellow Athenian Dave Schools. Southern Rock Opera was finally released on September 12, 2001 on Soul Dump Records. One day after September 11 attacks. September 12, 2001. Disc two: Act two "Let There Be Rock" Hood 00:09 "Road Cases" Hood 04:25 "Women Without Whiskey" Cooley 07:07 "Plastic Flowers on the Highway" Hood 11:27 "Cassie's Brother" Malone 16:29 "Life in the Factory" Hood 21:28 "Shut Up and Get on the Plane" Cooley 26:55 "Greenville to Baton Rouge" Hood 30:33 "Angels and Fuselage" Hood 34:44 Personnel Band Mike Cooley – lyrics, guitar, ambience, vocals Earl Hicks – bass Patterson Hood – lyrics, guitar, ambience, vocals, storytelling Rob Malone – lyrics, guitar, ambience, vocals Brad Morgan – drums Guest performers Kelly Hogan – backing vocals on "Cassie's Brother" and "Angels And Fuselage" (as Cassie Gaines) Anne Richmond Boston – 1st group vocal Jyl Freed – 2nd group vocal Amy Pike – 3rd group vocal

Jungle Boogie Album: Wild & Peaceful (1973) Kool and The Gang It took some brains to make this video... like the Mayor and City Council of Westminster South Carolina Praise Jesus Harder! "Jungle Boogie" was first released on the Kool & The Gang album, Wild & Peaceful, in October 1973. A month later, November 24, 1973, the track was released as a single, with the little recognized "North, South, East, West" as the B-side. With the million-selling success of "Jungle Boogie" and the success of other singles, "Funky Stuff" and "Hollywood Swinging," the album was quickly certified gold by the RIAA, the band's first certified gold album. "Jungle Boogie" hit #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 after receiving extensive play in dance clubs and discos, leading to the single being certified gold as well on February 2, 1974. The album, Wild & Peaceful peaked at #6 on the Billboard R&B Album chart and #33 on the Billboard Pop Album chart. The main spoken vocals on "Jungle Boogie" were performed by then-roadie, Donal Boyce, who became better known as "The Boogie Man." Boyce's vocals on the hit were so popular he was invited to sing back-up and perform "vocal effects" on a number of Kool & The Gang singles, including "Spirit of the Boogie," "Open Sesame," and "Slick Superchick." Boyce performed with the band from 1973 to 1977. All the songs on Kool & The Gang's 1973 album Wild & Peaceful, including "Jungle Boogie," were credited to the songwriting team of Kool & The Gang and Gene Redd. At the time, Kool & The Gang was made up of six members: Robert 'Kool' Bell, Claydes Smith, Dennis 'D.T.' Thomas, Ronald 'Khalis Bayyam' Bell, Robert Mickens, and George Brown. The group joined together with music producer and founder of De-Lite records, Gene Redd, in 1968, when Redd signed them to his first record label, Redd Coach Records. Since its release in 1973, "Jungle Boogie" has been sampled and covered repeatedly. Kool & The Gang sampled their own hit, releasing an instrumental version with an overdubbed flute section and additional percussion called "Jungle Jazz" on their album, Spirit of the Boogie. In 1988, Hip hop duo EPMD sampled the track for their debut single, "Strictly Business." The 1989 Beastie Boys hit, "Hey Ladies," used parts of "Jungle Boogie" to help land the first single in US history to chart in the Top 20 on both the Billboard Hot Rap Singles chart and the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. Madonna followed suit with sampling for her 1992 hit "Erotica," a controversial song that got the material girl banned from the Vatican and banned from airplay on the surrounding radio stations. The 1994 Top 10 hit by Janet Jackson, "You Want This," featured samples from both "Jungle Boogie" and "Love Child" by The Supremes. Media moguls love to use a well-recognized song like "Jungle Boogie" for their projects. Director Quentin Tarantino used the track for his 1994 film, Pulp Fiction. A cover version of "Jungle Boogie" by The French was featured in the Disney straight-to-video feature The Lion King 1 ½. Disney used the hit again in 2004 for the soundtrack of the show That's So Raven. Harmonix got in on the act in 2010 when they used "Jungle Boogie" as a dance track for their hit X Box 360 Kinect game, Dance Central. Get down, get down Get down, get down Get down, get down Get down, get down Get down, get down Get down, get down Get down, get down Get down, get down Jungle boogie (Get down with the boogie) Jungle boogie (Get it on) Jungle boogie (Get down with the boogie) Jungle boogie (Get it on) Jungle boogie (Get up with the boogie) Jungle boogie (Get up with the get down) Jungle boogie (Get down with the boogie) Jungle boogie (Shake it around) Jungle boogie (Get up with the get down) Jungle boogie (Boogie, boogie) Jungle boogie (Get the boogie) Jungle boogie Jungle boogie (Get up with the get down) Jungle boogie (Ah, get the boogie) Jungle boogie (Let me jump in) Jungle boogie (Get down with the boogie) Get down, get down Get down, get down (With the boogie) Get down, get down (Jungle boogie) Get down, get down (With the boogie) Get down, get down (It's the boogie) Get down, get down (Jungle boogie) Get down, get down (With the boogie) Get down, get down (With the boogie) Get down, get down (Jungle boogie) Get down, get down (Boogie) Get down, get down (It's the boogie) Get down, get down Uh, get it Feel the funk y'all Let it flow Get down with the boogie I'm a-talkin' 'bout the jungle boogie Get down, huh Get down with the boogie say Uh, huh, get down Say, uh, huh-uh, ah, get down Say, uh, huh, get down Say, uh, huh, till you feel it, y'all Ah, huh, get down, y'all Uh-huh Ah, get down Huh-uh Ah, get up, y'all Ah, huh, with the get down Uh-huh Uh-huh Get down Whoa!

Roll Me Away Album: The Distance (1983) Like A Rock Album: Like a Rock (1986) by Bob Seger And The Silver Bullet Band Bob Seger always seemed more like a regular guy than a Rock Star, and Like A Rock is a moving song about pride and consistency which struck a chord with working class Americans who could relate to him. Seger grew up in Michigan, paid his dues with constant touring, and stayed true to his roots. Seger was 40 years old when Like A Rock was released, and there was a wisdom to his words that appealed to his audience. In a 1986 interview with Creem magazine, he said: "It's a matter of growing up. From the time I was 20 until I was 30, I didn't sell a whole lot of records, but I was doing a lot of rock 'n' roll. That's the way I felt at the time. Maybe during the period when I was 30 to 40, I was getting more mature, writing about older themes. I'm sure 'Like A Rock' doesn't mean much to someone who's 20, but I gotta write what I know about." Talking about writing Like A Rock in a 1994 interview with Music Connection, Seger said, "There have been times where I've written a bunch of verses before I even know what the title is. That's what happened with 'Like A Rock.' I wrote the first three verses of that song before I even knew where I was going. Then, one day, I just fell into the 'like a rock' thing, and I thought it worked." Guitarist/singer Rick Vito played the guitar on Like A Rock. Vito was in Fleetwood Mac from 1987-1991. The album version of Like A Rock is 5:56 long. The single version was cut down to 4:36. Like A Rock was used in an advertising campaign for Chevrolet trucks that ran from 1991 - 2004, making it indelibly associated with the vehicles. The song helped sell a lot of Silverados, and is considered one of the best choices for an ad campaign in the history of music. With a sturdy tempo, a singer who fits the demographic, and lyrics about reliability, this was the perfect song. The title provided a tag line better than anyone in Madison Avenue could have dreamed up, and the song got a new life, becoming much better known than it was on initial release. The Like A Rock video was shot in the Mojave Desert. They went for cinematography over effects, with a blue tint and no lip synching. It was artistic but slow, and failed to make an impact on MTV. Some guys were never meant to be video stars. This song was used in the soundtrack for the film The Weather Man (2005), which starred Nicolas Cage. "Roll Me Away" is a song on the album The Distance. The song was used as Seger's opening song on his Face the Promise tour in 2006–2007, his first tour in a decade. According to Seger the song was inspired by a motorcycle trip he took to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He stated: "I wanted to do that for a long time. It was fascinating being out. The first night it was 42 degrees in northern Minnesota; the second it was 106 in South Dakota and all I had on was my shorts, and my feet were up on the handlebars to keep them from boiling on the engine. It was just silence and feeling nature." Bob Seger – lead vocals The Silver Bullet Band Chris Campbell – bass Craig Frost – organ Additional musicians Roy Bittan – piano Michael Boddicker – synthesizer Bobbye Hall – percussion Russ Kunkel – drums Waddy Wachtel – guitar

Seven Turns Album: Seven Turns (1990) Soulshine Album: Where It All Begins (1994) The Allman Brothers Band Seven Turns refers to a Navajo belief that there are seven times in life that you must make a decision that determines your life path. Taking the wrong path means you must either backtrack or stay on the road to ruin. Allman Brothers Band guitarist Dickey Betts wrote Seven Turns after producer Tom Dowd asked him to write something similar to "Blue Sky," which he composed for the band's 1972 album Eat A Peach. This was the title track to the Allman Brothers comeback album. They had not recorded together for nine years. This was one of the few Allman Brothers songs where Betts sang lead. Seven Turns features Warren Haynes on slide guitar. His addition to the band on the Seven Turns album allowed them to play with two guitars, like they did before Duane Allman died in 1971. "Soulshine" is a song written by American musician Warren Haynes and originally recorded by Larry McCray on his 1993 album, Delta Hurricane. It is best known as a recording that The Allman Brothers Band released on their 1994 album, Where It All Begins, featuring Gregg Allman on vocals. The song's title originates from Haynes's nickname, given by his father. Although the Allmans' version was never released as a single, it remained one of their best known songs among fans and concert-goers. A live version of the song, which appeared on the Allmans' 2003 DVD, Live at the Beacon Theatre, had Allman and Haynes alternating vocals on the verses and harmonizing on the chorus, and includes a slide solo from Derek Trucks, as Dickey Betts was no longer with the band. This has become the standard for the song in most recent years with dual vocals. When Haynes and bassist Allen Woody formed Gov't Mule, they took Soulshine with them. Gov't Mule performs "Soulshine" live at their concerts and it was included on the band's Live... With a Little Help from Our Friends, The Deep End, Volume 1, and The Deepest End, Live in Concert releases. Beth Hart covered this song on her 2007 album, 37 Days. Soulshine was covered by two contestants from the thirteenth season of American Idol. C.J. Harris used the song during his audition (and also in the Top 8) and Ben Briley performed the song during "Rush Week". The 1997 David Allan Coe album Live: If That Ain't Country... has a cover of Soulshine as the second track, since Haynes, Coe's original guitar player, joined him for that concert.

Crazy Little Thing Called Love Album: The Game (1979) Keep Yourself Alive Album: Queen (1973) Another One Bites The Dust Album: Greatest Hits (1980) by Queen Freddie Mercury wrote Crazy Little Thing Called Love while Queen were recording The Game in Germany. He wrote it while taking a bubble bath in his room at the Munich Hilton. Peter Hince, the head of Queen's road crew, recalled to Mojo magazine September 2009: "The idea for the song came to him while he was in the bath. He emerged, wrapped in a towel, I handed him the guitar and he worked out the chords there and then. Fred had this knack of knowing a great pop song." Freddie acknowledged that perhaps his limited talent on the guitar helped shape the song: "'Crazy Little Thing Called Love' took me five or ten minutes. I did that on the guitar, which I can't play for nuts, and in one way it was quite a good thing because I was restricted, knowing only a few chords. It's a good discipline because I simply had to write within a small framework. I couldn't work through too many chords and because of that restriction I wrote a good song, I think." Crazy Little Thing Called Love sounded a lot more like Elvis Presley than Queen. It was a different sound for the group, but their fans loved it. Crazy Little Thing Called Love was the first song on which Freddie Mercury played rhythm guitar. He was keen to keep the song minimal, despite his limited guitar knowledge, and producer Mack claimed that he rushed into the studio to record it "before Brian could get there!" He also played the guitar solo on the original recording of Crazy Little Thing Called Love, but the tapes were lost so Brian May played the solo instead, using a Fender Telecaster to achieve the period sound. May didn't seem to like playing another guitar, and even when playing live, after performing the solo on the Telecaster he would immediately switch back to his Red Special. At first, this was not released in the US. Since the album was not out yet, radio stations there started playing import copies of the single. This led Queen's record company to release it in America, about 3 months after it came out in England. Mercury's name is in the lyrics. He sings, "Are you ready," and the band sings, "Ready Freddie." This section took on a poignant edge after Mercury's death when the song was performed with guest singers, as the lyric was never altered regardless of the vocalist. Fans would take this opportunity to bellow the 'Ready, Freddie!' lyric back at the band in remembrance of the singer. On stage, Crazy Little Thing Called Love was an important part of the show. Brian May often used three different guitars during the song: the first verse was played by Freddie alone with his guitar, then Brian joined with another Ovation Acoustic; before the third verse he had already switched to a Telecaster on which he performed the solo. During the singalong part (famous for its "ready Freddie" line) Brian again changed instruments to his homemade Red Special. From 1984 onwards Mercury replaced the acoustic with another Telecaster. The single was very successful for the band, hitting #2 in the UK and becoming their first US #1 hit, There's an unconfirmed legend (commented on by Roger Taylor on the radio show In The Studio, and by Brian May on his website) that declares John Lennon was inspired by this song to go back to the music business. Whether it's true or false is still unknown, but it is a fact that Lennon listened to Queen and he did try new influences on his Double Fantasy album. Josh Kelley recorded Crazy Little Thing Called Love for the 2005 Queen tribute album Killer Queen. Keep Yourself Alive is a song about simply staying alive. The message of the song: Staying alive is more important than being rich or famous. It boils down to "being yourself" instead of what everyone else wants you to be. Queen guitarist Brian May wrote the words and music for Keep Yourself Alive, which was Queen's first single. It highlighted what would become a common facet of Queen's studio work: May's perfectionism. He noted in a 1983 interview with BBC Radio 1: "The first recording of it ever was in De Lane Lea when we did it ourselves and I've still got that recording and I think it's very good and has something which the single never had. But THEY pressurized us very strongly to redo all the tracks and we redid 'Keep Yourself Alive' with Roy and it was pretty awful, actually. I thought it was terrible and I was very unhappy about it and I thought the De Lane Lea one was better and I eventually managed to persuade Roy that it was better as well. So, we went back in and did it again in a way that was a bit more true to the original. But there is no way that you can ever really repeat something. I have this great belief that the magic of the moment can never be recaptured and, although we ended up with something that was technically in the playing and perhaps even in the recording a bit better than the De Lane Lea thing. I still think that the De Lane Lea one had that certain sort of magic, so I was never really happy. As it turned out no one else was ever really happy either and we kept remixing it. We thought that it's the mix that's wrong, we kept remixing and there must have been, at least, seven or eight different mixes by different groups of people. Eventually we went in and did a mix with Mike Stone, our engineer, and that's the one that we were in the end happiest with. That's the one we put out. But, to my mind 'Keep Yourself Alive' was never really satisfactory. Never had that magic that it should have had." Keep Yourself Alive also showed a glimpse of May's desire to experiment with guitar recording techniques. Talking to On The Record in 1982, he discussed the techniques behind the opening heavily strummed guitar riff. "That was real tape phasing. This was in the days when you took the tape off the synch head, put it though a couple of other tape delays, and then brought it back with the play head. There is no processing whatsoever on the solo in that tune, as far as I remember. I used John Deacon's small amplifier and the Vox AC-30 to do those little three-part chorus thing behind, as well as the fingerboard pickup on the guitar. There is a bit more tape phasing on the end of that track." Queen's first single, Keep Yourself Alive has many familiar elements: the stacked guitars, the big harmonies. Brian May recalled to Mojo magazine: "Unfortunately, apart from a few places like Japan, it didn't get much airplay. We were told 'it takes too long to happen, boys. It's more than half a minute before you get to the first vocal.' So when we made the second album, we felt right we'll show them." Another One Bites The Dust is one of the hardest Queen songs to understand. The opening line reads, "Steve walks warily down the street, his brim pulled way down low. Ain't no sound but the sound of his feet, machine gun ready to go..." Also, the last phrase spoken in the song is not "Shoot Her" or "Shooter," but "Shoot Out." Though probably not intentional unless someone did an excellent splicing job, the "another one bites the dust" line quite clearly says "decide to smoke marijuana" when played backwards. This is especially clear toward the end of the track when Mercury repeats the line with only the drums playing. Queen bass player John Deacon wrote Another One Bites The Dust. All four members of Queen wrote songs, and each wrote at least one hit. Deacon also wrote "You're My Best Friend." Deacon was influenced by the Chic song Good Times. In an interview with the New Musical Express, Chic bass player Bernard Edwards said: "Well, that Queen record came about because that bass player spent some time hanging out with us at our studio. But that's OK. What isn't OK is that the press started saying that we had ripped them off! Can you believe that? 'Good Times' came out more than a year before, but it was inconceivable to these people that black musicians could possibly be innovative like that. It was just these dumb disco guys ripping off this rock 'n' roll song." Deacon played most of the instruments on the track: lead and rhythm guitars, bass, reversed piano and additional percussion. Brian May did some guitar effects with harmoniser (in the interlude), and Roger Taylor played the drum loop. Surprisingly, there are no synthesizers. The drum track and the hand claps were looped. They repeat throughout the song. While the band and producer Reinhold Mack were mixing the track, Brian May's roadie suggested it to be released as single; the band didn't like the idea but were finally talked into doing it when Michael Jackson, after a concert, suggested the same idea. John Deacon claimed in a 1980 interview that Roger Taylor opposed Another One Bites The Dust's drum beat. This is backed up by the comments of several figures in the Days of our Lives documentary, who noted that Taylor hated having tape put on his drums to deaden the sound. However, the drummer denied this in an interview with Mojo magazine October 2008. He insisted: "I'd already had an ineffectual pop at that kind of music with 'Fun It,' on the Jazz album. I was never against 'Another One Bites The Dust,' but I was against releasing it as a single." In 1998, Another One Bites The Dust was used in a commercial for AIWA sound systems. In the ad, a guy drives around with this blaring from his car stereo. At the end of the commercial, we realize he is driving a hearse. Freddie Mercury loved this track. Brian May recalled to Mojo: "Freddie sung until his throat bled on Another One Bites The Dust. He was so into it. He wanted to make that song something special." During production of the movie Rocky III, this was used in a key scene where Rocky is training for a fight. Producers could not get permission to use the song, so Sylvester Stallone hired Survivor to write an original song instead, which turned out to be "Eye Of The Tiger." Queen were originally reluctant to release this as a single, but backstage after a Queen gig at the Los Angeles forum, a visiting Michael Jackson convinced them it would be a hit. "Michael and all his brothers were all going, 'That's a fantastic track. You must release it,'" recalled Queen drummer Roger Taylor to Q magazine December 2009. This meeting lead to several recordings and collaborations between Freddie Mercury and Jackson, all of which remain unreleased. Weird Al Yankovic got his first chart placing with his parody of this song: "Another One Rides The Bus." It bubbled under on the Hot 100, placing at #104 in 1981. After a few more minor hits, he landed "Eat It" at #12 in 1984. Even then, Al was getting permission from the artists he parodied before releasing his songs. Another One Bites The Dust was the single that really broke the band in America, and it garnered a huge following amongst American disco audiences, with many fans and journalists convinced it was a black man singing lead vocals (these people obviously hadn't heard of Queen before so didn't know what Freddie looked like). The band occasionally were unsure of how to deal with this - Roger Taylor jokes in the Days of our Lives documentary of having fans shouting "you guys are bad!" in the street, and he had to ask "does that mean good or what?" Another One Bites The Dust was used in a 2016 commercial for the Hyundai Genesis that first aired on the Super Bowl. In the spot, Kevin Hart uses the Car Finder app to track down the guy who is using it to take his daughter on a date. After tormenting her suitor, Hart says, "A dad's gotta do what a dad's gotta do." This is used for CPR training because its bassline has close to 110 beats per minute, which matches the recommended chest compression rate.

Hard To Handle Album: Shake Your Money Maker (1990) Remedy Album: The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion (1992) Jealous Again Album: Shake Your Money Maker (1990) by The Black Crowes Hard To Handle was originally recorded by Otis Redding, who wrote it with Allen Jones and Al Bell. It was the only cover song on The Black Crowes debut album, which sold over five million copies. Running a compact 3:08, The Black Crows turned Hard To Handle into a rocker, using guitars instead of horns and extending the song from Redding's 2:18 original. Hard To Handle was The Black Crowes' third single, following "Twice As Hard" and "Jealous Again." It made #45 in the US in December 1990, as the group was rapidly gaining momentum. After "She Talks To Angels" hit #30 in May 1991 - over a year after the album was released - "Hard To Handle" was reissued, this time going to #26 and becoming the highest-charting single for the band on the Hot 100. The group had been together for five years before signing a record deal with Def American, which prepared them well for the onslaught of success. Their live act had already been honed, and many who saw them remained lifetime fans as they became more of a jam band. In an interview with Black Crowes lyricist/frontman Chris Robinson, he explained: "'Remedy' is a song that essentially is about freedom. We were into the whole idea that the 'war on drugs' was just silly - it was this asinine concept to me and millions of other people. So that song to me is about freedom, plain and simple, just put in a Rock & Roll framework." A track from the second Black Crowes album, this was their last song to make the Hot 100 - a surprising development considering they charted three songs from their first album and had a lot of radio support. As the band moved forward, the focused more on their core fanbase (the "connoisseurs" as Chris Robinson calls them), which circumscribed their popular fortunes. The pro-marijuana stance the band espouses in Remedy is something they played up around this time. To help promote the album, they appeared on the cover of High Times magazine, played the Atlanta Pot Festival, and had signage at their concerts with marijuana leaves. "Jealous Again" was the first single from The Black Crowes, released in 1990 after the band had been around in some form for six years. It was written by Rich and Chris Robinson, the brothers who lead the band. Rich is the guitarist and Chris the lead singer, but they collaborate on both music and lyrics. The song reflects their time on the road, pushing forward as they pursue their rock and roll dream ("Singing songs, ain't got no regrets"). They seem to be addressing a girl, letting her know there's a lot they had to sacrifice, and acknowledging that life with an aspiring rock star isn't always easy. "When you're a kid and you're in a rock band, that's your life, and there are a lot of walls put up for you to bust through," Chris Robinson said. "We really weren't an angst-driven band, but on the early Black Crowes records you feel our youthful exuberance." The Black Crowes were often compared to The Rolling Stones, and Jealous Again is a big reason why. The Robinson brothers admit that it's inspired by the 1972 Stones song "Tumbling Dice." "We stepped into a new place on 'Jealous Again,'" Rich told Guitar Player magazine. "We were going for a 'Tumbling Dice' thing. I remember writing the intro, putting the song together with Chris, and bringing it to rehearsal, where everyone got it. The first time we played it live was opening for Drivin' N Cryin' in Nashville." Jealous Again got The Black Crowes off to a flying start. Rock stations were quick to add it to their playlists, excited to have some new blood in a genre that was still dominated by acts that were big in the '70s like Aerosmith, Rush and ZZ Top. And this was Southern rock (the band is from Atlanta), more boogie than grunge, which was making a big push. The band followed "Jealous Again" with "Twice As Hard" and their cover of "Hard To Handle," then with the touching ballad "She Talks To Angels." All of these songs were part of their debut album, Shake Your Money Maker, which went on to sell over 5 million copies in America. The band released a no-frills video for Jealous Again, directed by Pete Angelus, who worked on many of those Van Halen and David Lee Roth videos that were all over MTV in the early years. The Black Crowes had a distinctive look, with flowing shirts on their surprisingly skinny frames. Like their sound, this was also reminiscent of '70s rockers like The Rolling Stones. Another "black" band beat them to the title: Jealous Again is the name of a 1980 EP by Black Flag.

There Goes Another Love Song Album: Outlaws (1975) Dixie Highway by Outlaws A movie about a Tumbleweed... made me think "There Goes Another Love Song" Henry Paul, founding member of The Outlaws, says There Goes Another Love Song is another in their repertoire of songs about being on the road: "'Trying to get back to where I know I belong,' there we are again, sitting in some stupid Days Inn in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 1974." And even though they were doing something they loved, and on the edge of serious success, it didn't assuage the caged feeling of not being able to see their loved ones. Says Paul, "Even as much as you love your job, there's things about that lifestyle that'll make you do things you don't want to admit that you did. That's why they throw TVs out of window. That's why the rock and roll thing is so violent and self-destructive.It's kind of like being a lab rat stuck in some treadmill hell, that in order to keep your sanity you've got to lash out at what's right immediately there, whether it's your hotel room or shooting a TV or being Keith Moon over and over again. But that's where that song came from, and it had a very commercial appeal, and it was a single for us. And although it didn't chart particularly high, it was obviously and definitely a cornerstone in our musical career." There Goes Another Love Song's chorus was written by Outlaws drummer Monte Yoho, and lead guitarist/singer Hughie Thomasson filled out the rest of the words. Says Henry Paul, "'There goes another love song,' that specific line, 'Someone's singing about me again, now I need more than a friend,' was written by Monte. He was a man of very few words, our drummer. He was a very smart and sharp, witty guy, but he wasn't the most poetic character. I'm not trying to say that he was a dumb guy, just that his sense of poetry was on the target, but it wasn't close to the center. But he wrote that, and then Hughie sort of rounded out the song with the verses." Henry Paul “I hope that Dixie Highway reinforces the notion that the Outlaws still matter, and that southern rock will always matter,” he says. “It’s a message we’re proud to bring into the twenty-first century.” It was Skynyd’s Ronnie Van Zant who brought the Outlaws to the attention of their eventual home of Arista Records, forcing an executive to watch a support spot with Skynyrd in Columbus, Georgia in 1974. With typical bullishness, Van Zant collared label boss Clive Davis and told him: “If you don’t sign the Outlaws, then you’re the dumbest music person I’ve ever met – and I know that you’re not.” Thomasson died of a heart attack two years afterwards, but Henry Paul keeps things moving forwards. He’s completely comfortable with that, having overturned a lawsuit from Hughie’s widow that attempted to prevent him doing so. “I hated being dragged down that road, so let me say one thing about the whole situation,” he responds, choosing his words with caution. “I’m an original member of this band. I’m a part of its musical personality, and I’m a creator. I’ve shown myself to be caring towards the brand. "Why would I allow myself to be controlled by somebody who’s never played a guitar, entertained an audience or made a record? I felt an obligation to fight for what I felt was right for me and my bandmates. Since we won the case, I’ve worked really hard to maintain the integrity of the group.” Sometimes I feel I'm getting kinda low Thoughts I am thinkin' are the reason so I try to remember without talkin' to myself Things that I've said or maybe things that I felt about you Sittin' in a corner of a crowded bar room People all around me and I still feel alone Just when I know I'm gonna break down and cry Someone played a tune that dried the tear from my eye There goes another love song Someone singin' about me again There goes another love song Now I need more than a friend Lonesome and lonely and far from my home Tryin' to get back to where I know I belong Wishin' and a-hopin' I was already there I just heard a voice it whispered in my ear, singin' There goes another love song Someone singin' about me again There goes another love song Now I need it more than a friend Do, do, do, do, do Do, do, do, do, do Do, do, do, do, do Do, do, do, do, do There goes another love song Someone singin' about me again There goes another love song Now I need it more than a friend I said There goes another love song Someone singin' about me again, oh no There goes another love song Now I need more than a friend

Chicken Train Stomp Album: The Ozark Mountain Daredevils (1973) track 4 Standing On The Rock Album: The Ozark Mountain Daredevils (1973) track 6 by Ozark Mountain Daredevils The Ozark Mountain Daredevils are an American band formed in 1972 in Springfield, Missouri. They are most widely known for their singles "If You Wanna Get to Heaven" in 1974 and "Jackie Blue" in 1975. Bassist Michael "Supe" Granda has also written a book about the band, It Shined. The band name was derived from "Cosmic Corn Cob & His Amazing Ozark Mountain Daredevils", a name that John Dillon came up with at a Kansas City "naming party" after the band was told that the name they had previously been using, "Family Tree", was already taken ("Burlap Socks" and "Buffalo Chips" were two other monikers that had been considered). The band shortened the name because none of the band members at the time wanted to be called "Cosmic Corn Cob", and they did not want the name to sound similar to the Amazing Rhythm Aces. In 1971 Randle Chowning formed a band which included himself, Steve Cash, John Dillon, Elizabeth Anderson, Larry Lee, Rick Campanelli, Bill Jones and Michael Granda. The band recorded a demo at Springfield's Top Talent Studios (soon to be renamed as American Artists) and that demo, containing such early songs as "Rhythm of Joy", found its way to New York music executive John Hammond via the hands of band friend Steve Canaday, co–owner of the New Bijou Theater. In July 1972 Hammond sent a producer, Michael Sunday, to the band's Ruedi-Valley Ranch in Aldrich, Missouri, the house rented from Randle Chowning's Southwest Missouri State University teacher Mrs. Ruedi, where the band rehearsed and where Chowning and his brother Rusty lived. Sunday offered the group $500 to make another demo tape at American Artists but ultimately decided to pass on offering them a contract. Many of the songs on this demo appeared thirteen years later as the record The Lost Cabin Sessions. The band later sent a tape to the team who managed fellow Missourians Brewer & Shipley, Kansas City's Paul Peterson and Stan Plesser (who also owned the Vanguard, a popular coffee house, and ran their own Good Karma Productions). The pair gave the band a chance and became their managers as well in October 1972. The band then changed their name to the Ozark Mountain Daredevils (see "Name") and saw the departure of Campanelli and Jones along with the addition of Buddy Brayfield, a friend of Granda's, as the piano player. Anderson, though still romantically involved with Dillon, retired from the stage. Campanelli left on his own to pursue a master's degree in music; Jones rejoined the Daredevils briefly later and would continue to appear as a guest player on some of their shows and recording sessions. The band began playing out in 1972 and 1973. On February 8, 1973 they played at Cowtown Ballroom in Kansas City, Missouri. Later that month, on February 21, they played a concert at Shawnee Mission Northwest High School in Shawnee, Kansas. Two weeks after that, on March 9 and 10, they played at Kiel Opera House in St. Louis and Cowtown Ballroom again, this time with Brewer & Shipley, accompanied by Loudon Wainwright III. Performances from both those March shows later turned up on a CD called Archive Alive in 1997. The group's demo tape eventually caught the attention of A&M Records staff producer David Anderle, who was looking for an Eagles country rock type of band to place on the label. Anderle and the Eagles' first producer, Glyn Johns, flew to Missouri to catch the band's aforementioned performance at Cowtown Ballroom on March 10, 1973. But the band, nervous about Johns and Anderle being in the audience, did not play their best. Later on, Paul Peterson invited the two men back to his place to hear the band give an unplugged performance by candlelight. This time Anderle and Johns were blown away and they were signed to A&M on May 1, 1973, and sent to England to record their first record at Olympic Studios in London with Johns at the helm during that June and July. The first record, The Ozark Mountain Daredevils (also referred to as "The Quilt Album"), was released in December 1973 and spawned the Top 30 hit "If You Wanna Get to Heaven" in the summer of 1974. The album introduced the band's unique mixture of rock, country, bluegrass and pop to the world and is still the favorite of many of the group's fans. Chicken Train Runnin all day Chicken Train Runnin all day Chicken Train Runnin all day Can't get on Can't get off Chicken Train take the chickens away Lazer beam In my dream Lazer beam In my dream Lazer beam In my dream Lazer beam like a sawed off dream I been standin' on the rock, waitin' for the wind to blow I been standin' on the rock, waitin' for the wind to blow I been standin' on the rock, waitin' for my seeds to grow I been walkin' on the ground, waitin' for the guns to quit I been walkin' on the ground, waitin' for the guns to quit I been walkin' on the ground, waitin' for the pieces to fit HARP SOLO (1 Harp) HARP SOLO (2 Harps) HARP SOLO (3 Harps) Better get back to the country, look around and find you ahome Better get back to the country, look around and find you ahome Better get back to the country, that's where we all come from I been standin' on the rock, waitin' for the wind to blow I been standin' on the rock, waitin' for the wind to blow I been standin' on the rock, waitin' for my seeds to grow(whew!) I been standin' on the rock, waitin' for my seeds to grow I been standin' on the rock, waitin' for my seeds to grow