« This Week on the Year That Was:
1980: Have you ever been to a Turkish prison?
| Main | Listomatic: Make your own list (movie quote edition) »

listomatic: loud cheese

One thing I hate about summer is you drive with your windows open. And so does everyone else. Which means everyone can hear me singing (unlike winter, most of fall and parts of spring, where the window is closed and I can belt one out like a motherfucker without feeling chagrined about it).

Songs that should be too cheesy to sing out loud, in traffic, with your windows wide open, but I decided I don't give a rat's ass and all of freaking Nassau County is going to hear me sing whether they like it or not and the parts that I sing louder than the rest, for emphasis and extra embarassment:

  • Def Leppard - Pour Some Sugar on Me (do you take sugar? one lump or two?)
  • Bon Jovi (I've seen a million faces an I've rocked them all!)
  • Journey - Don't Stop Believin' (It goes on and on and on and on)
  • Europe - The Final Countdown (the whole chorus)
  • House of Pain - Jump Around (word to your moms I came to drop bombs)
  • Blue Oyster Cult - Don't Fear the Reaper (just do all the background versers)
  • Poison - Talk Dirty to Me (CC, Pick up that guitar, and talk to me!)
  • Van Halen - Hot For Teacher (Class dismissed!)
  • Anything by Kiss - (pick a lyric, any lyric)
  • Judas Priest - Breakin' the Law (only because it's a Pavolovian reaction for me to do the Beavis and Butthead metal-sign-head-banging thing while saying breakinthelawbreakinthelaw)

I'll probably add more as I work my way through the iPod.

Comments

Humpty Dance (Yo ladies, oh how I like to hump thee)

I don't have a problem singing Van Halen, even at stoplights. The rest of those, not so much.

I have a John Denver song on my iPod, tho, so I'm probably not the best judge. (only one, dammit!!)

Does doing the drum solo in "In the Air Tonight" on your steering wheel count?

The list seems to call for Scorpions and April Wine.

Hubris -

Seriously, you need to get out of my head!

With my thunder once again stolen, I will throw out.. Baby got Back (I like 'em round & big)

Valen Halen - Jump

Lynard Skynard - Sweet Home Alabama

John Mellencamp - Jack & Diane (but almost anything)

Wow, I don't think I was alive when any of these songs were released.

The extended "House of Pain" stanza is:

"Word to your moms, I came to drop bombs
I got more rhymes than the Bible's got Psalms"

I always wondered, so I looked it up: Everlast thus has no fewer than 151 rhymes. I assume it's right around 151, because if he had, say, 427, equating it with the number of Psalms in the Bible would really do a disservice to his stock of rhymes. I doubt he'd sell himself short like that.

Anything by Kiss - (pick a lyric, any lyric)

Oh really? How about ...

Tonight I wanna give it all to you.
In the darkness.
There's so much I wanna do.
And tonight I wanna lay it at your feet.
'Cause girl, I was made for you.
And girl, you were made for me.
I was made for lovin' you baby.
You were made for lovin' me.
And I can't get enough of you baby.
Can you get enough of me.

And does scrunching one's mouth and clucking one's head to the guitar riff in Yes's "Owner of a Lonely Heart" count?

You know, with the windows open?

Journey - Don't Stop Believin' (It goes on and on and on and on)

My friends and I would often caterwaul to Journey, always while cruising. The Escape album was always a favorite. Don't Stop Believin' was a notable song, as--even moreso--was Escape.

Worse, we'd squeal--in (almost-)matching pitch-- with the guitar licks that occured between phrases. Invariably this resulted in shrieking, voice-cracking, ear-numbing, toothfilling-rattling falsettos, e.g. from their song Escape "... I've got dreams I'm living for DOO DOO DOO DOO DOO ..."

(Try singing all the words AND the instruments to any high-octane song without turning blue. 'Taint easy.)

We'd scream along until we all started laughing at ourselves too much to utter a word. Then, we'd start up again once we stifled our laughter enough to catch our breath.

The absolute worst, though, was us singing to Journey's Open Arms. Oh, I cringe even thinking of it! There's no worse song to sing to in the history of musicology--bar none!

If you've seen Beavis & Butthead do Judas Priest's "Breakin' the Law", you just HAVE to do it B&B style! And then you have to break out with "Washin' the dog! Washin' the dog!" And of course, that leads to discussions of stomach grease, and all the rest of it....

I think this just made my day!

"I know what it means... to walk along the lonely street of dreams"

(hanging head in shame) I was still singing loudly when I rolled the window down to place my order at Burger King. The young lady in the window looked at me awful strangely when I handed over the cash...

Anything by Erasure in the 1980s. Especially "Sometimes", if you're a guy, and stare at the other obnoxious driver's face and enunciate lyrics like "it's not my sense of emptiness you will with your desire". Two snaps up!

Gee, that sounds like way more fun then having air conditioning and never opening your windows. (A/C is not really an "option" in Houston.)

Well, I'm more of a warbler, not that there's anything wrong with that. So my selection includes "My Little Grass Shack" and "You're a Heartbreaker" (covered) by Leon Redbone, and "Vampires, Mummies, and the Holy Ghost" and "Fruitcakes" by Jimmy Buffett. And I should know better, as I'm almost always in a convertible when this happens.

Currently:

Holiday - Green Day. Mostly great for your steering wheel and dashboard drum kit.

Smooth - Santana and Rob Thomas. I've been caught seat dancing to that one in slow multi-lane traffic too many times. "...because you're so smooth. And it's just like the ocean, under the moon..."

Cheeseburger in Paradise - Jimmy Buffett, "I like mine with lettuce and tomata, Heinz 57 and french fried patatas...a big kosher pickel an' a an ice cold beer, GOOD GOD ALMIGHTY WHICH WAY DO I STEER?"

A few off the top of my head:

RUSH - Spirit of Radio
DMB - Ants Marching (the rap)
Supertramp - Goodbye Stranger (does anyone know what the complete lyrics are spoken in the last third of the song?)
Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody
B-52s - Love Shack (You're what? Tin Roof rusted!)

I generally have the windows down year roud (when I drive alone, which I do most of the time). It has to be especially foul weather -- blowing snow or downpour) for me to close the window; why deprive the street walkers of my voice (as hideous as it may be)?

Every time "Cult of Personality" by Living Color comes on the car radio, passing motorists stare -- "I'm - A- Cult - Of - Per - So - Na - Li Teeeee..." I just cannot help myself.

Thank you, PB, for letting me know I am not the only one. The first time my wife heard me mutter "washing the dog" under my breath, she looked at me like I had two heads.