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Pop Rock Nation

Category: Videos

  • Songs from your sickbed

    As January comes to a close, I’m thinking about how fortunate my husband and I have been so far this winter, escaping the horrible flu that has brought so many to their knees or driven them to their sickbeds.  If you’ve spent any time watching the news or hanging out on Facebook, you have no doubt heard from people who have been bitten by some nasty bug that has led to an oppressive sickness. In some unfortunate cases, the flu bug has led to worse illnesses or even death.

    I know many of my friends have been sick this winter. With that in mind, I thought I’d write a post for those who are presently stuck in bed.  Here are a few songs about sickness.  If you’re not sick right now, count your blessings and, for God’s sake, wash your hands!

    “Medical Love Song” by Monty Python

    Perhaps one of the most comprehensive songs about sickness out there is the hilarious “Medical Love Song” performed by the venerable comedy troupe Monty Python.  Be careful about listening to this if you have the flu, because it will make you laugh so hard you’ll erupt into a coughing fit.  On the other hand, if you have a weak stomach, you may end up vomiting because the lyrics are pretty disgusting.  If you’re me and violent coughing makes you throw up, you may do both.


    This particular video comes from a live show by Eric Idle.

    I doubt there are many songs out there that can top “Medical Love Song” in terms of inclusiveness.

    “Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu” by Johnny Rivers

    The first time I heard this song, I’d swear it was on a 45 and sung by someone like Jerry Reed.  I was at my cousin’s house and his parents are very musical and had a nice collection of old records.  But try as I might, I can’t find that same version I heard at their house.  In 1972, Johnny Rivers made “Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu” a hit.

    If you’re in bed, shaking, hacking, and sweating, perhaps you can especially relate to this classic.

    “Fever” by many singers

    You can’t garner much sympathy for being sick if you don’t have a fever.  The song “Fever” is a true classic, having been written by Eddie Cooley and Otis Blackwell, who used the pseudonym John Davenport.  It was originally recorded in 1956 by Little Willie John, but it’s been covered by many, many well-respected artists.  Peggy Lee’s version might be the most famous, but you can hear versions by Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, and Bette Midler, just to name a few.  You might say this song went viral!

    Here’s a rendition done by Rita Moreno and Animal, of The Muppet Show.

    “I Want A New Drug” by Huey Lewis and the News

    If you get sick enough, maybe you’ll consult your personal physician, who will prescribe a new drug for you. Hopefully, it’ll make you feel like yourself again, or at least as well as you’d feel with your main squeeze at your side.


    Being a child of the 80s, this song has a special place in my heart.

    “Hospital Beds” by Cold War Kids

    Of course, if your illness progresses too much, you could find yourself laid up in the hospital. In that case, you might relate to this song by Cold War Kids.

    On the other hand, hospitals are probably the last place you’d want to be when you’re sick!

    “The Jack” by AC/DC

    And then there are illnesses that don’t get spread via casual contact…

    AC/DC reminds us why it’s a good idea to be extra careful when it comes to choosing sexual playmates.

    “Heart Attack” by Olivia Newton-John

    A heart attack is the last thing you’d want to have happen when you’re in the throes of a nasty virus.  Better take care of your ticker, lest you end up like Olivia Newton-John. She makes heart attacks sound better than they really are.


    I will admit I was quite the fan of Olivia’s when I was coming of age, but she’s also done quite a few songs that fit my blog themes.

    “Seasons In The Sun” by Terry Jacks

    Sometimes being sick leads to the process of dying, which brings to mind this 1974 hit by Terry Jacks…

    Come on now, you know the words! I’ve heard that the flu this year has made some people wish they might find relief somehow, perhaps even through death.  And I’ve also heard that Terry Jacks’ hit also makes some people wish for death, though tastes definitely differ.

    “Angel” and “I Will Remember You” by Sarah McLachlan

    If you do happen to pass away, you can take comfort in the fact that there are many lovely songs written about death, like these two modern classics by Sarah McLachlan.

    If you’re sick right now, I do hope this little little tongue in cheek look at songs about sickness help you feel a little better. If you’re not sick, please wash your hands!  The flu can and does kill; so please do whatever you can to avoid catching and spreading it. Wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands! And when you sneeze, aim for your elbow!

     

    Stay well!

  • New Video! Dee Snider Rocks “Mack the Knife”

    New Video! Dee Snider Rocks “Mack the Knife”

    He's gonna rouge his knees and roll his stockings down.
    Finally. Someone – someone great even – has exacted a satisfying revenge on Pat Boone. Pat Boone’s crimes against rock n’ roll are myriad and well-documented. In the mid-50s, his Wonderbread and butter was in recording squeaky clean covers of contemporaneous R&B hits (“black” music) marketed heavily to a mainstream pop (“white”) audience. Not only did his recordings diffuse the power and energy inherent in those songs (imagine John Mayer covering Nirvana), but it succeeded to keeping the original artists behind the songs – The Flamingos, The Charms, The Eldorados – off the radio and out of the record bins.

    Unsatisfied with the shameless real-time castration of some of rock n’ roll’s earliest classics, Boone attempted a late-late-late career comeback in 1997 by donning a leather vest (ewww) and doing a heavy metal theme album called No More Mr. Nice Guy, choosing 12 of the most iconic hard rock songs of the previous three decades and turning them into slick big band punchlines. (I’ll concede: his Latin-jazz take on Van Halen’s “Panama” has a certain Manilowian charm. Is that Reparata singing back-up?.) The obviousness of the song choices make the gimmick transparent. “Stairway to Heaven”? You get a sense that he’s playing for the laughs and doesn’t really respect the songs or the artists who originally performed them. It’s one thing to play fun with Van Halen, but when he starts crooning “The Wind Cries Mary”, that joke isn’t funny anymore.

    A few years after No More Mr. Nice Guy, 50s teen star turned 70s adult contemporary maestro Paul Anka recorded an album called Rock Swings, proving that this sort of thing can be done well; among a few gimmicky selections (“Smells Like Teen Spirit”, Van Halen’s “Jump”) he delivered lovely, stylish, and wholly unironic interpretations of such unlikely numbers as Pet Shop Boys’ “It’s a Sin” and the Cure’s “The Lovecats.” Rock Swings is still very much a Paul Anka album – there’s not a guitar solo in sight – but he approaches the alternative and hard rock songbooks the same way he might approach any other American standard. You get the sense that he really understands, for instance, what a great melodist Robert Smith is – and what a romantic. Listening to Anka sing “The Lovecats”, I wish he’d do a whole album of Cure songs.

    Dee Snider “Mack the Knife” (2012)

    This month, Twisted Sister frontman (and recent Celebrity Apprentice contestant) Dee Snider turned the tables, releasing Dee Snider Does Broadway. As a fan of both Twisted Sister and Broadway showtunes, I’m happy to report that Snider takes the Paul Anka approach to this concept: he clearly loves the songs he’s singing; he sings them damn well. And along with guests Clay Aiken (his Celebrity Apprentice rival) and Cyndi Lauper (another Celebrity Apprentice alum), he gets buy-in from two of the greatest Broadway divas of the last three decades: Patti Lupone, who joins Snider for the album-closing medley of “Tonight” and “Somewhere” from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story, and Bebe Neuwirth who reprises her role as temptress-from-hell Lola, a role she played in the 1994 hit revival of the Adler & Ross musical Damn Yankees, on a duet of “Whatever Lola Wants.”

    His duet with Clay “Always the Bridesmaid” Aiken on Frank Loesser’s “Luck Be a Lady” (from Guys and Dolls) turns that sleak, jazzy 1950 gambler’s plea into a shark-jumping send-up of Sunset Strip decadence. But while he never loses his sense of humor, he plays much of the rest of the stuff – an appropriately snarling take on “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd”, for instance – like the Twister Sister songs Stephen Sondheim had no idea he was writing. Which is to say not necessarily straight-faced, but also not entirely without reverence.

  • New Video! Daniel Martin Moore and Joan Shelley “First of August”

    New Video! Daniel Martin Moore and Joan Shelley “First of August”

    ''Farthest Field'', aka ''The Duets Project''
    One of the most haunting and lovely songs of 2011 was Kentucky-born singer-songwriter Daniel Martin Moore’s cover of Appalachian folk music pioneer Jean Ritchie’s “In the Cool of the Day”, which served as the title track to Moore’s sophomore solo album. Listening to it gives me the shivers every time. I’m not as taken with Moore’s originals, but when he sings a traditional hymn, you get a strong sense of someone brushing a layer of dust off a box of hard luck memories from the attic.

    In the not quite 18 months since that album’s release, Moore has kept himself plenty busy with the launch of his own record label, Ol Kentuck, to, in his words “help release some of the beautiful projects that I saw happening all around me.” The first such project was indeed very beautiful – a collection of lullabies by a female vocal trio called Maiden Radio.

    Maiden Radio “All the Pretty Little Horses” (2012)

    Moore’s latest project is a collection of duets he put together with Maiden Radio’s Joan Shelley. It’s another quiet, intimate album full of delicate, pastoral melodies called Farthest Field and was just released earlier this week. Here’s a video for the album’s first song:

    Daniel Martin Moore & Joan Shelley “First of August” (2012)

    You can listen to the whole album below. Right now, I think my favorite track of the bunch is the bluesy simmer “Sweetly By” with its rolling melody – Lover, come sweet and slowly, Lover come sweetly by – and great lead vocal by Joan. Talk about making love in the green grass.