Hulk RULES!

"Oh my God." That's what you said when this came up in your browser, right? Your reaction is appropriate, perhaps even understated. If my officemate didn't hate me for working on this blog in the office before, I'm fairly certain he does now.

It appears that the goal of this album was to take all of the forms of music popular in the late-80's and early-90's and ruin them. On this album, the Hulkster raps, he rocks, there's even a song that sounds vaguely like a cross between Heart and Culture Club. It's difficult to write about this album without just quoting a bunch of lyrics. The lyrics really do speak for themselves as I imagine that most readers of this blog are more than capable of imagining the type of hokey 80's-esque background music and third-rate vocals that go with the words.

The first song informs us with a rockin' beat that Hulkster's In the House. This has quite possibly the most inane lyrics I've ever heard. The writers of this song should be informed that "room" doesn't rhyme with "move". Really the song speaks for itself. Add some generic guitar riffs and you've got the idea.

I can feel it in my feet
We're moving to the beat
Hey ho hey ho, come on let's go
When the going gets tough, the tough get rough
Hey ho hey go, come on let's go
We're rockin down the house
The band is playing loud
We're blowing of the roof
We're gonna rock and roll

The second track, He's American Made, seems appropriate to the mood of the country today. That is to say, mindless jingoism. While there are things that make me proud of my country, Hulk Hogan is not among them. Despite the fact that "he's got the stars and stripes running though his veins" and "he wears the heart of his country on his sleeve". The best line, of course is, "He'll fight for your freedom if you really believe". If only Rowdy Roddy Piper were the greatest threat to our freedom, we'd be all set. Unfortunatly, I don't see the Hulkster taking on Al Qaeda anytime soon, although he did defeat the Iron Sheik, so who knows?

Yes....he raps, complete with flygirl background vocals and the valley girl intro (a la Baby Got Back). Hulkster's Back is really the only example we need as to why pro wrestlers shouldn't be given a microphone. The problem, of course, is that Hulk Hogan is white....very white. Thus he has the rhythm and rhyming capability of his ancestors...that is to say, none. "Oooh. Look at that vein in my tricep" he raps as the background vocals sing "Check out the pythons baby, the Hulksters back."

I have no idea why Wrestling Boot Traveling Band exists. A song about the travels of a band that existed for one (very bad) album and, to my knowledge, never toured, seems pointless.

While the pro-family, anti-drug message of I Wanna be a Hulkamaniac is inspiring, I'm not sure being a Hulkamaniac is what we should be encouraging our children to aspire to. Remember, always swim with a buddy, work real hard and always study.

By far the most disturbing, perhaps to the point of being offensive, song is Hulkster in Heaven. This piece is about a dead child. Yes, a dead child. The story goes that a young Hulk fan was invited to sit in the front row at a match (match? ok. performance) in the U.K. During the show the seat was empty, apparently the young fan had passed on. Here we hear the Hulk mourning that young fan. The line that really sums up this song for me is "When the Hulkster gets to heaven, we'll tag up again. The world just lost another Hulkamaniac". Perhaps here in my academic, culturally isolated (one might say, bourgeois) life, I'm too far detached from the common man to understand how or why anyone would find this song appropriate. But it does fill the "sappy ballad" slot on our list of late-80's musical forms to ruin.

I would like to take this opportunity to respond to part of an Amazon.com user review I read of this album. The user writes "Looking at the cd booklet and listening to the songs, you can tell Hulk and Jimmy had a lot of fun recording this cd and put their hearts into it, for better or worse. That does count for something. " I must disagree. As I told some undergrads in an Introduction to Programming class I was a TA for a few years ago, it doesn't matter how long it took you to come up with your answer, or how hard you worked, it's still wrong, and you still fail.

I rank this album as "worse than Fabio", since at least Fabio didn't try to sing.

I haven't decided what I'll write about next week. Leave comments with suggestions.

Vladimir Palaniuk

"Best knows as a legendary tought guy actor, Jack Palance recorded this 1969 album for Warner Bros. that recalls the warped country-rock vibe of Lee Hazelwood's 60's solo LPs. Fans of Johnny Cash will dig Palance's deep growl, as well as the actor's self-penned classis "Meanest Guy That Ever Lived." First time on CD with new detailed liner notes!" - Promotional Sticker on the cover of this CD

I was disappointed by this album. The main disappointing feature, vis a vis this blog, is that it doesn't suck to a sufficient degree. However, the three songs that Palance actually wrote, DO suck, and suck hard. This is the kind of sucking that makes you have to wear a turtleneck the next day. The take-home message here is that, surprisingly, Jack Palance isn't so bad as a country singer, but he's not much of a songwriter. It does need to be said that, despite what the sticker on the package says, Jack Palance should never be compared to Johnny Cash. No one should ever be compared to Johnny Cash... ever.

In any case, this blog entry will focus mostly on the songs written by Palance, since the other songs are, for the most part, decent. Even where the other songs have their flaws, making fun of them would be to make fun of country music as a genre. While mocking country-western music is fun, that's not why we're here.

The first song written by Palance, The Meanest Guy That Ever Lived, is possibly the most cliched country song I've ever heard that wasn't intended as a parody. My first dispute is that the song does not, in fact, describe the meanest guy that ever lived. This is clear from the fact that the song isn't about Hitler, Stalin, or any of the other clearly-meaner-than-Jack-Palance people from human history. Further evidence that the subject of the song isn't that mean is that he refers to someone as a "son of a witch". How mean can a guy be if he can't even say "bitch"?

I take that back, now that I've heard the second song on the album that he wrote, I've decided that this song, Goodbye Lucy is, in fact, more cliche than The Meanest Guy That Ever Lived. In addition to the country, old west drivel found in Meanest, Goodbye Lucy includes the singer of the song losing the love of several beautiful women. All we need is a dead dog and a pickup truck. I'll skip commenting on the third and final Palance composition Love Can Only Mean You. I'm sure you can get the idea from the title.
A common theme among the three Palance-written songs was a theme we also found on the Shatner masterpiece, Transformed Man. That common theme is an emotional disparity between the lead vocals, Palance, and the background chorus. Let this be a lesson to all musicians. If the lead vocals are sad and depressed, the chorus shouldn't sound happy and chipper. It's just....weird.

Next week, we'll get back to music that is truly bad. Through and through, nothing good about it. You'll have to tune in next week to find out what it is. I will tell you now, that I got it on eBay for the bargain-basement price of $4.25.

Disco showtunes! What more could a gayboy want?

The creatively titled "The Ethel Merman Disco Album", is a masterwork of high camp. I have to imagine that people laughed at this concept even when it was released back in the heyday of disco. I mean....look at the cover. Is someone taking off their hat in salute to her, or panhandling her? And why is she dressed like Endora?

Don't get me wrong, Ethel Merman is one of the great Broadway actresses of the Twentieth Century. However, the possesion of a Tony Award (Best Actress, Musical, 1951) does not imply that one can do disco.

In Miss Merman's defense, from listening to this album, it's not clear if she was even involved in the recording of it. One could easily imagine that some enterprising producer simply took some recordings of Ethel singing her showtune standards and put a disco accompaniment track behind it. There's No Business Like Show Business and I've Got Rhythm are not now, nor have they ever been, disco songs. Though it is pretty clear that she would have had to pose for that album cover, so she doesn't get off completely scott-free.

As a collection of dance music, I find this album a refreshing departure from current dance tracks. It's nice to hear something with a beat a little more complicated than THUMP THUMP THUMP and lyrics that include more than a dozen different words. Ethel Merman is cleary a far classier, not to mention more talented artist than today's whore-like club music artists. You used to be all cute and innocent, Kylie Minogue, now look at yourself. This is a creative, if ill-conceived, attempt at contemporary art (contemporary relative to when it was recorded, of course).

Kudos to Ethel Merman for trying something new so late in life. Depending on who you ask, she was 71 or 72 the year this was released. How many of us can hope to be able to speak clearly at that age, let alone belt out I Get a Kick Out of You to a disco beat? Her age is a little unnerving to think about while listening to her sing Something For the Boys. You always do something for the boys, eh Ethel? At age 71, lets hope it's just baking cookies. GAH.... I'm having Cocoon flashbacks!

When I say she belts out these songs, I mean it. Even in the twilight of her life, her voice retained it's steam-roller power. Being used to the relatively weak voices of modern dance-music acts, it's shocking to hear a disco beat and then get smashed in the face with Ethel Merman's powerhouse voice.

This might have been a better album if she were singing disco anthems intead of disco-fied showtunes, but I doubt it would have been as much fun or as campy.

As with the Fabio album a few tracks have been ripped and posted on the web. So you can enjoy what I think are the two best tracks on the album for yourself. Thanks to my chemist friend Matt for pointing me towards this album and providing a copy of it.

Everyone should take note that blogspot provides an atom feed for every blog, including this one.

Buon giorno, I am Fabio

Part how-to guide, part love song compilation, with After Dark, Fabio provides everything the listener might need to seduce a beautiful woman. But what do I know about seducing women? If any woman succumbs to this sort of schmaltz, than neither her, nor Fabio should respect themselves in the morning.

The tracks mostly alternate between Fabio describing his feelings on various romantic topics and late-80's, early-90's slow dance songs. Topics of discussion include, the perfect date, films, tropical islands, humor and slow dancing. If Fabio's strategies for seduction actually work than I am sorely disappointed in the dating standards of straight women. It reminds me of one of those family sitcoms. Every series like that has an episode where the teenage son is head over heals for some girl. The son then proceeds to whip out every romantic cliche in the book. He carefully plans the date, the romantic dinner by candlelight, the make-out music, perhaps he even pencils a mustache onto his upper lip. In the end, the boy ends up doing nothing more than thoroughly embarassing himself. If Fabio wasn't already such a ridiculous character, this album might embarrass him.

Of course, that analysis assumes that men are the target audience of this album. On further reflection, I think the target audience may actually be teenage girls. I don't mean it's advice for teenage girls, It's fantasy material for teenage girls. The giant pecs and flowing golden locks riding in on a white stallion fantasy. In fact, the very same fantasy supplied by the romance novels that made Fabio famous. I think we may be on to something here.

Her caress is my command

By far the best part of this album comes on track 7, entitled Fabio: On Surprises. "I like nothing better than to surprises my lady with a plane ticket, a toothbrush and her bikini.", he begins. His favorite destination, he says, is the Maldive Islands. Of course later in the track he says "We need no clothes, no money, just each other." It's not entirely clear if wandering around a predominantly Muslim country in the nude with a toothbrush is advisable, particularly a country that just last year experienced violent riots in the capital city demanding political reform from their strongman president-for-life. I know that when I get caught in a riot, I'm thankful that I have pants on.

Standing out head and shoulders below the rest of the album, is, surprisingly, track 16, entitles I Like You, You Like Me by Barry White. Now understand, I like Barry White. I own his best-of CD and I'm telling you, there's a very good reason that this track didn't make the cut. As the title suggests, the whole song (which Barry mostly speaks, rather than sings) sounds like a love letter from one 12 year old to another. This further adds credence to my hypothesis that this album is intended to fuel teenage, female sex fantasies.

This is a hell of an album. I wouldn't reccomend using it to seduce anyone but, if you and your significant other and looking for a good laugh, I highly reccomend it. My boy & I were nearly in pain from uncontrolable convulsive laughter when we listened to it. Lucky for us, someone has already conveniently violated the copyright on this album. Check it out for yourself. For the record, I paid money and own a legitimate copy the CD. I wouldn't dream of denying Fabio his due.

Ciao

Quintessential Camp, Shatner Style

I thought I would start my foray into high camp with what could perhaps be considered the model for the genre. The Transformed Man by none other than T.J. Hooker himself, William Shatner.

The best camp music, or more generally, the best camp anything, is not created as a joke. The very best camp is an attempt at a serious artistic endeavour that goes horribly wrong. Additional camp value comes from the serious attempt at art that unintendedly ends up being incredibly attached to the time during which it was created.

This first album fits all of these criterion. Listening to even a few minutes of The Transformed Man makes it abundantly clear that it was recorded in the late 60's. Even someone unfamiliar with American culture could listen to this album, then watch a couple of episodes of the original Star Trek and know that they're from the same era. A few of the people I've forced to listen to this album have pointed out that there are a few points in the music where you expect it to break into the Star Trek theme music.

The Transformed Man is organized rather oddly. Each track begins with Shatner reading an excerpt from classic literature, emoting violently all over the room, of course. The track then ends with him "singing" a song. I remember seeing Shatner talk about this album on some TV show (some E! drivel I imagine), he claimed that the literary excerpts and the songs that followed where somehow related. I have to believe that some of these correlations can only be understood in the context of a circa 1968 drug induced haze. I can see the relationship between King Henry the Fifth calling his troops to battle and Elegy for the Brave but I'm having trouble getting from Cyrano to Mr. Tambourine Man.

Perhaps the most amusing aspect of Shatner's reditions of Mr. Tambourine Man and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds comes from comparing the emotions expressed by Shatner in his reading of the lyrics to the apparent emotions you get from the background singers. That is, in Tambourine Man Shatner sounds like he's about to kill himself, while the background vocalists sound like they're skipping through a field of daisies. In Lucy both Shatner and the singers sound like they're high, but on very different drugs.

The final track, also the title track, has only the reading, without the attempt at music. Though given how Shatner performs the other songs on the album, one could also say that the track has the song, but no reading. It's hard to tell the difference. This final track tells the story of a man rejecting his former life of chasing wealth and power, and beginning a life in persuit of enlightenment and oneness with nature. By the end of the track... well. It's best summed up with the final line. "... and a gush of light flooded my being. I became as a pure crystal submerged in a translucent sea. I HAD TOUCHED THE FACE OF GOD"

For those not lucky enough to own this album, you can get a taste of Shatner style from his rendition of Rocketman, performed at a Sci-Fi awards show in 1978.

Now I eagerly await the arrival of after Dark by Fabio, which I ordered last week.