Good Grief, Starshine!

Let us consider as Exhibit A the following list of some of the silliest songs ever written:

1. Good Morning Starshine by Oliver
2. Gimme Dat Ding by The Pipkins
3. I Wanna Dance Wit Choo by Disco Tex and the Sex-O-Lettes
4. How Do You Do by Mouth & MacNeal
5. Chick-A-Boom by Daddy Dewdrop
6. Jam Up and Jelly Tight by Tommy Roe
7. Yummy Yummy Yummy (I've Got Love in My Tummy) by Ohio Express

If it did not violate numerous international copyright laws I would love to give you a link to these songs so those of you not of my particular generation could listen to them and see exactly how silly they are. These are songs that would make my children roll on the floor, howling with laughter.

Example:

Dad's Stereo: "Glibby-gloob-glooby, nibby nobby nooby, la-la-la lo-lo"
Children: (rolling on the floor) "Har! Har! Har! Hoooo! *Snort*, *Choke*, Har!"

Anyway, the thing you need to understand is that these songs have almost no artistic merit, make very little sense, and are extremely un-hip, if I can be so un-hip as to use that term. They would make many people's ears bleed spontaneously. They could kill Simon Cowell at 300 yards.

The other thing you need to understand is that I personally own all of these songs. Worse, I just paid 99 cents for one of them this very week. If I didn't already own them, and many others only marginally less abhorrent, I would be actively looking through iTunes and Rhapsody and Amazon.com, seeing if I could snap them up. Such is the pathetic nature of my taste in music.

Next, as Exhibit B, let us consider the following list of . . . Well, let's have you make your own. Go ahead: make a list of the most maligned musical acts of the 60's and 70's. No, really, go ahead and jot a few down. I'll wait.

*Hums the Pina Colada Song while waiting. . . .*

OK. Now I know your list contained at least the following three:

1. Barry Manilow
2. Neil Diamond
3. The Carpenters
4. Barry Manilow

(Yes, I know, but some of you really hate Barry Manilow.)

As you have already guessed, I own the complete collected works of all three of these artists -- well, the complete works up until 1985 or so when they quit recording the really good stuff. But the point is I really like them, despite what you and your sophisticated musical taste might think of me.

Finally, as Exhibit C, we have: The Entire Genre of Bubblegum Music. I like it. Quite a lot. This is how bad I am: I recently worked hard and long to procure the song "You Are The One" by the Sugar Bears. It was actually an MP3 taken from vinyl, and you can hear the pops of the needle hitting the dust and scratches.

The Sugar Bears are not real. They are animated characters. They are actually designed to sell cereal. But they cut an album in the early 70's. In the words of Frank Larosa:

Of course there is Sugar Bear himself, kingpin of the Post Super Sugar Crisp franchise back in the wild days when you could say "sugar" on national television. The marketing folks at Post cereals must have realized that Sugar would need a few companions to fill out his band. After consulting the top 40 charts of the day, they decided that what he needed was a tambourine-playing prostitute bear and a couple of drug-addled hippie bears to complete his musical ensemble.

According to Dr. Mark Hill, the vocals were actually performed by Kim Carnes (of Bette Davis Eyes fame) and Mike Settle, one of her partners from The New Christy Minstrels. They were backed by the same studio group and backup singers as The Partridge Family.

It is sick that I know that.

The point is, I actively sought out, and was delighted to find, a bad recording of a song ostensibly performed by a group that made The Archies look like The Rolling Stones (Archie would be Mick; Jughead would be Keith).

So there you have it: The ugly truth about my musical tastes. Perhaps in the future, I will blog more about some of the other music in my collection, not all of which is as lame as what you've seen here. In the mean time, if any of you have a song even worse than the ones I've talked about today, I'd like to hear about it. There's still some money left in one of my music store accounts.