No Air Guitar Allowed

80s Video Awards: Toto-Africa

2009-01-24T11:07:00.000-08:00

"Most Obscure and Convoluted Lyrical Reference":

This dubious honor goes to Toto's "Africa" for the following tongue-twister:

"I know that I must do what's right.
As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus from the Serengeti."

Man, that's a mouthful! Toto really pulled out all the stops on this one. Kilimanjaro, Olympus, Serengetti: Have you ever heard so much geographical name-dropping in one line? All this in a song named after a continent.

Check out the video to listen how David Paich strains to make the syllables of this song fit into the time signature. Notice how the "Ser" and "ti" in Serengeti are awkwardly emphasized:

Other observations/questions:
* In profile, vocalist David Paich looks more than a little like John Ritter.

*Why does the late drummer Jeff Porcaro (God rest his soul) look like he's cross-dressing in this video? Is it the women's glasses, the blouse or the necklace that is so prim it may as well have been June Cleaver's classic string of pearls? Is it speaking ill of the dead to say that Porcaro looks like a young Janet Reno? Is it speaking ill of Janet Reno?

*Is it just me who is rendered hopelessly dizzy by that incessantly spinning globe?

*Little known fact: The woman at the desk who keeps looking suggestively through her bifocals is actually the band's accountant. That's not busywork she's doing. It's their taxes.

*Notice what a workout this song is for keyboardist Steve Porcaro. If you watch closely, he's wearing sweatbands on his wrists.

*Notice how smug Paich looks when, despite the slight inconvenience of an intruding spear and a bit of fire, he finds the perfect book for his report on Africa.

*Why, oh why, did that lion and zebra on the wall have to die for this video? Was it worth it? Why did those glasses have to be broken?

*Little known fact: Those oversize books the boys of Toto are using as a stage? They belong to Steve Lukather, who was a prop comedian on the side.

Clearly, a special award for this video, which remains legend on YouTube, is long overdue. Long live Toto! It's going to take a lot to take me away from that band.

If you like rock humor, check out the book "No Air Guitar Allowed," a humorous guide to rock concerts now available on Amazon: See the book

-Posted by Sarah Torribio, "No Air Guitar Allowed" contributor

Video Award of the Week: Gary Numan-Cars

2009-01-20T13:08:00.000-08:00

Most charismatic frontman to be rendered a soulless automaton by the wanton proliferation of technology:

This prestigious award goes to Gary Numan, for his hyper-modern 1979 hit "Cars"

Watch the video!

Play that one song!: A "No Air Guitar Allowed" comic

2009-01-12T15:38:00.000-08:00

-Drawing by Andrew Wahrmund, "No Air Guitar" illustrator

Time's slipping into the future: A "No Air Guitar" comic (click on pic for a better view)

2009-01-08T11:27:00.000-08:00

—drawing by Andrew Wahrmund, "No Air Guitar" illustrator

Divorce hurts everybody-a "No Air Guitar Allowed" comic (click on pic for a better view)

2009-01-06T12:14:00.000-08:00

— image by Andrew Wahrmund, "No Air Guitar" illustrator

Why air guitar should be banned: reason number 502

2009-01-04T16:23:00.000-08:00

—image by Andrew Wahrmund, "No Air Guitar" illustrator

Every British musician has a 'loffing' place

2008-12-30T18:28:00.000-08:00

We all love those melancholy English bands, from The Smiths to The Cure. Those cockney accents straddling octave upon octave of minor notes. Those shouting, pouting admissions of loneliness and angst. For many of us, these terminal sad-sacks provided the soundtrack to our youthful moping and our first fumbling attempts at backseat romance.

In fact, there is only one area in which English sadmüzik is terminally lacking: a sense of humor. Lord knows, Cure frontman Robert Smith tries. The word laughing—which our favorite English singers pronounce as loffing—shows up in many a Cure song. It’s never quite funny, however. Try as Smith does to make us chortle, his attempts fall flat.

In the song “Let’s Go to Bed,” he shares a humorous anecdote about “laughing at the Christmas lights/You remember from December.” Hahaha! Wait. What? Okay, so I’ve never laughed at the memory of Christmas lights. Maybe it’s one of those “you had to be there” scenarios. Maybe it’s even one of those “you had to be on heroin” scenarios.

Let’s see if Robert Smith does better in another song. In the 1979 hit “Boys Don’t Cry,” he keens about lost love accompanied by an uncannily catchy guitar hook:

“I tried to laugh about it,
Cover it all up with lies.
I tried to laugh about it,
Hiding the tears in my eyes. . .”

Again, truly “loffing” is a tall order for everyone’s favorite male lipstick aficionado. Someone should have told Robert that he’d have better luck if he tried laughing at a joke instead of heartbreak.

Despite the lack of humor in his songs, there may be hope for Robert Smith’s funny-bone. Try Googling some notable quotes by Robert Smith and you find some pretty sharp zingers. Here are just a few of his on-record wisecracks:

“You can't drink on an eight hour flight, pass out, and then go onstage... well you can, but then you're Spandau Ballet.”

“I could write songs as bad as Wham's if I really felt the urge to, but what's the point?”

“I'd rather spend my time looking at the sky than listening to Whitney Houston.”

"The press try to categorize me a 'gloom-and-doom' singer. But, take a look at Morrissey! That man's a professional moaner!"

I’ve finally got a bead on Robert Smith’s sense of humor. He’s a hater. A trash-talker. In Smith’s head, amidst all the drug-inspired hallucinogenic imagery, there lurks an inexhaustible well of an English musician’s equivalent of the yo mamma joke. Yo mama wears Doc Martins. Yo mama is so depressed she listens to the Disintegration album on repeat. Yo mama’s lipstick is so messy, it looks like it was applied by Robert Smith. By the way, have you noticed that Robert’s whore-red lipstick looks as if he applied it while dirt biking?

Not only is Robert Smith’s humor insult-centric. He can only find his loffing place when he’s speaking. As he said in a 1997 “Rolling Stone” interview: "I've always spent more time with a smile on my face than not, but the thing is, I don't write about it."

Hmmmm. Let’s try another introspective English band on for size: The Smiths. Smiths frontman Steven Patrick Morrissey is known for his acerbic wit. Perhaps more belly laughs may be found in the Smiths’ sizable catalog.

In “Suffer Little Children,” a song about a horrendous spate of child murders, Morrissey takes on the voice of a juvenile ghost, saying, “We will haunt you when you laugh.” Here, laughing is not only decidedly unfunny, it brings on poltergeist activity.

Another song that addresses the subject of laughing is the tellingly titled, “That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore.” In this song, Morrissey speaks to the devastating effects of humor at someone else’s expense:

“When you laugh about people who feel so
Very lonely
Their only desire is to die
Well, I'm afraid
It doesn't make me smile

I wish I could laugh
But that joke isn't funny anymore
It's too close to home
And it's too near the bone. . .”

Apparently, when Morrissey’s musical muse is unleashed, he, too, has a crippling deficiency in the laughter department. Reading his interviews, however, one finds him unleashing his acid wit in the vein of 19th century satirist Oscar Wilde:

“All I said was 'bring me the head of Elton John', which would be one instance when meat would not be murder, if it was on a plate.”

“There are indeed worse groups than Modern Romance. But can anybody seriously think of one?”

“I think Band Aid was diabolical. I think Bob Geldof is a nauseating character. Many people find that very unsettling, but I'll say it as loud as anyone wants me to. In the first instance the record itself was absolutely tuneless. One can have great concern for the people of Ethiopia, but it's another thing to inflict daily torture on the people of England.“

“Long hair is an unpardonable offense which should be punishable by death.”

On rap music: "I really do think it's a great musical stench. I find it very offensive, artless and styleless. To me it's very reminiscent of thuggery, pop thuggery. I don't want to hear it at all."

Like Robert Smith, Morrissey is a hater of the first order. Let’s try a few more examples and see if this pattern holds with other disaffected Brits (unfunny songs, cruelly funny wit in conversation).

Going back in time a bit to the 1977 album Never Mind the Bullocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, vocalist Johnny Rotten actually laughs at the start of the song “Anarchy in the U.K. This auspicious start, however, is followed by lyrics that are an ode to hope-crushing dissatisfaction.

It’s hard to join Rotten’s laughter as he warns us, “Your future dream is a shopping scheme!”

But catch Johnny Rotten sitting down with a journalist over tea and he gets cattier than the late Richard Blackwell crafting his annual worst-dressed celebrity list:

“Every time I see Bono in those big fly glasses and tight leather pants I just can't hack it. I can't see that as solving the world's problems. He's crushing his testicles in tight trousers for world peace.”

Apparently, the somber song/barbed-tongue talk carries over into the world of punk music.

Moving forward again, Ian McCulloch, frontman of the atmospheric post-punk group Echo and the Bunnymen, demonstrated what is perhaps the most ambivalent attitude towards laughter. When he is singing, laughter is bittersweet at best and just plain bitter at most.

In “Lips Like Sugar,” the title temptress has “flown to other shores/to laugh at how you break.” In “My White Devil,” Ian describes our monkey brains as being “content to laugh/when laughing wanes.” Each of these situations—laughing at someone’s misfortune and laughing when no one else is laughing—is more odd than funny. In fact, one of the symptoms of mental illness is inappropriate laughter.

Yet get a reporter’s notebook or a tape recorder anywhere near McCulloch and he blooms into a world-class mocker.

On touring with the blokes of Gene Loves Jezebel:

“Yeah, I hated the shites. I wanted them thrown off the tour. The dumb bastards. And they were ugly as well. If you’re gonna throw the makeup on, you need to have the plastic surgery first.”

On the drummers of Liverpool and why Echo and the Bunnymen chose to employ a drum machine:

“We couldn’t find a anybody in Liverpool because drummers here are always too old and thick and drunks in the bargain."

On “the honor” of meeting Coldplay’s Chris Martin:

“I didn't meet Chris Martin . . . He met me.”

Yes, British musicians demonstrate a fascinating dichotomy. Despite their ability to turn a clever phrase and their propensity for using the word “loffing,” their music is largely somber and glowering. In conversation, however, they are singularly adept at roasting their fellow musicians and, in general, all the fools they are forced to suffer.

I can only conclude that musicians who sing knee-slappers such as Herman’s Hermits droll cover of the dance hall song “Henry the Eighth, I Am” are dull as a diet consisting exclusively of beans on toast. And that if funnyman Benny Hill—who made wacky physical comedy and the dirty joke his own on “The Benny Hill” show—could write some truly glum songs if he took a serious crack at it.

Whatever the case, I suggest that all of us who are professional moaners—whose CD collection could be construed as an aural suicide note—take a leaf from our heroes’ books. When we’re feeling downhearted after listening to too much down-in-the-mouth music, we should have a breezy chat with one of our mates. While doing so, we should rip everyone we know who’s not in the room a metaphorical new one. Ridicule them. Reprimand them. Ream them. Roast them. And make it funny. It’s a sure way to cheer up.

We’ve all heard of the tears of the clown when there’s no one around. How about the arch smile of the depressive when there’s no one around? Ready to elevate your mood like nobody’s business? It’s dead easy. Ready, set, mock!

—post by "No Air Guitar Allowed" contributor Sarah Torribio

'Pour Some Sugar on Me': a critical analysis

2008-12-25T05:14:00.000-08:00

I would like to take a while to ponder the lyrics of one of the most lively and memorable songs in the pantheon of hair-band sexploitation romps: Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me”. Either the narrator of the song, let’s call him Joe Elliot (frontman of the three-decade metal sensations), has one hell of a sugar fetish or sugar is an extended metaphor for wild, guiltless, unabashed sexual revelry.

In pursuit of this metaphor, Elliot touches on that luscious cane sugar molecule, good old C12H22O11 as we chemically-minded like to call it.

Yes, in the 1987 tune, the Sheffeild-born vocalist is willing to be the embodiment of kinky rockstar slut: “Pour some sugar on me/Ooh, in the name of love/Pour some sugar on me/C’mon fire me up.” (Incidentally, this is the exact step for creating the savory crust atop creme brule—“sprinkle some additional sugar on top, and either broil or use a kitchen torch to caramelize the sugar.”) But Elliot is also not afraid to embody the courteous Englishman when he presents this thoughtful poser towards the end of the song: “Do you take sugar, one lump or two?” This is obviously a gentleman who enjoys his teatime, and who cares about his partner’s preferences. Very nice.

When writing “Pour Some Sugar on Me”, it took a bit for the boys of DL to find their way during the song’s first stanza. Until the last two lines, it’s a bit of a metaphorical free-for-all:

"Love is like a bomb, baby, c'mon get it on  Livin' like a lover with a radar phone  Lookin' like a tramp like a video vamp  Demolition woman, can I be your man?  Razzle 'n' dazzle 'n' flash a little light  Television lover, baby, go all night Sometime, anytime, sugar me sweet  Little miss innocent, sugar me, yeah, yeah"

But once they realize sugar is where it’s really at, the song coalesces, or caramelizes, into one amazing tune. Who hasn’t got excited when “Pour” suddenly blasts from their car radio and, singing along, found themselves, perhaps for the first time, pronouncing the word me as “may”, as in “Pour some sugar on may”. This is either a verbal affectation on Elliot’s part or he has given his “parts” the very female nickname of “May.” I am inclined toward the former.

But I do have a few questions about this anthem’s lyrics—if I may dare to question any choice made by arguably the best band with a one-armed drummer of all time. Most of the questions come when they stray a bit too far from that fantastic sugar metaphor.
Certainly there is sucrose in any fruit, including peaches, and cream would likely be sweetened. But Elliot is most enticing when he’s freebasing the pure grain, straight from the clear glass dispenser, or a C&H bag or even in polite lumps.

The peaches and cream line, though almost saved by the somewhat arbitrary injection of the term saccharine, is clearly a new metaphor: “You got peaches/I got the cream/Sweet to taste, saccharine.” It is certainly an interesting grocery checklist for an evening of raucous coitus that is not soon to be forgotten, least of all for the flaming STD liable to show up after knocking boots with a groupie-infested musician.

I would argue that the peaches and cream line detracts from our powerful sugar metaphor and, if properly exploited, could have marked an entirely new hit for the come-back kids’ “Hysteria” album. In another song, listeners could have found their world rocked by an image of spreading peaches and cream over the model in their minds or in a music video. And if peaches and cream are actually code for body parts and bodily fluids, how much more erotic is that! Yes, this line is ripe for being excised from “Pour Some Sugar On Me” and mined for all its worth in another Def Leppard offering.

But then, perhaps, like a slight flaw on a person of great beauty, or the missing head and limbs of the Venus de Milo, the imperfection helps to highlight the work of art’s virtuosity. You cannot have light without dark, day without night.

There is one other line I find a bit off-kilter. I can accept a change of metaphorical pace in the song’s bridge, and it’s damned fun to sing along with what I call The Stoplight Countdown: “Yellow light, red-a light/green light, go!”. But the next line just doesn’t seem primed to get a metal fan’s blood boiling: “Crazy little woman in a one-man show.” Is physical slightness a widely held sign of sexiness in the rock world? I mean, if you look at all the models these guys date, physical pulchritude seems to be key.

But, in case you have forgotten the gentlemanly attitude of Elliot and crew as expressed by the sugar-lump-preference question, perhaps the line is a sign of an equal opportunity kind of attitude, offering hope to petite gals, A-cups and even truly little people (see “Under the Rainbow” or an episode of “Fantasy Island” if you don’t get my drift). I mean, these boys, who opted to keep drummer Rick Allen after he lost his left arm in a 1984 traffic accident, are anything if not sensitive to all of our differences. I guess it’s pretty heartening that there is no height requirement to find a potential place in the hearts and beds of a talented and curling-iron-hot crew like Def Leppard.

Despite raising a few questions—as well as a few eyebrows with its lyrical heat—“Pour Some Sugar On Me” is patently a beautiful example of songcraft, at least to may. . .I mean me. Would not Keats have been pleased if he had written a poem with these words? I guess we’ll never know, because Keats is dead.

But Def Leppard is still around. And when Elliot rallies listeners in the song’s prelude by saying “Step inside/Walk this way/You and me, babe/Hey, Hey”, fans like me are willing to follow him.”

–post by Sarah Torribio, contributor to "No Air Guitar," available on Amazon.com. Buy the book now by clicking here