Scylla Responds to Songs and Artists, Part Deux

Cafe Society
1

Part 1 is here:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=558015&highlight=Scylla+responds+songs

Dear Bob Seger:

I just finished listening to your pity party, “Turn the Page.” I know that there is a proud tradittion among rock stars to write a road lament about how tough it is tour and get paid millions of dollars to be adored, but this piece of crap song of yours offends me in ways that not even Rush with “Limelight” or Journey with “Faithfully” have been able to achieve. At least Journey is sad because they left their wives at home, and if you don’t listen to the lyrics “Limelight” is a pretty righteous tune (you can’t pretend a stranger is a long awaited friend? Really Rush? Why not? Are you trying to tell us that the reason you are rude to your fans is because you are so real? Blow it out your ass.)

Anyway, Bob I note that in the first few lines of the song you feel compelled to point out that you are so bored riding on your tour bus, that you actually take a moment to consider the random chicks you have one night stands with.

“On a long and lonesome highway
East of Omaha
You can listen to the engine
Moanin’ out his one note song
You can think about the woman
Or the girl you knew the night before
But your thoughts will soon be wandering
The way they always do
When you’re ridin’ sixteen hours
And there’s nothin’ much to do
And you don’t feel much like ridin’,
You just wish the trip was through”

That is just so fucking sad. We should really feel sorry for you, you know, as opposed to the guy that drives the bus. It must be tough, you know sitting there with your posse of syncophants.

But here’s the part that really bothers me the most:

" Well you walk into a restaurant,
Strung out from the road
And you feel the eyes upon you
As you’re shakin’ off the cold
You pretend it doesn’t bother you
But you just want to explode
Most times you can’t hear 'em talk,
Other times you can
All the same old cliches,
“Is that a woman or a man?”
And you always seem outnumbered,
You don’t dare make a stand"

what do you think making a stand means? That’s what you do when you are outnumbered. If you outnumber them they are the ones making a stand. You only fight people when you outnumber them? How courageous!

Rosa parks has more balls than you.

Thanks for letting us know that you only have the courage of your convictions when it is safe to do so.

2

I always thought of him as on a motorcycle rather than in a comfy bus.

3

I hate the song, but to be fair to Bob, he released it in 1972, well before he became rich and famous and even before he formed the Silver Bullet Band.

4

“A motorcycle? No thanks, man, it took me an hour of brushing to get my hair this smooth; no way I’m gonna put a helmet on it now.”

5

Come to think of it, Even “Hollywood Nights” and “Old Time Rock n Roll” are kinda cranky.

6

Some classic rock songs are fairly conservative. Even discounting obvious duff like “The Dawn of Correction”, there’s “Kicks” by Paul Revere and the Raiders (Drugs are bad!) and “Arizona” by Mark Lindsay (Chicks these days, amirite?).

Even the guy who recorded the best-known version of “Eve of Destruction”, Barry McGuire, went on to be Born-Again. OTOH, the guy who wrote “Eve of Destruction”, P. F. Sloan, went on to write “Secret Agent Man”… I don’t know where I was going with that.

7

And then you have “Spirit in the Sky”, one of the most overtly pro-Christian songs to reach mainstream radio, written by Norman Greenbaum who is Jewish.

8

Just for the record, Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee of Rush were known for being really friendly to their fans. They would take photos with them, talk to them and sign autographs before and after the shows.

It was Neil Peart, the writer of the lyrics, that just wanted to be left the fuck alone. He explained it as him feeling awkward/embarrassed around a stranger’s intense adoration and them wanting to be his new BFF.

9

How about when the odds are even? You left that out of your snark party.

Were you even alive in 1972? Did you have long hair then? Do you have any idea what it meant or felt like? I was, I did and I do.

10

That’s not making a stand, either. That’s a fair fight.

Yes. Yes. And Yes. And Bob Seger is still a pussy for bitching about tough it is being a rockstar and having sex with groupies, and foe being pissed off that he doesn’t always outnumber people he wants to fight.

He’s even a bigger jerk for proposing a violent solution to a verbal confrontation.

I spent some time in the south and I witnessed a black person in a diner suffering racial slurs, and he was the only black person there, but he confronted the group without being violent, stood up for himself, and shut them up.

I’ve seen a women in NY confront a group of men that were accosting her, and shut them up.

I mentioned Rosa Parks.

Part of “making a stand” is taking a risk to do what’s. right. Bob Seger doesn’t when he’s scared, but presumably he’s a real terror when surrounded by his posse. Wow!

Justin Bieber could give Bob Seger lessons on being tough. As big a pussy as Bieber is at least his songs aren’t about how tough it is to be the Biebs, so he could also give Seger lessons on how not to be self-absorbed.

11

I just learned something. Thanks!

12

Well, obviously into The Plugz’ Hombre Secretro, and awesomeness.

13

:snicker:

14

I never paid much attention to the lyrics to this song. But this couplet stands out as a bit creepy. I know that adult females were often referred to as ‘girls’ a lot back then, but Bob actually goes out of his way to distinguish ‘woman’ from ‘girl’, implying that he’s had adult AND underage sex partners.

15

So you’ve seen other people make a stand. But not yourself. I don’t think that gives you props.

16

I do get tired of Whiny Bob’s “good ol’ days” shit, but Turn the Page is the only song of his I still tolerate.

17

It doesn’t even have to be boring. People on other tour buses back then listened to country and western, R and B, even disco in eight tracks and cassettes in stereo. If he wasn’t feeling like music, he could enjoy the rural scenes or read a magazine. He could talk to truckers on the CB. Heck, he might even have had Richard Pryor on the video.

18

I reserve annoyance since that makes him all of 27 years old at the time. Oh to be so road weary and jaded…Taylor Swift singing “It was a Very Good Year” would evoke more sympathy.

19

… sigh…

I like “Faithfully”. Really love the guitar solo at the end.

20

I am trying to be modest, because this really isn’t about me. The fact of the matter is that I make stands with the best of them. One of them holds my lamp. I use another for knickknacks. I once repelled a mob by making a folding a TV tray, using only my pocketknife and some scrap wood.
No, but seriously. Do you remember that scene in easy rider where all the hot girls are admiring the protagonists, and the local yokels are acting all threatening? That was based on me.

Lee Child based the Jack Reacher character on me. If you remember the scene in the movie where he takes on the 5 guys outside the bar, that was also based on me.

I am so badass that when I take on 5 people by myself it’s actually the 5 people who are making a stand.

The Sam Eliot character in Roadhouse is also based on me (in truth Swayze and Eliot play separate characters which in composite are based on me. The writers decided to split the part into two people because I was so awesome that it was thought a movie about me would be too unbelievable, and they wanted to keep the realism as high as possible while making Roadhouse.)

It’s a little known fact that Homer did the same thing when portraying me by splitting me into two characters, Achilles and Patroclus to further aide credibility.
Is that good enough to get me props?