Wesley isn’t retarded. He’s insane. Clinically. For years he sold pictures he’d drawn in Chicago. Not sure if he was homeless or not. Then he started hearing voices in his head and was diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. Not sure if he started recording before or after the diagnosis. But a lot of the stuff is just him and a cheap Casio keyboard. He’s also incredibly prolific and has put out 3-4 albums a year on lots of occasions.
You have to love a guy (okay, you don’t HAVE to) with song titles like, I Whupped Batman’s Ass, I’m Sorry I Got Fat and one that’s named for his psychiatrist.
Ol’ Dirty Bastard mentions him in the opening of his Return to the 36 Chambers as the author of a lovely song that he sings about fellatio. That was teh first I had heard of him.
Also, check out this thread for more Wesley Willis stuff. I love that man.
I checked out some of the Frogs things. They weren’t as out there as I thought. Some of their songs are funny (that nipple clamps one) but overall they seem pretty run of the mill on offensiveness.
Wesley Willis on the other hand has a whole range of offensiveness. Unfortunately all of the lyrics I saw posted by him were completely formulaic. Every chorus consisted of the title of the song repeated four times. Even with that, he was funny albeit, I couldn’t see listening to a whole album by him.
Well, Rats!
I got all the way to the bottom of the thread thinking “Aha! They all missed the true classic!” and wouldn’t you know it, here it is! Yep, that’s about the most offensive song I know! I did have a fairly misspent youth though, and I seem to recall something about enchiladas and a donkey on Frank Zappa’s Fillmore East album that was truly rude. I thought it was funny at 3:00 am when I was 15 anyway! And, hey! What about Cheech and Chong and George Carlin!?
I am NOT putting my sig on this post!
I USED to be a bad girl!
(hanging head in shame)
It was an American 70’s punk band called The Rotters, and I believe that they got hassled a lot by connections of Fleetwood Mac at the time. With other song titles like ‘Amputee’ and ‘Sink The Whales Buy Japanese Goods’, it doesn’t seem they were trying to impress too many squares.
He definitely stretched the envelope - in his texts and certainly when introducing his songs. An example:
“What has put America in the forefront of the nuclear nations ? And what made it possible to spend 40 billion dollars of your money to put some clown on the moon ? Good old American know-how, that’s what. As provided by good ole Americans like - Doktor Vernher von Braun.”
And the song has gems like:
“Once ze rockets are up, who cares vhere zey come down ? That’s not my department” - says Vernher von Braun.
or
*Some have harsh words for this man of renown
but I think our attitude should be one of gratitude
like the widows and cripples in old London town,
who owe their large pensions to Vernher von Braun.*
Of course, it has to be delivered with the exquisite Lehrer timing to really get the acerbic effect he manages.
Ummm, Muffin, I don’t get this one. Why shocking? Except maybe the part about the groupies doing anything they wanted.
(BTW, I remember it worked. They landed on the cover when this hit.)
BTW, what made Zappa so much fun was that he found really funny ways to offend people, Catholic Girls and Jewish Princesses, people who follow evangelists (“He’s got twenty million dollars in his heavenly bank account / All from those suckers who were born anew”), hippies, mindless flag-waving patriots. When he was on target, he was DEADLY.
I don’t get it either, but you probably CAN nominate other Dr Hook material like “Freakin at the Freaker’s Ball” and “Get my Rocks Off”. The truly strange thing to realize is that Shel Silverstein wrote their lyrics, which might give people only familiar with his children’s books pause.
Kinky Friedman’s “Men’s Room in LA”.
How about Jimmy Buffett in his Marvin Gardens alter ego coming up with “Let’s Get Drunk and Screw”?
Then there’s a whole set of funny drug songs:
“Seeds and Stems Again” - Commander Cody
“Comin’ in to Los Angeles” - Arlo Guthrie
“Henry” - New Riders of the Purple Sage
Sorry, I had the wrong song title in my mind. I was thinking of “Freakin at the Freaker’s Ball”, but for some reason thought it was called “On the Cover of the Rolling Stone.” I guess my mind is slipping.
E-rotic, a German group of totally untalented techno musicians. Not very high up on the offensive scale, but you’ve got to give them credit for the rhyming titles…
“Oh Nick Please Not So Quick”
“Fritz Love My Tits”
Well, I suppose they are somewhat offensive, I mean, the song about dildoes is a little…yeah. Always good for a laugh.
I’ve always been fond of semi-dirty rap songs, too, like “Can I Get a…” or “Baby I Got Your Money”.
“I don’t have no problem with you fucking me
But I have a little problem with you not fucking me”
Y’know, the scary thing about E-rotic is that a bunch of their songs have been licensed by Konami for their Dance Dance Revolution games which are widely played by adolescents across the country (well, Hawaii, Cali, and Las Vegas, anyway).
And one of my personal favorites is Bloodhound Gang’s “The Lap Dance is Better When the Stripper is Crying” (or something to that effect).
