> I remember an interview with Paul Kantner many years ago, it might have been
> a VH1 Behind the Music, and when Starship was mentioned he said, with utter
> contempt, " . . .no, no you didn’t build this city". I don’t recall exactly what else
> he said but his disdain for the incarnation of his one time band was red hot and
> funny as hell.
If you’ll notice, I spoke about that Behind the Music episode in post #3. My memory is that what Kantner said was “We built this city? . . . Yeah, right [in a sarcastic intonation].”
Eh, in my humble opinion, it’s just a cute, meaningless song. I’ll listen to it if it comes on the radio, but I won’t seek it out. Of course, I love “The Flame,” so maybe I’m not one to talk.*
*I missed the 80s revolution because I was immersed in Christian Rock. Now that’s bad music.
Sorry, Wendell, I didn’t realize we were talking about the same show. I was thinking Mr. Kantner was not part of the '80s band and was just mocking them, possibly on some other show. Obviously the memory is even more vaguer than I thought :smack:
Well, I am proud to say that I thought it was,“While Cody plays the mamba, listen to the radio.” This thread cleared that up for me.
Along the same mondegreen lines, and this one is really embarrassing- despite having listened to the Ramones since a teenager, I just found out yesterday that the song “Blizkrieg Bop” actually contains the lyrics, “The Blitzkrieg Bop!”. All of these years I have been under the mistaken impression that Joey was actually singing “Let’s Get Fucked!” :smack:
The actual lyrics:
They’re forming in straight line
They’re going through a tight wind
The kids are losing their minds
The blitzkrieg bop
What I heard:
They’re piling in the back seat
They generate steam heat
Pulsating to the back beat
Let’s get fucked
I just thought that Blitzkrieg Bop was its title, never imagined that was what Joey was actually singing!
I was about 16 when that came out, and I said to my older friend, “you know how songs on commercials are kind of too catchy? This reminds me of that.” His work buddy said, “And at 16!”
Those of you who like it: you don’t consider WBTC to be just slightly more substantial and wholesome than “Come and Get It” from Badfinger? CaGI has to be near the bottom of insubstantial pop dreck. It’s a commercial jingle stretched out into a pop song. It’s as if Barry Manilow had tried to base a whole song off his Bandaid jingle.
Dunno. The only Bad Finger song I’m aware of is “Day after Day”. Now there’s a chance I’ve heard “Come and Get It” and didn’t know who sang it, but the title of the song doesn’t ring any bells.
Holy crap, my mind is blown! Before reading this thread I had absolutely no idea that Starship was essentially Jefferson Airplane, even though that’s the kind of trivia that I generally know and love. I’m 30, so I’m just old enough to remember when WBTC was playing on the radio all the time, but my only exposure to Jefferson Airplane growing up was during long car rides when my mom would insist on playing the oldies station. Still, I can’t believe this is the first time I am hearing this information :eek:
Starship is essentially not Jefferson Airplane. No.
Airplane was Kantner, Balin, Dryden, Kaukonen, Casady and Slick. Starship, at the time of the aforementioned atrocity, was Baldwin, Thomas, Chaquico, Sears and Slick. To say that Starship was essentially Airplane is the equivalent of saying Wings was essentially the Beatles.
I guess I misunderstood some of the posts in this thread, since it looked to me like some people were annoyed that the same group who was responsible for “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love” was also responsible for WBTC. I assumed that Jefferson Airplane and Starship didn’t have the exact same members, but I didn’t know the only shared link between the two was Grace Slick.
Grace isn’t the ONLY shared link. The evolution from Jefferson Airplane to Starship was gradual…Mickey Thomas didn’t one day decide he wanted to hijack the legacy of Jefferson Airplane. There was a series of member swaps…original members left one by one and were replaced as they went. Eventually, in the mid 80s, Thomas ended up in charge and convinced Slick to make a last album with the band (again, I contend, by kidnapping her family and holding them hostage on her good behavior (too bad nobody was being held hostage to ensure Mickey Thomas’s good behavior…)).
I kinda enjoyed “We Built This City”, but always wondered about that line “Tony plays the Mamba”. In retrospect, the lyrics are pretty dreadful. But it’s not horrible. Maybe overproduced, but I guess I’m the ideal audience of mass-corporate appeal.
MrSquishy said:
Well, that’s certainly possible, but that list is subjective. Sure, there are some real stinkers in that list, but some of those songs aren’t bad, except the authors seem to have a real hatred for synthesizers.
“Longer”, Dan Fogelberg
“The Final Countdown”, Europe (synths)
“Two Princes”, Spin Doctors
“What’s Up?”, 4 Non Blondes
Are all entertaining to me. Maybe not the greatest music ever, but certainly listenable, unlike whole genres.
And I strongly disagree with their listing of “Broken Wings”, by Mr. Mister. That one is better than a lot of the ones they listed.
So I decided to start a list of songs worse than “We Built This City”.
And if you want dreadful lyrics, I’ll point the finger at America. I’ll just limit this to 1 song, thought frankly several songs (all fairly popular) would work. Here is “Ventura Highway”, with notable lines as
Where the days are longer
The nights are stronger than moonshine
and
Cause the free wind is blowin’ through your hair
and the day surrounds your daylight there
Seasons cryin’ no despair Alligator lizards in the air
Bolding for emphasis. Alligator lizards in the air. WTF? Wiki says the author claims that line is about cloud shapes. Right.
That was just me mulling this over and picking up a few off the radio. I’ve completely ignored parody songs (“I’m On A Boat”, “Jizz In Your Pants”, etc). And I haven’t touched rap or country, which frankly the whole genre’s get ranked worse in my opinion. I’m sure if I tried I could come up with 50 songs that most people would agree are worse than WBTC, but frankly, I don’t want to subject myself to that. I think the 7 above are a good start. (That’s giving America a pass, because even though their lyrics are lame, the music is okay.)
Nobody said:
Come and Get It
jayjay said:
Grace Slick has stated that she was under contract, and the producers wanted to go in a new direction and have them play music/songs written by other artists. Add to that the shenanigans Mickey Thomas was playing. (They were supposed to do several of their songs in duets like “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now”, but Mickey would delay during recording until she left, then record solo versions.) Basically she rode out her contract. So yes, phoning it in is reasonably accurate. Rhythmdvl, I just saw “Lather” (hadn’t heard that one before), and I’m pretty sure those Blender guys would have put it on their list. Especially that bit at 2:40.
Also watched the “El Diablo” video linked there, with lots of pics of Grace Slick. Man, was she beautiful. I kinda liked her in “Nothin’s Gonna Stop Us Now”, but some of those pics she’s stunning.
I also thing Lene from that “Barbie Girl” video is pretty hot.
Oh, this song. Funny, I don’t think I’ve heard the original, but recently some commercial is using this song, or a version of it. I think it’s in a car commercial.
Or for more Beastie Boys greatness, how about “Fight For Your Right”, an anthem to teen slacker lazy jerkwads. Okay, maybe the band meant it ironically (learned that recently on the Dope), but too many people took it at face value.
And that hasn’t touched boy bands, which only had one entry on that Blender list: “Hangin’ Tough” by the New Kids on the Block. That one is worse than WBTC, but they didn’t rate it so.
It was written by Paul McCartney. Not the worst song he ever wrote, but probably in the top five.
Badfinger had a few hits, two of which (“Day After Day” and “Baby Blue”) are on the album Straight Up, which at the risk of being considered a tasteless weenie I will admit that I like. Not earth-shattering, but good pop-rock. “Baby Blue” (which hit #14 on U.S. charts) was about an actual woman one of the band members was dating, named Dixie Butz, which is a terrific name.
Badfinger also originated a song that probably would have made decent listening if their version had become a hit, but unfortunately it didn’t and the song eventually became a monster hit for Harry Nilsson which I would be content to never hear again - “Without You”. “I can’t liiiiiiiiiiiive…”
