Dijon catsup!
And my second example is "Step Right Up" by Tom Waits:
The large print giveth and the small print taketh away!
THE MUSIC SALON: classical music, popular culture, philosophy and anything else that catches my fancy...
Thursday, May 12, 2016
A Couple of Humorous Pop Songs
Yes, despite my post the other day, there are always exceptions. The first one comes from a commentator. Here is the Vancouver group Bare Naked Ladies with some delightfully self-deprecatory humour titled "If I Had a Million Dollars":
Dijon catsup!
And my second example is "Step Right Up" by Tom Waits:
The large print giveth and the small print taketh away!
Dijon catsup!
And my second example is "Step Right Up" by Tom Waits:
The large print giveth and the small print taketh away!
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3 comments:
Egad. I do despise that song by the Barenaked Ladies. It was a big hit here in Canada, and it more than outwore its welcome.
Has Bob Dylan come up yet in this discussion of humour in music? He wrote quite a few funny songs back in the 60s: 'Motorpsycho Nitemare', 'I Shall Be Free No.10', '115th Dream', 'All Over You', 'Talkin' Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues', 'Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues', 'Million Dollar Bash'. That last is from the Basement Tapes, made with The Band, and there's quite a lot of funny material in there.
He hasn't been as funny since that heyday, with perhaps a couple of exceptions. I almost always laugh during the restaurant interlude in "Highlands", for instance (from 1997's Time Out of Mind).
You might not believe it, but I had never heard it before. I think the last time I listened to the radio, it was the early 90s, it was the CBC and it was a broadcast of me playing!
I will have to check out those Dylan songs. Thanks!
Dylan's lawyers are eagle-eyed, and it's tough to find most of his music on YouTube and related sites. But those songs are worth tracking down. 'All Over You' is one of the funniest (because mildly obscene), but it never made it onto an official record. That one is on YouTube!
A general observation about humour in pop music: the humour is almost always in the words, and so is not specifically musical humour. That's certainly true of Dylan's stuff.
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