Verbose Versions of '80s Rock Song Titles!

For better or worse, I grew up listening to 80s rock. Some of it was good: Guns N' Roses, Metallica, and... I know there's another one in there. Some of it was, in retrospect, really bad. I will cop to enjoying Poison, Cinderella, Whitesnake, and many other neon-colored stinkers. I've got no shame, though. I was a kid, and that's what was on MTV and the radio at the time. Most people that claim they were listening to The Smiths and Primal Scream at nine are just engaging in unnecessary revisionist history, anyway. I say embrace the follies of youth! I'm gonna own the twelve-year-old jean jacket-wearing, long hair-growing, Stephen King-reading kid I was. Those were good times, and maybe those times would have been different if I'd still been in the basement, shooting game after game of pool with Pink Floyd's Animals playing in the background.

80s rock-be it hair metal or metal metal-was never much for subtlety. Every guitar solo had to be wankier than the previous one, and every Aqua-netted hairstyle had to be higher than the last one. I figure that the song titles for these "classics" should reflect the hyperbolic grandeur of the era. And so I present to you VERBOSE VERSIONS OF 80s ROCK SONG TITLES. Editor's note: this might be really lame. 

Sammy Hagar: "While I Am Aware of the Necessity of Parameters Regarding Speed Limits, I Nevertheless Find it Difficult to Adhere to Them"  🎸🔥🎸 YEAH! Let's do this!!!!

Gun's N Roses: "I Was Amorously Engaged With Her in the Recent Past, But Even More Recently I Facilitated Her Expiration In a Crime of Passion"  💋💔👹🚨🚑💘 Can you believe these guys are touring again? Axel looks like a poorly made Madame Toussaint figure, but the rest of the band-especially Slash-actually sound pretty good. Would I dare go to a show? Probably not, but you never know!

Bon Jovi: "Love Is Represented In a Negative Light Due to Your Past Behavior in the Aforementioned Category" 💏💘😡 I never got into Bon Jovi. They were seen as a band that girls were into. I WAS WAY TOO MACHO FOR THAT. It was like how everybody loved the album Hysteria by Def Leppard, but the girls were really into "Love Bites." The guys, however, thought it was kinda wussy. Therefore, during lunch, the girls would stare far into the distance when Joe Elliot sang, "When you make love, do you look in the mirror?" (?!?!) and the guys would scoff and bark, "PUT ON 'DONT SHOOT SHOTGUN,' MAN!" See Extreme's "More than Words" for even more compelling evidence regarding this phenomenon.

I'm posting a link to Mr. Brownstone because Appetite for Destruction still stands up after all these years, Slash's guitar solo kicks *** without being wanky, and this was always my favorite AFD track, even before I had any idea that Mr. Brownstone was heroin! OMG. Metaphors, you guys. 

https://youtu.be/KVYDnQwi3OQ

Grace Jones & Blood Orange at The Greek Theater

I saw Blood Orange and Grace Jones at The Greek Theater Saturday night. Blood Orange sounded even better live than he does on his records. Every member of his band was stellar: the sax wasn't schmaltzy, the rhythm section was tight, and his two backup vocalists complemented his vocals perfectly. He switched between keyboards and guitar, and he owned the stage. He was opening for an icon, but he performed like a headliner. Chamakay sounded especially amazing. When I see a song I love, and the live rendition makes me love it even more... that's proof that I've seen a great show.

Grace Jones' music was funky and fun, but she's so much more than just music. Like Bowie, Bjork, and Kate Bush, she transcends looks. She's a living canvas, and she's constantly transforming. When she smashed cymbals together during a song, she hadn't brought them out there just to play them. She fanned them out from each side of her face, completing a visual persona that looked like a mix between a peacock and a dilophosaurus. She also had as much fun with the audience as maybe any performer I've seen. Great show!

Blood Orange: Chamakay

https://youtu.be/-HSxllErrSc

What's the single greatest lyric in the history of recorded music?! I totally know that!

Whew! I just got back from Ashland, Oregon. I hung out with family and saw Hamlet at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Fun times! However, when I drive twelve hours in three days, I listen to a lot of music. I probably had a three to one music-to-podcast ratio on this odyssey. NINE HOURS OF MUSIC, PEOPLE. A lot can happen to a man's ears in nine hours. 

I've been listening to more podcasts than music lately, so going back to an old playlist of some of my favorite songs was really fun. I started thinking about lyrics that have resonated with me over a long period of time. Harsh human truths, wacky phonetic gymnastics, profound metaphors, slick slant rhymes, sharp imagery. These are the things that really melt my butter. That sounded odd, but I'm leaving it! Anyway, these lines obviously benefit from the intersection of words, vocals, and music. But while they're all from kick-ass songs, they also stand out on the page.

Here are the lyrics I heard today that are all-timers for me:

Well, the girls would turn the color of an avocado, when he would drive down the street in his El Dorado (Modern Lovers)

I had a man in every town, but I thought of you each time I tore off my gown (Marissa Nadler)

First of all, who's your A & R? A mountain climber who plays an electric guitar. But he don't know the meaning of dope when he's looking for a suit and tie rap that's cleaner than a bar of soap (Wu Tang [GZA])

You've been makin' your brags around town that you've been lovin' my man, but the man I love, when he picks up trash, he puts it in a garbage can. (Loretta Lynn)

Cause I always say "I love you" when I mean "turn out the light". And I say "let's run away" when I just mean "stay the night". (Magnetic Fields [Jason Merritt])

I kissed goodbye the howling beast on the borderline that separated you from me. (Bob Dylan)

I drink Moët with Medusa, give her shotguns in hell, from the spliff that I lift and inhale, it ain't hard to tell (Nas using the double meaning of getting stoned off marijuana and Medusa turning people that look at her into stone. Whaaaaaaaaaat? So great)

Again and again the same situation, after so many years, tethered to a ringing telephone in a room full of mirrors (Joni Mitchell)

Lucy you're my girl, Lucy you're a star, Lucy please be still and hide your madness in a jar, but do beware, it will follow you, it will follow you (Brian Eno)

The captain is a one-eyed dwarf, he's throwing dice along the wharf, in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king (Tom Waits)

I'm seeing body after body and our Mayor Giuliani ain't trying to see no black man turn into John Gotti (Notorious BIG) 

They say he sprung from the skull of Athena, think of your own head and the headache he gave (Liz Phair) 

Mama, here comes midnight with the dead moon in its jaws (Songs: Ohia [Jason Molina]) 

It doesn't mean that much to me to mean that much to you (Neil Young)

Any other suggestions?! Leave them in the comments for a chance to win a Sony Walkman signed by Bea Arthur's ex-housekeeper!