Category: Uncategorized

BREAD AND BUTTER (NEWBEATS, 1964)

To win the best/worst song ever, the song has to have peculiar and/or inane lyrics, so bad they are funny. And the song has to be catchy, an ear worm so strong you can’t get it out of your head no matter what. You love it. You hate it.

I’ve got two picks. The runner-up, which I’ll reveal now. And the winner, which I will reveal at a later date. (That said, I’d be interested to know if you have nominees that can knock off my runner-up and first place, but good luck with that).

The runner-up is a 1964 song called Bread and  Butter by the Newbeats.

Besides the absolutely silly lyrics,– unless there is  some double entendre going on here that’s flying over my head– this song hits all the boxes: bad lyrics, catchy but cheesy hook and, the secret weapon, the falsetto guy.

Now there was this guy in the band, named  Larry Henley, who went on to co-write the song, ‘Wind Beneath My Wings,’ made famous by Bette Midler and the movie Beaches.

Now several online stories  about Henley  say that he had a “distinctive” falsetto and one website I saw said he ‘pioneered,’ along with Frankie Valli, the falsetto style of singing. Did they actually listen to his voice in Bread and Butter? Do they want to encourage that ‘distinctiveness?’

Holy screeching seagulls, dudes.

This guy sang  like he just  inhaled some helium while being tortured in hell.

At the end of the song he goes into a series of short shrieks that sound  like  the noise Little Richard might make had he stuck a fork in the light socket..

Not to pile on, but that  dancing is so bad, it hurts my feelings.

Hard to beat but I got one even better for Best/Worst Song Ever. Stay tuned.

(Put your suggestions in comments by clicking the title  of this post and scrolling down.)

Confession: I have a 45 rpm record of this song. I’m afraid to listen to the other side.

 

Just wow!

I got a lot of love today as colleague John Archibald and others began sharing my blog on Facebook and other social media.

As you can see by this post right now, every post is not going to be an album review.

Let’s be interactive!  (take away 7 letters from that sentence and you have a Mitch Easter band we’ll be reviewing later.)

I just want you to know now and again, I’m going to stop the reviews to interject.

 (Rap interlude follows)

 Interject. If you show me some respect. And let me reflect on an imperfect text to give some perspect-ive, and be introspect-ive.

 Dad?

One of my three beautiful daughters, (or all in unison), say: Don’t sing, don’t’ dance and, pretty please, don’t do hambone. PLEASE!

Now as you have just now witnessed I don’t have a lot of rap songs in my 678 records. I’m a 57-year-old balding white guy with a 3-inch vertical  leap, for gosh sakes.

(Wait, though, and I’ll spin some Sugar Hill down in the  S’s).

So this interjection is about restating my mission and that is to bring awareness to Lewy Body dementia, which I have. I was diagnosed officially with the brain disease one year ago (October,2016).

Symptomatically, Lewy is a little like Alzheimer’s with an unhealthy scoop of Parkinson’s disease. Last numbers I saw showed the average lifespan is 4 to 7 years after diagnosis. So with 678 records (now down to 671) I’m truly on deadline.

Please read my About Me if you haven’t already. And check out the links in the stories.

I don’t want this to be downbeat. My blog will have many fun things.

What I hope is to bring hope. How do we negotiate the suffering and turn it into positive action.? The truth cuts through like a laser, a pure and holy light.

Mostly my blog is true, except for the parts that aren’t.

I mean that I’m looking for the truth but memory loss coupled with an insatiable desire to make people laugh (or cry, or feel something) can lead to selective storytelling. But isn’t that the way it is anyway? We tease out the parts we want to show. Withhold the parts we don’t.

Ultimately we seek and need that which will set us free.