Here we have bluegrass legend Grandpa Jones, on the 1960's-1970's hit TV show called Hee Haw, singing "Mountain Dew." To most people out there today, Mountain Dew is a lemon lime soda in a plastic bottle. But the soft drink company stole the name from a nickname for moonshine, good ol' backcountry, homemade corn liquor. Yep, mountain dew originally was the stuff the hillbillies and the mountain folk used to drink back in the day, to get drunk, particularly during the prohibition era of the 1920's.
Vices. Those bad habits that all of us are so good at seeing in other people, and so bad at seeing in ourselves. Life is tough. We get stressed out, pissed off, frustrated, depressed, and we need something to help us get through the day. We all have our go-to's in these situations. Sex. Alcohol. Food. Cigarettes. Weed. Prescription drugs. Other street drugs. Even video games. Everyone uses some crutch to get through the tough days, or maybe every day. Many of these things are somewhat toxic, but take a whole lifetime to actually kill us. Unless we lose control and let them get completely out of hand.
The other day something on Facebook reminded me of Grandpa Jones on Hee Haw singing "Mountain Dew." I looked it up and watched the video. That got me watching other old bluegrass songs. Then I watched several old school country songs. I noticed how many songs there were back in the 1960's and 1970's about cigarettes and moonshine. That got me thinking about the vices we all have. That turned into a blog post idea this morning. That's kind of how I work, one thing reminds me of another, a theme emerges, and a blog post is born. So here ya go, a bunch of songs about the things that help us get through the day, but can kill us, or seriously screw up our lives if they get out of hand.
I don't know what's up with the links, Blogger won't let me link actual words or phrases today, for some reason. But hit the "null" link after each one to find the song. Somebody's jacking up the interwebs again, so I need to look that up in a bit.
Guns n" Roses- "Night Train"- This song is about the cheap wine that the original guys in G n' R used to drink, when they were a young band coming up, and couldn't afford better alcohol.
Dramarama- "Last Cigarette"- Death sticks, coffin nails, smokes. This one is pretty self-explanatory.
Mike Ness of Social Distortion- "Ball And Chain"- Written as a "crying in your beer" song, it's one of Social Distortion's classics now.
Miranda Lambert- "Mama's Broken Heart"- Ever get completely shitfaced after getting dumped or a bad break-up? Yep, so have I. So has Miranda Lambert.
Bob Marley & the Wailers- "Smoke Two Joints"- Weed. Marijuana. Cannabis. Reefer. Whatever you call it, it gets you high.
No Doubt- "A Little Something Refreshing"- In my case, these days, I don't drink, I don't do drugs. I even kicked my Diet Coke habit. My vices these days are mostly 7-11 pepperoni pizza and sarcasm. Yep, for some of us, food is the main vice.
Nathy Peluso- "Gimme Some Pizza"- Now you're talkin'. I just found this one while working on this blog post.
Dolly Parton- "Little Bitty Pissant Country Place"- Sex, nookie, hookers, prostitues, and about 1,000 euphemisms. It's the original vice many have gone when stressed out since humans became humans.
Billy Gibbons with Daryl Hall & his band- "La Grange"- That shack outside La Grange
Osborne Brothers- "Rocky Top"- Another song about moonshine stills, which is a theme in bluegrass.
Jeanie C. Riley "Harper Valley P.T.A."- Small Town hypocrites getting called out for their assorted vices
Steve Earle- "Copperhead Road"- This is one of the best country songs ever, in my opinion. A country boy from the hills, in the late 1970's, coming out of the horrific Vietnam War era, gets a new idea. Why not grow weed illegally up Copperhead Road, where grandad used to make his moonshine?
Prince "Little Red Corvette" - One of the most classic one night hookup songs ever.
Prince "Darling Nikki"- OK, Prince could have 20 songs on this list, I'll stop at two.
ZZ Top - "Tube Steak Boogie"- You don't grill that kind of steak.
Limp Bizkit- "Nookie"- Another one about sex.
Elle King- "Ex's & Oh's"- A country girl and her boy toys
The Offspring "Session" - Another song about needing sex, off of The Offspring's underrated Ignition album. This whole album kicks serious ass.
Sublime- "Smoke Two Joints"- Yeah, it's the same song that Bob Marley is singing above, but Sublime did a great cover of it.
Grandpa Jones- "Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That Cigarette"- This actually a song about Grandpa saying why he didn't smoke. That was an era when most people wondered why some people didn't smoke. This song is for all of you Gen X kids, who had to drive around in the back seat of your parents' or grandparents' car while they smoked like a chimney in the front seat, with the windows up.
Grandmaster Melle Mel- "White Lines"- Coke. Not the kind that you buy in a bottle at the local 7-11. The glam drug of the 1970's and 1980's. The 1970's were the golden era of cocaine, but it didn't stop there. I'm going back to 1983, EARLY rap music, for this classic one about the dangers of the white dust.
Kontrol Freak- "The Tweaker Song"- I knew there had to be a song about meth, it's the main drug in much of America these days, and definitely on the streets of L.A., where I live. The tweaking zombies wander past me all night, every night while I'm trying to sleep.
The Salton Sea (movie)- "Pooh Bear"- "Pooh Bear did so much gack they had to cut his nose off." Want 1,000 reasons NOT to do meth? Watch this movie.
Afroman- "Because I Got High"- (Video featuring Jay and Silent Bob- aka Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith) A pot smoking classic. It's 4:20 somehwere.
Blink-182- "Waggy"- Stressed out and horny? Can't find a woman? Time to rub one off.
The Red Aunts- "The Vibrator Song"- Third song on this 7"- Stressed out and horny? Can't find a guy? Time to rub one off.
The Bloodhound Gang- "The Bad Touch"- Another funny song about sex.
Patsy Cline- "Three Cigarettes And An Ashtray"- One of the great voices of classic country music, Patsy Cline with a song about heartbreak and cigarettes.
Puddles Pity Party- covering Sia's "Chandelier"- A song about drinking to oblivion.
Lana Del Rey- "Video Game"- Sex, drugs, alcohol, and... video games. Playing video games is fine. But it can also become a vice, and get out of control, like all the other vices.
"Death that lasts a lifetime is what gets us through the day." That's a line from one of the poems I wrote in the 1990's, but have lost since. I made a few memes of that line last year. The things we consume to help us deal with life can consume us if they get out of control. That's one struggle we all deal with in life.
I've been doing a whole bunch of writing on a new platform called Substack, check it out:
My thoughts on the financial markets
No comments:
Post a Comment