"Turn that crap off and play something with some words!"

Hi folks. In case you hadn't already guessed, today's post is somewhat music-related. It has to do with the fact that most of today's Top 40 music is complete and utter crap. Now I know what you're going to say. You'll say yeah, but that's just because you're getting old, Jeff. And you may have a point.

When I was in my teens my mother and grandparents would say the same thing about the music I liked. My mother would always try to dig it, though, and these days we can talk on more or less the same level about music from the '70s and '80s. I think that that has a lot to do with the fact that her music taste was pretty good, she liked Rod Stewart (early stuff with the Faces),












Neil Diamond, and Dave Brubeck (she had a double LP of the albums Time Out and Time Further Out which is still one of my favorites, and, to me, it's the best jazz ever. I could listen quite happily to her music collection (except Manilow, whichI still have a hard time listening to).




















The reason for this post is my wife. Now, I love my wife, and I love her sense of humor and I admire her taste in a lot of things and her skill in everything she tries her hand at, but I question her taste in music, especially since she is such a talented singer.

Specifically, she is into a couple of genres of music which unfortunately fall into the "cure for insomnia" category.

Firstly, Contemporary Christian/Gospel. I am all for people singing about their beliefs. I have no problem with that. But does it have to be so BORING? My wife is particularly fond of both Steven Curtis Chapman and Selah, who, I'm sorry to say, bore the pants off me. Which takes some doing.












And secondly, and this is the one that I hate with a passion, WEENIE MUSIC.

What is weenie music? Well, dear reader, let me tell you.

Overly sentimental love songs played out against swirling strings. Any song that starts with a Fender Rhodes electric piano and a bell tree. "Sometimes When We Touch" is weenie music. "Baby I'm-A Want You" is weenie music. Barry Manilow is the god of weenie music. The term itself was coined by Dave Barry in his book "Dave Barry's Book Of Bad Songs". An awesome book, by the way.

But recently my wife burned herself a couple of CDs of nothing but weenie music. And everytime we get in the car, it's in the CD player.

Here's a partial track listing:





Lionel Richie (himself a weenie music Zen Master): There are actually several Lionel tracks on here - "Stuck On You', 'Ballerina Girl', 'Hello', 'Say You Say Me', 'My Love' ... pass the bucket....










Snow Patrol: Chasing Cars. She actually has this one twice in a row on one CD. I used to like this song when I first heard it. But you hear something 5000 times and you can grow to loathe it.









Atlantic Starr: Always. Pass the bucket again.











Starship: Set The Night To Music. Hard to believe anyone from Jefferson Airplane had anything to do with this nonsense.










James Blunt: 'You're Beautiful' You're annoying, James.











Once in a while you hear a song that just doesn't make sense. From the Stevie-Nicks-sheep-like baa-ing of her voice to the trite lyrics, 'Something In Red' by Lorrie Morgan just makes me wanna hurl. She's no slouch in the looks department, though. Woof!












I'm sure there's some Styx, Foreigner, Air Supply and Journey on there too.












But the worst one.... the WORST one.... I can hardly bring myself to say it, since this guy is a musical genius...

Stevie Wonder: 'I Just Called To Say I Love You'. Firstly, let's get this straight. This is the same guy that gave us "Superstition", "Sir Duke" and "Master Blaster(Jammin')", right? This song sounds like Stevie was shopping for a new keyboard and wandered into a toy store by mistake. Got himself a brand new Casio with an auto-arpeggiator and recorded this trite gobbledegook in one take for a joke. Well, my opinion of Stevie changed when this came out. And I hear it often. My wife, bless her cotton socks, has a higher threshold of noise than I do. I like loud music, but she cranks this up so loud the speakers start to do that BLATT-BLATT-BLATT distortion on the bass notes. Let's just say the local Hispanic population in their lowriders and airbrushed Virgin Marys turn and look at her as if to say, "Damn, that's loud!"


I like a lot of music of different genres. But these ones, all compiled together...uh-oh, here it comes... BLOOAARGH!

Well, that's off my chest. Now I feel better. Thank you.