music » CoupleDumb

Your Own Music Montage

Sep 182009

Rock out with...a chicken in your pants?
Finally Friday! It’s Lee’s Daddy’s Birthday today so Happy 72^nd Daddy! If you’re on Twitter, check us out and follow us. We promise to be entertaining and keep our political commentary at least humorous. We’re closing up our Music week and have spent most of it talking about the music that makes us gag. Except yesterday which was actually music that makes us all mushy and warm. So today is dedicated to kick ass music. Not the fluffy ‘I believe the children are our future’ but some blood pumping empowering music and lyrics to assert yourself by.

Lee says: Do you ever really listen to the music on the radio? Some music is so intoxicating that it takes a long while for you to realize the words that are attached to the beats that are making you shake your ass (i.e. Lil John ‘Get low’- I must have skeet skeeted a hundred times before I understood the sweaty balls part). However, there are those songs that should really be called anthems or theme music. The following is a list that should be on everybody’s play-list (some are gender specific so watch for it):

‘U + Ur Hand’ Pink: ‘Keep your drink just give me the money.
It’s just you and your hand tonight’. Every girl should get an I-pod on her 21^st birthday with this song on it. I love the fact that she doesn’t need a man to have a good time. It’s about a girl setting boundaries and you know I love this. Oh and she’s kind of bitchy about it and you know I adore that! And of course the song encourages masturbation which pisses off the Catholics which we love, too!
‘Golden’ Jill Scott: ‘I’m strumming my own freedom,
Playing the god in me’. I secretly consider Jill Scott my chocolate curvaceous sister. This song is wonderful since it is self effective without cause. No guy wronged her. She’s ‘Golden’ because she is. This woman can do no wrong with me. If you are really feeling bitchy listen to ‘Getting in the way’ and take off your earrings and get the Vaseline. ‘You better back down before you get smacked down, you better chill!’
‘Can’t hold us down’ Christina Aguilera: ‘Thinking all women should be seen not heard, so what do we do girls, shout louder!’ Great song that speaks to the double standard in sexuality and ways of being. Sister’s are doing it for themselves and we are every woman and yet just a girl. Because I’m a woman and deserve the respect from the chain of fools out there. I am extraordinary and beautiful dammit. If you don’t get it then fuck you very much.

         Paul says: I think that, compared to girl music, the lyrics of guy music are mutable and generally unimportant. First, 98% of men’s music is about sex. Whether going to have it, currently having it, or subsequently had it, coitus is the theme. ‘Great balls of fire’, ‘All right now’, and ‘Let’s do it again’ could be subtitles, respectively, ‘I need to fuck’, ‘Hey, we’re fucking’, and ‘You wanna fuck again?’

          Since you can only say ‘I want to put my meat in you’ in so many different ways, the man has relegated lyrics to a distant second behind attitude. Satisfaction and Mony Mony are all about how you sing them, not what you say. The strut is actually a clef note specially developed by Mick Jagger. And every guy knows that, if you cannot sneer, don’t even try a Billy Idol song. Remember that from a sociological point of view, there are only three reasons to sing and dance: to pass on lore, to call on God, or to attract a mate. In our culture, women pass down lore. (Look at Lee’s comment above about the Pink song.) Obviously we are not talking about gospel music and I ain’t no priest, so this is all about getting (and keeping) your woman.

          As a final example, look at Prince. The guy looks like a drowned rat but his music says something different. Somewhere is the smoldering backbeat, he is communicating that his dick is as tall as he is and vibrates at 700 megahertz. Male music is attitude. So, my brothers, I say to you: Rock out with your cock out.

Sex and Music

Relationship Rejects

Sep 172009

It's all about sex and music, baby.
          Paul says: When we discussed this week’s musical theme, I got a bit worried. You need to understand that all of my songs have the words ‘scooby do’ in them as a form of harmonic placebo to fill in for my Alzheimer-like rendition on any song. In other words, I do not remember the lyrics to songs. Hotel California, for example, goes something like this: Welcome to the Hotel California (that much I know) something, something, something (pause) something, something, something – and then a ‘scooby do’ for good measure.

          So I am not even going to try to play the ‘how did mainstream music effect you’ game. Admittedly, I rocked out sounding like a third day torture victim singing scat but that is about as profound as it gets. The one place that does come to mind was neither mainstream (to me) nor my doing.

          During the courtship and beginning of our marriage, I made an attempt to learn Spanish. Nothing formal as I had already taken years of high school and college Spanish and still could only ask enough to get me to a bathroom in Mexico whereupon I would be promptly mugged since I had made my gringoness well known. Instead, Lee would tutor me in popular Hispanic culture. Of course, we lived in Los Angeles where the streets, like the name of the city, were more often than not Spanish words that Lee would translate and I would attempt to commit to memory.

          Then she busted out the music and I fell in love. Specifically Juan Luis Guerra’s album Bachata Rosa.

Juan Luis Guerra is kind of the Beatles of Colombia. This CD is filled with some of the sappiest love ballads that ever existed. As Lee played the music, translating as the lead singer sang, I was opened to a world of metaphor and imagery, the likes of which sounded at first very overdone to my Anglo ears. After a few minutes of lyrical delight, I became accustomed to the merengue infused lust music and was swept away. One of our favorite is Burbujas de Amor which has the balladeer wishing to be a fish in a fishbowl with the one he loves and blow bubbles of love (burbujas de amor). It also has him asking to be ‘wet in you’ which I am going to go out on a limb as say is a metaphor for sex.

          More than just a Spanish lesson, this music became the mechanism through which Lee introduced me to her life, her culture, and her familial spirit. It was one of the most romantic times of our lives. I thank you Juan Luis Guerra for scoring our love.

          Lee says: As my wonderfully forgetful husband is prone to do, he forgot the song we really liked from that album (yeah, I said album). Sure the song about fish fucking is sexy and cute but the really romantic song was ‘Estrellitas y Duendes’ (Stars and Sprites). This song is just one image after another all leading to how someone is enraptured by their partner. He talks of getting inside of his partner’s pupils and how he’ll never close his eyes again; perhaps never wanting to miss a moment of looking at her. I know that I have felt like that before. I can’t help it, he has great eyes.

          One of my favorite games to play with Paul is ‘What year was this song from?’ I love it since I win it every time and he loves it because he gets to make fun of me and call me a freak for knowing such useless information. We pass the time in the car and I get to impress my kids with my inane knowledge of 70s music.

          This is where the game gets even better. A song will start and I will think for a moment and recollect what grade I was in, what traumatic event occurred when this song came out or where is this song in comparison to the Disco era. Paul’s contribution to the game is asking me ‘Do you know what this song’s about?’ I’ll start laughing and shake my head and he’ll grin and in a low sexy voice say, ‘Fucking’. God I love that!

          It’s like musical foreplay for us. A song can elicit such a profound affect on people. For me, just hearing this song makes me tear up and remember how I like to dive into him. It reminds me of my visceral reaction to him; regardless of what he says and forgetting to put the dishes into the dishwasher. As in the song Bachata Rosa, ‘Yo soy satellite y tu eres mi sol’. Do you know what this song’s about?

Celebrity Smackdown: Wussy Musicians

Celebrity Smackdown

Sep 162009

Tell me they don't have a handful of giz.

          Wednesday is a welcomed day in our home. Hump Day! Half way through the week! Excellent TV day! Anyways, our other favorite reason for loving Wednesday is Celebrity Smackdown. This week we have been discussing music and how it affects relationships so we scanned our brains for the biggest culprits of victimy, dysfunctional music out there. Sure we could bring up misogynistic rap music telling us to smack a bitch or overindulge in mind altering substances while going to da club, but that would be too easy. So who deserves the spank this week?

          Lee says: I like depressing music. I was in high school and college during the 80s and that had to be some of the whiniest music of all time. Anybody? Sinead O’conner? That bitch makes Kanye West look like a little girl. ‘George Bush doesn’t like black people’. Yeah, that bitch ripped up a picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live and talked about how the Pope condones rape. That bitch has balls. But I digress. Whiny is fine but victim anthems are not acceptable.

          I’ll start with John Mayer since Paul hates him and he has proven to be a big douchebag aside from his music. Problem is, I like some of his music. I like how it sounds but he says such stupid shit in it that it makes me hate it; case in point ‘Waiting on the world to change’. Now as fans of ‘So you think you can dance’, we all remember a few years back when all the dancers danced this one song over and over again. It was painful. Let’s not do that again. The song is about how he and all his friends are misunderstood. They aren’t apathetic and useless, they just know that they’ll fail if they try. Read the lyrics! It’s the perfect excuse and justification for not getting involved. John you useless piece of shit, keep waiting for the change and see what you get. Abso-fucking-lutely nothing!

          Then you do the song ‘Say’ and show what an idiot you are. You just said in the ‘Change’ song you couldn’t do shit but now you advocate ‘Say’ what you need to say. You know John, that could work with your first song dilemma but it is so much easier to say that it isn’t a fair fight and do nothing. The voice of a generation is a ball-less wonder. Sure he plays a good guitar and makes faces that you only see during a grand mal seizure but he needs to learn a little thing I call personal responsibility.

          Another one of these musicians who leaves me looking for the radio dial is James Blunt. I mentioned on Monday that the song ‘You’re Beautiful’ was not romantic but a stalker song. The only thing missing in the song is how he smelled her hair on the bus and knew that she wanted him. The missing lyrics mentions standing outside of her home and taking pictures of her that he uses as wanking inspiration later. The last lyrics mentions how hot she looked in court as the judge ordered him to stay over 500 feet away from her. I will not mention the singing. The British gave us Cat Stevens too. Just don’t piss them off.

          And this last one really upsets me since I really love Green Day, however their latest songs sound like a million other songs out there. I literally looked it up to see who had done it before. I wanted them to come up with some music like ‘Dookie’ or ‘American Idiot’. At first I thought it was the theme from ‘Mahogany’ but then it breaks into another song that I can’t recall (if you know what I’m talking about email me and get a free Dysaffirmation mug).

          Music is in everything from the TV we watch, the movies we see and the ring tones on our phones. It plays in the background of our grocery stores, malls and elevators. It seeps into our psyches and wrestles with our medulla oblongata while we sleep. It tells you it’s normal to be victimy and whiny. Wake up and say no to wussy music. We need powerful songs that inspire and make us move on. No justification. No bullshit.

             Paul sings: John Mayer is a douchebag, doo-da, doo-da. All the doo-da day.