Thanksgiving doesn’t have enough songs to mark the occasion. We’ve decided this year that Weird Al’s “Eat It” should be officially canonized as an unofficial Thanksgiving song.
Here we have a stunning 4K scan and remaster. The audio, on the other hand, suffers from some destructive remastering. We’ll take the first press of the LP over that any day.
The owner of the video has disabled third-party embedding but you can watch it on youtube. It’s 4K so put it on full screen! The levels seem off though. You might need to adjust brightness.
That thing about “Beat It” was just a joke. It’s a reference to the Al’s new movie Weird. If you haven’t seen it, it’s free on the Roku Channel. Go see it!
This is pretty much the best we can do as a nation when it comes to writing songs for our weird Thanksgiving holiday. For some reason we just don’t have that many.
Sandler recorded this again and released it on an album but the original 1992 performance on SNL is the one everyone remembers the fondest.
We’ve never shied away from cringe at FunHouse Radio. Before you listen to this you need to be warned. There are shrill vocalizations that make some people get neck-hair erections. Others cover their ears, yell, and stomp feet. You might even go cross-eyed.
Not only that, but we are treated with a lot of dissonant chords on a clean tone electric guitar. If you hate Jazz, you will really hate this.
“Kiss, Kiss, Kiss” was released on the album Double Fantasy in 1980. It also appeared as the b-side to Lennon’s “(Just Like) Starting Over” single. Stylistically quite different from Lennon’s track, I think it can safely be classified as New Wave. Ono fans consider this one of her best productions. It’s been remixed several times as well.
The “orgasm” starts at 1:42 in the song. The official story is that she just simulated the sounds in a studio but you have to wonder if she captured her and John doing the deed. The two were known to keep recorders by the bed. What do you think?
Edward Khil became known to the world in 2010, when this 1976 clip of him singing on Soviet Television was uploaded to YouTube. The video went viral and became an Internet meme. It’s been described as the “Russian Rick-roll”.
In this performance Khil elected to use phonemes instead of the actual lyrics to the song. As a result it earned the nickname “Trololo Song”. This term because so ubiquitous that the singer adopted the stage name, Mr. Trololo.
The song has been referenced in pop culture numerous times. Family Guy produced a scene where the guys sing along at the local bar.
Mr. Trololo died in 2012. His final public performance was in 2010 where he sang the song to an enthusiastic crown in St Petersburg.
Today is Micky Mouse’s Birthday. He turns 94. We’ve got a crazy tune here to celebrate. It’s ironically called “Can’t Botch This”. It’s the only good track on an otherwise cringey kid’s album called Mickey Unrapped, released in 1994 back when he was still in his 60s.
As far as the album goes, they botched it. They really really botched it.
Unlike the rest of the album however, The Disney cartoon gang actually sounds believable performing this song. It cracked me up and I bet you will enjoy it too.
Some would say the Dr Who Theme is the best of all time. I think it’s number two. This is just a personal opinion. Just listen to this banger. Someone took the time to remaster the track and make it stereo in the example above. It’s from Season one of Wonder Woman starring Linda Carter which ran for three seasons starting in 1975.
The first season theme music is better than what they ended up going with for seasons two and three. The removed the lead vocal. I think that was a big mistake.
The show had an excellent intro animation to go with the song as well. Here it is. Classic.
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish is the title of the fourth book in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams. Its title is the message left by the dolphins when the entire species evacuated Planet Earth just before it’s scheduled demolition to make way for a “hyperspace bypass”.
A song with the same name was created for the 2005 film. Right at the beginning of the movie we hear the vocal choir version of the song as performed by Hilary Summers, Kemi Ominiyi, & RSVP Voices.
But did you know that on the Soundtrack CD there is a second version of the song? That’s right and it’s done in the style of lounge singer Richard Cheese but it’s actually Neil Hannon.
The 2005 movie was good but this author highly recommends the six-part miniseries from the BBC. It’s streaming on Hulu right now in the USA. If you want to take a really deep dive, check out the BBC Radio-Dramas based on the books. They are far-out indeed.
The song had been done by other polka groups before. I remember hearing it on the radio but with lyrics and in German by some other group. The Emeralds did an instrumental version which became an international hit. Soon it acquired a goofy dance routine to go with it. You may have seen it at performed a wedding reception.
Shortly after I first heard the song on the radio, TV commercials started to air for a hits compilation titled Bird Dance by The Emeralds (Show and Dance Band), a group from Canada. It came out on K-Tel Records which had some distribution in the USA, especially in the Midwest.
There are two versions of the song. This one was recorded and released first, but also appears listed as “version 2” on the compilation. Originally called “Bird Dance” people quickly nick named it “Chicken Dance” and that became the alternate song title.
This exact recording is heard in the Weird: The Al Yankovic Story while the actors do the dance. You can watch it for free on the Roku Channel. If you have not you should. it’s a great time. The song also appears on the forthcoming CD and Vinyl soundtrack to be released in January 2023. I’ve heard the new mix and I prefer the original. The new mix is too tinny.
I believe my Grandma found her copy on a merch table at the Yack Arena in Wyandotte, Michigan. Dozens of ethnic festivals were held there every year in the 1980s. Polka music was popular among the elderly population that had immigrated from Central and Eastern Europe decades before.
But because I was a weird kid, the story does not end there. You see, ever since I was about 9 years old I knew that I wanted to own a radio station some day. I was also a bit of a nerd that liked to tinker with things.
One Christmas I received an electronic projects kit from Radio Shack that looked like this.
You would follow the wiring instructions in the manual to create a host of different circuits. It was fun to put them together. One of the projects was a low-power AM radio transmitter.
I put that circuit together but I wired in my cassette recorder and connected the TV antenna located on out roof. The tape in the cassette recorder was of course Bird Dance by The Emeralds (Show and Dance Band). I went out to the back yard to find my grandmother. I tuned her radio into the broadcast and it worked like a charm. Good times. :)
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