Q: What is the difference between a vocalist and a terrorist? A: You can negotiate with a terrorist.
Bring the band on down behind me, boys.
I have friends who shall remain nameless, friends who are exemplary in every way except that they're addicted to bad singers. Life online is a paradise for such masochists: around every cyber-corner lurks another MySpace/YouTube hopeful with a microphone, a dream, and six dozen mp3's/videos available for free download. Finding new "talent" every five minutes, these well meaning noodles then proceed to load their own sites with the never-ending torrent of aural backwash from the universe of singer-songwriter hopefuls, presumably in the interest of fostering the arts. I know I have to keep the speakers muted on my computer whenever I visit certain websites, because the minute I click on the opening page, bang! without warning my eardrums are suddenly punctured by Cunegonde Petrunti caterwauling her heart out about the moon and her faithless lover, or a plastic bag she saw blowing down an alley, or the turmoil in Ouagadougou.
Q: What's the difference between a puppy and a singer-songwriter?
A: Eventually the puppy stops whining.
Of course bad singers have been with us forever: neurasthenic nieces warbling in Victorian parlors, bobbed blondes belting out the blues in blind tigers after a few too many, mobsters' marcelled mistresses crooning in front of big bands, stringy-haired sirens with Silvertone six-strungs emoting in the Purple Paisley Period, and latest but not last, alas, shoegazing, fulminating and generally annoying singer-songwriter types, you know who you are. A few decades ago, when my great-uncle Jim used to hear an especially egregious chanteuse on TV or on the radio, he'd shake his head in disgust. "Somebody oughta slaughter that heifer and put her out of her mis'ry." He was born in 1874 -- that's how old the problem is. No, actually the problem is, nobody ever does put them out of their misery.
Since bad singing is a rather crowded field, ingenuity and adaptability are required to make it in today's cutthroat climate. Awhile back, three considerably over-the-hill purveyors of mal canto decided to join forces, thinking that in a clump people might just possibly mistake them for an angelic choir, or else maybe they thought there was safety in numbers. Social networking sites enabled them to bludgeon the universe with hype: announcing their world tour (for the most part comprised of no-pay gigs in out-of-town coffeehouses, upstate boilermakers' bars, and once, a command performance in a leaky tent), promoting their new CD (recorded in one of the members' broom closets on an iPod), and sharing hours of candid video with their fan base via YouTube (psst -- wanna see what we look like in our bathrobes with no makeup and our hair extensions off?). The bad news is, you can't get rid of them no matter how utterly abject their "career" is. Because MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter allow the fantasy of their "success" to continue ad infinitem, no actual success is required to keep the ball rolling. And if some reason they do finally decide to go away, don't go breathing a sigh of relief -- there are millions and millions more even worse than they are out there.
Not to mention even more well-meaning doofuses who actually listen to them.
There is no hope. I hereby resign from the human race.
We all have our guilty pleasures, though, don't we? I know I have cringe-worthy stuff I listen to on occasion that would cause mass scattering for the nearest exit if I were to play it in mixed company. LOL! But I know what you mean.
ReplyDeleteAt least you know it's cringeworthy. :) That's to your credit.
ReplyDeleteI have a friend who is the drummer for The Dials. The Dials are modelled after, in an easily-recognizable fashion, The B-52's...two lead girl singers, etc. After hearing much talk about the band over some time, I asked to hear some samples. Sheepishly, he complied. What I heard of the singing was all toneless shouting and sprechstimme. Oh...THAT aspect of the B-52's. :-)
ReplyDeleteDespite the fact that he ragged on Steely Dan as among the musical artists he can't stand, I liked this Bizarro strip of Dan Piraro's. Now he's got it available on a T-shirt because so many folks liked it.
ReplyDeleteThe strip just reminded me of this post of yours, that's all. Thought maybe you might appreciate the humor in context. But at $22.49 I, for one, ain't a' buyin' the shirt.
I still have a yellowed Bizarro strip from 2000, showing a pirate (in full buccaneer regalia, parrot on shoulder) at the dry cleaner's, scowling at the cost of his latest cleaning bill. The counterman is opining, "I still say you could cut your cleaning bills in half if you'd lose the parrot." I definitely like Piraro's humor -- whatever his opinion of Fagen's voice -- and I have ever since his strip first showed up in the San Francisco Chronicle, whenever that was. But I agree, as funny as I think the bad-singer strip is, I wouldn't pay that much for a T-shirt, either. Thanks for sharing it, though.
ReplyDelete