Soundtracked

It's Your Life

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This week's theme: Guilty Pleasures

I guess maybe I can add this point to my loose definitions from yesterday regarding how to approach guilty pleasures: If you haven't bought a record from a musician or band in at least twenty years and they're still currently making music or touring or what have you, then they are probably no longer a favorite artist of yours.

Case in point: Oakland, California rapper Too $hort. The last time he put out anything that I bought was nearly 25 years ago. Had his first three tapes, and haven't picked up a thing since (besides getting those same albums off iTunes). Why? I dunno...every time he's come out with something new, I haven't been into it...but I will rock the shit out of those old records any time they come on.

Like, today. Last night I started another list of songs I might wanna use this week...and settled on one for today. Cued up a video and the lyrics, and thought I was good to go. And this morning, instead of actually writing the damn entry, I thought I'd wait until after the appointment I had this afternoon...so I looked up a few other videos by the original artist I'd intended to go with today (because there are a number of directions I could go with an entry related to that particular band). I got ready for my appointment and grabbed my iPod before leaving the house, even though this doctor's office is probably no more than a one minute walk away, tops. So of course, Too $hort comes on...and suddenly I'm like "I will always love this, even if I will never feel compelled to add anything else of his to my collection."

Yet I don't feel guilty about this. In fact, this is one of the few Too $hort songs that's not about bitches or pimpin'...it actually has a positive message. Well, sorta. It was written in response to the burgeoning crack epidemic and the need for something to be done about it, but what that is really isn't clear. It's more like someone saying "Do as I say, not as I do!" and you just sorta nod along...you almost wanna buy in during the A-side of the tape, but then the B-side comes on and it's "Punk Bitch", "Ain't Nothin' But A Word To Me", "Hard On The Boulevard", Pimpology", and "Paula & Janet" (all NSFW; YouTube at your own risk), and all the sudden you wanna be a rich playa covered in nasty hoes. Perhaps it's the realization that that's something I'll never be that makes me wanna almost consider this a guilty pleasure...a short term, free from conscience lifestyle, with lotsa money and cars and rhymes and sex. Like, I'll settle for the part just before the really, really good part of all that if it means I never hafta deal with any of the fallout from that .

Oh...and this song also showed up on the soundtrack to one of the greatest movies of that era, Boyz N The Hood  ...an all-time classic. And it features a key sample   from what might be considered a guilty pleasure of many others, Parliament's "Dr. Funkenstein"  ...that's what I worry about with calling things that...what if someone really loved a certain song through and through and took offense to you liking it only in part because you think people would/should be ashamed of you for it? And that's totally not what I mean but that's how it came out and that's how it's gonna stay. Like, what if that "how to save a life" song   came on and it really saved your life but then Joe Sixpack comes along and bros out about it yet later quietly admits he watches Grey's Anatomy   to get chicks and it makes him teary a little at the end of every episode, which does get him chicks...he's a serial datist gettin' laid off his guilty pleasure that saved your life and you feel totally indebted to, ya know? Weird how life works like that. And yes, I have thought about this way, way, way too much already this week.

So anyway, here it is.

"This is not a song I made about crack.
It's all about losin' what you can't get back."
Lyrics.  

Side notes regarding this song:

I once drew a near spot-on rendition of the dog holding up the peace sign on the album cover  , just using markers. I wish I still had it, actually...that's how good I thought it was. Well...I might still have it...if it's in the folder I think it's in buried among all my notebooks. But I'm not going through that stack again anytime soon.

Somewhere in the back of that pile is a yellow two-pocket folder,
perhaps with a manila folder in it.
It may have drawings. And very old pictures.

Anyone heard from skeason lately? I sent her an email a few months ago because her blog entries were showing as "Invalid Item" and I wanted to see if she was alright. I don't think I ever heard back. She was one of my favorites...and I remember being in some kind of awe of her once for (among many reasons) using a Too $hort song in one of her "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  posts. I think I even told her something like "I don't read enough entries that reference Too $hort." And it's true. I read a lot of blogs each month...and I'll be damned that he doesn't come up very often. We need to work on this, y'all!