Of course, some people don’t understand the joy of Christmas. Often they’re unemployable Irishmen. But today’s bad boys are failed glam metallers, Danger Danger.
Yes, bitter and twisted, after their quest for fame and fortune was ruined by the evils of grunge (and we all know the only good thing to come out of grunge was a shotgun blast), they turned their bile and invective on Father Christmas. Gits.
It wasn’t his fault that despite hits with the original ‘Naughty Naughty’ and ‘Bang Bang’, and tours opening for KISS, Alice Cooper, Extreme and Warrant, that Satan opened his buttocks and shat out Kurdt Cobain.
And so it is that today’s Christmas classic is ‘Naughty Naughty Xmas’, a song designed to kill elves (good) and make Ecclefechan tarts go bad (bad). You can hear it here.
Come Christmas Day, I’ll be broadcasting Christmas joy to the world on GRTR between 8 and 10pm GMT, and broadcasting Christmas Blues to the world on Boxing Day.
I know you’ve been eagerly awaiting the return of Wednesday WIMPHEM, so it only seems fair to carry on with King Wimps,. the mighty STYX!!!!
The mighty STYX!!!! actually began over a humdred years ago, in 1861, when the members worked on a boat out of Chicago, Illinois called “The Tradewinds”. They needed to find something to fill in the long nights searching for the open sea, unaware as they were of Chicagos landlocked status, so brothers Chuck Panozzo and John Panozzo and Dennis DeYoung began singing barber shop tunes on board. They soon added the brilliantly nicknamed James “J.Y.” Young and John Curulewski to the lineup, adding instrumentation along the way.
One night, Thomas Edison came aboard on business, and amazed at what he heard, signed them to his Wooden Nickel Record label, something that saw the band adopting the name The mighty STYX!!!! because, says DeYoung, it was “the only one that none of us hated”.
They recorded four releases on Mr Edisons Cylinder Phonograph – Styx, Styx II, The Serpent Is Rising and Man of Miracles before coming to the conclusion that there was no future in barber shop music, and when their early stab at WIMPHEM, “Lady” (from Styx II), began to earn some steam powered radio time, nearly two years after the album had been released, and subsequently went top ten on the sheet music charts, the switch to WIMPHEM was assured.
After their hit, all the cylinder companies wanted a piece of their action, and they signed up with the Alpert & Moss Company, something that saw John Curulewski leaving the band due to a typographers strike, being replaced by the font friendly Tommy Shaw.
“The Grand Illusion” was the group’s breakthrough album, with more than three million (3,000,000) of Her Majestys Colonials buying into their adult oriented rock stylings, with “Come Sail Away” hitting the Toppermost of The WIMPHEM Poppermost. Steal it here.
The good years kept on coming with the mighty STYX!!!! insinuating themselves into every American home aroud the time of “Paradise Theater”, a loose concept album that became their biggest hit, reaching number one on the album chart and yielding two top ten singles in the shape of “The Best of Times” and “Too Much Time on My Hands”.
But it was all about to fall apart as Dennis DeYoung started to believe he was a Robot from the planet Eglantine and a California religious group and the PMRC accused the mighty STYX!!!! of backmasking Satanic messages in their anti-cocaine anthem, “Snowblind.” Really! The mighty STYX!!!! The cracks were starting to show and disaster was looming. A disaster called Kilroy….more soon…ish
Buy my favourite Styx album here.
Buy the cheapo best of here.
You lot may be an absolute SHOWER, but I still treat you with professional courtesy. Which is why, despite your lack of appreciation for the LOVERBOY, this post comes with a WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!
This may be the worst record ever. Now, as a semi-retired music journalist, I have undergone years of training, so that when confronted with the abject horrors of the new Manic Street Preachers, Ash or Foo Fighters record, I can survive the attempted aural assassination and, depending on who’s paying, lavish it with disgust.
However, what I am about to give to you is so horrible, I had to spend 48 hours in a bamboo cage, with my Filipino boy beating me about the head with a seal cub as he sang in his delightfully pidgin English, the entire recorded output of Radiohead and Coldplay. Only then was I able to listen to this, and only once.
Be WARNED!
The Ogden Edsl Wahalia Blues Ensemble Mondo Bizzario Band, for it is they, was a band formed in 1970 in Omaha, Nebraska. The band’s “career” began by playing the Omaha and Lincoln circuits for about four years until in 1974, the members expanded throughout the midwest with a ten-piece band. Between 1974 and 1976, the band recorded an LP, Stuffed, released on the Sunburn record label. Fortunately, a tsunami heard their performance, and despite Nebraska being thoroughly landlocked, took a 10,000 mile detour to kill them all.
Ogden Edsl was inducted into the Nebraska Music Hall of Fame on 27 October 2001 at the Ranch Bowl in Omaha. This tells you everything you ever need to know about the colonials.
“Kinko the Clown”, is the heartwarming story of a childrens party clown who is actually a complete and utter speedofile, and probably a kiddy murderer, as well. They were good days, the seventies. A simpler, happier time. Well, for speedofiles anyway.
If you recover, come back and beg for the LOVERBOY. Gits
