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lgc
Dec-19-2007, 3:46pm
So I got turned on the Little Benny this week. I was wondering what other kinda messed up songs people like. I do It's a Shame to Whup Your Wife on Sunday, They Locked God Outside The Iron Curtain, Ham Beats All Meat and stuff like that.

What'a yall got?

mandolirius
Dec-19-2007, 4:00pm
On a seasonal note, "Death Might Be Your Santa Claus". Found it on a collection of early gospel music. I forget who performed it. Sort of half-sung, half-preached. It's aimed at people who "ain't livin' right" which, obviously, couldn't include anyone here.

bradeinhorn
Dec-19-2007, 4:26pm
"he's little and he wants you to love him...."

that is so sad

ourgang
Dec-19-2007, 4:37pm
How about - "Please Daddy Don't Get Drunk This Christmas" - John Denver

JHo
Dec-19-2007, 4:55pm
How about - "Please Daddy Don't Get Drunk This Christmas" - John Denver
Yeah, I think you hit the nail right on the head there. How funny and sad a title all at the same time.

mandroid
Dec-19-2007, 5:16pm
Of course there are the traditional ones Like 'Barnacle Bill the Sailor'.

I love the version by Louis Jordan. [recorded 12-20-38]

Lyrics are relatively tame , but they seriously swing the tune.
Ken Burns 'Jazz' film, has Louie Jordan doing 'Calidonia'
for the cameras.

billhay4
Dec-19-2007, 6:25pm
"Honey, you're just a salt lick in my mind."
Bill

MartinD_GibsonA
Dec-19-2007, 7:13pm
Mama's Not Dead, She's Just Playin' Possum
Five Pounds of Possum (In My Headlights Tonight)
If My Nose Was Runnin' Money (I'd Blow it All on You)

Don Smith # # #http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

James P
Dec-19-2007, 7:56pm
I've always wanted to find (and play) "There's no Romance in your Soul" by the Hoosier Hotshots.

swampstomper
Dec-20-2007, 2:03am
I don't think Little Bennie is in bad taste at all. It's strong medicine for sure, but when Carter sings it, the pathos and true depth of feeling for the poor little kid confronting an abusive drunk father is so real (and sad). Better to have this out in the open. Rhonda has one called Little Angels about child sexual abuse -- I don't care for the song as such but I don't think it's in bad taste.

bolannta
Dec-20-2007, 7:10am
Five Pounds of Possum (In My Headlights Tonight)
Bad taste?
Not if you know how to cook possum.

jim_n_virginia
Dec-20-2007, 7:18am
When you say songs in bad taste (ain't no might to it!) I can't help but think of David Allen Coe's X-Rated Album of songs he wrote when he was in prison. I bought a cassette tape of if when he was playing some local Honky Tonk around here years ago not know what was on it.

There are several very funny (albeit raunchy) songs on there and several that are SO racially charged that they would make what Don Imus said sound like a compliment!

One of the songs I learned off that cassette is "The Three Biggest Lies" #but I haven't sang it in years because the only place you could sing that song and get away with it would be in a bar full of all male bikers (the female bikers would kick my...)

Steve Cantrell
Dec-20-2007, 7:45am
How about "Poor White Folks"? I really like the tune, but can't bring myself to call it in a jam because of the title. I hear it referred to a lot as "PWF".

Red Henry
Dec-20-2007, 9:08am
When performing at weddings, we like to play "Will You Be Loving Another Man."
. . . . .

But during a completely different performance, a tragi-comic situation occurred. We were on stage for a Sunday gospel set at a Florida BG festival in the 1970s. There were a lot of stoned people there (no surprise). Some of them were swimming in a small lake, and one of them decided to dive in. I guess he didn't know that the water was only six inches deep, and he broke his neck.

The festival promoter told us to keep playing. We didn't have a set list for a situation like this, so we just played whatever came into our heads. A med-evac helicopter came and took the patient aboard. As the 'copter lifted off again, Murphy thought of a song and started singing it without thinking-- it was "I'll Fly Away."

Red.

leathermarshmallow
Dec-20-2007, 9:14am
How about, "He drinks tequila and she talks dirty in Spanish"

Tom Mullen
Dec-20-2007, 9:18am
Without a doubt.....Knoxville Girl......bluegrass violence at its most extreme. I wont play or listen to the song.

carlnut
Dec-20-2007, 9:53am
The ugly girl song. It's the one that the chorus says Always marry an ugly girl, thats the only kind. She'll never ever leave you but if she does you won't mind. And another one is Hallelujah i'm a bum.

johnsmusic
Dec-20-2007, 9:55am
"Plastic Jesus" I do it at most gigs and people love it but the one guy in the band (and his wife...) think that it's in bad taste. I grew up in an Italian family and my Grandfather's old Buick always had at least Jesus, Mary, and Saint Christopher stuck on the dashboard so the song is alwways nostalgic to me.

mandopete
Dec-20-2007, 9:59am
Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer?

Ken Berner
Dec-20-2007, 10:15am
56 Gibson Hoss, I think "Pretty Polly" is fairly gruesome as well. "Tom Dooley" was hung (pardon) and there is "Banks Of The Ohio", "Blackbirds And The Crows" and my favorite "Perfume, Powder and Lead". There are several good killin' songs out there.

Frank Russell
Dec-20-2007, 12:07pm
Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road. I play it every Friday at my local circle. All the old folks know the lyrics now, and a friend took the song back to his local jam in Maine to spread the sickness. Frank

hoffmannia2k7
Dec-20-2007, 12:37pm
When I get married it won't be for riches, I'll marry a big fat gal who won't wear my britches.

Tom T. Hall - Dolly Parton's T%&(s

My favorite though is You Ain't Talkin to ME by Charlie Poole

His wife says
let's jump in the lake and end this trial and strife.

He relies, when the lake goes dry its time to die, you ain't talkin to me

A traveler stops in at a home for some dinner and a bed so the hostess asks him to chop some wood for his stay

his reply - your food tastes good but I can't chop wood, no you ain't talking to me.

Bad mother, you ain't talkin to me!

Josh_Akins
Dec-20-2007, 2:57pm
Alot of songs by David Allan Coe are seriously in bad taste.

thefiddlemon
Dec-20-2007, 3:13pm
What about the old classic...
"Git yer tongue outta my mouth (I'm kissin' you good-bye)"

James P
Dec-20-2007, 3:50pm
Eddie Jefferson's "Benny's From Heaven" could be fun to play. #For really bad taste I don't think you could do much better (worse?) than Francis Zappa's "Magdelena". #The polka/bad sci-fi sountrack/rock verse to chorus transitions would work nicely in a stringband, but those lyrics are over the line!

allenhopkins
Dec-20-2007, 3:54pm
The Rodeo Song

"It's forty below and I don't give a ----, got a heater in my truck and I'm off to the rodeo..." etc.

Back in the '80's we had to play it every night in the bar. Only lucky we didn't have to play it every set.

If for any perverse reason someone wants the entire dumb, pointless set of lyrics, they're here. (http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Rodeo-Song-lyrics-Chris-LeDoux/7DC0D686CE4BA1F848256E4B000C1B45)

Treblemaker
Dec-20-2007, 4:01pm
The Sheik of Araby

martinedwards
Dec-20-2007, 4:04pm
dead puppies (http://youtube.com/watch?v=57KDDKbfhmI) A pal used to do a really gentle mellow sweet sung version of this......

Rodney Carrington "Show them to me" (http://youtube.com/watch?v=uelk54jKuA8&feature=related)

Rodney Carrington "T***ies & Beer) (http://youtube.com/watch?v=0ylRplLnU84&feature=related)

Frank Russell
Dec-20-2007, 4:33pm
Allen - The redneck band I used to see that played the rodeo song, which they called "You Piss me Off," also played the PG-13 version of "I've Been Everywhere," with the lyrics "I see pubic hair, man, in my underwear, man...." Pretty deep stuff. My local circle is made up of older teetotalers, and my fellow pickers routinely make songs more palatable for them. An example: in the Stones song Dead Flowers, done Townes Van Zandt style, we sing "I'll be in my basement room, with some ice cream and a spoon," instead of "with a needle and a spoon." I don't want to get kicked out, the food is too good. Frank

Bret Roberts
Dec-20-2007, 5:12pm
Alot of songs by David Allan Coe are seriously in bad taste.

IMO.

I think it would be closer to the truth if it was said that:

Though the years, David Allan Coe has written, and performed many beautiful songs. However, a few of his songs may be considered to be in bad taste.

Sorry, not getting on a soapbox,I just really like alot of his stuff.

John Kasley
Dec-20-2007, 6:04pm
And there's also the Cajun version of "Grandman Got Run Over by a Reindeeer"...."Boudreaux Got Run Over by a Mudboat" (aka "Boudreaux's Christmas")by Bayou Boudreaux.
Still available on a Cajun Christmas anthology from Swallow Records in Ville Platte, LA
http://www.flattownmusic.com/Louisiana_Christmas_-_Various__P198.cfm

allenhopkins
Dec-21-2007, 11:23am
...My fellow pickers routinely make songs more palatable for them. An example: in the Stones song Dead Flowers, done Townes Van Zandt style, we sing "I'll be in my basement room, with some ice cream and a spoon," instead of "with a needle and a spoon." I don't want to get kicked out, the food is too good. Frank
Yeah, in our folk club, some people have had problems with the "sit and pass the pipe around" line from John Denver's Poems, Prayers & Promises. Nice people, though, and as a lifetime non-druggy, I can see their point.

And yet, how many country songs about drinking are there? A zillion?

Oh, another "bad tsste" song (from Flatt & Scruggs):

He Went To Sleep and the Hogs Ate Him

Rroyd
Dec-21-2007, 11:50am
There's the one Larry Stephenson recently recorded, "Clinch Mountain Mystery", with the description of the pile of body parts, and his more recent contribution, "Knoxville Boy."

Peter Hackman
Dec-21-2007, 3:32pm
Tom Lehrer? I hold your hand in mine.

Ted Eschliman
Dec-21-2007, 3:42pm
Sometimes, it isn't the song itself, but the way it's sung: Blue Moon of Kentucky (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE2jzHjfGxY)...

Sonomabob
Dec-21-2007, 4:24pm
I always liked "Would Jesus wear a Rolex on his TV show?"

pickinpox
Dec-21-2007, 7:44pm
Does your spearmint lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight? Not sure if it is in bad taste but it tastes bad. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

Chip Booth
Dec-22-2007, 8:13pm
Does anyone out there know about the band Ween? I use to play "P**s Up a Rope", a tune from 12 Golden Country Greats. But only after 2am in college bars.

Chip

lgc
Dec-22-2007, 9:00pm
I was hooping for less self conscious songs. More trad stuff. I have hundreds of Zappa tunes. I was hoping to be pointed more in the directon of older songs.

allenhopkins
Dec-22-2007, 9:40pm
Well, lgc, you asked "what other messed up songs people liked." Depending on what you mean by "messed up," most of these songs qualify in one way or 'tother.

Perhaps you might refine your definition. If what you're looking for are "traditional or older songs with questionable/offensive content," there's a ton of those. Many murder ballads (Knoxville Girl has been cited), which are not only violent, but in many cases sexist as well 末 men murdering women because the women won't marry them, or become pregnant, or are unfaithful, or for no apparent reason. The Two Sisters in all its variants has an older sister murdering a younger one out of jealousy, and then the younger girl's corpse is cut up by a musician and made into a musical instrument (harp, fiddle, banjo depending on the version), which then magically accuses the murderer 末 who then is either hanged or burned. Pretty strong stuff.

There are many traditional and older songs which demean women; you mentioned It's A Shame To Beat Your Wife On Sunday ("When you've got Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday" etc.). Bald-Headed End Of a Broom, The Man That Wrote 'Home Sweet Home' Never Was a Married Man, Devilish Mary 末 list goes on and on. I remember a little ditty Pete Seeger sang on his old Darling Corey 10" record:
If you've a wife and get no good of her,
Here is how you easy get rid of her:
Take her out and chop off the head of her,
Earlye in the morning.

Doesn't really fit in with Pete's overall political orientation, does it?

And of course there are tons of songs that celebrate drunkenness, drug abuse, promiscuity, infidelity, crime 末 all the things that keep the media in business. I'd need to sit at this keyboard all night to even scratch the surface. From Rye Whiskey to Jake Leg Blues, Take a Whiff On Me, I'm a Rambler and a Gambler, Codyne, Rosin the Beau, Wild Bill Jones, Back Door Man, Deep Ellum Blues,If You's a Viper, Candy Man, Richland Woman, the list is interminable.

How to find them? Many reissue labels have put out albums of songs on particular topics. Doing some extensive searches for styles like the double entendre "hokum" music of the '30's (Please Warm My Wiener, Smoke My Cigarette, etc.) will point you toward specific sources and performers. There's a lot of it out there, might take a bit of digging 末 more than posting on a mandolin website 末 but you can find it.

KanMando
Dec-22-2007, 10:22pm
Just about anything by R. Crumb and the Cheap Suit Serenaders - especially their 78 rpm "party record".

Bob J.

Chip Booth
Dec-22-2007, 10:36pm
Try Cuckoo's Nest (http://www.scoyote.net/equation/Equationfm/Lyrics/CuckooNest.htm)

Peter Hackman
Dec-22-2007, 11:42pm
[/i] 末 list goes on and on. #I remember a little ditty Pete Seeger sang on his old Darling Corey 10" record:
If you've a wife and get no good of her,
Here is how you easy get rid of her:
Take her out and chop off the head of her,
Earlye in the morning.

Doesn't really fit in with Pete's overall political orientation, does it?
No?

mandocrucian
Dec-26-2007, 4:59pm
Bad taste song(s) of the day (Dec. 26th)

"Tiger By The Tail" - Buck Owens
"Tiger Rag" (contains the chrous line, "Hold that tiger..")
"Tiger In My Tank" - Jim Nesbit (C&W)
"Tiggerific Birthday Party"

"Bungle In The Jungle" - Jethro Tull

mandolirius
Dec-26-2007, 5:09pm
<I was hooping for less self conscious songs. More trad stuff. I have hundreds of Zappa tunes. I was hoping to be pointed more in the directon of older songs.>

"Give Me Back My Five Dollars" and a host of others from Uncle Dave Macon.

The chorus to this one goes: give me back my 5 dollars I paid for my wife
i'd be a fool to pay someone to sentence me for life

mandolirius
Dec-26-2007, 5:10pm
Bad taste song(s) of the day (Dec. 26th)
<"Tiger By The Tail" - Buck Owens
"Tiger Rag"
"Tiger In My Tank" - Jim Nesbit (C&W)
"Tiggerific Birthday Party"

"Bungle In The Jungle" - Jethro Tull>

"Hold That Tiger"? http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

asmiler
Dec-26-2007, 5:53pm
<Does anyone out there know about the band Ween? #I use to play "P**s Up a Rope", a tune from 12 Golden Country Greats. But only after 2am in college bars.>


That is such a great album and I've always wanted to hear bluegrass versions.

Clyde Clevenger
Dec-26-2007, 6:50pm
Sometimes it's not the song, it's the singer. Guy Clark's Stuff the Works is one of my favorite songs, it was sung at our wedding a few years back. Last spring we were singing at the grand opening of an art gallery. Stuff That Works was on the set list, when I sing the line "The kind of stuff you don't hang on the wall" I got the "bad eye" from about 45 artists. Great song in the wrong place.

Crowder
Dec-26-2007, 6:57pm
I'm thinking about working up a Robbie Fulks song called "She Took a Lot of Pills (And Died)"

8ch(pl)
Dec-26-2007, 7:44pm
My band's harmonica player ddoes an old Scot's tune called Cocck of the North. It is also refered to as "Chase Me Charlie" which has unappropriate words.

"Chase me Charlie through the Barley....."

We were at a Senior's home once when he played it. There was a lady singing these off colour lyrics. Pretty funny, she had some form of dementia. Whenever we go back there I tell Mike not to do that song.

guitar junkie
Dec-27-2007, 1:59am
Girl You Aint Much Fun Since I Quit Drinkin'

not even thinking about Spinal Tap songs here....

allenhopkins
Dec-27-2007, 10:50am
Anything on Pat Sky's old LP. Songs That Made America Famous.

Check it out here. (http://www.adelphirecords.com/Folk/4101PatSky.html)

bnjrpkr
Dec-27-2007, 5:10pm
There's a bed and breakfast down the road that has live music on saturday nights.Once they had a gospel set and the Karoake singer didn't have enough material,so he sang "Devil woman" http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/rock.gif

Elliot Luber
Dec-28-2007, 9:28am
How about the old stndard: "I wanna kiss her, but she won't let me?"

Rroyd
Dec-28-2007, 10:37am
On the last album that Keith Whitley recorded, which was being prepared for release when he died, he had recorded a song that he had co-written entitled "I've Done Everything That Hank Did but Die." For some reason that one had been deleted when the album was released.

Buxton Bumpkin
Dec-28-2007, 11:15am
another one from the mid 60's I think, 'Git your bisquits in the oven and your buns on into bed'

mandocrucian
Dec-28-2007, 11:38am
I don't know what this topic is supposed to be about... to name off titles of risque double-entre songs? Poo-poo ka-ka lyrics?

"You can <s>fool</s> offend some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not <s>fool</s> offend all of the people all of the time." #- Abe Lincolin (paraphrased)

Just about any song can be accused of being in "bad taste" depending on the situation, the mode of delivery (derisive, sarcastic, etc.), the religion/politics/race/ethnicity/etc. of the "party taking offence".

Situational "bad taste"......
a little girl (or boy) gets abducted, mnolested or is found strangled in a dumpster...
"Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" - a lot of folks have done this one...but I liked Pigpen's delivery off the 1st Dead album
"Little Red Riding Hood" - Sam The Sham
"Fiddle About" - The Who
"Midnight Rambler" - Rolling Stones
"Play With Fire" - Rolling Stones
"Little Girl and The Dreadful Snake" - Bill Monroe
now,... the songs have a completely different connotation

school shooting?
"99 Year Blues" - Hot Tuna
"Bad Company" - Bad Company
"Random Violence" - Peter Stampfel & The Bottlecaps

corporate functions.....
"Mr. Sheep" - Randy Newman
"My Life Is Good" - Randy Newman
and depending on the delivery...these could either go over great or create havoc....
"Money Makes The World Go 'Round" - from Cabaret
"Money (It's A Rich Man's World)" - ABBA
"Money (That's What I Want)"

political rallies
"Duetschland Uber Alles"
"The Marseilles" (French national anthem)
"The Internationale" (communist anthem)
"Dixie" <span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'>(in fact almost any national anthem can be used to sonically pick at a scab, including your (depending on the delivery...... i.e. Roseanne Barr, Hendrix))</span>
any Nazi drinking songs, #Jim Crow era blacktop minstrel songs about "darkies"
"Rednecks" - Randy Newman
"Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die Rag" - Country Joe
"God Save The Queen" - Sex Pistols
"Springtime For Hitler" - Mel Brooks
"Great Nations of Europe" - Randy Newman
any of the songs from the movie "Bob Roberts"
"Roll With The Punches" - Randy Newman
"Loot" - Peter Bellamy (setting of the Rudyard Kipling poem)
"American Idiot" - Green Day
"Drug Store Truck Drivin' Man" - The Byrds

Religion/faith/etc. provide a lot of easy pressure points to strike and buttons to push.....
"Ape Man" - The Kinks
"Sympathy For The Devil" - Rolling Stones
"Stand Up For Judas" - Leon Rosselson (covered by Dick Gaughan)
"Black Sabbath" - Black Sabbath
"Highway To Hell" - AC/DC
"Imagine" - John Lennon
"Plastic Jesus"
"Brian Song" - Monty Python (theme from "The Life Of Brian")
"God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind)" - Randy Newman
"Heartattack and Vine" - Tom Waits

weddings......
"Love The One You're With" - Steve Stills
"Wedding In Cherokee County" - Randy Newman
"White Wedding" - Billy Idol
"Why Don't We Get Drunk And Screw" - Jimmy Buffet
"I'll Regret It In The Morning" - Richard & Linda Thompson
"Alabama Song" - Brecht/Weil #(covered by The Doors)

And there's probably some here who think that this post is in "bad taste". I suggest a Sid Vicious style rendition of "Kumbaya"...just for you!
http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif

NH

arbarnhart
Dec-28-2007, 11:56am
Just about any song can be accused of being in "bad taste" depending on the situation, the mode of delivery (derisive, sarcastic, etc.), the religion/politics/race/ethnicity/etc. of the "party taking offence".
I remember many years ago when I lived in Atlanta there was a string of murders, all young boys of color, and a DJ on Z93 played "Another One Bites the Dust" after reporting that another body had been found. The producer interrupted the song to announce that the DJ was being escorted from the building.

I once heard a punk rock song about a wheelchair whore called "Paraplegic [a synonym for cat]".

Sometimes it goes the other way also. Musicians get applauded for things that would normally be offensive. I was at an AC/DC concert once where the lead singer mooned the crowd to wild cheering.

allenhopkins
Dec-29-2007, 1:59am
I don't know what this topic is supposed to be about... to name off titles of risque double-ent[end]re songs? Poo-poo ka-ka lyrics?
"I was wondering what other kinda messed up songs people like. "
末 from the original post...

Allows a lot of latitude, which is clearly being exercised. However, the OP then went on to narrow the topic to more traditional songs.

As Nils says, anyone can find anything "in bad taste" in one context or another. Still an interesting topic.

Peter Hackman
Feb-04-2008, 2:01pm
I just listened to Lord Nottingham's War Dance with Spade Cooley. It's about insanity.

Bob DeVellis
Feb-04-2008, 2:24pm
The story I heard about the Pat Sky album was that he had a contractual obligation to produce one more record but he really wanted to part ways with the record company. So, he intentionally came up with a collection of songs that he thought would be too offensive to release. To his surprise, when he shared these songs with people, they got a kick out of them. Because people who knew him realized that the blatant misanthropy (to put it mildly) of the lyrics didn't at all reflect Pat's world view, they viewed them as a form of parody, kind of like Randy Newman's "Short People," which isn't a criticism of short people but of bigots. Word of the songs spread by word of mouth. Gradually, the songs got more and more traction and the album ended up being a hit of sorts.

Steve Davis
Feb-04-2008, 3:32pm
Tom Lehrer wrote quite a few including:

"The old dope peddler"
"Poisoning pigeons in the park"
"The Vatican rag"