After running into a number of fun covers of the Ventures’ instrumental “Diamond Head,” I decided to do a week dedicated to the song on Fuck Yeah Surf Rock. Each day I’ll be posting a new version of “Diamond Head,” starting with today’s post of the Ventures performing the original track. Diamond Head, in addition to being the name for a film, two separate bands, a record label, a 70s game show and the name of a completely different song by the Beach Boys, is a volcanic tuff cone on Oahu. It looks like a giant crater in the middle of the city, and is a popular tourist destination in Waikiki. Unsurprisingly, Diamond Head has become a popular point of reference for surf bands and other entertainment set in Hawaii.
I should mention “Diamond Head” itself wasn’t a particularly popular Ventures song, although it did chart in the Top 100. It certainly wasn’t in the realm of “Walk Don’t Run” or their covers of “Perfidia” or the Hawaii Five-O theme, for which the Ventures remain well-known. But it’s a good one and I like it. Other musicians seem to enjoy it enough that there’s a wealth of well-done cover versions out there, so I’m declaring it “Diamond Head” week in celebration of its greatness.
Hi all. It’s come to my attention that many of you still visit this website, and yet, you may not be aware of my other web projects. These projects are all updated more frequently than this blog, but I’m working on that as well. But why not take a moment for all of you who read this site and give you an introduction to the others? Then it won’t be awkward when you meet at parties.
Good Songs Bad Lyrics was an idea I had bouncing around in my head for about a year, but I waited to start until earlier this year. I was convinced I would run out of material almost instantaneously. I might, if I focused exclusively on bad lyrics, but the blog has since expanded to cover tacky or ridiculous videos, and bad music industry fashion as well. With that three-part fuel source, I expect us to be able to run indefinitely. Updates every weekday.
Fuck Yeah Surf Rock is new. It’s my own contribution to the narrowcast world of Fuck Yeah tumblrs, such as Fuck Yeah, Tattoos or Fuck Yeah Sharks. I have a deep, deep obsession with surf music that started with the Beach Boys when I was a kid. I definitely know a lot more about it than a guy from Rhode Island who’s never been surfing should, and it killed me that there wasn’t a tumblr for it. So I started it, and it’s fun. Updates every weekday.
I’m also on Twitter now, in case you hadn’t heard. Updates when I feel like it.
I’m also working on other, non-Internet-based projects, but as you might expect, these are difficult for me to link. In any event, I ask that if you like any of the above, please follow, add or visit them appropriately, and maybe, if you’ve got a second, tell your friends about them. Thanks.
I’ve been listening to a lot of good/bad music recently for my blog, Good Songs Bad Lyrics. On GSBL, I comment on songs from the last 50 years that are lyrically sloppy or weak, or videos that are notably ridiculous. I’m always hunting for “Worst Lyrics of All Time!” lists, and seeing what people have to say. I frequently disagree with some people’s assertions about what constitutes “bad lyrics,” which is fine. My blog is very much a taste issue, and what’s more, it’s ultimately just to make people laugh and have a sense of humor about music. I try and make it clear I think most of the songs on the blog are good songs: I greatly prefer these songs with their imperfections over their destruction. But sometimes, I run across songs where the lyrics or videos are so misguided that ceases to be my stance. Such is the case with Trace Adkins’ “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk.”
“Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” seems an innocent enough confection: ostensibly a country song with an urban veneer (but really a Southern-fried disco number) about a woman with a fetching rear end - the “badonkadonk” in question. In case you are dead, or for some other reason weren’t aware, badonkadonk is urban slang for a large and shapely buttocks. I urge you to explore the wide variety of definitions available on Urban Dictionary for the word. There’s a chance that some of Adkins’ audience didn’t know the meaning of the word prior to the release of this song, but I’d be curious as to the numbers on that. It’s a pretty well-worn slang term at this point, and even rural areas would likely have been familiar with it and its decidedly non-country origin in 2005, when the song was released.
This begs the question, then, why Adkins (or more accurately, writers Jamey Johnson, Dallas Davidson and Randy Houser) felt the need to use badonkadonk, other than the obvious grade-school rhyme with honky tonk. The song itself is just barely a honky tonk song, dipping into disco and straight pop rhythms most of the time, and badonkadonk is slang that is completely removed from the setting in question. It would seem like pandering to write a song called “Zydeco Hos,” wouldn’t it? (I just gave someone a great idea for a song - my apologies if it’s popular.) These three writers took an already established term from black street slang and put a country coat of paint on it to make it sell, and indeed it did. In that sense, it’s hard for me to see “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” as anything other than straight-up cultural appropriation.
The video reinforces this idea in what may be the worst way possible. The whole production looks like some sort of nightmarish mash-up entitled Hip-Hop Goes Country!. All throughout, it shamelessly apes the signature fish-eye lens shots of hip-hop video director Hype Williams to extend Adkins’ hands, which are constantly in search of “the badonkadonk,” into grotesque tentacles. Somewhat ironic, considering the overwhelming majority of the women featured in the video don’t possess anything close to what a black audience would label as a badonkadonk. The dance moves are straight out of rap videos circa 1998, emphasizing the video’s seemingly unspoken motto of “rap the whole family can enjoy.” And then, of course, there’s the fact that despite using an obviously black slang term in the title of the song, there’s not a single black person in the entire video.
At three minutes in, the tone changes and the video shifts into what I can only assume is parody. Adkins talks over the song about being only in it for “the badonkadonk,” despite not actually having seen one in the video yet. Then, with a light disco-funk groove leftover from 1975, “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” plods on as the dancing girls from before don glittering hot pants and roller skates. This smacks of the director desperately throwing everything in pop culture against the wall hoping something will stick. What’s more, this shotgun technique seems to have worked, propelling the song to #2 on Billboard’s Hot Country chart and #30 and #33 on the Hot 100 and Hot Pop charts respectively.
The country music market has long been built on the success of appealing stars like Adkins singing tunes written by other people, much like the pop music industry. There are exceptions to the rules in both genres, of course, but “exceptions” is an accurate term here. Rock music seems to have its own rules about authenticity, even though many popular rock bands collaborate with songwriters or buy songs outright. From what I know of the country music world, it’s very difficult to get a song picked up by a star or producer if you’re not already part of the system. Jamey Johnson and his crew were already inside, and according to this interview, wrote this song based on a night in a dance club. Adkins apparently loved it and picked it up as soon as he heard it. Heard what though, exactly? A heartfelt story? A fun song? Or a chance to score on a silly rhyme with a silly word with a white audience by taking all the black out of it?
Full disclosure: I’m a white guy from the Northeast. Country’s not in my blood or part of my history, nor is hip-hop or rap. That said, I do know what a cash-in looks like when I see it. Usually they’re well done, so as to distract you from the hatchet job that’s being done on someone else’s work - for examples, I refer you to the majority of white rockers in the 50s. But “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” makes my skin crawl a little bit; an obvious rip from urban culture that does the most insulting kind of lip service to its own origin. That makes it a bad song with bad lyrics, and that’s why it’s here instead of Good Songs Bad Lyrics.
9/11 will always have an undeniable significance in New York, but it also happens to be my NYC anniversary. In 2005 on September 11th, I took a Dominican shuttle bus from Providence to New York with a bunch of suitcases, my bass guitar, and next to no prospects. It was, as plans go, a terrible one. But somehow it worked, and four years later, I’m still here. I’m still slightly shocked I haven’t bombed out of the city yet.
I don’t have any milestones to report this year - not because I didn’t do anything, but because I stopped keeping track. This is, of course, the city that never sleeps. I have some things I’d like to accomplish before I hit Year Five, and I’d like to stay in the mindset of “what I want to do” over “what I did.” So I’m going to try and look forward this year. I saw a lot of my extended family and old family friends this summer, and a lot of them asked, “So you think you’re going to stay in New York for a while, then?”
The answer to that question was always, definitively, “Yes.” I can’t imagine moving anywhere else right now, except maybe LA, and only if someone offered me an awesome job. And even then it would be begrudgingly. I’ve built too much in New York. Too many friendships, too many ongoing shows, too many good creative environments and too much access to talented people to leave now. Not before I do the things I want to do. That’s the goal this year. Get those things done, continue to enjoy life. Got your back, NYC.
My current gaming rig and beloved black monolith. I got mine through a friend for wholesale, tax-free, so I did ok in regards to the insanely high pricing for the PS3.
System: I was looking to upgrade to the PS3 as soon as I saw two things - Rock Band and Final Fantasy XIII. That was enough. Also, my PS2 only worked on alternating Tuesdays. I had a bit of money saved that was going to go to a new iPod after the death of my first one. I ended up not having to buy a new one, thanks to the generosity of my employers on my birthday back in ‘07. This money got rolled over into the PS3 purchase, along with the sale of my decrepit PS2 (very little gained there) and, heartbreakingly, my Guitar Hero collection (GH, GH2, GH: Rocks The 80s and two guitars) which would be useless on the PS3. Combined with an Amazon gift card and the return of the now-useless unopened PS2 version of GH3 I got for Christmas, I was able to afford both the system and the original Rock Band in January of ‘08.
I have no idea what possesses me to buy these freaking things, but I bought this, I think, in the winter of ‘02. I suspect there was a sale.
System: Microsoft’s first real entry into the console world was pretty good. The controller pictured was not the one I had. I had the smaller, more comfortable PS2-esque “controller S,” which they had to introduce in Japan because people couldn’t use the monstrosity they originally released. The console itself was enormous and heavy, yes, but it boasted some excellent games and I can’t deny I got many happy hours of play out of it before selling it prior to moving to NYC. I used the money to buy an iPod. Sorry Bill.
I saved for a while, adding $20 bill to my little stash each week to eventually buy a used PlayStation 2. I owned this from like 2002-03 and then again from 2006-08.
System: I had one of the original PlayStation 2s, which means in 2007 it stopped working consistently due to many of its plastic gears having worn out. That’s longer than many people got out of it, so who am I to complain. It also played DVDs. Sort of. I had a DVD player before I had a PS2, so I kept it because it wouldn’t freak out if there was a branching menu or a scratch on the disc.
I don’t know what possessed me to get one, but I believe I traded in my PlayStation for this guy.
System: I know I got it freshman year of college, which might explain it. I had a crazy amount of disposable income freshman year, when all my work-study cash went to dvds and nonsense instead of what it should’ve been going to. It might have been because the Dreamcast had an adapter that let you use a computer monitor instead of a tv, and I didn’t own a tv at the time.
I loved the Super Nintendo, but come 10th grade, there would be no denying the events of 7-7-97.
System: I remember going to Funcoland (still called Funcoland, not GameStop, at the time) to trade in my SNES and games for the original PlayStation. Final Fantasy VII was out, and it was not to be denied. In my nerdy teenage life, this was on par with like, a new album by the Beatles. Not only was it a new Squaresoft game, it was a new Final Fantasy, on a new freaking system. It would be mine. Oh yes.
Ah, the SNES. Stately in thy countenance, worldly in thy repertoire. I definitely consider the SNES to be one of the finest gaming systems ever created.
System: I must’ve traded in my Genesis for the Super Nintendo, because I can’t remember owning the Genesis after I got the Super Nintendo. Clearly this was the right call. The SNES has so many of my all-time favorite games, it’s crazy.
