Mud on the Tires

Hello there faithful readers! I’m Ashley, the resident “Country Music Expert”. Let me tell you a bit about myself, I was born and raised on country music. Some of my earliest memories are watching the Statler Brothers Show with my Grandparents and my first concert was to see Neal McCoy in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. My second concert was to see a (very young) Leann Rimes at the Bloomsburg Fair.

I’m not as big in to country music these days; I mainly listen to ska and punk, with some top 40 and country mixed in. I lost interest in country in part due to what it sounds like now. I’m sorry, but Taylor Swift is not country and Toby Keith is my redneck nightmare.

For my first post, I’m going to talk to you about Brad Paisley and his song “Mud on the Tires”. Brad Paisley is by far one of the best guitar players in country music today; he’s absolutely phenomenal. I wish I could have found an example; however youtube failed me and they’re all crappy recordings from fans at concerts. He has truly perfected the art of a “high pitched” guitar solo. You’ll just have to take my word for it.

However, “Mud on the Tires” is quite possibly one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard, it’s essentially a redneck cliché about buying a new truck and going mudding. The song doesn’t actually have much substance to it, and I find that slightly insulting to its country roots. When you consider some of the more classic country songs, not matter how silly they may have seemed – they all have substance. This song doesn’t have that, and that is a major gaff when it comes to what I see country music as. When I think back to songs that I still know the words to and that I won’t change the station when they come on – they all have some sort of substance behind them; consider a few songs “Fancy” by Reba McEntire or “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” by the Charlie Daniels Band. Those songs have a substantial meaning behind them.

“Fancy” is a song about a young girl who gets sent away by her mother to be a prostitute. She goes through having her mother make her a fancy red dress, and cockroaches crawling across her shoe all the way to making her life better and making a name for herself. “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” is about a battle between a man and Satan. It’s a classic good vs evil story that is based on Georgia and features amazing fiddle playing.

For a better example of what Brad Paisley is capable of, I’m including “Whiskey Lullaby” in this post. Paisley joined Alison Krauss for this beautiful song. The song is about a man and a woman, and the woman is caught cheating and the man leaves, eventually drinking himself to death. (In the video, he’s portrayed as a soldier returning from the war, which walks in on the cheating.) She follows suit and also dies, in the video they are reunited. It’s a sad song; again, it has a meaning love never fails, even in death.

See ya around!
Ashley

If I had just one wish, only one demand

During the research of my first contribution to the “Box to Abu Dhabi,” I mulled over the endless amount of content that deserves to be here. Among the scent of stale popcorn, and mindless, repetitive trivia projected onto the screen while waiting for a movie to commence, I noticed a familiar combination of chords. The first few bars of the handpicked guitar start quietly, almost innocently, which then leads to the grating, seizure-inducing, primitive snarl emanating from the "singer." Soon, those wretched sound waves set the cascade of events by vibrating my eardrum and transmitting the information to my brain, I knew I had stumbled upon my first endeavor.

Back in the late 90s, in the sun-washed, murky swamps of Tallahassee, Florida, the seeds were planted for founding members, Scott Stapp and Mark Tremonti, to establish their abhorrent, worthless excuse for a band, Creed. Before an alligator could bite a hand off, or a hurricane destroy their equipment, they unleashed the wrath upon the ears of the ignorant American public.

Their destiny was set early on when they originally named the band, “Naked Toddler.” (I'm not making this up.) One would assume that having a name like that would be a violation of the Florida Statute 847.001(3) which is defined as: “’Child pornography’ means any image depicting a minor engaged in sexual conduct.” Unfortunately for the rest of the world, they were not immediately cuffed and assigned a prison cell.  Too bad.  

Look at these guys, seriously

Now to the topic at hand: Why “With Arms Wide Open” deserves to be in the box to Abu Dhabi.  This pseudo-Christian, semi-spiritual modern rock band released their sophomore effort, “Human Clay,” in the Fall of the year 1999, and those of us hoping for the album to dissolve into music history were greatly disheartened. “With Arms Wide Open” hit the airwaves as a single in the year 2000, and subsequently won a Grammy Award in 2001. This hollow opus about a man surprised to find out that he would become a father is quickly overshadowed by his love of himself. The lyrics are so boring, and uninspired that his excitement about this fact is lost on the audience. This joyous occasion is not only marred by the total lack of intuitive lyrics, but also the repetitive and predicable structure of the song. The shallowness of the lyrics, coupled with the lack of musical talent in the band creates a song that is utterly unlistenable. The studio where this song has been recorded should be burned to sediment, and the grounds quarantined so that future generations will not be inspired to write a similar tune.

Finally, not only is the song unbelievably horrific, the video that accompanied the video is full of pretentious douchebags dressed in leather jackets in a fake thunderstorm who obviously have a god-complex. Toward the end, I was hoping for some gracious soul to just push Scott Stapp over the edge, or at least take a bat to one of his knees.  Lightning would've been a god-send. I'm actually thinking about suing this band for reparations for the crimes against humanity after the release of this song. Unfortunately, they have reunited and released a new album in 2009. Watch the video below in order to understand the downright triviality of this song, and subsequently, this band.

I submit this for your approval to be included in the Box to Abu Dhabi.

-Todd

Sesame Street is a wonderful thing.

So after some discussion today, Chris totally thought I was going to pack this song up:

There's no way I could pack Frankie Goes to Hollywood up.  I mean, seriously - without Frankie, how would people know when to relax?  And more importantly, what the hell would this girl have to wear?!?

Anyway, this song totally deserves to be on this list, even if they've made some amazing music in the past:

It is truly my belief that if U2 stopped making music in 1996, they'd be one of the greatest bands of all time.  That said, they didn't, and this steaming pile of crap annoyed each and everyone one of us, endlessly saying "YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH!" in iPod commercials for what felt like eleventy billion years.

Note - I just had to add eleventy to my dictionary in Google Chrome.  It should be in there, even if it's not a real number...yet.

Speaking of numbers, that's my other gripe with this song - Bono apparently doesn't know how to count.  This lack of number knowledge stinks up the song from the beginning, with this poor attempt at counting in Spanish in the first line:

"Uno dos tres CATORCE!"

Roughly translated, that becomes this in English:

"One, two, three, FOURTEEN!"

Bono, it doesn't matter how much AIDS you cure - you need to be able to count to four to survive in this world, regardless of what language you're doing it in.  Someone get the Count of Counting on the phone, as I think we need to have a counting intervention.

If you're looking for some good U2, check out "With or Without You," or "Where the Streets Have No Name."  Leave this one alone though, so we can swipe it and send it on its way to the sunny shores of Abu Dhabi.

-Matt

Goodbye to Romance

The first song that I would like to throw in this box and my gift to Abu Dabi ,was released in November 2000 and It reached No. 1 in 15 countries.  Sounds awesome right? WRONG!!! 

CRAZYTOWN gave birth to this demon child known simply as "Butterfly". Penned by SHIFTY SHELL SHOCK, how could this song not be awesome?

 Thanks ICP guy for making the best face ever by the way.

The elements that make this song bad are the fact that it was over played until the summer of 2001, the lyrics,  the music video and that this was meant to be a love song all are the equivalent of a bad burrito after a night of heavy drinking. 

Everywhere I turned this was being blasted through my ear drums, the roller skating rink (a usual Friday night hang out), friends houses, most radio stations, the dull hum of the “Pretty Little Ditty” sample coming from multiple headphones on the bus. I admit, I myself had the CD, and listened to this song, for a month,  but after that month I was torn between hiding it in my CD book’s rear section or breaking it in half and mailing it back to CRAZYTOWN demanding a refund. Eventually I made the right choice.

 This horrible little ditty included such enchanting lyrics as

“Girls, me and you like Sid and Nancy/So sexy... almost evil/Talkin' about butterflies in my head”

What? Why! Really?  

Lets examine a moment.  So you want to get high and then stab her in a New York hotel and not remember it? Am I getting that right?  Is this because she is sexy/ evil??? What the fuck is with the butterflies then? Is this girl possessed? Is this why he wants to go all Sid and Nancy?

Look at dis guy!

Here is a formula for a crappy video start with a bunch or tattooed pierced mofos, in what looks like an early draft of Avatar’s Pandora,  pierced and fuggs, someone has a dare shirt, then there is girls, with Hot topic wings on, and the most bizarre eyelashes I guess meant to look like cartoon butterflies.  But wait the best part can be found at about 1:22, because the guy’s fucking lame star tattoo’s fly off his shoulder and turn into stars in the sky.  Yes, real stars.  Why? Just fucking because, the band members are dancing, and beckoning the butterflies to “come and dance with me”

This crap sandwich of a song was proposed to me as an “our song” situation, and as this lover of awesomely 80’s rock love ballads, musicals, bonjovi and essentially every love song from 1941- at that point 2000, choked down the bile and accepted this deal breaking abomination of a song, the song meant to make me smitten and swoon when I thought about it, well that relationship ended but my disdain for this song never quite went away. I would rather have needles jammed under my finger nails that listen to another moment of this song.  Enjoy Abudabi!

-Angie

I'm not trying to state the obvious here...

...because it's too easy to put the obvious ones in the box.  This one can't escape for long, though, and is a prime example of the requirements of what needs to be sent to Abu Dhabi forever and ever and ever.

That's quite the freeze-frame image for Youtube to select.  However, the Naked Cowboy does have one thing in common with the song and artist that have been selected - both are displaying their junk in public.

Nickelback, in my mind, is everything that is wrong with music today.  Boring, uninspired, mind-numbing lyrics.  Cliches out the ass.  And, of course, they think they're the greatest thing in the world.  If you disagree, they'll try to set you straight (note - I can't find the footage right now of Chad Kroeger attacking that dude for saying to his face that they suck, but as soon as I do, it'll be posted here).

Anyway, Rock Star isn't their only bad song:

That's right - they've made more than one shitty song!  In fact, I'd be willing to bet if you looked through their catalog, you'd find nothing BUT bad songs.  I hope you have warmer weather clothes, guys, because Abu Dhabi's climate is a bit different from Vancouver.

Then again, it doesn't matter where we ship them, because it looks like we're not the only ones with this opinion:

Ladies and gentlemen, the first full catalog to get packed away - Nickelback.  See ya, guys.  I almost wish things had ended on better terms...for you at least.  These terms are perfect for us.

-Matt

A little bit of History...

As the original creator of the idea of throwing songs in a box, I must take a second to look at the original cargo that was sent to Abu Dhabi.

Aww look, it's Nemal. Self proclaimed "World's Cutest Kitty." But let not kid ourselves, we live in a world of icanhascheezburger, and those cutesy Animal Planet shows. For crying out loud, we have KEYBOARD CAT!

I can't play keyboard that well.

Never the less, we still have Nermal, the overly irritating antagonist of Garfield. She can't help herself honestly - I guess she was just as Lady Gaga would say "Born This Way," if born that way means mind numbingly annoying. So searching and not finding any other alternative, our lasagna loving feline had no other choice but to send out (exclusively on UPS Ground) Nermal to a world in turmoil, The United Arab Emirates. Now don't get me wrong, Abu Dhabi is one of the most beautiful places in the world, so why not put the "World's Cutest Kitty" in a city just as pretty as her. I think that only makes sense.





I'm getting off track. The song I would throw in the box is "Down With The Sickness."

Oh 2000, I remember you well. I was in 9th grade and playing high school football. And we were in quite a rut of bad music. And during the height of it, when it looked like we had seen the worst, Disturbed comes out with the sports anthem based on the lead singer clearing his throat.

Let's remember during this time, we were surrounded by great sports anthems like "Break Stuff" and "Last Resort," songs that would undoubtedly be played in lower level MMA events and YMCA Basketball tournaments until the end of time.  And in like a phoenix comes the title track off of Disturbed's debut album, and quicker than you can say "wah ah ah ah" this song becomes the theme for every bro in the weight room with the tribal tattoo.

As someone who enjoys going to hockey games and other assorted sports events, I can only ask that we replace "Down With The Sickness" with anything else on the face of the earth. The Morman Tabernacle Choir, The Mama's and The Papa's, Billy Ocean and countless others I can't think of right now. And hopefully with this gone, the fans of Disturbed can "Deal with these changes."

So get up and get down with sickness, one last time, because I am throwing it in the box.

-Chris

I'll be the first to throw a song in the box.

I think this is the best (or worst, really) way to start to pack this box.  I have a feeling it's going to be pretty packed, so I want to make sure to get the worst possible stuff in there before it's too heavy for us to afford shipping.

This song makes me ashamed to be around a college.  One night, I was doing my radio show, and some dude called and requested this song, saying that he wanted to hear it before going to the Asher Roth show at the Sherman Theater that night.  I told him absolutely not, and even went as far as to tell him to listen to it on his iTunes before he went out.

I mean, with a super-intelligent chorus like this, how can you go wrong?:

"I love college.  Hey!  I love drinking.  Hey!  I love women.  Hey!  Yeah, I love college.  Hey!"

The whole song is just bad stereotype after bad stereotype, recited by some kid who probably didn't even participate in half the things he's singing about.

Long story short, if there's room, I vote that we put Asher Roth himself in the box.

-Matt