Spring break is a gigantic tease. If you’re lucky, you go somewhere warm and exciting where you can sip drinks with funny little umbrellas in them and whoop as loud as you want about how great spring break is, all the while representing the best America can be to the residents of various countries south of the border.
If you’re less fortunate, then you just lounge in Madison, or whatever city from which you happen to hail – relaxing, trying to avoid work as much as humanly possible and sipping drinks with funny little umbrellas in them. (Note: Funny little umbrellas are available at Target in packs of 30 for $2.75.)
But then you come back. And suddenly you have a lot more work than you remember having, the weather still isn’t as good as it ought to be and you get in the kind of mood that Limp Bizkit expressed perfectly on track four of its 1999 magnum opus Significant Other. It’s a downer.
March is supposed to roar in like a lion and prance merrily out like a lamb. But in Wisconsin, we have Panthera leo (as they say in Latin and Wikipedia) for at least a couple more weeks.
In what has to be the most gigantic stretch of a transition ever written, the irritating distraction of spring break reminds me a bit of a certain type of pop song, namely pop songs which choose grisly murders as their subject. Whoa! How the hell did I get there?
Well here’s how the comparison works: Spring break lulls you into a false sense of security, and by the time you wake up and smell the impending exams, you’re in serious trouble.
In faux-conjunction, pop songs about murder lull you into this same trap – with their jangling repetitions and earworm-ready hooks – and by the time you wake up and realize that the song was about murder, the pop standard of three minutes and 14 seconds have passed. So, here are some of those songs that spring break somehow reminded me of. And if I hear the words “phoned” and “in” in the same sentence, well, let’s just say I actually think Stagger Lee was a pretty decent role model.
“Excitable Boy” – Warren Zevon
Warren Zevon is the absolute master of the offbeat: a seemingly harmless pop song that turns into something much weirder than the listener expects. There are many of these gems on his 1978 album Excitable Boy, including a song about an infantryman who has got himself a bit of an Ichabod Crane situation and the pop chart success “Werewolves of London.”
Yet there is perhaps no weirder song than the title track, upon which the “excitable” protagonist goes from doing slightly weird stuff (going to dinner in his Sunday best for no particular reason) to the downright insane (raping and killing his date to the prom). Zevon sings the whole song with a passive amiability, punctuating each description of the boy’s wild activities, with the shrug-off line, “Excitable boy, they all said.” Bringing in some backup singers for the chorus, the overall normalcy of the sound only serves to highlight the bizarre lyrical content.
“Staggolee” – Pacific Gas & Electric
Staggolee (or Stagger Lee, or Stack O’Lee) is a famous American folk song that has seen several hundred iterations, the most famous of which is by famous bluesman Mississippi John Hurt. However, on this countdown, the nod goes to Los Angeles band Pacific Gas & Electric for its impossibly smooth, funky take on the legend.
The song is based on a true story in which Lee Shelton, an alleged pimp and definite murderer, shot a man named Billy Lyons for arguing with his politics.
In many versions, including this one, Staggolee doesn’t stop with Lyons. Instead, Rasputin-like, he refuses to die. When he is eventually buried alive, he manages to kill Satan and become the ruler of Hell.
No wonder Quentin Tarantino saw fit to use the song in his movie “Death Proof.” Staggolee’s literally devil-may-care attitude could easily be compared to the one Kurt Russell exudes as the serial killer Stuntman Mike.
“Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” – The Beatles
As with so many other musical elements, The Beatles were absolute masters in telling the charming tale of a homicidal maniac. Their masterpiece is Maxwell, a silver-tongued medical student with an eye for the ladies.
Maxwell seems like a harmless rapscallion; even his weapon of choice, the eponymous silver hammer, is like a child’s plaything. Unfortunately for his girlfriend Joan, his strict teacher and the judge who hears his case, Maxwell’s hammer turns out to be as deadly as Mj lnir.
The Honorable Mention goes to “Run for your Life,” another McCartney product – it seems like that guy has some issues. This track’s lyrics have the effect of cautioning any girlfriend who dares to dally with another man to get the heck out of dodge because a mop-topped pop star is coming for you.
“Pieces” – Dreamend
Dreamend is a side-project of Black Moth Super Rainbow member Ryan Graveface. BMSR make psychedelic electronic bubblegum music, but Dreamend amps the sweetness up to near-unbearable levels – to the point where you feel like you’re listening to the audio equivalent of one of those Claire’s Icing stores for preteen girls.
Thus it is extremely shocking to realize, after you give the album So I Ate Myself, Bite by Bite a couple of listens, that it’s a loose concept album about a cannibalistic serial killer. The album is designed as a gestalt, meaning you won’t understand the angle unless you listen to every song. But with that information in hand, I’m sure you can imagine what “Pieces” refers to.
Jonah Bromwich is a senior majoring in English and an enthusiastic fan of rap, pop and electronic music. E-mail column suggestions, questions or criticism to [email protected].
