03.09.12

Singing Shat

Posted in Rock 'n' Roll at 12:12 pm by George Smith

Published eight years ago, it’s still funny. If need a tutorial on developing rhetoric through the use of slurs, I’m your man.

From the Village Voice, a reply of a now old Bill Shatner joke record:

Ben Folds, a man so downright great he’ll bear burdens like an ass, is musical director on William Shatner’s Has Been. He’s the right fellow to take the colostomy bagful of Singing Shat and search it for gold. On the scale of Singing Shat, Has Been ranks above the Shakespeare rap in Free Enterprise, but below “Mr. Tambourine Man,” where he first found much fool in himself, to the world’s pleasure and increase in laughter. Other reviewers have insisted it is Singing Shat’s best, furnishing praise like “the original William Hung, only with straight teeth” and ” ‘Has Been’ strives to make an ugly deed look fair.”

Notably accompanying Singing Shat is Henry Rollins, the man with wits in his belly and guts in his head, exhibiting it all for “I Can’t Get Behind That.” With Rollins and Folds, Garson Foos, leader of Shout, obviously has hopes Singing Shat will please fans of intelligent alternative rock, or at least idiot-worshippers to whom Bill is an idol.

On an Ozzy Osbourne greatest hits collection:

Ozzy Osbourne believes aging is optional.

Propped up in public by the best sustenance pharmacy provides, Osbourne assumes the guise of a vigorous man. Made a celebrity for being a shaking wretch on TV, Osbourne now has the gall to pretend otherwise, speaking of ambushing a robber and making available a commemorative box set in his spare time.

It’s recommended that the collection be pushed into a slit latrine and covered with lime. Prince of Darkness contains live renditions and demos of ho-hum heavy metal “classics” and cover versions (examples: “All the Young Dudes,” “For What It’s Worth”) that only those who received copies for promotion needed to hear.

What’s called for instead is a CD of Ozzy truth, call it Die Fledermaus. Translated as “The Bat,” Osbourne’s fictitious CD would open with “Harsh Solution,” a diatribe at being manacled at the Alamo for drunk-in-public urination. ZZ Top-esque is the lyric: “How could those coppers be so unkind to arrest me for [pissing] while blind.”

The head goth’s music is autobiographical. “You Won’t Be Coming Home” deals with the more than twice-told tales of Osbourne’s attacks on his wife while demented from drugs and strong drink. The centerpiece of the CD is the title cut, a mini-rock opera. Beginning with “No More Tears, Sad Dove,” Osbourne sings about the unreasonable hysteria following his first famous solo career event. “Die Bat!” continues, recounting the misery that resulted after the singer bit the dead head off one of those things, too. The mini-opera closes with “Killer Injection,” a metal bolero of misery on the abdominal inoculations one gets for rabies after eating unprepared fledermaus. All appropriate for playing spot-the-walker, wheelchair, and oxygen on the sides of the stage at Ozzfest.

Permalink