More true musical confessions

Really bad music that, I’m embarrassed to say, I would put on the turntable right now if I could:

• Anything by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show. I had a friend once who thought I was goofing on her when I said that, after she confessed to loving “Sylvia’s Mother.” But I wasn’t. I loved it, too. And “Cover of the Rolling Stone.” I’m not actually a Shel Silverstein fan (there, I’ve said it), but most of their hits really worked, they had a unique voice, and they liked to genre-jump. A Rolling Stone review in 1973 said, “If these guys would relax and become a straight pop group, they’d wipe the Osmonds and the Partridge Family off the board. Hey fellers, why don’tcha start a TV show? I’ll watch, I promise.”
• “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” by the BeeGees. Nearly 30 years later, the BeeGees are like the Vietnam of pop music, a wound that just won’t heal, a problem we don’t like to talk about. But before “Saturday Night Fever” and the disco infection, there was a collection of their hits called “BeeGees Gold,” and most were standard pop songs with some little quirk to their structure or subject matter. When I was 17, working in a grocery store and I desperately needed something, anything, to force the lite music/muzak they played from my head — and there are some Carpenters songs stuck there to this day — I would play the entire Gold album in my head, over and over and over, in order to block out the latest Olivia Newton John offering that was coming over the loudspeakers. (The only other thing to do was to add dirty lyrics to the ONJ songs, and after a while even that got boring.) Then the whole regrettable disco thing swept them up and from then on you either hated the BeeGees from the depths of your soul, or you were a disco weasel. There was no middle ground, there was no explaining the folky roots of “New York Mining Disaster 1941” or the sweet harmonies of “Massachusetts” — to do so was to invite a serious beating. Or at least the loss of musical respect, which at that time was much more serious than any beating could ever be. So, out with all BeeGees product, and banish the songs from my brain. Then, a couple of years ago, the BeeGees appeared on Howard Stern and did an acoustic version of “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” that just slew me. Turns out it’s a really good song. A Really Good Song. So maybe it doesn’t fit on this list, but now I’ve written all this up, so there you have it.
• “Philadelphia Freedom” by Elton John. Okay, no, there’s no way in hell I would put that awful piece of pre-Bicentennial cheese on my turntable. But I would flip the bastid over and play the incredible live version of “I Saw Her Standing There” that he did with John Lennon on the flip side. “We’re trying to think of a number to finish off with so I can get out of here and be sick . . . ”
  There was a show on Yoko Ono on Ovation the other night. I’ve always been mixed on Yoko. Don’t blame her for the breakup of The Beatles, definitely recognize that her performance art in the early years was way beyond groundbreaking, and I love love love “Walking on Thin Ice.” But, still, I can’t say that I like her. On the show, out of nowhere, Camille Paglia suddenly delivered a broadside against Yoko that was stunning and yet, in retrospect, highly accurate — she said that Yoko took away John’s sense of humor, that his brilliant English wit was something she just found silly, and she made him get rid of it. And that was exactly it. Once he was with her, he got serious and stopped having fun. And the magic of his re-emergence, just before he died, was that he seemed to have found joy again, seemed a lot like the old joyous John.
• “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad,” or, really, anything by Meat Loaf. I’ll admit it, I’m a sucker for the Loaf and those awful, over-the-top, let’s-stuff-some-cliches-into-a-song Jim Steinman bloats. Train wreck! Train wreck! Hitting a school bus! Full of nuns! Can’t! Avert! Eyes! (or ears, in this case.)

Also, gonna have to disagree with some commenters. “Telephone Line” by ELO was one of The Most Meaningful Songs Ever. At least, when I was 16 it was. (But I know what you mean — if a song gets attached to a trauma, that’s it for the song.) “Afternoon Delight” can’t make the list because, even though I’m man enough to admit I loved it when I was 16, there is no force on earth that could get me to put that on the turntable now. (And, unfortunately, who would need to? We ALL have it permanently engraved in our brains.) God, it was so DIRTY back then.

Blender is slowly putting up more of the list. See if you can guess which song this is about: “Any musician who uses the phrase forest primeval with a straight face must be stopped. ” Amen.