One side effect of the portable MP3 player: I don’t spend nearly as much time as I used to watching television with the sound turned all the way down and the stereo on. It’s a shame, really, because you can end up with some really good, or at least pretty funny, accidental art that way, when what’s playing through the speakers accidentally syncs with what’s going on onscreen.
Case in point: I remember one night listening to Street Life, one of what seems like half a dozen Roxy Music best-ofs, while channel surfing. And it happened. Some channel was showing a speech by Louis Farrakhan, clearly getting himself into a lather over something, while Bryan Ferry and company were belting out “Do the Strand.” You can just imagine my joy when Farrakhan spake thus:
Do the strand love
When you feel love
It´s the new way
That´s why we say
Do the strand
Do it on the tables
Quaglino´s place or Mabel´s
Slow and gentle
Sentimental
All styles served here
Louis seize he prefer
Laissez-faire le strand
Maybe he was angry because he was “tired of the tango,” or “fed up with fandango.” We may never know.
Speaking of Farrakhan, before making a living as a race-baiting, Jew-hating fount of pseudo-Muslim crap (sorry, Minister, but I’ve read the Qu’ran, and there’s nothing in it anywhere about an evil scientist creating white people), he was a Calypso singer who dubbed himself The Charmer. Some of The Charmer’s works survive online, much to Farrakhan’s subsequent embarrasment (though I don’t think The Mighty Sparrow ever lost sleep over them). You can listen to one here at WFMU’s original 365 Days project.
As for me, I think it’s time to watch John McCain do his best Johnny Cash (I bet he does a mean “Five Feet High and Rising”), or Sarah Palin lip-synching, I don’t know, The Go-Go’s, maybe? Better still, how’s about Barack Obama channelling The Prophet Omega? Anybody that can go from discussing the economy to the Shipp Moving Company is my kinda guy…
Radio on the TV. I still remember the glee of watching Bret Michaels wildly gyrating and dancing across the stage in a concert video set to a Shop Rite radio jingle. Of course, I don’t think Poison ever surpassed the musicality of Shop Rite’s jingle composers.