It Was Almost Like A Song

I’m not going to lie to you. This image has nothing to do with this post except it will one day be featured at a funeral home in place of my face for my Wake Me Up Before You Go Go. I will remain anonymous to the bitter end.

Nothing too heavy today…

And, regarding my beloved chemical suit, I leave that to … what? Are you kidding me? None of you get that. I’m taking it with me. Bury me in it!
–The Last Will and Testament of Tom B. Taker, Chapter 1, Section A, Article 1

As most of you know, I have been busy most of the last few decades planning my wake. A wise man in a Stephen King movie once said, “Get busy living or get busy dying” and I took to that advice to heart like a leading a guru to tequila and telling him not to drink.

Of course this planning primarily took the form of picking out songs that participants (guests? attendees? celebrants? wakers? invitees? z-list celebs?) would, at least once, get to enjoy my eclectic taste in music.

I thought it was a pretty good plan. Besides, nothing pleases me more than the thought of people coming together to remember my life and having to listen to some random songs while they are left to ponder, “What the hell is this crap supposed to convey to us about Tom?” Ha ha ha! Suffer!

Then, this week, in the name of research, I attended the memorial service for a gentleman I knew and I thought to myself, “See? This is what happens when you fail to plan and allow your loved ones to pick the music on your behalf.”

Actually, I didn’t really know the man that well. He was the father of one friend and the husband of another. After attending the service I have to say I regret not knowing him better. He was a great guy, the kind who would give away the shirt off his back, always with a warm smile at the ready, and the sort who could cheer people up even when the chips were down.

I also knew him from the liquor store where he seemed friendly enough as he handed me bottle after bottle for several years before he got sick. See? We just went full circle. From tequila to the liquor store and back again. That’s what this guru calls the circle of life.

This post will document the set list that was used to send this soul on its way back home.

Moved

“You’ve got a keen eye, my man. This baby is hot.”

The salesman had seemingly materialized out of thin air. Suddenly he was saddled up and comfy cozy with the customer, on his elbow, and so shoulder-to-shoulder they were actually touching. The customer, in awe of a shiny object, missed the intrusion, and in so doing, a tiny layer of self-protection had been peeled back inside his brain.

“Nothing else can touch her,” the salesman boasted in a silky-smooth voice. Suddenly the object was personified with a female pronoun. We’re all just friends here and getting friendlier every moment. Desire in the customer imperceptibly kicked up another gear.

“Bluetooth ready with seamless integration for all of your devices. Phone, calendar, and email, of course. But also Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and our latest innovation: hands-free texting. She generates her own wifi hotspots, too.”

Kids These Days

Real life example of someone thinking he is the shit.

Once upon a time there was a little movie called Back To The Future 2 – This Time It’s That Time. Ol’ Doc Brown lands his DeLorean out front, picks up Marty McFly, then takes him on a ride to the future because Marty’s as-yet unborn son is in some kind of trouble.

Doc’s plan is for Marty to imitate his progeny long enough to resolve the trouble. Brilliant. What could possibly go wrong?

The whole plot of BTTF 2 is predicated on a cutesy throw-a-way line at the end of BTTF 1 when Doc and Marty have this conversation:

Doc: Marty, you gotta come back with me!
Marty: Where?
Doc: Back to the future.
…

Marty: Wait a minute, Doc. What are you talking about? What happens to us in the future? What, do we become assholes or something?
Doc: No, no, no, no, no, Marty, both you and Jennifer turn out fine. It’s your kids, Marty, something has got to be done about your kids!

I call this type of phenomenon Star Wars Syndrome. It’s what happens when your movie is so successful that a sequel becomes mandatory but something you thought was a cute detail at the time actually paints you into a corner and now you’re committed because the fans will only tolerate so much hinky nonsense with the storytelling. (Unless you’re J.J. Abrams, of course, then you simply don’t give a shit. You just stuff it in your Mystery Box.)

Because of this, when they made the BTTF sequel, they had to have the storyline be about a trip to the future – no matter what. And then, because of disturbances to the timeline, Marty’s father and girlfriend both end up looking like completely different actors.

I know! That’s heavy.

My point is this: In the future Doc Brown tells Marty to pull his pants pockets inside-out, because that’s what the kids think looks cool and if he doesn’t, he’ll stick out like a sore thumb.

Musical Pie

The premise of this game is simple. I turn a song into a pie chart and you identify the song. I’ll try to start things off easy and then make them harder as we go along. Register your guesses in the comment section below.

If you enjoy this sort of thing I’ll keep pondering to come up with more songs for another post in the future.

Correction: I made a wee lyrical error in Song 3. It has been corrected. My apologies if this made you scrunch your brain. -Ed.

Song 1

Forever Albums

The marshmallows and chocolate bars hated each other. They were never seen together but especially not on Graham Cracker near The Forge.—
Tom B. Taker (@shoutabyss) October 01, 2012

The Undercity. Once upon a time I lived here.

This morning I said to myself, “No damn politics on the blog! Enough!” I then sat back, cleared my mind and let my consciousness wonder. The tweet above was the result. My brain came up with the idea of marshmallows and chocolate bars having a rumble in the street. Random, I know! From this the lame and grisly thought above got expressed. Too bad Twitter doesn’t have a retroactive time warp function.

Then I checked my “recent drafts” on WordPress to see if there was anything worthy of being finished. Weird, but none of the 267 candidates there showed promise.

So, here’s a totally random post about music.

Back when I worked in the Big City, a group of guys would get off work and head over to Bennigan’s for $1 draft beers and munchies. Yes, this is also the site of the famous Night to Dismember. But that’s another story.

One day I went to the jukebox. It played CDs. Not records. And it had the option to play an entire CD from start to finish. So, when no one was looking, I selected Clint Black. An album called Put Yourself in My Shoes. And I played the whole damn thing. It cost money but it was worth it. Back at the bar everyone was bitching. Who the hell was the asshole? I lamented along with the rest of them, playing along, but inside I was laughing my ass off. For some reason a bar full of young posers becomes really upset about country music.

I like music. I like it a lot. And I have varied and eclectic tastes. My collection ranges from death goth metal to bluegrass. Gilbert and Sullivan show tunes to gospel. Rap, soft hits, Air Supply, Alan Parsons, The Beatles, Elvis, folk, etc. Some genres (like rap and gospel) I am very, very picky but some still find there way into my collection.

Like Ricky Skaggs. I’m a superfan. It seemed like there would also be at least one hardcore religious song per album. I didn’t care. I’d sing along with those songs just as much as the rest of them. “Sinners don’t wait before it’s too late / He’s a wonderful Saviour you know / Well I fell on my knees when I answered my pleas / Hallelujah, I’m ready to go.” Singing songs like that can also be useful for freaking out your friends.

Sometimes you come across albums where you lik every single song. Even the ones that never went on to become hits or even get played on the radio. I often wonder how these things got decided when there were better songs on the album than the ones that got released as singles. Back when I was a kid, we bought albums, not individual songs. If you only go for the promoted singles you’ll be missing out on a lot. Anyway, if every song rocks, then I call it a “Super Album.”

So what is a “Forever Album?” I personally have known two.

Singer/Songwriter Tom B. Taker

Oh yeah. Residuals. I now will feck you up with a spirited rendition of an a cappella performance piece I wrote while on vacation. And no, it wasn’t in Wyoming. That’s just an unfortunate naming coincidence.

I have to admit, this is one of the crappiest songs I’ve ever written.

Make the jump to view the video goodness. Enjoy!

I Will Always Shove You

You may have noticed I'm mostly green. Well, Fuck You!

Those of us in the airlock/apologizing industry noticed an unusual blip on the radar this week shortly after the death of Whitney Houston. The epicenter was traced and determined to be sourced in Minato (Tokyo), Japan.

Ah, Sony! What have you done this time?

A lot of you may be under the impression that Sony makes overpriced electronics that break shortly after their warranty period. Yes, that’s true, but that’s only a small fraction of what they do.

MINATO, TOKYO, JAPAN — The motto, “Be Prepared,” is one famously associated with the Boy Scouts movement. It also encapsulates the thought that you should be ready to “do the right thing at the right moment.”

It’s a philosphy shared by Sony Music Entertainment (SME) company and their secretive elite unit known as the Death Immediate Response Team (DIRT). When a big name celebrity in the Sony music library dies, that’s when the deceased is designated a “featured artist” and the members of Team DIRT leap into action.

In order to be prepared, SME-DIRT has identified their artists who have achieved sufficient sales volume. They have then compiled detailed “death response plans” on those they artists they have identified as meeting their proprietary criteria selection scheme.

Whitney Houston was one of these artists. Her death on February 11, 2012, came as a surprise to most. But as the news spread like wildfire across the internet, plans were already afoot in Minato. Like most death response plans SME-DIRT has on file, there is a three-pronged approach:

• Have an office party complete with cake (in the likeness of the artist) and ice cream and party hats. During this symbolic process they literally eat their artist.
• Immediately jack wholesale prices on albums in the library.
• Summon high-level Sony executives to a summit in New York City to discuss strategy to capitalize on the artist’s death.

Within hours of Whitney Houston’s death, a faceless operative on a nameless Tokyo street walked away from his noodles, pulling an Xperia ™ Ion LTE (Long Term Evolution) smartphone from his coat pocket, dialed a number from memory, waited three seconds, said, “Operation Bodyguard. Initiate. This is not a drill.” He then faded away as he side-stepped into street level sewer fog and disappeared into the noises of the murky city at night.