Today begins an entire week’s worth of Halloween-related posts. Enjoy!
Pandora was on a mission to find the “scariest song of all time.”
So the Oakland-based internet radio company started looking at the many factors that go into making a song sound sinister. In all, 450 attributes were evaluated by the Pandora team.
“Scary songs use key, tempo and timbre to create tension and manipulate the way the listener interacts with sound,” according to a news release. “This includes the use of what scientists call ‘non-linear’ sound. Non-linear sounds are generally scratchy, disorganized, and chaotic, like the sound of vocal cords vibrating violently during a blood-curdling scream. Humans (and many other species) are hard-wired to perceive such sounds as life-threatening.
“The data science team identified structural and musicological properties best fit for frightening moods, including anguished, distraught, eerie, harsh, menacing, spooky, tense, anxious, and volatile, and scored each song against these traits.”
The song that topped the list turned out to be Nine Inch Nails’ “The Becoming.”
Here are the top 10 scariest songs of all time, complete with commentary from Pandora:
1, Nine Inch Nails, “The Becoming”
“This song makes use of distorted “non-linear” instrument timbres and effects, which humans are programmed to find distressing. This contrasts with the hushed + screaming vocals which creates a suspenseful & unsettling mood. Melodically, this song makes use of an exotic-sounding scale, which features a major third, but a flat second scale degree, which gives a dissonant quality.”
2, Pixies, “The Happening”
“Like ‘The Becoming,’ there is more use of distorted, ‘non-linear’ sound along with aggressive vocal attitude, and this one is in a minor key, which is usually perceived as a ‘dark’ sound.”
3, Bauhaus, “Dark Entries”
“The mood of this song is dominated by the tonal quality of the instruments, including distorted riffs and scratchy guitar solos. There is a high level of dissonance between the chromatically descending guitar line and the vocal, which is not a melody exactly, but a series of monotonic, almost unrelated pitches that clash with the accompaniment. The lo-fi aesthetic and freaky vocal delivery make for an unsettling experience, like being chased through the woods by a chainsaw-wielding maniac.”
4, Joy Division, “Transmission”
“The combination of lo-fi production, synth pads, and an exaggerated reverb effect creates a menacing, claustrophobic quality. The song finishes with an intense wall of sound, which along with the staccato and insistent bass guitar rhythm makes this a truly anxiety-provoking track.”
5, Lamb Of God, “Contractor”
“Due to its sheer aggression, it’s a typical example of the death metal genre: it’s loud and distorted, includes a fast tempo, makes use of technically proficient drumming and guitar riffs, and is rhythmically complex in the form of shifting tempos and syncopated hits. The vocals are extreme and gritty and a good example of the ‘death metal growl.’ Lyrically it’s confrontational and threatening.”
6, Tool, “‘nima”
“Similar to the Lamb Of God in its aggressive, confrontational vocal attitude, ‘nima also features loud distorted tones throughout. Still, there is some dynamic range too, with some quieter, more drone-like stretches.”
7, Nirvana, “Heart-Shaped Box”
Like many Nirvana songs, this one defies pop conventions. The harmonic progression is difficult to pin down as major or minor, but there is an unmistakable dark and menacing quality to the music. There is a dissonance between the vocal melody and instrumental parts that is disorienting and can be a bit disturbing to the listener. It makes use of heavy, distorted tones, but also features quieter, brooding stretches.
8, Korn, “Bottled Up Inside”
This song relies on loud, distorted timbres, and some ‘non-linear’ tones to create an aggressive, frightening effect that will transport you straight to the dungeon of despair. The relentless pounding of the drums and the deep, sludgy doom-guitar riffs give this song a truly menacing and diabolical feel.”
9, A Perfect Circle, “Thinking of You”
“This song has a creepy combination of tones, including heavier distorted ones, alongside more ambient & suspenseful tones that will leave you convinced the demons are watching you. The melody at times makes use of an exotic-sounding scale that adds to the mood — the first two vocal notes you’ll hear from a ‘diminished 5th,’ a musical interval which since the 18th century has been nicknamed ‘Diabolus in musica,’ or ‘The Devil in music’ due to its dissonant quality.
10, Whitechapel, “Eternal Refuge”
Eternal Refuge is another Death Metal entry, therefore it’s extreme in its volume and distortion, with that famous ‘death metal growl.’ Try putting this on at home in the dark.”
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The world is full of creeps, and if you’re not careful then you might end up being the unwilling object of a particular creep’s affection. Check out these Reddit-approved stories of possibly insane women who creeped dudes out. Some of these stories will make you afraid to ever talk to another human being again.
A Long, Unhealthy Obsession Can Only Predict A Terrible Ending
“When I was 19 I moved out of my parents’ house and got an apartment. It was in a relatively safe neighborhood, but still affordable. One bedroom, one bath. Very modest. Nothing fancy.
Anyway, I was on the second floor, above an old man who couldn’t hear anything and below a couple in their early 20s who fought and screamed all the f*cking time, and when they weren’t fighting they took turns having loud, obnoxious sex in the wee morning hours or rolling giant f*cking boulders around the floor at all times of day apparently.
One day, the boyfriend gets violent and the cops take him away. The girl continues living there, but she comes down to me to let me know he’s gone and because I was a relatively big guy then (300+ lbs) she said he’s not supposed to come by, but can I have your number in case he does? This was before cell phones, so I gave it to her.
I should mention that I had a girlfriend (Sue) at this time, and she did not like upstairs girl (Jen).
Anyway, Jen calls me one night right before midnight. ‘Are you okay?’ I ask. ‘Yeah. What you doing?’ She asks. ‘Getting to bed, I have to be at work at 7. I work early.’ ‘Wanna come f*ck me?’ She says. Very direct.
‘Uh, I’ve got a girlfriend Jen. Talk to you later.’
Two hours later, she calls me and wakes me up. She’s crying. ‘Why don’t you think I’m attractive? Why don’t you want to f*ck me? I saw your girlfriend and she’s fat. Why don’t you want to fuck me? I swear I won’t tell anybody. But you have to break up with her. It won’t work. She doesn’t love you like I do.’
Keep in mind all those words came out at lightning speed and she was drunk. She just kept prattling on like that, I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. Finally, I ended up just hanging up. 30 seconds later she’s banging on my door. I decided to ignore it. She starts yelling. It’s almost two AM. She’s screaming. Crying. Banging on the door.
I do the only thing I can think of – I call the police. They say it’ll be 45 minutes.
It took them an hour, and she was banging on the door screaming and crying for the entire hour. They take her back to her apartment and calm her down. An officer takes a statement. He keeps asking ‘Was she ever in this apartment?’ and questions like that. ‘At no point did you allow her to enter the premises?’
She’d never, ever been inside my place. She told the cops a very different story – that we’d been intimate, that I’d kicked her out in the middle of sex without her keys or her wallet. I told the cop he was free to search. He looked around for about 10 minutes, seemed satisfied, and then thanked me and left. At this point, it’s near four AM.
4:30 rolls around, and she calls me and wakes me up. She’s apologizing. She’s crying. She’s so sorry she got like that, but she just misses him SO MUCH. At this point, I tell her I think it’s a bad idea that we talk anymore. I tell her I understand how hard it is, but that I’m going to miss work and I can’t afford to miss a day’s pay.
She seems to get that and hangs up.
I go to work after getting maybe 2 hours of sleep in total. I’m a zombie all day. I get home at 4:30, ready to crash. Sue, my girlfriend, was going to bring dinner by after she got off work at eight. I have 4 or so hours to sleep.
My apartment is completely spotless. Somebody came in and cleaned it. Better yet, they vacuumed, and I still didn’t even own one yet. There are freshly made cookies on the table. Sue must have gotten off early, I think. ‘Sue!?’ I say and walk to the bedroom. There, of course, is Jen. Naked except for thigh-high stockings and a hair tie. She’s lying on her back, and as I come in she pulls her knees back to her shoulders, smiles at me, and says ‘Shove your f*cking cock in me until I cry.’
I just turned around and ran out of my own apartment. Scared like a little boy. I would have run all the way to the office but I was in terrible shape so I walked. In the lobby I called the police again, they came and arrested her. Charged her with some minor things like B&E or trespassing (forget which) and she spends a couple nights in jail since her parents/friends don’t bail her out.
Behavior like this happens for weeks. I have some friends stay at my house, including Sue, during this time so I’m never alone because I’m worried she’s crazy and might do something weird.
She’s constantly knocking on the door and arguing with the people staying at my place. She offers to ‘Share me’ with Sue, offers to go down on Sue, then eventually tries to get Sue to leave me and move in with her and that they’ll be like the lesbian Bonnie and Clyde.
A week or two later she is being evicted (I guess they were late on rent already by like two months and eviction had begun) and as some form of weird protest, she paints her upper torso and face bright pink with some kind of body paint and wears a green bikini top as they drag her kicking and screaming out of the place. Police end up arresting her again for something.
My six months lease is up and I’m uncomfortable with her knowing where I live, so I move. I get an unlisted number/address. I am about 10 miles from the old place. A couple of months after I move in, there’s a knock at the door on a Saturday afternoon. It’s Jen. She followed me from my work during the week, then waited until Sue left and now she wants to apologize. She says she’s medicated, she wants to apologize. I tell her I can’t let her in, and that she needs to leave. I tell her I hope she’s better, but I can’t let her in.
Predictably, she goes nuts. Another call to the cops as I lean on my own door to keep her from pushing it in. Another arrest.
For a while, I didn’t hear from her. Six months, a year. I moved three states away, broke up with Sue (unrelated to this), and was single. It’s been about three to four years, and suddenly I get a MySpace friend request from her. I ignore it. Then I get a tirade of emails. Long-winded, lacking punctuation. Stream of consciousness. Clearly mentally ill. I just ignore them, what else can I do?
This is about 2002.
It dies down a bit. 2005, I hear back from her on Facebook. Same thing. I ignore it again.
2006, Sue messages me out of the blue. Haven’t talked to her in like eight years. She says Jen came into her work and wanted info on me, where I was, what I was doing. She was dragged out by security.
2008, Jen finds my little brother’s Facebook while he’s in college. Makes a road trip across three states to find him at school. Finds his dorm and goes to talk to him. He has no idea who she is. She threatens him, he and two friends kick her out of the dorm. He calls me, I explain. He calls the cops. They do nothing.
Six months later she accosts him at his work – a bar – his boss (female) punches her square in the mouth during a fight to get her out of the building and Jen loses two teeth. She sues the bar, the owner counter-sues, and Jen is found mentally incompetent and placed under some form of mental hold in a facility.
2012 – Jen is out of the mental illness facility and heavily medicated. Her ‘counselor’ contacts me on Facebook. ‘Would I like to help her put her past behind her?’ she asks. She wants to set up a face-to-face. I have a wife, I have a kid. I say no thank you. ‘Counselor’ gets very frustrated and tells me I’m a terrible person.
2013 – Jen commits suicide by jumping off a cliff somewhere in Arizona. Her body is found months after the fact and identified by a wallet.
Part of me wonders what I did to cause this? I literally never did anything out of the ordinary or said anything out of the ordinary to her. I was her downstairs neighbor for a couple of months by the time this started – and it caused over a decade of fixation. Mental illness is a hell of a thing.”
What, You Don’t Think A Boiling Oil Enema Sounds Sexy?
“I’m a pretty easy-going guy and make friends easily. There was a 45-55-year-old woman that got friendly with me and would talk with me almost daily at lunch. She said some pretty odd stuff at times…
For instance one day she told me she murdered a man. Totally seriously and dead pan delivery. I really didn’t know what to say and probably made the mistake of continuing speaking to her asking her questions about why the f*ck she killed someone and how. I didn’t believe her. Well, basically she told me that it was her ex-husband and he was abusive to her and she killed him with a shovel and buried him in the woods. She claimed no one ever found his body.. Weird right? F*cking threw me for a loop.
About two sentences later she tells me, ‘I want to take you home, tie you upside down between two metal poles and pour hot oil up your ass.’
It made me so uncomfortable hearing this… needless to say when I told my girl what happened she refused to let me keep working there.
A Violent Nose Lick Shows The Most Affection, Right?
“I was having lunch with a couple of friends when a woman my mother’s age sat down next to me at our table and started rambling about how beautiful she thought my face was. I was weirded out but flattered until she asked me if she could touch my face. She claimed to be a sculptor. She said it would help her recreating my face for an art piece she was doing. I told her no, but she proceeded to grope my face anyway. My friends [burst] out in hysterical laughter as I was trying to get her off of me.
Suddenly she started to violently lick my nose and trying to tongue f*ck me in my nostrils. This is when a waiter pulled her off me and dragged her out of the restaurant. She waited for me outside in her car, took a picture of me when I left the restaurant over an hour later, and quickly drove off.”
A Fairy Creeper
“There was this girl, we’ll call her Cherry, I was in a dance class with. Very attractive, lots of tattoos, incredibly flirty, but she had a boyfriend so I brushed it off.
Well, the story starts when I broke her boyfriend’s ribs (by accident). She starts texting me later saying she thought it was super hot (should’ve been the first clue). We start texting back and forth, it’s getting more aggressive. Then I find out they’re in an open relationship and she has permission from her boyfriend to do whatever with me. Weird, but being a 20-something guy I’m okay with it.
So we’re fooling around for a few weeks and it starts becoming clear that something weird is going on. I came home a few times to find Cherry and her boyfriend drunk on my porch writing me weird love notes.
Then one night she’s trying to get me to go to her boyfriend’s birthday party. I had other plans so I just said no but she was being very persistent. I go do my thing, ignore her texts, go home and pass out around 1am.
I wake up around five am and there’s someone standing at the foot of my bed. I can see the outline of fairy wings. At first I think I’m hallucinating but then the figure moves a little. Obviously it’s Cherry. She had decided to come to see why I had stopped responding and climbed up into my second-story bathroom window. wtf possesses someone to do that?!?
I escorted her out of the house, double and triple checked that every door and window was locked, and never talked to her again. Luckily I also moved halfway across the country later that week. Crazy fairy girl with boyfriend climbs into my second story bathroom window at five am to find out why I stopped responding to texts.”
Just Show Up On My Doorstep, Why Don’t You
“A girl I knew from the class got my phone number somehow (I didn’t give it to her) and started texting me incessantly. Constantly asked to hang out, no matter what. Now, though I wasn’t particularly fond of her, I didn’t want to be rude, so I would make excuses. I once told her that I had lots of families over, so I was too busy to hang out with her.
10 minutes later I get a text. It was a picture. Of my empty driveway. At my house. She found out where I lived, drove to my house, and took a picture to prove that I was lying.
I came outside to tell her that I didn’t have time and that she should go home. She refused to accept that, going so far as to sit in front of my door, not allowing me to go back inside my own home.
I walked around the house, went in a back door, and texted her that I never wanted her to contact me again.
She sat there for about 20 minutes before she left.”
One Day Feels Like A Lifetime When I’m With You
“This happened when I was 16.
I worked at a grocery store and on my first day on the job this girl, who I only said three sentences to handed me a note before she left for the day and told me not to read it until she was gone.
Well, I thought a note was a bit weird since that was grade school stuff but whatever. I open the note and it says things like:
‘I love you, I want to be with you, we need to have children together even though we’re both only teenagers’ and it just prattled on and on. My overly attached girlfriend has nothing on this chick.
So the next day at work she asks sheepishly if I’ve read her note and I said yes but I wasn’t really looking for a relationship at the time. Her face lost all expression for a second and then she smiled and said something to the effect of ‘No worries, I thought I’d try’ and we continued on working.
That night, when I left work there were about 50 notes taped to my Jeep. LONG notes too! I have no clue how she wrote this much in a day. The notes said things like ‘I hate you you’re a fucking asshole I hope you die’ and other notes said things like ‘I’m sorry for writing that note that called you an asshole. I really like you and want to be with you ❤ ❤ <3’
She would then try luring me with innuendos. When she was on her lunch break she would do things like buy these huge dill pickles that we sold (making sure to come through my line) and say things like ‘Do you think this pickle is for lunch or personal pleasure?’ gag
She would also still put notes all over my Jeep. Eventually, after a few months, she lost interest in me and started chasing a new guy that started.”
Creepy Stranger On A Train
“I’m on the train. This girl behind me is having the most boring phone conversation I’ve ever heard. Some guy she thinks is cute or something. I keep listening though, mostly because she’s too loud to block out… And things get weird. The guy she’s describing sounds pretty physically identical to me.
So I turn around, and this girl says ‘Oh. He’s looking at me now. I wonder what he’ll do. I wonder if he likes me.’
She also DOESN’T HAVE A F*CKING PHONE.
Yeah, I got off at the next stop and put a whole train between me and that weirdo.”
This Guy Survived An Attempted Kidnapping By A Girl
“When I was at a party a few years ago, it was right after I’d had a fight with my then-girlfriend and I was drinking kind of heavily (I’m generally a heavyweight but I was drinking a lot and fast). This one girl was constantly around me all night and I was warned by a couple of people that she was going to hit on me. Whatever I can deal with it. She was flirting with me a little bit and I made sure to add my girlfriend to the conversation topic so there was no misunderstanding. Didn’t matter. Every time I went to talk to someone else I would feel a small butt grab, and when I looked around she was backing up giggling. Once it started getting not-so-lightly I straight up told her to stop, I had a girlfriend.
Anyway later in the night when I was significantly drunk I was sitting down on a chair while most people were off in another room doing something else. Well, she comes in and I guess decides this is the perfect chance. She sits on my lap and starts trying to kiss me and every time I move away she bites my neck. She starts to grab at my crotch too, and even after I hit her hand away it goes right back (remember I’m significantly drunk so not all my coordination is all there).
The last thing I remember is trying to get up to get her off my lap and then I wake up the next morning in a friend of mine’s room on the floor (one of the hosts). I walk out and ask her what happened and she told me the girl was trying to walk me out of the door, telling the others she was just taking me back to ‘take care of me’ at her apartment. My friend said no dice and locked me in her room (while checking on me relatively often) so that the girl couldn’t sneak in and try anything. The girl apparently got very upset when this happened and stormed out.”
A Stranger’s Armpit By Any Other Girl Wouldn’t Smell As Sweet
“As you can imagine, the subway was used by everyone and it’s always packed. Like a permanent peak hour. I’m tall and skinny so I don’t take much space and always manage to get in. So the train arrives, I get in…
A girl ends up between me and the [door]. I always take care of not rubbing other people but it was very packed. I was wearing a shirt with rolled-up sleeves and nice cologne girls said it smelled good on me before.
So the girl was facing forward with me behind her with my extended arm next to her. Then she puts her face next to my forearm but I think nothing of it since there was no free space to move around.
This is where things get weird. The girl turns her head towards my arm and starts vigorously sniffing my forearm. Like she is tasting my skin and the cologne through her nostrils. I freak out a little but say nothing, after all, there is nowhere I can go and it would just make things weirder.
I get off the train in the next station while wiping her nasal mucus off my arm and wondering wtf just happened. A crazy woman sniffs imaginary lines of coke from my forearm on the subway.”
Microbiology Class Is A Petri Dish Of Oddities
I dunno if she suffered from 2edgy4uitis or what, but I sat behind the creepiest chick in my Microbiology class. Some of her greatest hits include:
Invading people’s personal space and softly growling.
Disrupting lectures with anecdotes completely unrelated to Microbiology. For example, she interrupted our professor discussing necrotizing fasciitis to talk about her fanfiction.
Began wearing cat ears and this tail thing and meowing at people.
Wore a bazillion bracelets on each arm because ‘they cover up all my scars. People can’t handle me.’
Licked a petri dish that had strep culturing and then claimed she got cancer.
She also smelled like she had never bathed or showered. A musty, nauseating aroma of bo, rancid vag and unwashed ass.
When confronted about her weirdness or when told to knock her behavior off, she would start breathing hard and saying, ‘I’m so triggered by this.’
There’s more if anyone is interested.”
More tomorrow!
Thank you for reading my blog. Please read, like, comment, and most of all follow Phicklephilly. I publish every day.
This is the final chapter of this series! Thanks so much for reading it and following me on this strange journey.
If you were like me in the 1970’s you listened to top 40 radio most of the time. You heard a lot of great songs and instant classics. But among them were many unforgettable songs that were just weird or strange. I’ve tried from memory to remember the ones that stand out in my mind.
For weird reasons they became hits. They either made no sense or having any musical merit. Just a bizarre era of story songs.
Of course, this stuff is all pretty subjective but I did have a few criteria for what should be here. I decided to include a song if it:
made me sick without even listening to it again
made me want to break my radio
made my stomach turn
brought out violent thoughts of hatred, revenge, etc.
reminded me how lame the radio and record companies are
could make me want to break my stereo
would make me leave a bar or club if they started playing it
would make me boo a band who started playing it
suspended my belief in a divine force that governs the universe
I’m not saying that there weren’t ANY good songs during the 70s but there was just a truck-load of waste back then. If anybody’s stupid enough to think that ALL disco sucks, remember that it’s just a bastard son of rhythm & blues just like rock’n’roll is- so they’re related, see? Also, the 1970s definitely didn’t have a monopoly on shitty music- there was tons of crap unleashed on us in the decade before and after and now also (there’s a future article there somewhere). Clothes-pin anyone?
The 70’s was an interesting time for music. There was a lot of experimentation and creativity from that decade, but there was also plenty of crap as well. Here is my list of the worst and most irritating songs of the 70’s.
Paper Lace, a British group – 1974
The Night Chicago Died. A fictional shootout between members of Al Capone’s gang and police. Based on The Valentine’s Day Massacre between Capone’s men and Bugs Moran’s gang. Police weren’t involved, and no one died. There was never a showdown where 100 officers were killed. They also mention the East Side of Chicago, which isn’t really a thing. Just like the girl born and raised in South Detroit, in the Journey song Don’t Stop Believing’. But the guys in Paper Lace just figured there was an East Side to everywhere. It’s a catchy song, and well done, but it’s a strange song.
Billy Don’t Be a Hero – Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods – 1974
I think because of its anti-war sentiment, a lot of people thought this was about the Vietnam War. This song went to number 1 on the charts. I think it’s about the Civil War. Rolling Stone has voted it as one of the worst songs ever made. I remember hearing this song on the radio back then. One of the girls in my class sang along with it at an assembly at school one day. Her version was worse because she seemed to be terrified to be on stage in front of everyone, but the song is an odd choice.
Look at the ridiculous outfits on these guys. Mummer’s Parade much? Elvis called, he wants his wacky sequined jumpsuits back.
Angie Baby – Helen Reddy – 1974
Was 1974 the year of weird songs? Helen Reddy already had two huge hits with I Am Woman and Delta Dawn. Written by Alan O’Day. Who knows why she did this song. This song is about a weird girl who gets kicked out of school who stays in her room and listens to the radio all day. Imagining boyfriends who come and visit and dance with her. One day a boy comes to visit her and gets absorbed into the music. Does he shrink? Does he disappear? Does Angie kill him? Does he become her forever lover? I guess we’ll never know because Helen Reddy never said and now she’s passed away.
Another awful outfit. I never realized how bad some of the 70s fashions were.
Leo Sayer – Long tall glasses – 1974
I always hated Leo Sayer. He reminded me of a skinny version of that workout guy, Richard Simmons. It was Leo’s first US top 10. He later had hits with, You Make Me Feel Like Dancin’ and When I Need You. The story in this song is, some guy wanders into a fantasy bar or magical pub, but before he can eat he has to dance like Fred Astaire. He doesn’t think he can dance at all, but he somehow figures it out and everything works out. I really couldn’t stand Leo Sayer in the ’70s. I had zero tolerance for anything that wasn’t guitar-driven rock back then. This performance just looks like old vaudeville to me. Complete with that barbershop banjo in the background. Watch his performance in this video. His choreography and him acting out the lyrics is ridiculous.
Back when I was in a band if someone told me I could only become famous if I did this act and this kind of music, I would have jumped into a tree shredder.
God, I hate him.
Cher – Dark Lady – 1974
Cher was at the time on the hit TV show Sonny & Cher. I’m sure that was a great place for her to break any new material. I get why the LGBTQ community has always embraced Cher. Even though she’s an attractive lady, she always resembled a guy doing a drag act. Even her voice has the limited range of some dude singing songs in a bar in a dress doing karaoke on 13th street in Philly.
The dark lady in the title is a gypsy fortune teller in New Orleans. The protagonist of this song follows the fortune teller’s limousine back to her lair and gets her fortune told. She learns her lover has been unfaithful to her with as the gypsy tells her, someone who is very close to her. The dark lady tells her to leave and never return. But when she gets home she smells the very perfume that the gypsy had been wearing. So she sneaks back to the fortune teller’s shop with a gun and catches her lover with the gypsy. They’re laughing and kissing. She shoots them both killing them. Cher hit number 1 with Dark Lady and she wouldn’t have another number 1 until 25 years later, with Believe.
It’s a crazy story song, which was popular in the 70s.
One Tin Soldier – 1969 – Coven – 1973
This song tells the tale of two neighboring tribes, the warlike valley people and the peaceful mountain kingdom. The mountain people possess a great treasure buried under a stone, which the valley people demand. The mountain people offer to share it with their brothers but the valley people invade and slaughter them all. When they turn the stone over they find nothing but the words, Peace on Earth. It was this kind of thing that was a radio hit in my youth. Insane!
It feels like a statement about God and country and how man kills in the name of religion and for whatever else.
Go ahead and hate your neighbor, go ahead and kill/cheat your friend all in the name of heaven you can justify it in the end.
What???
The Night The Lights Went Out in Georgia – Vicky Lawrence- 1974
Bobby Russell was a grammy-winning songwriter who wrote songs for Frank Sinatra and Elvis. When he wrote this next song, he disliked it so much he didn’t even want to cut a demo. His wife, Vicky Lawrence who was a cast member on The Carol Burnett Show thought it was a hit. But after Liza Minnelli and Cher both turned it down, Vicky decided to record it. I’m not even going to get into the details of this complicated ridiculous plot, but let’s just say that the narrator accidentally frames her own brother for murder and gets him hanged, while killing two people herself and hiding the bodies, but the whole time she blames the crooked criminal justice system for her brother’s death.
It makes no sense. But it was a number 1 hit. It was later recorded by Reba MacIntyre and Tanya Tucker, and was even turned into a feature film starring Kristy McNicol! She won two Emmy Awards for her portrayal of teenage daughter Letitia “Buddy” Lawrence in the TV drama Family.
Insane! All of this and a pre-Star Wars Mark Hamill too!
Here’s this crazy song!
Go Away Little Girl – Donny Osmond -1971
is a popular song written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King. It was first recorded by Bobby Vee for Liberty Records on March 28, 1962. The lyrics consist of a young man asking a young attractive woman to stay away from him so that he will not be tempted to betray his steady girlfriend by kissing her. The song is notable for making the American Top 20 three times: for Steve Lawrence in 1963 (US number 1), for The Happenings in 1966 (US number 12), and for Donny Osmond in 1971 (US number 1). It is also the first song, and one of only nine, to reach US number 1 by two different artists.
The song almost didn’t get recorded, because according to the Mormon laws, one had to be 16 for double dating and 18 to date alone, however, as long as this was an innocent song, the Mormon faith allowed the song to be sung and recorded. Donny was 13 at the time the song was recorded. Listen to that voice. Is our Donny a little late getting to puberty?
Say hello to white bread America’s version of Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5. Michael had sass, talent, and pipes. Donny is a little, strained, shrill, knock-off of the obvious King of Pop.
Just sayin’…
I hope you enjoyed this series. I had fun compiling this stuff and writing about it. Maybe I should do the worst films of the 70s next!
Just want to say Hi to my sister Gail, for reading and listening to this whole series!
Thank you for reading my blog. Please read, like, comment, and most of all follow Phicklephilly. I publish every day.
You probably swapped as many pretty awful first date horror stories with your friends as potential mates you’ve swiped left on Tinder. When it comes to horrible first dates, they’re no different than taxes or puberty: everyone hates them, but everyone’s gotta get through them. Thankfully, the very worst first dates often become hilarious stories in hindsight, though some remain, complete terrors, even years after the fact. Plus, many horrible first dates provide you excellent excuses to end a creepy-ass date before it goes too far. The people of Reddit shared their worst first dates and they definitely do not disappoint. You might have thought you had a date from Hell, but did you ever date somebody who claimed to know the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? Didn’t think so.
“I went on a Tinder date in January that ended poorly. At the end, he tried to kiss me so I dodged, tripped over a curb, and broke my fibula while falling into traffic. The guy got down in the road with me, moved my hair behind my ear, and said, ‘We could tell people that we fell in love.'”
“Eh?”
“He asks me out to dinner, but instead of a restaurant he pulls into an empty parking lot and pulls out his half flaccid dick. He looks at me with a shrug and goes ‘Eh!?’ I look him in the eye all stern like for a good minute before he zips up his pants and he drives me back home in complete silence. Only when we pull into my driveway he said ‘Your eyes are too big for your face…’ I just get out and start walking to my door, but he gets out too, I figure to apologize. But no, he tries to kiss me goodnight.”
“You Like Being Daddy’s Little Sl*t”
“So I matched with this dude who seemed nice, and we agree to meet up at a coffee shop. Talking is awkward, but from the get-go, he was giving me some neck-beardy vibes. Example: I complimented his American traditional style tattoo and his response was: ‘Huh I didn’t think girls would know anything about tattoos.’ Note that this was after me talking about the tattoos I have. He also tried to forcefully order for me, which I brushed off like ‘Lol no,’ figuring it was all whatever, he’s just nervous and trying to show off or some sh*t.
Everything was still going okay until he walked me to my car. We hugged, and he leaned in for a kiss. I think ‘Whatever, I don’t care, that’s fine.’ We were making out a little and I felt his hand moving up to my face, and I thought ‘Oh, okay, he’s just going to put his hand on the back of my neck or my chin or in my hair or whatever.
NOPE. I WAS WRONG. SO WRONG. This mother*cker decided it was a swell idea to start choking me. At this point, it would be pertinent to mention I’m a 5’8″ female of average size, and he was a 6’2″ stocky dude. I froze, because that’s my response to threatening situations, and he leaned over and whispered in my ear ‘Yeah, you like that? You like being daddy’s little sl*t.’ I was just sitting there waiting for him to let go of my neck because I am pinned against the car. I finally managed to stammer out a ‘Wuh-what’ and he proceeded to tighten his grip and repeat the question, to which my survival instincts are screaming “SAY WHAT YOU NEED TO” so I just managed to choke out ‘Yes sir’ and he let me go. I proceeded to get the f*ck out of there and chewed him out after the fact.”
Their Date “Knew” The Four Horseman Of The Apocalypse
“This was by far the most terrifying/hilarious date I had ever been on. Years ago, I was a junior in high school and he was in college. We had been texting casually for a few weeks. One weekend, he met my friend and me at a local concert. When it was over, the friend I got a ride from had to leave urgently, so this guy offered to drive me home. No big deal, I thought, I needed a ride. We went to dinner and it was very nice. Nothing weird nothing suspicious.
Then came the ride home. My house was about 45 minutes away through isolated freeways in the desert. (Accepting a ride was not my proudest moment, I admit) He talked the entire ride and it went from normal small talk to him saying that he has superpowers. He said that when he was in high school he went to an alternate dimension and couldn’t find his way back. The only way for him to find his way was to sell his soul to a merchant he found in this other dimension. When he got back to this dimension he had superpowers and could control people’s emotions. He then creepily leaned over and said ‘I can make you feel anything right now…’
He also said he knew the four horsemen of the apocalypse and that he was going to help me during the end of the world. At this point, I was convinced I was going to end up in a garbage bag on the side of the road. But I got home safe. Never talked to him again until he was my server at a restaurant years later and was extremely awkward.”
His Dead Cold Eyes
“A coworker who asked me out for a drink after work. He wasn’t really my usual type but always seemed sweet so I figured I’d give it a shot. We hit a bar, and all seems well until he apparently has one too many. He starts telling me stories about his past and how he was basically a knee-breaker/hitman for some crime organization out of Mexico. He gives me tons of details about methods and the going rates for XYZ. The stories get progressively worse and more graphic, but still, I’m not really believing any of this. I think he’s trying to (very weirdly) impress me.
He’s quiet for a minute, stares off into space, and then leans over to me and his eyes just go dead cold. He tells me that if someone paid him $5,000, he would cut off one of my hands. But since we’re friends, he would do it quick and clean at the wrist and put the hand on ice so I could possibly save it.
I start believing him then. I tell him I’m feeling sick and have to go home. I stayed ‘friendly’ with him at work until he eventually got fired for stealing from the bar – I was very concerned about the ramifications of no longer being on his good side.
I still don’t know if I believe his stories about being a hired killer, but I do believe that he fantasized about it deeply enough to scare the sh*t out of me. I’ve never been happier to see someone disappear.”
MJ In The House
“It was with a guy I worked with. He picked me up from my desk dressed up like Michael Jackson, including tape around his fingers and a surgical mask on his face. He was a plump, 5’6″ white guy with blond hair, making it somehow even weirder that he was trying to look like Michael Jackson.”
He Wanted Violence
“This one guy complained about how he resented that nobody would let him talk to them about the dark side of life, including violence. I mentioned that I have a hard time watching violence against animals on TV. (I meant reality TV shows that show stories of animals who have been abused.) His face perked up, and he asked which TV show had violence against animals. There was an eagerness in how he asked which creeped me the f*ck out. I left quickly.”
Seriously, Dude?
“I went to the cinema and I felt very uncomfortable with my date, so said I wanted to leave. He then proceeds to say, ‘Let me guess, nerves, overprotective parent, wanting to leave, have you been raped before?’ The date ended right there.”
Illuminati
“I have one that’s more ‘weird’ than it was terrible. It’s a doozy. When I was 19, I was working at a shop in a less-traveled part of downtown. It was wintertime, and my hometown is dead in the winter, so there was very little foot traffic. I was working alone on a Saturday night.
A cute backpacker guy came into the shop. At the time, I considered myself to have hippie leanings, so he was just my type (yeah, I had one long skirt and wore jewelry I bought from street vendors. That’s as far as that went. Totally pretentious and naive).
We got to chatting, and he said he’d just gotten into town and was looking for suggestions on ‘fun things to do.’ I directed him to the nearest nightclubs on the next block, and he left while I went about my business. He came back sometime later to tell me that the clubs weren’t really his scene, and invited me to hang out with him at his grandparents’ place, which was on lakefront property. I agreed to it, like an idiot, all excited and flattered that this hot scruffy guy had asked me ‘out,’ thinking it was romantic or some sh*t.
Well, I went there after I closed the shop down at 10 PM. I got to the address he had given me, and it looked like a nice enough place but there were no grandparents to be seen. I wondered briefly if he had just broken in to some random property, but he seemed familiar with a few key things. I stayed, and he made me Kraft Dinner, which was pretty cool.
Then, we sat inside and he began talking about all the occult/Illuminati symbols on the American dollar bill, that everything in the U.S. is a giant conspiracy run by them, etc., etc. At this point, I was feeling uncomfortable. He told me about some experience he had in Tofino (a small, hippie-ish town on Vancouver Island) where he was on the beach and apparently saw hippies come out of the forest, draw a big circle in the sand, and then dance and chant around it in the moon/candlelight (honestly, this one could have been true). He told me about some spooky supernatural experiences he had in Stanley Park in Vancouver that also cemented his belief in ghosts. Then – the kicker – he told me he could see auras. So far, all of this could be just some hippie/free-spirit guy talking about his beliefs, yes? But he said that he believed that he was descended from the wizard Merlin since Merlin had a grey aura and so did he. He believed he was a wizard and had some kind of powers and that’s why all these weird things kept happening to him.
I had to go.
I told him I had to work early. Then, I get outside and it was the first snowstorm of the year – hooray! I could barely get my car up the driveway but finally did (no way was I going back inside or considering staying the night). At the time, I thought he was weird but was more worried about driving in the snow or waking up my parents after being out so late. He texted me once or twice after that, but I kept telling him I was busy.
I should have known better. Way better. That was so, so dangerous. Nobody knew where I was, so I was extremely lucky that he was harmless. When I tell the story to friends, they laugh about my date with a wizard, but I shudder to think of how dumb I was – it’s more about that than about some kooky dude.”
Lick It Right Up
“When I was a senior in high school, I went out with this guy after school. We grabbed some smoothies, smoked a blunt, and were planning on doing the boop, until he picked a zit when he thought I wasn’t looking, and while his face bled he LICKED HIS FINGER. I thought I was going to puke”
Straight-Up Stabbed
“Got straight-up stabbed.’ Friends set me up on a blind date and swore I’d ‘totally love her.’ She was weird at the beginning of the date and just kept getting weirder – clingy and possessive, even though we’d just met, etc.
I excused myself to hit the restroom (the joys of beer) and she hauled to the back and stabbed me in the arm with her knife, claiming I was ‘totally running off on her to make out with the cute waitress.’
I got three stitches, she got an extensive psych hold.
There was no second date.”
Oh, Mario
“On a first date: ‘My great-grandfather’s name is Mario, my grandfather’s name is Mario, my dad’s Mario, I’m Mario, and if you don’t mind, I’ll be naming our child Mario.'”
Fingers Off
“He picked me up at my house and had flowers and a bottle of wine, which for me was way too formal and awkward (I was 18 and he was 27). Then we went to the movies and he would not stop trying to finger me. I finally got so fed up about that I had him drive me home mid-movie .”
Private Time But Not In Private
“The guy kept touching himself. He also ran across the street and didn’t wait for me.”
Just A Little Casual Racism
“‘You’re definitely Chinese. How are you not Chinese?!’
I’m 100% Irish and no matter how many times I stressed this, he would not give up.”
A Parting Gift
“Picked up girl.
Drove to dinner, nice place.
Asks if it’s cool if she smokes.
She pulls out a blunt.
I get pissed off.
She blows smoke in my face.
I kick her out.
She stuck a bloody tampon to my car.”
Meet The Parents
“Dude I matched with online. I was really bored and I like to drive.
He lived about 45 minutes away, but it was up in Big Bear which is really pretty, and did I mention I was bored? He said his truck was broken so I said what the hell, I’ll drive up.
I finally found the place and he meets me outside. He doesn’t have a plan, just says we can go out to the marina by the lake and look at the stars. Ok, I’m hungry, but whatever. Well, the part of the marina we went to was not pretty. It was the backside, the creepy side with construction going on and no one around. I was freaking out a bit but had my knife on me and thought to myself not everyone is bad.
We looked at the stars, talk a bit, and then went back to his place. We walked in the door and his freaking parents were standing at the back door in their underwear looking at raccoons on the back patio. He even introduced me to them and I shook his dad’s hand while he was in nothing but his boxers!
I am too polite of a person and can’t believe it, but I actually went up to the dude’s room. Then he fell asleep on me and I snuck out.
The next day he wouldn’t stop calling me and sending me dick picks at work.”
A Point And A Wink
“I went on a date with a guy I had met online. He wanted to meet for drinks, so I went to the pub and waited. He showed up 20 minutes late on his bicycle, proceeded to come into the bar and down two pints after giving me a point and a wink. I overheard him tell the waitress to “put it on his tab” and then he came over to the table with another beer.
He proceeded to tell me about his two boys (no mention of them in our previous conversation) and how his mom wanted to take them all to Disney World. He told her that would be too expensive, so he left his boys at home and he and his mom went to Disney World instead. Then he proceeded to tell me that he rode his bike everywhere because after his sixth DUI, “those dumb cops” took his license away. He mocked me for drinking water, then in his next breath told me that he could really see falling in love with me. In 20 minutes, I got about ten words out, and most of them were me telling him I had to go.
I later found out that he worked for a friend’s father, and that he was married.”
Mystery Dating
“Got a call from a friend of a friend who I thought I’d met once before asking if I wanted to go out tomorrow (Saturday) night. Sure. I went out to her place about 40 mins away. I realized upon arrival that I didn’t actually know her name. We had dinner, talked, made out a bit, talked about going out again, made out some more, called it a night at around 1 am. I tried several ways to get her to reveal her name, to no avail. I dropped her off at her place, drove home, went to bed.
I realized the following morning that she had never spoken my name either, not on the phone or in person. I further realized that I didn’t have her phone number and called the mutual friend to ask for her number. A mutual friend had no idea who I was talking about. I gave him the address of the girl. He said he didn’t know anyone from that town and the address wasn’t familiar.
Never heard from her again.”
The Cats Out Of The Bag
“Date was dinner and a movie with a girl. We got the movie time wrong so went to dinner first. After ordering she starts looking at her phone a lot and has this weird look on her face. I ask what’s wrong she says her cat has gone missing. She goes outside to make a phone call and comes back 5 minutes later saying we have to go.
I get our food boxed and pay the bill. I drive her back to her dorm and she runs inside with no goodbye. I shrug it off and go eat my boxed cold dinner. Later that night I check Facebook and see her on a date with another guy. I send her a message asking how her cat is.”
Takeout To Take Her Out
“The girl asked if I could buy her something for takeout, mainly because her boyfriend only lets her see other people if he can get a meal out of it when she gets back home.”
If you were like me in the 1970’s you listened to top 40 radio most of the time. You heard a lot of great songs and instant classics. But among them were many unforgettable songs that were just weird or strange. I’ve tried from memory to remember the ones that stand out in my mind.
For weird reasons they became hits. They either made no sense or having any musical merit. Just a bizarre era of story songs.
Of course, this stuff is all pretty subjective but I did have a few criteria for what should be here. I decided to include a song if it:
made me sick without even listening to it again
made me want to break my radio
made my stomach turn
brought out violent thoughts of hatred, revenge, etc.
reminded me how lame the radio and record companies are
could make me want to break my stereo
would make me leave a bar or club if they started playing it
would make me boo a band who started playing it
suspended my belief in a divine force that governs the universe
I’m not saying that there weren’t ANY good songs during the 70s but there was just a truck-load of waste back then. If anybody’s stupid enough to think that ALL disco sucks, remember that it’s just a bastard son of rhythm & blues just like rock’n’roll is- so they’re related, see? Also, the 1970s definitely didn’t have a monopoly on shitty music- there was tons of crap unleashed on us in the decade before and after and now also (there’s a future article there somewhere). Clothes-pin anyone?
The 70’s was an interesting time for music. There was a lot of experimentation and creativity from that decade, but there was also plenty of crap as well. Here is my list of the worst and most irritating songs of the 70’s.
Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald – Gordon Lightfoot – 1975
Compared to the rest of the songs on this list, this song should win a noble prize. I only just figured out that the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald wasn’t an ancient mariners tale, but was an actual breaking news story. The actual wreck in Lake Superior which killed 29 crew members happened in November of 1975. Gordon read a story in Newsweek about the tragedy and wrote and recorded this song the following month. It came out the next summer and got all the way to number 2 on the singles chart, which is pretty amazing for a 6-minute sea shanty with no chorus. Lightfoot changed a few details. The boat was actually loaded for Detroit not Cleveland and has actually revised the lyrics as more details of the wreck came out over the years. The other songwriters on this list should take notice. This is how you tell a story in a song.
Run Joey Run – David Geddes – 1975
Ahh… this disaster.
David Geddes wrote a song, and this song was later revived in an episode of Glee. Struggling songwriter, Geddes was in law school when he got a call from a songwriter that thought his voice would be good for a song, called Run Joey Run. In this tragedy, both in terms of the story and this song, Joey sings about his dead girlfriend Julie who haunts him when he tries to sleep. She warns him not to come to her house because she’s been fighting with her father. We’re to believe that Julie is pregnant but she promises her dad that she and Joey will get married. (Just you wait and see) Of course, Joey comes to be by her side, her father tries to shoot him, but he hits her instead. Yes, even in the ME decade of the ’70s these are the lessons and the morals we grew up with.
I was 13 years old when this song came out. Even back then I knew it was an awful pile of garbage. But there’s something about it that has this weird, B-movie vibe to it. Now I actually kind of love it for its kitsch. I love songs and films that are made in earnest that are terrible. I guess that’s why Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax are some of my favorite shows. Stuff so bad, it’s good. This is a welcome tune to my list!
Shannon – Henry Gross – 1975
Henry Gross played Woodstock as part of the group Sha Na Na, and he was part of Jim Croce’s band. Sadly his own solo work was going nowhere. But he struck gold with a song about a dead dog. Not just any dead dog. While he was touring with the Beach Boys in 1975, Gross visited Carl Wilson’s house in LA. He mentioned that he owned an Irish Setter called Shannon, Wilson replied that he also had an Irish Setter named Shannon that had recently been killed by a car. That was enough to score a top ten hit and an afterlife when Casey Kasem went on a profanity-laced tirade in 1985 when his producers stuck a long-distance dedication of Shannon right after an up-tempo song by the Pointer Sisters.
If you listen to it you can feel the whole Beach Boys vocal sound in the chorus. The only thing that could make this song worse would be if Mike Love sang it. Not a terrible song, but just a weird subject for a tune. Back then I always thought it was about a girl that had died.
It’s also way too long…
Convoy – CW McCall – 1973
Advertising executive Bill Fries created an award-winning campaign for Old Home Bread, featuring a fictional truck driver named CW McCall. A few years later, at the peak of the CB radio craze, Fries got together with Chip Davis from Mannheim Steamroller and they put together a song that chronicled a CB conversation between Rubber Duck, Pig Pen, and Sod Buster, about a fictional trucker rebellion that drives from the West coast to the East coast of the country without stopping. The song is mostly dialogue, thick with CB lingo and an annoying earworm chorus, Convoy became a number one hit in 1975, it inspired a major motion picture in 1978 directed by the great Sam Peckinpah and starring Kris Kristofferson Ali McGraw and Ernest Borgnine. I would watch this movie for the laugh.
Kids… that’s the kind of thing that was possible in the ’70s.
Look at the body on Kristofferson in this rendering! Lookin’ ripped!
Wildfire – Michael Murphey and the Rio Grande Band – 1975
Murphey and Larry Cansler co-wrote “Wildfire” in 1968, shortly after Murphey emerged as a solo artist. Earlier in the decade, he had been part of a duo known as the Lewis & Clark Expedition (which had appeared and performed in an episode of I Dream of Jeannie) in 1968 with his fellow singer-songwriter Boomer Castleman. When Murphey rerecorded “Wildfire” for a new album in 1997, he was quoted by Billboard as saying that what many consider his signature song “broke my career wide open and, on some level, still keeps it fresh. Because that song appeals to kids and always has, it’s kept my career fresh.”
In a 2008 interview, Murphey talked about the origins of the song and the context in which it was written. He was a third-year student at UCLA, working on a concept album for Kenny Rogers (The Ballad of Calico). The work was demanding, sometimes taking more than twenty hours a day. One night he dreamed the song in its totality, writing it up in a few hours the next morning. He believes the song came to him from a story his grandfather told him when he was a little boy – a prominent Native American legend about a ghost horse. Murphey didn’t have a horse named Wildfire until a few years before the interview when he gave that name to a palomino mare.
The lyrics are those of a homesteader telling the story of a young Nebraska woman said to have died searching for her escaped pony, “Wildfire”, during a blizzard. The homesteader finds himself in a similar situation, doomed in an early winter storm. A hoot owl has perched outside of his window for six days, and the homesteader believes the owl is a sign that the ghost of the young woman is calling for him. He hopes to join her (presumably in heaven) and spend eternity riding Wildfire with her, leaving the difficulties of earthly life behind.
The song is rather famous for its piano intro and outro, which is often left off versions of the song edited for radio. The introduction is based on a piece (Prelude in D-flat, Op. 11 No. 15) by the Russian classical composer Alexander Scriabin.
This song is not annoying or weird. It’s just a really unique story song that was very popular in the mid-70s. It’s kind of sappy, but also sort of beautiful and sad. I like it so I added it to this list.
Muskrat Love – The Captain and Tennille -1976
I really have to hand it to my readers on this one. I was discussing compiling this list with a few of my followers and they sent me some of their favorite weird songs. The Captain and Tennille clearly deserve a spot on this list, but they didn’t go for the obvious choice with “Love Will Keep Us Together” or “Do That to Me One More Time.” No, they wisely went with “Muskrat Love,” by far their hit that’s aged the worst. The song (originally called “Muskrat Candlelight”) was written by obscure country-rock artist Willis Alan Ramsey in 1972. The band America covered it in 1973, and the Captain and Tennille cut their own version of it in 1976. The song isn’t some sort of analogy. It’s about actual muskrats falling in love. They played it at the White House in 1976 when Queen Elizabeth II came for a visit. It’s unclear why the Ford Administration thought that was a good idea. If they came a year later, Jimmy Carter would have probably pulled in a better act.
If you google pictures of them, Daryl always looks like he’s uncomfortable and doesn’t want to be in any photos with her. I can’t blame him.
Tennille filed for divorce from Dragon in the State of Arizona on January 16, 2014, after 39 years of marriage. Dragon was unaware of the termination of his marriage until he was served with the divorce papers. The divorce documents referenced health insurance or health issues, and Tennille had written on her blog in 2010 that Dragon’s neurological condition, similar to Parkinson’s, known as essential tremor, was characterized by such extreme tremors he could no longer play keyboards. Dragon later stated that some of his health problems were the result of errors in dosing his medication.
In 2016, Toni Tennille, Tennille’s memoir (co-written with niece Caroline Tennille St. Clair) was published. In it, Tennille painted an unflattering picture of Dragon and their years together.
Dragon and Tennille remained close friends until his death from complications of kidney failure on January 2, 2019, in Prescott, Arizona. Tennille was at his side when he died.
I always thought of Toni Tennille as a poser who sang flat with little range. They’re like a bad act you’d see in a hotel lounge in the middle of nowhere. This song is trash and I can’t believe why anyone would focus their songwriting energy on such an odd subject.
On a final note, the weird solo that sounds like little farts is supposed to be Muskrat Love sounds.
It’s just Awful!
I hate her and this song too. She just comes off like the type of person that would be best friends with Kate Gosselin.
You’re Having My Baby – Paul Anka – 1974
Nobody disputes the fact that Paul Anka is brilliant – the man wrote “My Way” for God’s sake. That feat alone earns him a spot on the Songwriters Hall of Fame. But in the summer of 1974 he released “(You’re) Having My Baby,” an uber-saccharine song about a man overjoyed about the news that his wife is pregnant. The song hit home for a lot of Americans, and it gave Anka his first Number One since 1959’s “Lonely Boy.” It’s aged about as well as a rancid bucket of sweet and sour pork. New life was breathed into the tune in 2009 when it was featured on Glee. Finn sang it to Quinn while having dinner with her parents. At the time, he didn’t know that Puck was the real father and that Quinn’s dad would throw her out of the house after hearing the news.
In 2018, heavy metal singer Glenn Danzig invited Anka onto the main stage at the Wacken Open Air Festival to sing “(You’re) Having My Baby.” Despite not having sung the song live in nearly 40 years, Anka agreed and appeared with Danzig wearing bell-bottom pants and a plaid shirt with a butterfly collar.
Less than thirty seconds into the song, the crowd of roughly 66,000 expressed their disgust with boos and empty beer bottles, forcing the two to stop singing. Unable to quell the crowd with offers of singing “Long Way Back from Hell” and “Do You Wear the Mark” together, Anka and Danzig fled the stage shortly before the frenzied crowd stormed the stage.
“These kids don’t know Anka as I know him,” Danzig later said through tears. “When I first heard ‘You’re Having My Baby,’ I knew that’s what I wanted to do in life.”
Despite the underwhelming catastrophe of the Wacken Open Air Festival, other heavy metal singers have followed suit with Danzig’s idea. Paul Anka is currently collaborating with thrash-metal band Slayer and an album is due in stores during the summer of 2021.
Watch the performance. Notice how Paul is up on stage singing it by himself? Odia Coates the woman who sings the duet with him isn’t with him on stage. She’s sitting on a bench at the piano. Was a white man and a black woman standing next to each other on stage singing about how he’s so happy he got her pregnant and she’s keeping their mixed-race baby, too controversial for 1974? I don’t know. Just sayin’…
My mother hated this song and so did I. My mother appreciated good music and couldn’t understand why someone would write a song like this. If you listen to the song you’ll hear how gross this song really is. “You could have swept it from your life, but you didn’t do it.” Nice Roe vs. Wade reference, Paul.
Ugh!
Watching Scotty Grow – Bobby Goldsboro – 1970
is a song written by country music singer-songwriter Mac Davis and recorded by Bobby Goldsboro in 1970 on his album, We Gotta Start Lovin. Davis recorded his version on his 1972 album, I Believe in Music.
This song deals with a father witnessing the activities of his son growing up, while the father does his usual laid-back adult activities. The phrase, “that’s my boy” is used in all 3 verses. One of the verses, “Mickey Mouse says thirteen o’clock,” refers to the Mickey Mouse watches which were popular at the time.
Who the hell told Bobby Goldsboro that this was a good haircut? It looks like a fur helmet. But I digress. I hate this song. It’s so sappy. The lyrics just make me want to puke. If my handlers asked me to record a song like this I would have quit the music business.
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Once I complimented an intern on her haircut. From behind me, a male coworker commented, “I was going to say that but I didn’t want to seem creepy, what with #MeToo and all.” He figured that this intern would hear “nice haircut” and think “assault.” We teased him about it, and he doubled down: “I didn’t want to make anyone feel like I was looking at them!”
Pretty much every man’s greatest fear is coming off creepy or turning into his father or whatever. But for the vast majority of normal guys, the worst charge you could throw at them is that they’re creeping someone out. It’s a healthy fear, considering the world today and how many men are behaving inappropriately. Even small acts performed with good intentions can come across poorly, and it can be difficult to navigate what is and is not appropriate. A compliment in the workplace can easily cross lines, so here are some tips to help you stay in the compliment safe zone:
Don’t make it about you
The first defense against accidental creeping is taking the word “I” out of your compliment. Even the most innocuous compliments adopt sexual undertones when they start with “I.” Centering the compliment around how you feel carries with it a suggestion that you think the woman you’re complimenting is doing what she’s doing – whether it’s wearing a cute top or wearing a little bit more makeup today – for you. “I” compliments are unsettling because it sounds like you’re telling us that what we’re doing suits your sexual appetites. “I love that shirt” feels like you’re thinking naughty things about what’s under the shirt, while “that shirt is awesome” is much safer. G-chatting someone, “I loved it when so spoke up in that meeting, so feisty!” is creepy. “You made a great point about the budget in there” is nice.
Never call a woman “feisty”
This is self-evident.
Don’t comment on women’s bodies
This, too, should be obvious, but you should never compliment a specific body part. I can think of very few things creepier than hearing “you have such great legs” at work. Specific body part compliments are only for people you’re dating or sleeping with. With the exception of dramatic hair changes (“you got a haircut!” will suffice), you should never comment on someone’s body. Even “you look great!” and “did you lose weight?” are deadly. I know “you look great” seems innocuous, but it often comes off as “I would sleep with you.” As for weight: Never mention it. It’s not your business. You have no idea why a woman lost weight. Perhaps she has emotional issues with it. Perhaps she doesn’t even want to be losing weight. You also don’t need to tell someone how well their clothes suit their body. It doesn’t matter if that dress is flattering; we’re at work, we’re not dating. You can tell a woman her clothes are cool without veering into “your jeans always fit you so well” territory.
Stick to professional merits
In general, we tend to neglect non-appearance-based compliments. One positive comment about a woman’s work will go a long way towards making you seem less horny. Most of your compliments should be not about appearance: I would aim for a good 90/10 split with only 10 percent of your compliments being about how someone looks or what they’re wearing. What’s left, you may ask? Well, you do work with this woman, right? “You killed it in that meeting” is a safe option. If you feel awkward delivering unsolicited work praise (you shouldn’t) try framing your compliments as thank-yous. “Thanks for catching my mistake in the third paragraph, your stuff always looks so polished.” Just be careful not to sound surprised that she’s good at her job, though. Exclaiming, “Wow, what you said was so smart!” is a bad look.
You don’t need to do it
Unless you’re in a feelings circle and everyone is required to say one nice thing about the person to their left or whatever, giving a compliment is never mandatory. It seems like somewhere along the way, a lot of men confused being decent to women with complimenting us, and I worry it has become a compulsive tic. So I’m telling you now: You don’t have to say every compliment that comes to you. Especially if you’re concerned that you’re toeing a creeper line, just shut it down. No one needs to hear your opinion on anything unless someone is about to cut a wire to dismantle a bomb and you are the only one who knows which wire is correct. Most opinions (and your compliments are, fundamentally, your opinion) can stay in your head. Ultimately, understand that a lot of women you work with simply might not care what you think about their new shoes. No woman I know, despite the myth that persists, is upset that she’s not getting more compliments.
Thank you for reading my blog. Please read, like, comment, and most of all follow Phicklephilly. I publish every day.
If you were like me in the 1970’s you listened to top 40 radio most of the time. You heard a lot of great songs and instant classics. But among them were many unforgettable songs that were just weird or strange. I’ve tried from memory to remember the ones that stand out in my mind.
For weird reasons they became hits. They either made no sense or having any musical merit. Just a bizarre era of story songs.
Of course, this stuff is all pretty subjective but I did have a few criteria for what should be here. I decided to include a song if it:
made me sick without even listening to it again
made me want to break my radio
made my stomach turn
brought out violent thoughts of hatred, revenge, etc.
reminded me how lame the radio and record companies are
could make me want to break my stereo
would make me leave a bar or club if they started playing it
would make me boo a band who started playing it
suspended my belief in a divine force that governs the universe
I’m not saying that there weren’t ANY good songs during the 70s but there was just a truck-load of waste back then. If anybody’s stupid enough to think that ALL disco sucks, remember that it’s just a bastard son of rhythm & blues just like rock’n’roll is- so they’re related, see? Also, the 1970’s definitely didn’t have a monopoly on shitty music- there was tons of crap unleashed on us in the decade before and after and now also (there’s a future article there somewhere). Clothes-pin anyone?
The 70’s was an interesting time for music. There was a lot of experimentation and creativity from that decade, but there was also plenty of crap as well. Here is my list of the worst and most irritating songs of the 70’s.
Indian Reservation – Paul Revere and the Raiders – 1971
This song was written by John D. Loudermilk. It was first recorded by Marvin Rainwater in 1959 and released on MGM as “The Pale Faced Indian”, but that release went unnoticed. The first hit version was a 1968 recording by Don Fardon – a former member of the Sorrows – that reached number 20 on the Hot 100 in 1968 and number 3 on the UK Singles Chart in 1970.
In 1971, the Raiders recorded “Indian Reservation” on the Columbia Records label, and it topped the Hot 100 on July 24. On June 30, 1971, the RIAA gold-certified the record for selling over a million copies. The record was later certified platinum for selling an additional million copies. The song was the group’s only Hot 100 number 1 hit and their final Hot 100 top 20 song.
At the end, where the Raiders sing “…Cherokee nation will return”, Fardon says “Cherokee Indian…”, while the line is absent in Rainwater’s version, which ends with “beads…nowadays made in Japan.” In addition, Fardon sings the line: “Brick built houses by the score/ No more tepees anymore”, not used in the Raiders’ version.
Not a terrible song, just a bit insensitive by today’s standards, but worth adding to this list of 70s oddities.
The Sound of Philadelphia – MFSB – 1974
“TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)” is a 1974 hit recording by MFSB featuring vocals by The Three Degrees. A classic example of the Philadelphia soul genre, it was written by Gamble and Huff as the theme for the American musical television program Soul Train, which specialized in African American musical performers. The single was released on the Philadelphia International Records label. It was the first television theme song to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100, and it is arguably the first disco song to reach that position.
The song is essentially an instrumental piece, featuring a lush blend of string instrument and horn section in the Philadelphia soul style. There are only two vocal parts to the song: a passage close to the beginning during which The Three Degrees sing “People all over the world!”; and the chorus over the fadeout, “Let’s get it on/It’s time to get down”. The words “People all over the world!” are not heard in the original version. The version heard on Soul Train also had the series title sung over the first four notes of the melody, “Soul Train, Soul Train”. This particular version was released on a 1975 Three Degrees album, International.
“TSOP” hit number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 in the spring of 1974 and remained there for two weeks, the first television theme song to do so in the history of that chart. It also topped the American Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs (for one week) and adult contemporary (for two weeks). The Three Degrees would revisit the top of the AC chart later in 1974 with their hit single, “When Will I See You Again”.
Don Cornelius, the creator, and host of Soul Train refused to allow any references to the name of the television series when the single was released, leading Gamble and Huff to adopt the alternate title for the release. Cornelius would later admit that not allowing the single to be named Soul Train was a major mistake on his part. (As a result, the Three Degrees’ singing of the show’s name “Soul Train” during the chorus as heard on the TV version is not heard on the single.)
Although it was rerecorded a number of times for future versions of the show, and various different themes were used during the late 1970s and early 1980s, “TSOP” returned in the late 1980s and remained the theme song for Soul Train through the disco, 1980s rhythm and blues, new jack swing, hip hop music, and neo-soul eras of black music.
Not a bad song. Actually kind of a great disco song. I always hated disco in the 70’s because I felt it undermined rock music. But in reality, it’s simply R&B and Soul music jazzed up so you can dance to it. A huge fad in the late 70’s.
Fly Robin Fly – Silver Convention – 1975
is a song by German disco group Silver Convention from their debut studio album Save Me (1975). Sylvester Levay and Stephan Prager wrote the song, and the latter produced it. “Fly, Robin, Fly” was released as the third single from Save Me in September 1975, peaking at number one on the United States Billboard Hot 100. Thanks to the success of “Fly, Robin, Fly”, Silver Convention became the first German act to have a number one song on the American music charts. The song received a Grammy Award for Best R&B Instrumental Performance in 1976.
“Fly, Robin, Fly” carries the distinction of being a Billboard chart-topper with only six words: the chorus simply repeats “Fly, Robin, fly” three times, with an ending of “Up, up to the sky“. During a segment on VH1’s 100 Greatest Dance Songs, it was revealed that the original working title was “Run, Rabbit, Run”.
It’s a classic disco tune that was wildly popular. But the reason it makes this list is that the only lyrics in the song are, “Fly Robin Fly, up, up to the sky.”
Jacqueline Nemorin (known professionally as Jackie Carter and Né-Mo-Rin) is a Mauritian-British singer, songwriter, composer, and music producer. She is notable for being one of the voices and members of the 1970s Silver Convention project. She’s the main girl in the middle and clearly the prettiest of the three. For me, it’s worth watching just to see her beauty.
The odd thing about this performance is; the choreography resembles some sort of aerobic workout!
Afternoon Delight – Starland Vocal Group – 1976
It’s hard to hate on a song about the joys of mid-day sex, but the Starland Vocal Band makes it easy. The group was composed of two real-life couples that probably enjoyed some afternoon delights around the time of the song’s release in 1976, though both couples have long-since divorced. The song hit Number One in the summer of 1976 and actually got the group a brief variety series on CBS the next year. They also won a Grammy for Best New Artist – as opposed to, say, Aerosmith, the Ramones or Tom Petty, and the Heartbreakers or the many other great bands that were around that year. The song got renewed attention when it was featured on Glee recently with guest star John Stamos.
Bill Danoff looks like an accountant, but Margot Chapman is kind of cute. But let’s face it, they all look like 70’s porn stars that all need a shower.
It’s an awful song with horrible lyrics. That whole bit about rubbing sticks and stones together just makes me retch.
Disco Duck – Rick Dees – 1976
Rick Dees was a Memphis DJ who spun so many disco songs that he decided to record his own parody of the genre in 1976. He never imagined that “Disco Duck” would reach Number One on the Hot 100 and briefly make him a household name. The song was a hit everywhere in America besides Memphis, whose radio stations didn’t want to promote a rival – and Rick’s own station refused to play it. He continued to release novelty songs in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but they failed to find an audience. Then Weird Al came around with “Eat It” and Dees just couldn’t compete. Weird Al wasn’t going to keep Rick Dees down though. He started the Rick Dees Weekly Top 40 in 1983 and it’s still going strong.
This song and this performance are downright awful!
Good Girls Don’t – The Knack – 1979
“Good Girls Don’t” begins with Fieger playing the harmonica, in a part which authors Michael Uslan and Bruce Solomon liken to The Beatles‘ song “I Should Have Known Better.” The lyrics, such as the refrain “She’ll be telling you ‘good girls don’t but I do,'” were considered misogynistic by some critics. However, Joyce Canaan of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies wrote that this line succinctly captures the transformation of teenage girls’ representations of their sexual practices; while they want to be seen as “good girls”, even good girls may engage in practices not corresponding to established moral standards. Fieger has stated that “All we were doing in songs like the naughty ‘Good Girls Don’t’ was reflecting the way 14-year-old boys feel. And there’s a little 14-year-old boy in all of us. I think that’s why the record did so well.” Other lyrics that created controversy included the lines:
“And she makes you want to scream; wishing you could get inside her pants” (this line was re-recorded as “wishing she was givin’ you a chance” on the “clean” single release), and:
“And it’s a teenage sadness everyone has got to taste.”
“An in-between age madness that you know you can’t erase till she’s sitting on your face (and it hurts!).”
DISGUSTING!
Although I really liked My Sharona when it came out, I realized quickly that Doug Fieger seemed like a Beatles wannabe and a bit of a pervert. Who names their album, “…But The Little Girls Understand.”??? What kind of Pedos are these guys to approve that? Even the cover’s imagery conveys that. A young girl looking up at the stage in awe. It’s awful. Even when this came out, I was 17 and found this offensive.
Critic Greil Marcus described the song as a “smutty little Beatles imitation”. Author John Borack described the song as “a mean pop tune”, noting too that in the song lead singer and songwriter Fieger comes off “like a leering, sexist twit with hormones a-raging.
I don’t know. It just seems a bit too much. Anyway, Doug Fieger died from cancer at 57 in 2006.
Let’s Make A Baby – Billy Paul – 1975
I don’t know. Here’s another one that makes me think of the Paul Anka song, You’re having my baby. Billy’s a good singer, but again, the subject matter bothers me. I just can’t ever imagine myself driving down the road in my car singing along to these lyrics. Just…NO.
Come on, come on, let’s make a baby
Oh, baby, come on, come on
(Come on, come on)
Let’s bring another life into this world
A little boy, a little girl
Take my hand while we walk slowly to the room
Can’t you see tonight I’m gonna make sweet, sweet love to you?
Girl, don’t be shy, don’t be shy
This is a moment we’ve been waiting for
Hey, come by my side, by my side
It’s the place you’ll be forevermore, forevermore
So, baby, come on, come on
(Come on, come on)
Let’s make a baby
Oh, baby, come on, come on
(Come on, come on)
Let’s bring another life into this world
A little boy, a little girl
The Buoys – Timothy – 1970
Here’s a last-minute entry. One of my followers sent this one to me. I’ve never heard this song before. It’s a perfect addition to this series. I’m not going to give away the twist to this song.
Just listen to it.
Thank you for reading my blog. Please read, like, comment, and most of all follow Phicklephilly. I publish every day.
In these hypersensitive times, even a controversial music video as artful as Sia’s ‘Elastic Heart’, which saw Shia LaBeouf wrestle in a brotherly way with dancer Maddie Ziegler, will lead to a full apology from the artist. But back in 1981, Grammy-winning composer Danny Elfman was manifesting unhinged visions no-one would dare post online in 2016.
At the time, he was part of new wave band Oingo Boingo, whose album Only a Lad and specifically the song ‘Little Girls’ has become a persistent internet oddity, racking up over 6 million YouTube views.
If you’ve never seen it/had it burned into your memory, watch it at your peril now:
Slightly mortified? Sorry. With lines like “They don’t care about my one-way mirror / They’re not frightened by my cold exterior” and the (hideously catchy) chorus hook, it’s a pretty disturbing song and video, imagining a predator living in a house seemingly designed by M.C. Escher and inhabited by voyeuristic dwarves in smart-casual attire. Several little girls visit, pillow fighting with the character, restraining him, kissing him and floating in some kind of void.
Was it some kind of Nabokovian exploration of paedophilia? Elfman was asked about the video at Comic Con in 2010.
HE SAID:
“What made me write it? At that point I was just grabbing onto things that popped up in my head and taking characters and singing from their point of view. So whether it be the right wing guy talking about capitalism or the feisty little girl or quasi molester – these were just things that I thought were funny or interesting and I would just kind of jump into the skin of. Often things I wrote were motivated by nothing but the newspaper. I’d read an article and be thinking about something and write a song from that perspective. So it didn’t necessarily reflect me…but it was just fun and I knew it was irreverent. I was out to offend everybody when I started out. Any subject matter I could find that would be offensive I was embracing, so that was just one.”
Elfman, who won a Grammy for the Batman score and an Emmy for Desperate Housewives’, doubled down on this in 2014 when he told The AV Club it wasn’t so much about writing “from the perspective of a paedophile” but dishing out an “in-your-face facetious jab”.
Only A Lad critiqued capitalism, but he also wanted to provoke the outraged left.
“I just basically make fun of everybody, and I didn’t see anybody as being protected from that,” he added.
“So even if my politics were left, I still would really mock political correctness and kind of organized left-wing politics as frequently as I would the right.
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Happy New Year! I’ve been writing this blog for over two and a half years now! I appreciate all of my readers that have stayed with me on this journey of dating and discovery. I want to thank all of my followers who have helped grow the site and I love all of your comments! Keep them coming!
2018 has been an amazing year of dating, relationships, friends, family, self discovery and most of all, love.
I found a girlfriend! (If you’ve been reading this blog I know what you’re thinking, but bear with me. The blog is called Phicklephilly for a reason! See: Cherie)
Also…. I had a goal to reach 50,000 views by Christmas 2018. Thanks to all of you I achieved that number on Christmas day!
Thank you so much!!!
Here’s some of the things you can expect to see in 2019!
Murder Mystery Weekend
I’ve finally decided to try my hand at writing Erotica. It won’t be the usual intense in and out action like most erotic stories. I’ve been working on this idea for a while, and I want it to be a rich and satisfying tale. This series has already begun! Because it’s NSFW (Not Safe for Work) I’ve decided to publish it on my new sister site to Phicklephilly called, La Petite Mort. (There is a link to get to that sight that is live right now!)
The first few chapters will set up the situation and introduce the characters. If you’re looking for the sex, there’s some steam, but you’ll have to be patient. I like a story and character development.
I also have another series starting over there entitled….
Another Life
Have you ever wondered if you exist in another world living Another Life?
I have, and I decided to explore another world that I could have possibly inhabited. In this series I’m a teenager in the late 70’s. My parents are divorced. My stepmom is a bitch. I have roommates. I work at an auto repair shop. I’m close to my uncle and my cousins. I go to college. I navigate this other world and see how this alternate path turns out.
This is part one of a new series I want to write that mixes mind control with transformation elements. This is the first time I have written something primarily based on mind control and while this first part is very smut heavy later parts will have more focus on the mind control aspects for other purposes (as well as smut). I hope you enjoy and please give me feedback, it would really help!
There will also be some exclusive erotic series that I’ll only publish on La Petite Mort so for now they’re a secret. You’ll have to visit the site if you want to read those!
You can find all the goodies there starting in January 2019:
Let me know what you think because this is all new literary ground for me.
Enjoy!
(Read at your own risk, and praying none of my sisters read it!)
As always, your comments and suggestions are most welcome.
Remember, this is my first foray into erotica, so any positive and negative feedback will be very welcome!
California Dreamin’
If you’ve been following this blog for the last year, (and I hope you have!) You read about how I began to tell random stories from my past. (Search: My Young Life) (Wildwood Daze) Many were very personal and I needed to get them out. I was comfortable enough with the regular content and strength of phicklephilly to tell those stories. The feedback and outpouring of assurance was glorious and I thank you all for your words and support!
But I also had the opportunity to write about my young life playing as a musician in several rock and roll bands. Those series ran every Friday in 2018. (Search: Renegade) Wildwood Daze) (Union Jacks)
Now it’s time to tell the crazy, winding tale of my journey from New Jersey to Los Angeles in the early 80’s. It was a mad time to be a young, good-looking musician in a rock band in L.A. So get ready for the real insanity to begin in 2019!!
These stories are some of, if not the most crazy events that I have ever experienced. I’m sure I’m going to be laughing out loud writing them.
And there are plenty!
Cherie
My lovely girlfriend Cherie will continue to appear every Monday at 8am. We’ve been together for a while now and she has well-earned the number 1 spot on my blog. Strap in… it’s going to be a bumpy ride in 2019!
Dating and Relationship Advice
This series really caught on last year. I originally wrote and published it once a week. I just wanted something to fill the Saturday slot. But when a friend of mine ran into some problems in his relationship, I decided to write more. I made a pact with myself that I would write a piece every day and publish every day at noon and twice on Saturday! This way when I didn’t see him he would always have my words to help him through his struggle.
I frankly don’t enjoy writing Dating and Relationship Advice as much as everything else I compose, but people seem to like it. I’m a big purveyor of, “Give the people what they want” So I’ll march on to bring you the best and most up to dating and relationship advice I can come up with! Thanks for making that column a hit!
UPDATE: The more I’ve thought about this the more I want to kill it. I hate writing it and editing it so I’m going to take a break from it at some point. If my traffic drops dramatically I’ll resume it, but if not I’ll stop publishing it. I’d much rather publish content I really love and believe in that’s fun to create, rather than just pounding out content simply for traffic..
UPDATE 2.0: I found a way to keep it going and I hope it works. It will save me a ton of time in the editing process and in the same moment I can support other writers.
I love the idea of Dating and Relationship advice on phicklephilly, but it takes so much time to create and edit, it’s eating up the time when I should be creating fresh content that IS phicklephilly.
But here I am on New Years Eve and I think I came up with a way to make it work.
So for now it’s on for 2019!
Bear with me!
Crazy Dating Stories
These posts have become a bi-monthly staple of the phicklephilly universe. They’re the funniest and most cringe worthy posts on the site’s history. But like I said… my readers love them. Everybody likes a bad dating story, and I have so many to tell. Crazy Dating Stories are like catnip to my loyal following. I love writing them so I’ll do my best to remember them and keep cranking out the trash!
Enjoy!
Sun Stories
Sun Stories have been a monthly series that have appeared on phicklephilly since it’s beginning. There have been so many great tales that have come out of the tanning salon. I have enough to publish an entire book. (I plan to once again try to get Phicklephilly and Sun Stories published as books on Amazon in 2019!)
Highlights to appear this year in Sun Stories will be the introduction of a couple of new characters. (Some enduring, some fleeting)
Chanel – The nerve-wracking and sexy two-part story of the pretty Romanian gypsy that came in from the cold to tan at the salon one night.
Kita – She’s a cute, naive, 20-year-old Asian girl who goes to college in Philly, but lives in Florida with her sister and parents. She loves to tan and is a unique character. I can’t reveal too much, but I’m interested to see how this story plays out.
Jazmin – She’s an exotic, smoking hot Middle Eastern girl who works across the street from the salon at the Guess retail outlet. This is an intense and jarring story about a girl who knew too much… but not enough about one thing.
Tales of Rock
This is my favorite series to write on phicklephilly. As a former musician and rock trivia buff, I love writing these stories. I get a thrill out of telling stories about musicians, sex, drugs and rock n’ roll in general. This enduring series will continue to own the 8am slot every Sunday morning through 2019!
A couple of highlights this year in Tales of Rock:
There will be several disturbing stories about underage girls getting involved with some of the most beloved of rock’s musicians. It’s a lurid series, but someone has to tell these tales. (It might as well be me.)
The Theory of the 13 Year Rock vs. Pop Cycle
This is a 5 part series that runs every Sunday for a little over a month. I did tons of research for this one and I am proud to present this interesting series to my readers! The cycle spans over half a century of Rock and Pop!
Enjoy!
In Search of the Forgotten Heroes of 70’s Rock
I loved writing this post because I grew up listening to these icons in the 1970’s.
Steppenwolf
This one came straight from my heart and soul.
Celebrity Sightings
I’ll continue to crank out stories about local and global celebrities I’ve met in my life. I may even write a few about some actors and actresses I simply adore but haven’t met!
Tinder Moments
I’m sick of these. They’re funny and weird but hard to collect and assemble. They’ll appear monthly through 2019, but after that I’m cancelling this series. (I think online dating sites have been played out anyway.)
Sensuality, Sex & Something Else
I will continue to promote my friend Jad’s blog every Sunday at 3pm. She’s a great lady and her stuff is always a fun read. Whether her series will continue on phicklephilly in 2020 is anybody’s guess at this point. I’ll have to see what the site looks like by then.
Update! Jad has since reached out to me to tell me that she’s met someone special and will not be writing that series anymore. However, she has told me that she will continue to write her blog but it will be private and for her eyes only.
Please join me in wishing her health and happiness in her life!
Thank you Jad for your great stories!
Racquel Writes!
I met the effervescent Racquel on word press. I love her writing and her stories. I decided to feature her every Saturday (Or i it Sunday?) at 3pm on phicklephilly in 2019. She’s a great lady and I hope you enjoy her journey. Please read, comment and follow this wonderful lady’s work! Her series begins next Saturday on January 5th at 3pm EST!
Thank you!
Later in the year I’ve decided to rerun the Rebecca series from 2016. There may be some new developments brewing in that lost relationship this year…
Stay tuned!
So thank you again, one and all for your wonderful support. I’ll continue to deliver quality, unique content this year. I hope you continue the journey with me.
It’s going to be a fun ride!
Life is fleeting and fragile. Enjoy yourself!
I work a lot and when this post publishes I’ll be asleep on New Years Day.
I will arise at some point tomorrow and make my way to the Mummers Parade for a moment.
Thank you one and all for your ongoing support!
Zoolon Forever!
Thank you for reading my blog. Please read, like, comment, and most of all follow Phicklephilly. I publish every day.
Everything on Phicklephilly is true. I can’t make this stuff up. I wish it weren’t true, but sadly it is.
I was just told this story by my friend Alice. She is the CEO of her own IT recruitment company, and a dear friend of mine. If anyone reading this can help, please comment on this post.
One day while Alice was at Starbucks, a man came in with a very eerie demeanor. He looked like he was looking for something, or someone, and asked if anyone was sitting next to her. There was no one sitting next to her, so of course she said no. She was very consumed in her work so she didn’t really pay much attention to this man, when he peeped over her shoulder and said “Oh, I see your name is Alice.” She was a little freaked out, but figured he was just being friendly and saw her Starbucks cup, but then she realized her name wasn’t even on her cup, and he was peeping over her shoulder and was watching what she was doing. She had to meet a client at their office so she left, but it was also because she felt very uncomfortable. That was the only time she ever actually spoke to this man.
Ever since that run in with him, he appears everywhere she is. There was one time he followed her out to her car. Another time, he came into a different café she was in and sat right next to her when there wasn’t even a seat. Each encounter she pretended that she was on a call. Over the course of two years now he’s waited for her outside places that she’s been, showed up at her office looking for her, and somehow got her one employee’s phone number and reached out.
She even talked to the barista at the other coffee shop. They know who he is and have barred him from ever coming in again. When asked why, they told Alice that he has been harassing other young girls in the cafe. Like teenage girls. Thirteen and fourteen year olds. They all have told their mothers, and they have reported him as well. But nothing has been done.
One barista told Alice that he once went up to a group of young girls and said he lost his contact lens and they all got down on their hands and knees looking for it and he just stood back looking at their butts and up their skirts. So he’s not just some nut job. He knows what he’s doing. He is a diabolical menace that needs to be arrested.
He’s requested Alice on every source of social media she can think of, Facebook, Instagram, every platform she is on. Just this morning there was a silver car following her out of her development for about a mile. The car was following her closely. Almost tailgating her. Not thinking anything of it she pulled into the gas station as she normally would, got out to pay and get a coffee inside. She got a bad feeling, and when she looked behind her, it was him!
She went inside and ran to the back of the store. It was quiet until she heard the bell of the door opening. Then the sound of approaching footsteps.
He went down each aisle looking for her. The owner of the gas station asked him if he needed anything. He said “I’m just looking around.” She said it felt like she was in a horror movie.
But it was real.
He must have gotten nervous and finally left. Alice came out of hiding and told the woman running the station, that he was the man who has been stalking her. She sprung into action, and got his license plate number.
I’m writing this because she called the police on each encounter and they told her that unless he touches her, or harms her, there’s nothing they can do. But they would put it in his file. Problem is, by the time this happens, that would mean that he harmed her.
Each time he appears, she tells herself she is going to confront him and tell him to leave her alone. But each time she sees him, every time it happens, fear takes hold and she is afraid to do so.
Today she called the police after this incident, and they said they had an incident with him back in 2013 but that was all they had on him. She told them that she’s reached out to them several times and they said because it’s in a different county they can’t even see that he has a history of stalking/harassment. ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? It’s 2016 and there’s no way for one county to see a record of someone in the next county over? This man is scary; he’s in his mid 50’s and has full on conversations with himself. He’s extremely intelligent as he has requested her on LinkedIn and she saw his work credentials. She does recruitment for IT positions, so she knows that he knows exactly what he’s doing. There’s just something really off about this guy.
She is an advocate for the police system, but she doesn’t know what to do. She is really freaked out. It’s gone too far. She doesn’t want to wait like a sitting duck, but wants this man has to stop following her.
Alice is afraid he’s followed her home and knows where she lives.
Does anyone have any advice? Also, why isn’t there a way for police stations to see incidents that happened in other counties? Isn’t there some sort of CRM software they can use to track that? Any advice would be appreciated.
Here’s a photo of this piece of shit. If you, or anyone you know can identify this man, please contact local law enforcement.
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