Saturday, June 13, 2009

"Sh-Huh It Happens"

Anyone who has read this blog for any length of time will no that this writer is know prude when it comes to word usage (I would have said verbiage, but I dumbed it down to an eighth grade level as they told us to do when I began writing commercial radio copy)
Recently a friend of mine commented that the "f" bomb has been rendered inefficient due to its constant use. In a bygone era, namely Woodstock (the ORIGINAL one) motion picture producers, in an attempt to be avant garde, did what would be known now as closed captioning of the film every time someone on stage uttered the "f" word, just in case the stoners viewing the film failed to pick up on that.
Earlier, while touring Europe, specifically in France, a young Jim Morrison began his Doors hit "Light My Fire" with a barrage of "f-bombs" to the syncopated rhythm that characterizes the end of the song. That was about the most outrageous thing one could do at the time, but not really, when you consider much of the audience didn't speak English.
Fast forward to the twenty-FIRST century and a group booked on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno as "The Doors" (but only had Manzareck and Krieger as members) performed the song in the same manner with the same "f-bombs" on live NBC television. One would think that this many decades later, even the potty mouthed Jim, had he lived would have matured at least a little, but Ray Manzarek still has the sixties mindset. "Far out, Man!"
It seems that everyone, or at least a lot of people think they are Howard Stern (very fitting last name, when you consider he behaves like a rear end!)
Country Music, always last to catch on to trends has gotten into the cheap attention-getter frenzy. The song, "Shift Work" has the line, "A big ole pile of sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeft work!" In it, and I'm sure the audience initially hearing this thought the lyrics were different than what they turned out to be.
The latest cheap trick is from Sugarland, the Country Band with the wannabe Janis Joplin blonde (with a mouth that looks like Lyndon Johnson's) exclaiming, "Sh-HUH it happens." (Oh, I get it!) I guess I'm the only one who is wishing we could mature beyond pre-teeny bopper little boy mentality.
Guess it's just another example of the dumbing down of America.

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