Old Punk Memory 5
I could never figure out the appeal of Barry Manilow. My father tormented me with Manilow 8-Tracks on long trips, and the only good to come from it was to make the Neil Diamond that followed tolerable. Barry was so Liberace he turned Neil into Lemmy. His fans created and use the word "Manilove", for Jiminy's sake! On his 1977 live album he sang a medley of commercials he wrote for Dr. Pepper, Kentucky Fried Chicken, State Farm, McDonald's and others. The memories flood back and they hurt.
On a TV show around 1980 Barry did the following: he said "This is my impression of New Wave", then he waved a limp wrist and made a childish face of insult. Cut to commercial.
What...A...Dick
The BBC, Orwell's inspiration for 1984's Ministry Of Information, ran a puff-piece on Barry that featured the following trail of poop. I keep on forgetting I'm out of style:
Punk, New Wave, Grunge, House, all may have come and gone, but Manilow ploughs on regardless, like an acrylic-clad ocean liner.
posted by emerson at 9:43 AM
5 Comments:
Howie!!!!!!!!
4:02 PM
It's best not to worry about things like this. Cher's 2 year "farewell" tour was even more sucessful than anything Barry "The Man" Manilow has ever done. Yes it's incredibly annoying but it doesn't really hurt anyone - unless they are forced to listen to their Dad's eight track tapes - I feel your pain. I'd be more concerned about Lemmy's proudly wearing a Nazi medal and promoting alcoholism to "the kids" for a quarter of a century.
11:52 AM
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2:13 PM
Ish:
I've been put in my place and now I feel only shame. I only wanted to give my New Wave memory, which has been SEARED into my brain. The rest was just google image-search gravy. I'm sooooooo sorry.
2:17 PM
- no apologies needed. I have to go to these family parties that always feature kareoke and Barry and Neil are tops on the menue.
It's painful.
- I got a problem with what you called Long Beach's #1 export - Iron Cross t-shirts. You know those guys would put swastikas on them if they thought they could get away with it. Kids at my daughter's school can't wear Dixie flag, White Power, Black Power, Asian Power or Flower Power t's but you walk into third grade and it looks like half the kids are in the Hitler Jugend. Yeah, I know Hitler got his is WWI, but the Kaiser wasn't exactly Mr. Tolerance either.
It would be fun if the record companies started doing those cheezy "supergroup" things again.
You could have Barry, the remaining members of the New York Dolls, Pete Townsend, Iggy Pop
and Liberace samples all playing together.
8:27 AM
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