Update 12/21: If this is your first time here, this is what you need to know:The avowed purpose of this blog is to bring back the genius that is Huey Lewis. In particular, I want Huey to get the airtime on classic rock radio stations that is being squandered on hacks like BTO and Foghat. If you would like to add your name to my petition,
leave a comment on this post.
After you've done that, make sure that you
vote in the Huey-pocalypse -- the final showdown between Huey Lewis and the forces of evil.
Help spread the News! Together, we can bring Huey Back to the Future!And now, in case you're interested, here's the story of how all this started....
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An interesting discussion broke out recently over at the
Ominous Comma about something that I said in my book,
Antisocial Commentary.*
The discussion centered on this item from the introduction to the book:
For me the kiss of death for a humor piece is to start off trying to convince someone of a particular point of view…I don’t mean that humor is an effective way of making a point; I mean that humor is the point.
Brent, the proprietor of the O.C., notes:
To be honest, I don’t know if I agree with the Fossil-Fueled One on this point. For as much as I enjoy entertaining people as a Basically Agenda-less Humorist** I have to wonder if I couldn’t be doing something more beneficial. If I couldn’t somehow improve the world, or make some small difference by bringing some of my personal causes more fully into this, my pubic platform.
Actually, he said "public," but it's funnier without the "l."
In any case, the more I reflect on this statement, the more I realize that Brent is right. I should be doing more than just making people laugh. I have a pretty good-sized readership with this blog now, and as that modern day Augustine, Peter Parker, once said, “With great power comes great responsibility.”
So today is a historic day. Today I am embarking on a crusade of sorts, to use my blog power for a greater good. I’ve thought long and hard about what cause to take on, and I’ve settled on something that I think is a noble, but still realistic, goal. And that goal – my “holy grail,” if you will – is this:
I’m going to convince classic rock stations to start playing Huey Lewis and the News.It’s long been known by me that Huey Lewis is an under-appreciated and misunderstood genius. Ballads like "Do You Believe in Love" and "The Power of Love" are classics of the earworm genre. "Workin’ for a Livin’" spoke timelessly*** of the working man’s plight, and the songs "Walkin' on a Thin Line" and "Back in Time" addressed the serious issues of the struggles facing Vietnam veterans and time travelers, respectively.
And yet, classic rock stations across the U.S. stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the genius that is Huey Lewis -- not to mention legendary bassist Mario Cipollina, guitar virtuoso Chris Hayes, and presumably someone playing the keyboard.
This, then, is my petition to the powers that be to add some numbers from the Huey Lewis catalog to the classic rock radio playlist:
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To the National Organization of Deciding Who Gets to Be Considered 'Classic Rock'****:For shame! Since the birth of the Classic Rock format around the time that somebody decided that Jane's Addition and The James Gang were perhaps two different kinds of music -- 1989, I think -- I have watched the Classic Rock genre slowly expand to include such offerings as Guns 'n' Roses, Metallica and Styx, but thus far you have refused to admit a true legend of rock & roll, Huey Lewis, not to mention his stalwart companions, the News.
How can you justify playing execrable songs like Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock and Roll" or Rick Springfield's "Jesse's Girl," while neglecting crowd-pleasers like "I Wanna New Drug" or "Heart and Soul?" "Hip2BSquare" was the anthem of my generation*****, and yet you spurn it in favor of crap like BTO and Foghat. Look, I'll admit that "Stuck With You" can be a little grating after 30 or 40 listens, but it's hardly fair to hold a grudge because of that one song. Have you forgotten about Rod Stewart's "Forever Young" or the Van Halen album with Gary Cherone?
Please, I beg you: add "Workin’ for a Livin’" or "Heart of Rock & Roll" to your playlist. Come on, those are solid pop/rock songs. Certainly no worse than anything by John (nee Cougar) Mellencamp or 38 Special.
You wouldn't even have to eliminate anything from your current playlist. For example, I know for a FACT that no one has ever listened to Peter Frampton's "Do You Feel Like I Do"****** all the way through, at least not since he awed that group of easily amused stoners with his talking guitar back in 1975. Seriously, throw that CD in the player some time and just try to listen to the whole song while completely sober. It's impossible. So here's what you do: After the 68th time that Peter Frampton says "Do you feel like I do," right when you feel like screaming at the CD player, "That depends. Do you feel like jamming a
meat thermometer in your ear?!", you mute it and crank the entire first side of
Sports. And then you switch back to the Frampton song for the last 38 seconds. No harm, no foul.
You can do the same thing with the interminable interludes in "Riders on the Storm" and "Oye Como Va." The trick is to wait until the listener is thinking, "Holy crap, the entire run of
Viva Laughlin didn't last this long. I'd rather hear two possums fighting over an accordion than listen to one more second of this." Then you pop in the Huey, and they think, "Hey, this is such an improvement that I don't mind that I'm going to have this song stuck in my head until I get my first postcard from my great-grandchildren on Venus."
I urge you to take action quickly. I have attached the signatures of [fantastically large number] people who do, in point of fact, feel like I do.
Respectfully submitted,
Diesel
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If you would like your name to appear on the petition, please submit a comment, and maybe add a few words in support of Huey. I will mail the petition and comments to the NODWGTBCCR, or Clear Channel, or whoever's in charge these days.
And if you would like to offer some additional support for the cause, please write your own impassioned plea in support of Huey on your blog, link to this post, and encourage your fellow bloggers to do the same. Yes, this is a meme, and you know how I feel about memes. But this time it's for a good cause. Let's let the world know how we feel about Huey. Even Grundir the Implacable has a soft spot for "Doing it All For My Baby."
Look, I even made a neat little banner you can use. See how sad he is because his music isn't considered Classic Rock?
The code for using the image to link to this post is here:
I should be able to enlist
Renal Failure, who has made no secret of his
affinity for Huey. And
Logophile just gave me a
Def Leppard shout-out, so I think I can count on her support. I'll drag
Central Snark along too. And maybe
Brent,
Bossy, the
Frogster,
Sinister Dan and some of the other
Humor-Blogs.com members.
Man, I'm really excited about my blog's newfound purpose. Come on, folks, let's show those radio people that the heart of rock & roll is still beatin'!
* That’s right, people are actually talking about my book. Don’t you feel left out? It’s like that time when everybody in your class had seen
The Empire Strikes Back but your mom wouldn’t let you go on opening weekend because it was Aunt Cecilia’s birthday and the next Monday everybody made fun of you because you didn’t get the joke when somebody said that you smelled like the inside of a tauntaun and then you hid in the supply closet and cried after recess and found the janitor’s special magazines that made you feel funny inside.
** The acronym for which, Grundir the Implacable has just pointed out to me, is
BAH!*** If you set aside the non-inflation-adjusted "two hundred rent."
****It's possible that the NODWGTBCCR doesn't exist, in which case I will deliver this petition to the nearest approximation I can find. Perhaps Interpol or Unicef.
*****Although if I were two years younger, it would have been "Smells Like Teen Spirit."
******According to Wikipedia, the title of this song is actually "Do You Feel Like
We Do," which doesn't make any sense. And anyway, halfway into the article they change their minds, so obviously Wikipedia is written by monkeys.
Humor-blogs.com is stronger and harder than a bad girl's dream.
Labels: Exemplary Police Work, Music