Tagged with Music - Songs of Summer

It's kind of hard to believe that this will be the first real Bungles on Bikes Blog post, but here you have it. Am I alone in thinking it's hard to get these things off the ground. If any one comes here from In Yr Fashion, I should be up front and say that I am certainly not fashionable, (although I did fret about my hair before I accepted my baldingness,) and again I just wanted to be up front about that. Mz. Bungle would claim to be even less so. This was sort of fun to do because the reality is that I've hardly listened to any music since we departed Rochester about a month ago, so most of these are remnants of an earlier era. I am totally out the loop re: music (already) and will probably have more and more trouble as the miles accumulate.

BTW -Bungles on Bikes is our blog for our bicycle trip around the United States. We are currently in Portsmouth, NH and are projecting to go from here to Seattle or so in a giant 'U' shape in the coming year.

So. . . without further ado, my Top Seven Songs of Summer:


1. The Entertainer by Scott Joplin performed by Various Ice Cream Trucks.

Any body ever bought a Nutty Buddy from a Ice Cream Man in strip mall hell? Seriously, though? Who wants a ice cream outside Circuit City? Well, that's what people in New Hampshire are all about. If any one out there has ever had to ride their bike through an area like this, then you know it's bad enough without being followed for MILES by the Ice Cream Man. The Entertainer has been reprised in various towns throughout the trip, most notably in Portland, ME where we were possibly tipsy from G&T's when it went by and thus found it more funny than irritating.



2. Go Slow by Fela Kuti

This one's easy to swallow. Every time I ride past a 'GO SLOW children at play' I start singing the hook to this song. Any one that doesn't know Fela Kuti should, and as soon as possible.

My favorite Fela tune, Roforofo Fight:


3. Bump by Spank Rock -

There are a number of reason this is a funny song for me to have stuck in head, but the most amusing thing about it is that the chorus is currently being used in a Wishbone salad dressing commercial. I'll keep it simple and just print the part I can't shake, and seriously, every time I go up a steep climb I sing this to myself over and over again: "We got the fly rhymes on the hustle and grind/ And if you get us at the right time/ You get it from behind/ In just Chanel pumps/ I'll throw my legs up/ And if you ready you can get it anytime you want/ I’m the midnight dropper/ I’m the body rockin’ rocker/ Workin’ tight all night/ Yo I’m never getting tired," etc. etc. This is the cleanest part of the tune.



4. On the Road Again by Willie Nelson

Does any one here know Uncle Gerald? Well, anyway, he saw Brie and I off the day we left and from the moment he came into our apartment to the final heart-wrenching goodbye he must have sung the opening lines from this song to us, O, I don't know maybe 40 or 50 times: "On the road again, just can't wait to get on the road again." Just that part. I don't think he's knows any more of the song. He even added a bit of a southern twang to it. I looked up the lyrics a few minutes ago in preparation for the blog post, and realized that what the interpretation may have been lacking in nuance it more than made up for in appropriateness.



5. Mistaken for Strangers or Slow Show by The National

The first song makes me think of all that I'm leaving behind in Rochester (pessimistic and sad) and the second song reminds me of how lucky i am to be with Mz. Bungle. These to songs are constantly running through my head.






6. The Web by The Roots

This was the last song I heard before the start of our first challenging day on the road, and I listened to it 4 times before I had to put the Shuffle away. The short version of the story is that we got bogged down by this guy Ray, who I might've written about in a later post, but the reason this song kills so hard is because Black Thought destroys this track. The beat is so sparse it sounds like this old man played patty wack on his thumb. the verse must be like 100 bars all verse no chorus (in the best hip-hop tradition) with the following lines right towards the end: "I'm like young LL cause I'm hard as hell/ Makin' n****z screw face like Gargamel." That line got me through the day.




7. Tiger Feet by Mr & Mrs Bungle sung to the tune of Spider Pig by Homer Simpson

We came up with the lyrics to this song because of what the Keen's have done to our feet. It go's somethin' like this: "Tiger Feet, Tiger Feet, does whatever a tiger foot does." We sing it every time we look at our feet.