Your Daily '80s: America's Top 10

It's the end of summer and the beginning of fall in 1980.

What was at the top of the pops? Well, let's see here on America's Top 10.


Keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars.

He's Casey Kasem.

Baby Diddy

Only Nixon could go to China, and only Baba Wawa could ask The Artist Formerly Known as Puff Daddy why he can be a baby Diddy five times over, but never a real, live, married-to-his-baby-mama -- any of the three -- father.

That's a question P. Diddy still is trying not to answer a day and a half later.

The hemming and hawing went something like this, as reported by the Daily Mail in London:

"Why I'm not married yet, I don't have the exact reason. Some things in life you don't have the exact reason.

"My father was killed when I was three years old... I never got a chance to see the way a family lives, but I'm not making an excuse."

Not satisfied with his answer, Walters further inquired, "Six children by three women, how much time do you need?"

Diddy cut her off saying: "I get to spend a lot of time with my children. Everybody has a different life. Mine and your life is totally different.

"That's the way it is. My life works for me, it works for my family."

He added: "They have no cavities... and they pray every night."

Diddy is the biological father of five and he is the informal stepfather of another child.

GOOD THING she didn't ask him about that $360,000 first car he gave his 16-year-old:

In July, Diddy called British journalist Martin Bashir a racist, after Bashir grilled the rapper during an interview on Nightline about the star's lavish lifestyle and gifting his son Justin with a $360,000 Maybach car for his 16 birthday.

"There were times in the interview when I had to give him a ultimatum, the questions weren’t being handled the right way,' Diddy explained afterwards.

"In hindsight when I saw him I shouldn’t had done the interview because I know the style of interview that he does. The whole thing about giving a Maybach to my son, that’s really like a racist question.

"You don’t ask white people what they buy their kids and they buy ‘em Porsches and convertible Bentleys and it’s no question.

It’s really a racist question and put things back in perspective with money and the way that people still look at you. And I’m not saying that consciously he’s a racist.

"But he probably don’t even realize that he would not ask Steve Jobs that. He would be like Steve Jobs has that money and that’s the gift his kid is supposed to get."

OH . . . Diddy didn't give a straight answer to the baby-daddy question when Bashir asked it, either.

This after Bashir reminded Diddy of having said he wanted to be "someone that kids want to emulate."

Yeah, there was a racist lurking in that interview, and it wasn't Martin Bashir.

Some African-American (and other) thinkers have argued that most blacks cannot be racist because racism presupposes the power to act upon one's racial prejudices. All right, then, who has the power here?

Martin Bashir, salaried TV journalist? Or Sean "Puff Daddy-P. Diddy" Combs, hip-hop media and marketing mogul?

If Bashir went on national television and screamed the N-word for three days straight, the only life he would be destroying would be his own. He'd be fired. He'd be ridiculed. He'd be shamed. He'd be shunned.

He. Would. Never. Work. Again. (Or at least for a long while.)

BUT WHEN DIDDY -- he who seeks to be emulated -- goes around siring children by multiple women, without marrying any of them, he sets a standard that has been proven socioeconomically toxic to the very people he'd most like to "emulate" him.

When Diddy plays hip-hop mogul, peddling a violent, misogynistic and ubermaterialistic subculture to young people who least need any more violence, misogyny or materialism shoved into their minds, he blows more toxic cultural gas toward the canaries in the American coal mine.

And when Diddy proclaims he's an adequate father to the fruit of all his "baby mamas'" wombs because he shoves some serious cash -- or a Maybach automobile -- at them every now and again, he gives yet another oversexed lout in some American inner city yet another excuse for not acting like a man.

Or acting like a father.

Without the means -- or the tools to acquire the means -- to bandage over the psychic wounds of little children with Benjamins. Or Maybachs.


DAVID DUKE couldn't have hoped to "accomplish" as much in a million white-supremacist years. That's why the ol' neo-Nazi needed a little Diddy magic.

Yowl . . . or Crazy in Moloch!

A friend just turned me on to The Shaggs, the 1960s New Hampshire teen-girl group that Frank Zappa proclaimed "better than the Beatles."

Well, better than Yoko Ono's "Kiss Kiss Kiss," anyway.

Above, we hear The Shaggs perform "My Pal Foot Foot." If I were a cynical man, I would say "My Ass Ass, Pal."

Oh, wait. I am a cynical man.

If only they'd thought to fake orgasms and call it "the bridge," "My Pal Foot Foot" (wink, wink) coulda gone straight to the top of the pops. The Shaggs could have could have made it after all.

Meow.

NOW, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go write the song that will make me a star -- "Ima Go Puke in a Bucket and Call It Vichyssoise."

Lyrically, "Ima Go Puke in a Bucket and Call It Vichyssoise" will be simplistic, yet profound . . . and postverbal. Musically, it will be both "outsider" and "antifolk," with thrash/death-metal overtones. I wouldn't argue if you called it "post-antirhythmic hardcore punk."


ON THE other hand -- turning our musical thoughts back to The Shaggs -- "My Cutie" ain't bad. Seriously.

It's kind of got a pre-B-52s vibe within a folk-rock framework. "I'll give it a 77 and a half, Dick. There's a beat in there somewhere, and dancing is so yesterday's bourgeois rhythmic conformity, you f***ing fascist tool of musical repression."

Now, where's my bucket? For I'm with you in Rockland.


HAT TIP: Michigan Silverback.

Your Daily '80s: You say goodbye, and I say. . . .

It was 30 years ago today, the world stopped to pray . . . and though I don't really want to stop the show, I thought that you might like to know that the singer's going to sing a song, and he wants you all to sing along:

All we are saying is give peace a chance. . . .

It'$ a Wonderful Life in 'the real Bedford Fall$'

Wednesday in Wilmington, Ohio . . . unemployment rate 15.8 percent:

Glenn Beck Meet & Greet Breakfast
and Radio Show Ticket Package

Breakfast and Meet & Greet at 7AM
Radio Show at 9AM
Ticket Price:
$500.00

Package Includes:
* Breakfast at the General Denver Hotel
* Meet & Greet with Glenn Beck
* Photo with Glenn Beck
* Premium Ticket to the live Radio Show Broadcast at the Murphy Theatre

All Ages
Reserved Seating


Glenn Beck Live Radio Show Broadcast

Doors: 8:00AM
Radio Show: 9:00AM (Must be seated by 8:45AM sharp)

Ticket Price:
$125.00

All Ages
Reserved Seating

HAT TIP: PoliticusUSA.

That's Molly the IMPORTANT Dog to you

Molly the Dog is important, and she's not about to let you forget it.

She wants you to behold the importance that is herself.



She also wants you to know that treats are gladly accepted.

That is all.

Your Daily '80s: It's the future . . . today!

Man . . . look at this stuff! It's a futuristic wonderland . . . right now in 1983!

Lost in Space has come to pass! Look, it's the Robot!


The next thing you know, we'll have "communicators" and "tricorders," just like on Star Trek!

And huge view screens just like on the bridge of the Enterprise. I wonder what wonders we'll see in 2010?

We'll be getting around in nuclear levitating cars, no doubt.

Dis be offensive?

I am reliably informed by various corners of the media universe that this commercial for Duncan Hines is offensive to African-Americans.

White advertising executives cannot -- repeat CANNOT -- have fun with the old saw that black folk got soul, but white boy don't. Only African-Americans may stereotype white people as being off-key, uncoordinated musical buffoons.

Therefore, we find racism in the sepia-toned hip-hop cupcakes. Therefore, Duncan Hines has taken the ads off the ol' TV plantation -- and YouTube, too -- because someone, somewhere may have been offended.


UNFORTUNATELY, this did not happen back in 1980, when African-American actors were prompted by the white advertising establishment to do national ads in which they expressed their longing for an unattainable whiteness of being.

Remember, kiddos, white cake is the best. You don't need to be pollutin' it with no chocolate frosting.


AND WHERE were the forces of political correctness two decades before that, when the racists at Duncan Hines were putting ads on grampaw's 1960 Motorola pointing out that their chocolate came from the "chocolate trees" in deepest, darkest Africa, and that what you did with that African chocolate was make devil's food cakes.

Africa + chocolate = the cake favored by the prince of darkness. Get it?

An absolute hate crime.

And don't even get me started on Aunt Jemima.


THANK GOODNESS someone in the African-American grassroots has stood up to combat pernicious demeaning stereotypes of blacks in American marketing.

It's about time.

Only we can do that to our pledges

Oh, boo f-ing hoo.

House speaker-to-be John Boehner says the president disrespected him by saying he took the taxpayers hostage so the rich could get their tax-cut due.

Did I mention "Oh, boo f-ing hoo"?

On one part of the Politico website, Boehner is whining about how mean Obama and the Democrats are to himself and the poor, poor Republicans:

In an interview with Leslie Stahl of “60 Minutes” for broadcast Sunday night on CBS, Boehner said Obama showed him “disrespect” by calling him a hostage-taker.

“Excuse me, Mr. President I thought the election was over,” Boehner said, according to a transcript obtained by POLITICO. “You know, you get a lot of that heated rhetoric during an election. But now it's time to govern.”

MY HEART BLEEDS for the House minority leader. Frankly, I think Obama let him off too easy.

Look it, the guy ought to thank his lucky stars that the president didn't treat him like Republicans treat their own. One click away -- on another part of the Politico site -- there was this little item from Minnesota, you see:

In a dramatic display of the new Republican order, Minnesota’s state GOP banished 18 prominent party members — including two former governors and a retired U.S. senator — as punishment for supporting a third-party candidate for governor.

The stunning purge, narrowly passed by the state Republican central committee last weekend, suggests more than just a fit of pique: by banning some of the state’s leading moderates, the Minnesota GOP moved toward extinguishing a dying species of Republican in one of its last habitats.

Those exiled warned that the measure, which bans the 18 former members from participating in party activities for two years and bars them from attending the 2012 Republican National Convention, may provoke a backlash that undercuts the party’s competitiveness in a state that’s voted for the GOP presidential nominee just once in the past half century.

“The Republican party is trying to become ... you would call it introverted totalitarianism,” said former congressman and Gov. Al Quie, a onetime vice presidential prospect who plans to stick with the party despite the penalty. “It’s just plain dumb on their part. ... In the long run, if the party persists with this, [it's] going to just become smaller and smaller and eventually something else would come in its place.”

Among those rebuked along with Quie were former U.S. Sen. David Durenberger, former Gov. Arne Carlson and former state House Speaker David Jennings.

WELCOME to politics in the world's first nuclear banana republic.

We have Republicans in the provinces fighting an ideological war -- the "country clubbers" vs. the "totalitarians." Meanwhile, in the capital, we have the leader of the insurgency complaining that El Presidente said mean things while giving him what he wanted, instead of exiling him to Elba . . . or Saint Helena.

Take your pick.

This week's 3C&T playlist

Here's the playlist for this week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth -- All those years ago.

Enjoy.

						Song Name				Artist																					Year
1						Lavender Road				The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger (Sean Lennon/Charlotte Kemp Muhl)																					2010
2						Give Me Some Truth				John Lennon																					1971
3						Dust in the Wind				Kansas																					1977
4						Livin' On A Prayer				Bon Jovi																					2001
5						(Just Like) Starting Over				John Lennon																					1980
6						Beyond the Great Divide				Emmylou Harris																					2008
7						The Afternoon: Forever Afternoon				The Moody Blues																					1967
8						Baby the Rain Must Fall				Glenn Yarbrough																					1965
9						Watching the Wheels				John Lennon																					1980
10						Here Comes The Sun				Beatles																					1969
11						Look at Me				John Lennon																					1970
12						I'm Looking Through You				Beatles																					1965
13						Looking for My Life				George Harrison																					2002
14						I Looked Away				Derek and the Dominoes																					1970
15						Look What You've Done				Bread																					1970
16						Hard Times Are Over				Yoko Ono																					1980
17						Helter Skelter				Beatles																					1968
18						I Just Shot John Lennon				The Cranberries																					1996
19						Too Late for Goodbyes				Julian Lennon																					1984
20						A Woman Left Lonely				Janis Joplin & Full Tilt Boogie																					1971
21						Whatever Gets You Thru the Night				John Lennon																					1974
22						Mind Games				John Lennon																					1973
23						Headlights				Sean Lennon																					2006
24						Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)				John Lennon																					1980

3 Chords & the Truth: All those years ago

They're funny, aren't they, those "zero" anniversaries?

You know, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. . . .

Thirty years. Those "zero" anniversaries have a way of taking something that happened a long, long time ago and making it seem like it was just yesterday. Just as vivid as yesterday. Just as raw as yesterday.

JUST AS painful as it was yesterday, only in this case, "yesterday" was three decades ago.

That's what 3 Chords & the Truth is all about this week, what happened 30 years ago, and how it hurt us . . . how it changed us. This episode of the Big Show is a look back -- a meditation, actually.

It was 30 years ago Wednesday that a madman murdered John Lennon. I had some thoughts on that here. I have some musical thoughts on that awful day, and what it has meant to my generation, here.

FOR WHAT it's worth, I rather like the way George Harrison put it . . . "All Those Years Ago."

Hear them shouting all about love
While they treated you like a dog
When you were the one who had made it so clear
All those years ago.

Hear them talking all about how to give
They don't act with much honesty
But you point the way to the truth when you say
All you need is love.

Living with good and bad
I always looked up to you
Now we're left cold and sad
By someone the devil's best friend
Someone who offended all.

We're living in a bad dream
They've forgotten all about mankind
And you were the one they backed up to the wall
All those years ago
You were the one who Imagined it all
All those years ago.

Deep in the darkest night
I send out a prayer to you
Now in the world of light
Where the spirit free of the lies
And all else that we despised.

They've forgotten all about God
He's the only reason we exist
Yet you were the one that they said was so weird
All those years ago
You said it all though not many had ears
All those years ago

You had control of our smiles and our tears
All those years ago

IT'S 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Your Daily '80s: The $!*# Dogs

From my college days, way back in 1980, I am proud (and a bit ashamed of myself) to present The Band Whose Name Must Not Be Uttered.

Then known in LSU's college newspaper as the S*** Dogs -- and in Baton Rouge's daily rags (back when there were still two local daily rags) as The 'Dogs -- TBWNMNBU was hot (ahem) around campus and in the Red Stick's first-generation punk scene.

So, kid, I don't want to hear what a badass you are. I don't want to hear how badass your emo-poseur, thrash, death-metal, hardcore music is. They all bore me, and so do you.

IF YOU WANT to be radical, go put on some classic-jazz vinyl. Get into the 1950s and '60s folk scene.

Buy some Hank Williams 78s and find something to play them on.

That would be out there.

But we've already invented the S*** Dogs. We've been there. Done that. Got the T-shirt we can't wear to church.

So stop copying us. That's just sad.

All we are saying is give pizza chance

LSU's 459 Commons. Wednesday, 1:30 p.m.

A billion years ago, when I was a poor student, this kind of behavior was reserved for the student section at Tiger football games. No, really. When I was a freshman in '79, a fight broke out and someone went flying past my head. Down the steps.

Airborne.

I blame the spread of this kind of bad behavior to campus dining facilities -- and note that the video contains many F-bombs . . . screamed, no less -- on Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and his budgetary broadax.

Why?

WHY THE F*** NOT?!?