Completely Conspicuous Episode 124: Listen to What the Man Said

Special guest Jay Breitling joins me to discuss misheard song lyrics.

Topics:

- Easy to look up lyrics online nowadays, but many user-generated lyrics can be wrong

- Mondegreen is term for the mishearing of a lyric or phrase

- Kumar used to mishear Manfred Mann's "Blinded by the Light"

- Classic example is Hendrix's "Purple Haze" with misheard line "Excuse me while I kiss this guy"

- Kissthisguy.com is misheard lyrics site, not gay dating site

- Breitling: Nobody knew the lyrics of "Louie Louie"

- Kumar: Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"

- Teenage Kumar used to mishear a line in Eddie Money's "Shakin'" 

- Kumar: Wild Cherry's "Play That Funky Music"

- In '70s, sometimes profanity was left in songs ("Who Are You," "Jet Airliner") played on radio

- Kumar: Just learned correct version of a line in Zeppelin's "Black Dog"

- Certain singers are hard to understand: Plant, Jagger, Stipe, guys in shoegaze bands

- Das Efx vocals purposely mimicked music

- Mumblemouthed singers: Vedder begat crappier imitators Weiland, Stapp

- Pearl Jam's "Yellow Ledbetter" is almost completely unintelligible

- Kumar: Thought PJ's "Rats" referenced Hakeem Olajuwon

- Kumar: Long misheard lines in "Rock the Casbah," "Everybody Wants Some"

- Billy Corgan's singing was hard to understand, but early Smashing Pumpkins rocked anyway

- Breitling: Bad Brains' "Pay to Cum" was 75 seconds long, 10 understandable words

- Kumar: The Knack's "My Sharona"

- Weird Al made his career on jokey lyrics

- Kumar: Stone Roses' "I Wanna Be Adored"

- Amy's co-worker thinks a Natalie Merchant song references dishpan hands

- Charles Kuralt's secret life

- Breitling: J. Geils Band's "Freeze Frame" was "Freeze Spray"

- J. Mascis was never big on enunciation

- Bonehead of the Week

Music:

Dead Meadow - That Old Temple

The Shout Out Louds - Fall Hard

Everyone Everywhere - Raw Bar OBX 2002

Fol Chen - In Ruins

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The show is sponsored by Budget, the country's premier car rental service with 900 locations. Go to http://budget.com/compcon and save 10% off any reservation or $30 off a weekly rental. 

The Dead Meadow song is on the album Three Kings on Xemu Records. Find out more at http://www.myspace.com/deadmeadow. The song is courtesy of IODA Promonet; download the song for free at http://www.iodapromonet.com.

The Shout Out Louds song is on the album Work on Merge Records. Find out more at http://www.shoutoutlouds.com. Download the song for free at http://www.insound.com.

The Everyone Everywhere song is on the band's self-titled album on Tiny Engines. Find out more at http://www.myspace.com/everyoneeverywhere. The band is currently in the midst of a two-week blog tour in which it's giving away a song a day on a different blog. Download this song for free at http://www.canyouseethesunset.com.

The Fol Chen song is on the album Part II: The New December on Asthmatic Kitty Records. Find out more at http://www.myspace.com/folchen and download the song for free at http://stereogum.com.

The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Find out more about Senor Breitling at http://clickyclickymusic.com and http://www.keepingsomedarksecrets.net. Additional music used in the show is by Me and Boris the Bull, which is the brainchild of the mighty Mark Campbell; find out more at http://www.myspace.com/meandboristhebull. Thanks to Bob Durling for the album art; find out more about his photography at http://bobdurling.blogspot.com/.

Completely Conspicuous is a Tan God Production. Word.