Song of the Day: Paradise City (by Guns N’ Roses)

Posted on August 14, 2016 by Arleigh

One cannot reminisce about the 80’s music scene without including the biggest (and most dangerous) band of that decade. Well, the band and it’s handlers sure thought of them that way. The band I speak of is Guns N’ Roses. this was the band that dared to put the word hard back into hard rock after the glam metal scene began to turn it into a joke.

Nothing against glam metal. Mötley Crüe was and is a favorite rock band of the 80’s for me. Yet, even they succumbed to the hairspray overload that glam metal would turn into. These bands became more about their look (especially in their music videos) than actually playing good music.

Guns N’ Roses still had the teased hair, but their music when they released their Appetite for Destruction album was a breath of fresh air in the hard rock scene and would grab glam metal fans from the vapors of hairnet spray into the dark, dingy bluesy lounges and then the overwhelming open air arenas.

I’ve already featured two of the bands most famous tracks from their first album, “Welcome to the Jungle” and “Sweet Child o’ Mine”, so it’s time to give their third biggest hit from this album time to shine.

“Paradise City” is a place we all should aspire to visit.

Paradise City

Take me down to the paradise city
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Take me home (Oh, won’t you please take me home?)

Just an urchin livin’ under the street
I’m a hard case that’s tough to beat
I’m your charity case so buy me somethin’ to eat
I’ll pay you at another time
Take it to the end of the line

Rags to riches or so they say
You gotta keep pushin’ for the fortune and fame
You know it’s, it’s all a gamble when it’s just a game
You treat it like a capital crime
Everybody’s doin’ their time

Take me down to the paradise city
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Oh, won’t you please take me home, yeah, yeah?

Take me down to the paradise city
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Take me home

Strapped in the chair of the city’s gas chamber
Why I’m here, I can’t quite remember
The surgeon general says it’s hazardous to breathe
I’d have another cigarette but I can’t see
Tell me who ya gonna believe

Take me down to the paradise city
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Take me home, yeah, yeah
Take me down to the paradise city
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Oh, won’t you please take me home, yeah?

So far away
So far away
So far away
So far away

Captain America’s been torn apart
Now he’s a court jester with a broken heart
He said “Turn me around and take me back to the start”
I must be losin’ my mind, are you blind?
I’ve seen it all a million times

Take me down to the paradise city
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Take me home, yeah, yeah

Take me down to the paradise city
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Oh, won’t you please take me home?

Take me down to the paradise city
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Take me home, yeah, yeah

Take me down to the paradise city
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Oh, won’t you please take me home, home

Oh, I want to go, I want to know
Oh, won’t you please take me home?
I want to see how good it can be
Oh, won’t you please take me home?

Take me down to the paradise city
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Take me home

Take me down to the paradise city
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Oh, won’t you please take me home?

Take me down, take me down
Oh, won’t you please take me home?
I want to see how good it can be
Oh, won’t you please take me home?

I want to see how good it can be
Oh, oh take me home

Take me down to the paradise city
Where the grass is green and the girls are pretty
Oh, won’t you please take me home?

I want to know, I want to know
Oh, won’t you please take me home?
Yeah, baby

Song of the Day: 1980’s Edition

“Providence” #10 : All Is Lost — And Found

Posted on August 14, 2016 by Ryan C. (fourcolorapocalypse)

Trash Film Guru

It’s no secret : apocalypse has always loomed large in the works of Alan Moore — from Adrian Veidt’s duplicitous, engineered “brave new world” of Watchmen to the celebratory “wrap party” of all as we know it to be in Promethea, one way or another, as Rorschach himself would almost certainly put it, the end is always nigh. In Dez Vylenz’ documentary feature The Mindscape Of Alan Moore, the author himself opines that, in his considered view, apocalypse is essentially synonymous with revelation, and that it needn’t be feared in the least — but apparently he didn’t pass that memo along to one of his own characters, the ever-hapless (not to mention clueless) Robert Black, who experiences perhaps the most personal Moore-scripted apocalypse to date, yet also the one with the most profound and far-reaching (not to mention harrowing) consequences, as he comes to find out that he…

View original post 911 more words

Music Video of the Day: Creep by Radiohead (1993, dir. Brett Turnbull)

Posted on August 14, 2016 by Valerie Troutman

Here I thought I was done with Ministry for the time being, but no. We are back to a group that was perceived to have undergone a metamorphosis, but really didn’t. I love that Thom Yorke comes right out and says: “I don’t belong here.” You certainly don’t, Thom. You aren’t in a car chasing a Hungarian yet.

I didn’t really get into Radiohead till the early 2000s when I picked up a copy of OK Computer, but I was well aware of them before that. OK Computer came out while I was in high school, and I distinctly remember the music video for Paranoid Android. I also remember that despite Radiohead evolving into a group that took the flag from Pink Floyd, the radio would always play this song instead of stuff off of OK Computer or any of their albums that followed. The song isn’t very remarkable at all. It’s a simple little rock song. That’s why they played it. Not sure why Paranoid Android or Karma Police wouldn’t work, but maybe it was a lyrical or runtime issue.

The music video is as unremarkable as the song. It’s the group playing in what appears to be a small club. There isn’t even any particular style to the way it’s done. It’s just a throwback to when Radiohead was considered to be another one of these British Invasion bands like Oasis before they produced what some consider the greatest album of the 1990s with OK Computer. I personally think it’s a little like trying to come up with a greatest album of the 1960s. In other words, ridiculous.

I can’t think of anything else to say, so just enjoy a major group in its’ early stages with Creep by Radiohead.