Auditory Abominations: "Smoke on the Water" - Pat Boone

Considering my last post, I felt like I needed something a bit simpler to cover for this abomination before I went back to doing more unbearable garbage, and I didn't think I could get simpler than Pat Boone.

Pat Boone is a different kind of bad, a bad that is not pure lack of talent like Katy Perry, unbearable awfulness like Foreigner or gross levels of assholery like Axl Rose. No, Pat Boone is a different kind of abomination. I could've gone with any Pat Boone song, but I decided to go with his cover of the hard rock and heavy metal classic "Smoke on the Water" by Deep Purple, because yes, there is a level of blasphemy you didn't think was possible.

Now, before I tear into the abomination of a cover, I want to talk about Pat Boone and why I don't like him. As I said it's not that he lacks talent, and I can understand why people enjoy his music, although it personally makes my skin crawl. No, to really understand I want to take you back to the 1950s, where it was still legal to cater to only white people.

The 50s was the decade in which rock and roll was emerging, and it was mostly coming from the up tempo Chicago blues scene from the late 40s with guys like B. B. King, Muddy Waters and Elmore James. Now, roll in the 1950s with a decent economy and people buying records from some of these black artists. Now marketers got the idea to appeal to conservative parents by selling them watered down versions of "Tutti Frutti", "Long Tall Sally" and "Ain't That a Shame".

That is really why Pat Boone is here, but at the same time it's why he's been popular in the 50s, because conservative America ate it right up. It wasn't as "vulgar" as Elvis, nor as wild as Jerry, but at the same time it was no Bing Crosby, or Frank Sinatra or anyone with a voice and talent.

Which brings me to Pat's 90s release, In a Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy, where he decided to cover hard rock and heavy metal classics such as "Paradise City", "Crazy Train", "Holy Diver", "Enter Sandman" and of course "No More Mr. Nice Guy" among others, yes this is a thing. Sad thing is he also got metal legends Ronnie James Dio, Ritchie Blackmore and Alice Cooper by his side with this.

Really, all of that would be enough to justify it being an abomination, but nope, this song has to be as wretched as a Buckcherry song, with twice the unbearableness of it all.

But the thing is, I can't actually put my finger on what I find so wretched about this song. I mean, I have found some songs pretty bad that other people enjoy, I have plenty of those coming up, but this is just awful. It's taking a heavy metal song and making it more jazz and gospel like which would be fine, I like Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra and a lot of the other crooners, but this just makes me shudder. I think it's because the entire tone is changed, the original was rough, uncut and almost punk rock sounding, this was because the song was about a fire burning down a casino where the band was originally going to record, so the tone had to be rough and unclean to match. This one just kind of makes it smoother, which does not work for the meaning of the song, it's like taking "The Sound of Silence" and making it an electro-pop tune, some songs work only in specific genres and "Smoke on the Water" works as a hard rock song, not as a lounge jazz tune.

This is one of the worst songs I've ever heard. Yes, alongside some of the other garbage I've done on this blog, alongside "Call Me Maybe" which made me want to pop in the video tape from The Ring, but this made me wish death upon humanity. I don't hate this style of music, but that's because a lot of the music works for that style. This song does not, and quite frankly, Pat Boone is not the best person to even cover a song like "Smoke on the Water" in this style.

I'm the Entity of Darkness and let's forget this ever happened.

Auditory Abominations: The Songs from "Dorbees - Making Desicions"

Where are the songs from Steven Universe when I need them?

Okay, so disregarding this total breakdown of not wanting to do such an abomination, let's talk about Dorbees, because this is a fascinating lost relic of awful animations. It was made by the son of one of the members of a Christian gospel group. I don't honestly know if these song were written by the group, but I think they were sung by them. Either way I'm not crediting this to anyone, because I don't think they want to have these songs on their discography. This animated waste of potential, has no Wikipedia page and barely has a page on IMDb, so if you want a good understanding of what this is here is the actual video, from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veVPWYNTj00

Of course, I'm not here to talk about the video, just the music, but I will say this; it is awful. Seriously, I've seen very few things that was this level of crap, the animation is awful, the storytelling is all wonky, the plots make no sense, the characters are lifeless, and the songs themselves range from bad to so bad that I actually kind of like them. If you have seen the video, you may think that the songs are the best part of it, and yeah they are, but that does not mean they aren't crap.

This came out the year I was born, so I didn't grow up with it, I instead grew up with what this was ripping off, VeggieTales. Say what you want, but VeggieTales was actually really good, and it had some pretty great songs. This wanted to be VeggieTales, without understanding why VeggieTales worked. But I'm getting off topic, this is a song blog, not an animation blog.

So what better song to start with than the very first song in the video, the theme song!

It's sung in this kind of lounge music style. Where this song really falls apart are the lyrics. The first verse is fine, but the second verse is just confusing, what did the singer say? "Rolling to a crawl"?, "Roll unto a bowl"?, "Rolling to a ball"?, at least it's better than the intro to The Nutshack. Also, I should never hear the phrase "Tiny little balls" in the theme song of a kid's cartoon, that is the fourth verse after the bridge by the way. The bridge by the way, asks "Why don't they go away?". The theme song tells us nothing about the Dorbees, except that they are "Tiny little balls" and that eventually we're going to want the to go away, which can not be any truer. This is however, the highlight of our song selection.

Now the main reason I am not going to cover musicals on these blogs is because there is story in between the songs, but this one has simple stories that I can explain in less than a paragraph. So between the theme song and the next song is a beginning story about a Scandinavian dorbee that needs new clothes and goes to this "groovy, funky" clothing store run by a stereotypical disco dude.

This one definitely has a groove to it, something you can easily get down with on the dance floor. This one isn't too terrible, it's mostly just bland. It never really changes tone or gives us anything within itself. It really only serves as a space filler. Really the only thing decent about this song are the technicals, the vocal work is good and as I have stated prior there is a groove to this one. This is more middle of the road than anything else.

Following this story is another story about two children who skipped school and are about to enter a spooky house. Yes, they also get their own song.

This song is just awful, really bad, but honestly I kind of like it. I generally don't talk about stuff I like ironically on these blogs as I love and hate them, but this one really needs to be seen and heard to be believed. Although, unlike most songs I enjoy ironically, this one probably has the most issues. The first issue should be apparent before the song begins, the character singing should really not be singing. His voice is so nasally, it's like if Gary Oak from Pokémon decided to start a jazz group. The other issue is the lyrics. These two are, as stated in song, eight years old and their complaining about not having credit cards, beards or cars, yeah, because that was all I wanted when I was eight, not more Lego or a pet fish, a credit card and a car were all I wanted.

The other character has her own verse, this time the lyrics don't start of too bad, actually complaining about things that I can see children complaining about, things like having to curtsey and wear things in your hair, stuff that children would complain about. Granted they still aren't great lyrics, but still a step up from the previous stanza. The song ends with the strangest thing in this entire thing, and considering what's coming up next, that is saying a lot. It ends with rejected scraps from "Yellow Submarine" and then repeating the song's title. Overall, this one is probably the worst quality wise, but I love how bad it really is.

Following this song is the theme song to a German public access show about a superhero and his sidekick and their evil nemesis who is a French cow. The funny thing is you think I'm kidding! The funny thing is I am not kidding, why am I not kidding?

I do not know what to say about this one. The faux German accent and accordion music gets annoying very fast and the lyrics are just beyond basic, I get that is kind of the point, but just adds to the obnoxiousness of this song by making it a total ear worm. This one is the worst of them all, it is highly annoying and is entirely pointless as the entire segment did not need to be in the video, at all.

And to top of the story of the two kids skipping school, one more song to show that yes, these people should not quit their day job. Unfortunately I could not find any footage of this one, so if you want to hear it, the link to the whole video is still there, skip to about 31:58 in the video, the link is still up there if you need it.

Not only is this song entirely random, but it is barely audible. I have no clue what they are singing half of the time, although it sounds as though they are just repeating the same lines over and over again. This song serves nothing to the plot, comes right the hell out of nowhere, throws all logic out the window, is never mentioned afterwards in the epilogue, you know where this is going just show the card.

Yeah, one pointless flavoured Big Lipped Alligator Moment.

On top of the pointlessness and randomness, this song is pretty annoying. The vocal work is in such a pitch it's as if Peter Cetera, Tiny Tim, Barry Gibb and a gospel group of castrato singers were singing it. The Mr. Poe intro song is worse, but this one is the most pointless. Thankfully it's forgettable, which is probably why I can't find footage of the song itself.

So, what was the point of all this? Well, honestly I really wanted to talk about the songs in the piece of trash. I watched this about three times and it wasn't until the third time it really dawned on me how terrible the songs actually were. If I had to choose, my favourite of the bunch would be the "Digg's Duds" song as it has some groove to it and is probably the best song quality wise, sure it's bland and mostly there to fill up space, but it could've been a lot worse.

From that, the list goes like this:

The theme song - Still has some good qualities, but still pretty bad.

"I Wanna be Grown Up" - So bad it's good

"Mr. Poe and Yogul" intro - The worst quality wise, but not my least favourite.

The ending song - The most pointless, needless, forgettable, bland, obvious filler I've ever heard.

Really, this is kind of a testament to how bad a musical can get. I won't do musicals often on this blog, but if I find something with every song as bad as these, oh you better believe I'll be on it.

I'm the Entity of Darkness, and seriously, give this a watch if you're into "So bad, it's good" kind of stuff.