Song of the Day – “Funeral for a Friend / Love Lies Bleeding” by Elton John

Man, what a song.  And as Wikipedia has just told me (as it sat on my shoulder and whispered into my ear like it were some sort of bird) that majestic and awe-inspiring intro was actually played by David Hentschel.  But anyway, the first part, the “Funeral for a Friend” part is what a young Elton John figured was music appropriate to be played at his funeral.

And man, that Honkey Cat can put the “fun” into “funeral”!

Possibly even the “funk” into “dysfunctional”, but let’s not go overboard.  I’m not even going to mention that version of “Rocket Man” that William Shatner did.   Actually… I just mentioned it.  Well, I’m certainly not going to link to it.  Fuck you.  You can go find it yourself.

So, this song first came to me in the early 90s when I was just getting into “Classic Rock”.  I heard the whole 11-minute thang on the radio at night coming back from Medicine Hat for a work road trip.  Those were drinking days.  I was probably convalescing from a mild case of alcohol poisoning.

I bought a VHS tape with an Australian concert that Elton John had performed in the 80s.  The quality of this tape was fucking atrocious, and I couldn’t even get a good enough audio signal to Mikeify the audio when I tried years later.  The performance was part of his 80s “comeback”, and he was dressed like Mozart… puffy white wig and all.

Anyway, Elton was much more interesting in the 70s.  That statement is true for most musical artists of the time… just replace “Elton” with the artist or band’s name and you get the idea.

• “ELP was much more interesting in the 70s”
• “Genesis was much more interesting in the 70s”
• “Funkadelic was much more interesting in the 70s”
• “Black Sabbath was much more interesting in the 70s”
• “Deep Purple was much more interesting in the 70s”

and so on and so on.

I think it’s got more to do with him having a “rock band” around him.  That’s just the music I prefer.  I don’t think it has anything at all to do with the fact that he was still trying to stay in the closet about being gay.  Hell, Queen was pretty fucking gay, and I love most of what they did.  But again:

• “Queen was much more interesting in the 70s”

And now I’m rambling.  See the post below.  What can I do about this?  I’m not, as it turns out, very good at being a critic.

But how am I as a humourist?  Terrible?  Oh.  Well, actually I know that.  I’m not sorry about it though.  I have to fill up these blog posts with something, and since I’m not to good at making sense, I’ll try to make jokes.

So how bout some jokes about Elton John?

Sorry, I don’t know any.

I actually have a lot of respect for him.

Actually, I’ll make one up.

Q: “Why did Elton John cross the road?”

A: “žË™uǝʞɔıɥɔ ǝɥʇ oʇ pǝןdɐʇs sɐʍ ǝɥ ǝsnɐɔǝq”ž