On “Bust A Move” and Wedding Party Protocol

In the spring of 1989, Marvin Young (AKA Young M.C.) released what would prove to be his most successful work, a song that has become a staple of party DJs and movie soundtrackers, and is almost certainly your friend’s ringtone.  The song, obviously, is “Bust A Move,” and its longevity is not undeserved.  It’s a great song, for the most part.

It begins with a command from Mr. Young.  ”Bust it,” he instructs, and it is duly busted.  What follows is a rapid-fire primer “for all the fellas tryin’ to do what those ladies tell us.”  Who can’t relate?  Young serves up advice for nearly every conceivable social situation (high-class luncheon, new movie showin’, etc.) and that advice is simple and elegant: just bust a move.

Everything is going fine in the song, the beat has been sufficiently broken down as per Young’s request, and then this happens:

Your best friend Harry has a brother Larry

In five days from now he’s gonna marry.

He’s hopin’ you can make it there if you can

‘Cause in the ceremony you’ll be the best man.

Wait, what?

This Larry character, who you have possibly not even met (the song deliberately avoids clarity on the matter) has chosen now—FIVE DAYS BEFORE HIS WEDDING—to not only invite you but to virtually demand that you act as his best man!?!  Is he serious?  Is there no one else in his life who would be better suited for what is easily the pinnacle of a platonic male-male relationship than some random dude he’s never even met?  Maybe—oh, I don’t know—HIS FREAKING BROTHER HARRY?!?!?!???

I mean, seriously.

Welcome to Rock Charts Casual Fridays

Casual Fridays at Rock Charts are going to be pretty cool I think. The idea is simple: On Fridays, all of my self-imposed content rules are out the window and I’ll be giving you any charts I’ve thought of that are still music-related but aren’t based on specific songs or lyrics. I’ll also be sharing any cool music charts by other people that I find or that you submit or point me to or mail to me in creepy Manila envelopes with block lettering.

So enjoy. Or don’t. Whatevs; it’s Friday.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Hi.

If you pay as much attention to me as I like to pretend you do, then you’ve noticed my return after a far too long absence with a couple of new charts that look a lot different than the old ones.  These two things are not entirely unrelated.

It’s not that I didn’t like the look of the hand-drawn charts on graph paper; I liked it a lot, in fact.  It’s just that it was becoming far too time-consuming to produce the charts after I thunk ‘em up and finding that time was becoming more and more difficult.  (And, to be perfectly honest, there were times when I scrapped an idea because I screwed it up at the last minute and didn’t want to draw it again.)

Recently, though, I was playing around with the Paper app (check it out here, it’s pretty sweet) and drew the Smells Like Teen Spirit chart, because it’s a pretty simple one and I didn’t have it on here yet (even though I’m sure it was part of one of the earlier versions of this blog).  It probably took me less than two minutes.  My mind was sufficiently blown.

The discovery of this new efficient tool and the news of the rapidly-approaching release of the I Love Charts book (cleverly entitled “I Love Charts: The Book” and even more cleverly featuring a few charts from right in here!) has inspired me to get back to something I enjoy very much: helping you avoid doing whatever that thing was you were supposed to be doing right now.

I also intend to mix things up a little every now and again with some non-chart entries to satisfy the “Other Random Stuff” portion of my mission statement.

Bye.