Lola

Well Wasatch is over, so, time to get on with life. For me, the transition back to normal living is always done with lots of pizza. During today's pizza run at lunch, I heard Lola by the Kinks on the radio for the millionth time. It is really a very funny song if you listen to it, some small-town kid who falls in love with a woman, not really completely aware (or perhaps not wanting to admit) that the woman is actually a guy. I got to thinking about other songs of a similar concept and started to realize that there are other good ones in this genre:

1. Transformer by Lou Reed -- An entire album dedicated to a guy slowly deciding that he wants to play for the other team. I love this record, I think this may have been one of the very early Lou Reed solo albums after he left the Velvet Underground.
2. 53rd and 3rd by the Ramones -- A song about a male hustler who never gets picked, then when he finally does, he kills the person to prove he's "no sissy." It is well known that Dee Dee Ramone used to do this for money, it would also not suprise me if he actually killed somebody.
3. A Token of My Extreme by Frank Zappa -- This song is very twisted, but still good. Joe's Garage was my soundtrack for the summer of 1996.
4. Bobby Brown Goes Down by Frank Zappa -- From the amazing Sheik Yerbouti record, which I played to death during the summer of 1997. I used to work night shift that summer and once just to stay awake, I wrote down the lyrics to this entire song. After thinking that somebody might get really freaked out if they ever found it and it got traced back to me, I decided to destroy it. For me the best part of this song is that I actually went to high school with a guy with this name, and he pretty much exactly matched the character in the first half of the song ("They say I'm the cutest boy in town, my car is fast, my teeth are shiny...."). I have not seen the guy in almost 20 years, but I'd like to think that his life probably turned out like the second half of the song!
5. David Bowie -- Pick almost anything from the 70's: some specifics that come to mind are Rebel Rebel, Five Years, ........ David Bowie rules and he could probably record himself doing laundry and it would sound awesome.