The cutest little illegal you ever saw!
It’s Monday! Time to open your ears and embrace another song that time forgot straight out of the barbed wire fences of The Nest’s Dusty Vinyl Archive! The elephants are converging on Cornhole City as we speak, ready to provide us with all of the TP we need for our bungholes! Aren’t you excited!? No? Well, neither is DJ Scratchy… but she had her conventioneer Sponkies nominate a very fitting song to honor the man who will get entirely too much TV time this week. It’s time to make these unicorns build that wall of sound….
Genesis has a long and complicated history that will come as a shock to most people of my generation who only know the band as the trio of Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks (Not the former Rams QB and his excellently named dog Felony). Peter Gabriel was once the driving force behind the group, though he left in 1975 to pursue a solo career that wound up being the best thing to happen to both Gabriel AND Genesis… as each was wildly successful in the 80’s without the other. Gabriel making memorably fucked up music videos that dominated MTV, and Genesis releasing an unending string of pop ditties that their hardcore 70’s fans probably wished they’d thrown all away…
Like you wouldn’t sell out too if you had the chance to make millions of dollars.
Genesis’ 1983 self-titled album contains a few lesser known hits that were mainly successful on the Mainstream Rock charts… one of which is the very politically incorrect but humorous song “Illegal Alien,” which peaked at #44 on the pop charts…
This is a cute little song with more than a handful of Mexican flair that’s a tongue-in-cheek send-up to our southern neighbors wanting to sneak across the border years before we considered it to be the most pressing issue facing our country. It’s a creative effort that, sadly, no artist could ever get away with today because we live in a world that equates poking fun with the violent emotion of hate. So radio stations never play the insensitive “Illegal Alien” anymore, the homophobic second verse of “Money For Nothing” gets forever blipped, and you can only see the original version of Taco’s video for “Puttin’ On The Ritz” on YouTube…
Super duper!
One of the reasons I look back so fondly on the 80’s were that it was a wonderful, short-lived utopia that took place in between the end of ultra-conservative moral censorship in the 70’s and the beginning of ultra-liberal sensitivity censorship in the 90’s. I despise both methods of inflicting a “superior way of thinking” on the people, and unapologetically sing along with Phil and the boys as they attempt to get their fake passports into the land of confusion…
A funny screenshot of Phil Collins taking off his crappy toupee to keep that last picture off your sidebars…
I’ll be back next week with another earworm that should only manage to offend your musical tastes. That’s all…
I liked genesis very much and I also liked the song… I think that genesis deserved the same attention like phil collins, a lot of people furgot that he was “just” the drummer… btw: Taco gave me the shivers, I wasn’t sure if he was human….(probably not, but if he is food I would not like to eat him)
Genesis was definitely a great songwriting team, and Phil was just a part of that…. though his solo career was so successful that it’s sometimes hard to remember what songs belong to the band and which belong to him. I agree on Taco… he looked like a cyborg in that video!
I miss the 80s. Thank you for the memories. I don’t remember the Taco video, only the song. Super duper..ew.
That footage got replaced with an old photo of Gary Cooper in the censored version, which I always thought was one of the neatest parts of the video (though it’s weird to realize now why it was put there)…
Well, I knew it wasn’t going to be Wall of Voodoo, but I was disappointed when I saw Genesis. They are like the Steely Dan of the 80s. Everybody gets all excited about them being the greatest thing EVER! and I just don’t see it. I like ONE Genesis song….
Hey, wait! I’d completely forgotten about this one! I like TWO Genesis songs! Whoda thunk?
Meanwhile, frickin’ Taco…. Taco/Falco, Faco, Talco, I can’t keep their German asses straight. Was Falco even German? Maybe Dutch? Austrian? Probably not Austrian, I’m projecting WAM on him. I can always remember who did what, and that Taco is just incrementally creepier looking but I can never remember which one has passed and which one has time just passed by…..
Ouch… dissing Genesis AND Steely Dan! You sure know how to hurt a guy…
I’m not sure what Taco’s nationality is, but I remember from Music Choice he was born in Indonesia. And I know Falco is dead, because he was one of the 80’s icons that passed during the brief time I was listening to an 80’s hour on the radio way back in the day (it had to be around the same time as the one guy from Milli Vanilli died)…
I am staying in my little suburb of Cornhole city, where there is nary an elephant in sight. Well, fucking hopefully anyways.
You know what’s good on Ritz? Cream cheese. Yum.
I prefer my Ritz plain. I was pissed when I bought a whole box that wasn’t salted. How can you eat a Ritz with no salt?
Insanity!
Hilarious video…..love Phil’s shoes……….!
Pam
They go great with his rug!
That’s a hilarious video. “It’s no fun, being an illegal alie-un.” LOL! That chorus will definitely be chewing away at my eardrums all day today.
It’s usually annoying when artists try to force two words to rhyme, but this one is just too good! I’m still trying to get it out of my head so I can work on the song I’ll be stuck on next week….
Finally. A group I’ve heard of! It’s a miracle. I like the serape wearing squirrel at the top. Was he a member of the group too? He needed a bigger sombrero 🙂
I think La Ardilla was playing the horn in this song…. Andale, Andale!
Hey – my Ortega ancestors crossed the border but California belonged to Spain then. I guess we stole it… 😉
Hmmmmm, I don’t think Genesis has been around quite that long, though it seems like it sometimes!
LOL! I was completely ignoring all the stuff about Genesis and referring to your illegal squirrel. 🙂
I finally got round to listening to the song! Quite a cheery song. I can generally take or leave Genesis but all of their songs are generally easily listenable-to. Fun video too!
Catchy! Where were the PC police when “Dog Police” came out in 1984? and what would they have made of them? Apparently wearing a Sombrero in my town can be interpreted as mocking people half a world away, even though it is 40 degrees in the shade and Sombreros are a very good idea. Also, the pom poms keep away the flies. LOL! People are getting fearful of saying ANYTHING! As our late Melbourne thug Chopper Reed, used to say “people need to harden the eff up! 😀