The perfect ambiance music for a romantic evening of sliders.
It’s Wednesday already, and that means it’s time for us to ram another godawful piece of music down your ear canal in The Nest’s Top 30 Iconic Songs I Can’t Stand countdown! Normally, I’m pretty coy about giving away the identity of the featured song in these posts until you manage to scroll below my nifty little ISICSC logo… but this week, I just said “fuck it!” You know why…. because others have already guessed that this song would probably be in my countdown, and it gives me great satisfaction to know going in that I’m not the only one who thinks this song is a gigantic piece of ass! You’ll need a shitload of Coke to wash this greasy bellybomber down with…
#7. “Nights In White Satin” – The Moody Blues
In 1967, a fledgling rhythm and blues band from jolly ol’ England underwent a significant lineup change and made a decision to move away from the kind of music their group was named for in the first place. The result was one of the first concept albums… Days of Future Passed, which spawned a single the world clearly wasn’t ready for. However, upon being re-released multiple times during the 1970’s, the song gained far more popularity in an era when songs regularly ran longer on the radio than the commercial breaks that followed them…
Before there was Pepto Bismol, there was “In A Gadda Da Vida”…
That song, of course, is the Moody Blues shitstain epic “Nights in White Satin.” And just to make sure you get the maximum amount of displeasure from this week’s entry… I made sure to find the full seven-plus minute version on YouTube. Your reward for making it to the six and a half minute mark will be a cute little squirrel, which I don’t think I need to tell you, is the very best part of this complete waste of bandwidth…
Listening to this garbage again, I had to seriously ask myself why I only put it at #7. Are there really six big time songs that are somehow worse than this? I think I probably under-ranked this one… not that it’s a threat to my Top 3, that triumvirate of evil muzak was a lock, but I certainly could have justified putting this a couple notches higher. This is the very worst of mellow rock and classic music mashed together into seven minutes of vinyl that could have better been used to record the ecstatic bleating of possums in heat for a sex education tutorial…
You will NOT be playing that disgusting track around my children! And we don’t want to hear the possum bleating either!
Normally when a group has a song that sucks this bad yet gets a lot of love from highbrow music fans, I hate most of the other crap they did as well… but that’s actually not true of the Moody Blues. “Tuesday Afternoon” was on that very same 1967 album, and it’s not half bad at all. A lot of their 70’s stuff is alright, but I really, really love their 80’s work. I won’t tell you which songs yet, because I plan on featuring my favorite in the Dusty Vinyl Archive the week the Moodys are inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame next month. But this is a case of a decent band who suffered the misfortune of having their most unlistenable song become their signature tune, and about the only one the idiots who craft together radio station playlists will ever play anymore…
Coins in white satin, never meaning to spend…
And while I’m on the subject…. people hate disco. I mean really, REALLY hate disco. I don’t really know why… the music is a lot of fun and can be danced to, even if you’re by yourself like Billy Idol. You know what genre of music is the antithesis of disco that was also big in the 70’s? Prog rock. Songs that are about as joyless as a Playboy full of nothing but articles, with the extra added torture that they go on and on and on…. and just when you think the ear torture is finally over and maybe they’ll play an awesome Bay City Rollers song, the orchestra band segues into some symphonic ass like “Late Lament.” There is nothing that made a dent on the Billboard charts that is more unfun and undanceable than prog rock, and yet it gets looked up to and admired, while disco records get thrown into crates in centerfield and blown sky high. The world is not a fair place…
“Is that a radio from the past?”
“Yes, and it’s still playing the same Yes song that started back in 1973…”
I’ll be back next Wednesday with more shitty music that makes me want to kick an FM deejay…
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
I’m totally with you… but whats much more worse is ther michael cretu version of this song fgrom 1995… I think some songs deserved a cover-prohibition…
That sounds like a good idea! I’d nominate House of the Rising Sun for that list too… every version I’ve heard of it is awful…
you haven’t heard mine :o) I performed it with my friend to hop in the band of her father… he suddenly had tears in his eyes… we thought he is touched, but he just fought with a laughing fit… finals statement: girls, forget it !
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHH!!! How dare you!!! LMAO!
Hey, that was my Song #29…. you already had your chance to speak your piece about it!
I never did understand what this song was about other than using up a lot of air time (and ear time). I did like the Moody Blues but this one could have wound up on the cutting floor and we’d all be none the wiser! This was a major Moody BOO.
Pam
It’s one of the most blah songs ever… especially under the supposed genre of classic rock.
There’s nothing “rock” about it other than it should be hiding under one (rock that is).
Yeah, not one of my favorites either. Hubby is a HUGE Moodies fan. We saw them live twice (for him). The concerts didn’t stick with me; I don’t remember much (and I don’t drink – they were just a little dull). I hate those narration things they do in their songs. Just sing already. You want to talk? Go be an actor.
LOL, I agree! Save the poetic oration for Shakespeare, we just wanna rock!
This is it!
Some many people think this is “Knights in White Satin” as if it is some epic love story of yore. This is a simple break-up song. Holy shit. It is so overplayed and so OVER DRAMATIC. I knew early on that this song would be high on your list.
Moody Blues is so hit and miss with me. It was a favorite of one of my siblings and I just got pulled into it all. If you see them in concert you’ll realize how multi talented these guys are. They are one of the few bands who has a flute player. Anyway, I’m hoping my favorite Moody Blues songs from the 80’s are featured on Dusty Vinyl.
I was trying to find the post you made that comment on to show that you called this one, but couldn’t find it. It must not have been on one of the countdown posts. Anyway, good job! I know these guys have some talent, because so many of their other songs are pretty good, but man…. how did they become stuck with THIS ONE as their “magnum opus?” I guess they shouldn’t have written it in the first place…
I sent it in an email – when I sent the baby shower gifts.
I am torn. I grew up with this song. The only part of it they didn’t play was the beginning flowery part. I didn’t know the Moody Blues had songs in they 80s, but I am not sure about that, skeptical. I’m not one for ballads anymore. I want to be tapping my toes. And disco does not make me toe tap. Not a fan.
And please, please, please no Don’t Stop Believin by you-know-who.
This song is a meh for me.
Cute squirrel at the end!
The Moodys were actually pretty big in the first half of the 80’s… I knew that version of the band before I ever heard of this song. You’ll see in a few weeks… they sound much livelier than they do in “Nights.” Although, I’ll go out on a limb and say 80’s Moodys probably won’t be your thing…
Psychodelic weirdness to start my day. Thanks! The squirrel was sweet though…I jumped ahead.
I would hope you did! Nobody should have to listen to six minutes of dreck just to see a pretty squirrel. My blog would be out of business if I did that…
ody N biskit…..thiz songz…knot bad…but…. tuesday afternoon…. & your wildest dreams….in theeze catz book…. waz WAAAAAAY better !! 🙂 ♥♥
I like both of those songs. If they could have put a tenth of the energy from either of those songs into this one, I might have been passable. You could play Nights in White Satin at the library and never get kicked out…
As much as I was Shocked and Appalled and Highly Offended last week, I am so with you this week. I have never been able to understand the appeal and staunch fanship of the Moody Blues. I like Question quite a lot (I think that might be because it might have been in a movie I liked a lot, or maybe I liked the movie because of the song), but that’s it.
I’ve never liked prog rock and I think part of that is because its fans always thought they were above the hoi polloi who were too busy rock and rolling all night and partying every day…..
Love it! When I turn on the radio, I want a good, fun song to listen to. If I wanted to admire works of art, I’d go to a museum (Or pull out ES’s portfolio)….
My uncles says to greatly appreciate this song, you need to be fully drunk. I don’t know for sure though. Snorts and rolls with piggy laughter. XOXO – Bacon
LMAO!! I agree Bacon!
Yes, being drunk with a really bruised, stepped on, smashed, broken heart is the only way to appreciate this song… I listened and watched the whole video, I want my squirrell!
ps.. It does kind of drone on and suck now I’m not drunk or broken hearted! lol..
Yup…there weren’t enough drugs for me to smoke to get through this song back in high school. It always sounds like someone was trying to sleep on its slow-as-death spin on the turntable.
It might make a nice lullaby is it weren’t so creepy sounding…
I like the song. There.
Now you know.
But then I am a huge glam-rock-fan.
Interesting, because I would not consider the Moody Blues to be glam rock. Of course, it’s silly to categorize groups as any specific genre anyway since the ones who stuck around as long as they did probably did numerous different styles…
This song probably is – I don’t know many of their other songs (if any at all).
I had to be the ONLY person I knew who didn’t really like this album. I did like many OTHER concept album, but not this one. I made Garry listen to it one day and he just looked baffled. But to be fair, I also wasn’t particularly fond of the group, before OR after that song. I loved the Doors and the Stones and the Beatles and Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and a lot of individual singers and songs. But there was a whiny quality to these singers that was like squeaky chalk on a blackboard.
If this song is representative of what’s on the rest of the album (Other than Tuesday Afternoon, which as I stated above, I actually like), then it had to be really wretched to listen to. Then again, I once listened to the full later albums the Beatles did back before they threw them off of YouTube, and I thought “they may have had a lot of hits, but they sure did make some awful album filler. Or maybe I just wasn’t stoned enough to get it….
It is sentimental clap-trap along with Stair Way to Heaven.
Oh yes, that song is awful and overplayed too! In fact, I think LZ itself is extremely overrated…
That was awful! Are you sure it wasn’t actually the possum bleating video? Or a cow dying? At one point, I thought the song had ended and a 70’s movie soundtrack had started playing!
Well, you know what I’m going to say, don’t you? Great song! Yes, indeed. Well okay, not a “Drali Top Ten” but not half bad. Though it did spawn a number of comedy sketches in this country featuring knights draped in negligees.
I agree with you on this one, AWFUL.