Number 30 goes out to you, Buster!
Hey, it’s Monday! I hope you weren’t looking for the Dusty Vinyl Archive today, since it’s been shut down until 2019. If you missed out, and shame on you for not reading every single stupid thing I post, today is the beginning of The Nest’s latest music countdown! This time, we’re celebrating the weird and wonderful in the Top 30 Novelty Songs Of All Time countdown! DJ Scratchy’s still the grandmistress of Monday Muzak around these parts, and the Sponkies are along for the ride as well in this salute to songs that are mostly older than they are. Let’s get this party started on a down note, shall we?
#30. “People Who Died” – The Jim Carroll Band
If you don’t know who Jim Carroll is, well…. he led an interesting life that allowed him to cross paths with a lot of famous people in the artsy scene. He wrote The Basketball Diaries, the inspiration for the pre-Titanic Leonardo DiCaprio movie, as an autobiography. Though primarily a writer of books and poetry, he dabbled a bit in the world of music during punk rock’s emergence in the late 70’s, and in 1980 we got the one song he is known for today. Never before has the morbid sounded so awesome…
Wow. I sure hope this song wasn’t also autobiographical, or Jim was the most unlucky friend you could possibly have. The verses that are sandwiched between the punk jams reel off a laundry list of young people little Jimmy supposedly knew who meet untimely, unfortunate, and ultimately silly endings. My favorite has to be the poor sap who OD’ed on Drano on the night of his wedding. Exactly how much Drano would be considered to be an overdose? I doubt it would take much to eat a hole through every vital organ in your body…
On the plus side, I’ll bet it would relieve your constipation better than the Squatty Potty.
Before I end up suffering from the Jim Carroll curse, I better just stop right here and remind you to return next Monday for the next novelty song that is a friend of mine…
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
I always thought he played Reverend Kane in The other side… and I think I was right ;O)))
I do remember this one……only this time listening to it I paid attention to the words instead of just enjoying the frantic pace of the music. You have to wonder how much of it is true and how much is “well it rhymed so I used it”. 🙂
Pam
I think probably most of it is the poetic version of “Hmmmmm, I wonder how I can have Buster hilariously die next?”
Don’t recall this ‘catchy’ little number. Probably because I had more than likely had a seizure every time any punk music came on the radio.
I wonder how many people died listening to “People Who Died?”
Ditto from “Tails”. Punk music also upsets my stomach.
I agree on most counts… I had no idea until I looked it up for this post that this song was even classified as punk. For one thing, he doesn’t have a colored mohawk…
That is the most cheerful death song I’ve ever heard! I’ll have to look up the lyrics because my slow brain processors just couldn’t keep up with the speed of the song to hear all the ways that his friends died. I am wondering what that fellow was doing drinking Drano on his wedding night!
The lyrics were posted under the video on YouTube, and I had to follow along to understand the parts that were gibberish. As for the groom, all I can come up with is that it must have been a shotgun wedding he didn’t want to be involved with…
OMG! Novelty songs? And the first one is a death song? This is going to be the best countdown EVER. I love & collect novelty & death songs. I know all these countdown songs can’t all be death songs, but thanks for this one. I love the punk here. It’s not Dead Kennedy’s or Sex Pistols, but man that’s great!
I just loved this song & post. Thanks for a new novelty song! Can’t wait to hear the rest!
Without looking at my list, I’d say this is probably the only death song. Probably also the only one that would be categorized as punk. There will be a lot of variety in this countdown… almost every genre and time period is represented somewhere.
That is going to be terrific. Plus I have something new to find & buy. Looking forward to all. Any time period will be good. Can’t wait.
I haven’t heard this for years. I’m loving it. How can you help but start dancing. Awww man it is fun to have that sick and twisted streak.
There is nothing wrong with enjoying oneself over the misfortune of others…. especially when they do stupid things like drink Drano and jump off roofs. It’s a celebration of Darwinism!
Music to mosh by indeed. The “chorus”, such as it is, is the very definition of reckless abandon.
It would definitely rile up the audience. I don’t remember the Dan Fogelberg concert I went to when I was 8 being very rowdy…
ody N biskit…..we gotta add mit we never hurd thiz song sew we will give it a listen two
when de FSG iz on a dee vize that allowz sound ~~~~~~~~ 🙂 ♥♥
It was not mainstream, but it’s good.
Again, video not available… At least by going direct to the tube of you I’ve found it. A most strange song!
I think it’s dangerous being that guys friend, stay away or die! Bizarre song indeed!
You’ve got to be pretty unlucky to have all your friends die young like that. Or maybe be in a slasher movie…
Goodness, what a jolly song.
Tell you what, if I didn’t have Alexa (plus an Amazon Music subscription) I might as well give up on music posts. Copyright has got way more strict for these videos over the past year, I used to able to view almost every single one, now it’s maybe one in ten.
It is obviously a ploy by Alexa to sell more Amazon Music subscriptions. There is something sinister in that lady’s voice…
Hmm, I did wonder why she said “People Who Died by the Jim Carroll Band you’re all going to die pathetic humans BWAHAHAHAHA!” before playing the song…