Category: Moldy Oldies and Guilty Pleasures

Personally I love this song, as it’s a guity pleasure of mine. Before Randy did a lot of political grandstanding or Disney soundtracks, he did this wonderful ditty that pissed a lot of overly PC people off. Notice no one said a thing when the song “Rednecks” took the same sarcastic approach to the subject. Like most pop icons, it’s very easily parodied, and below is my favorite Randy Newman parody, where he’s just singing about “everything he sees”. Enjoy.
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Here is a lost classic for sure. Years ago, I discovered that the super sweet baroque pop of The Critters on Rhino’s “Nuggets” compilation. The song, “Mr. Dieingly Sad” was written by group member Don Ciccone and featured a beautiful melody and some great harmony vocals and unlike most of the garage sounding items from other Nugget bands, this basically makes The Association sound like MC5. The Critters hailed from Westwood, New Jersey, and in 1966 they had their first hit (for the Kapp label) with a cover of the Lovin’ Spoonful’s ‘Younger Girl’. They hit again with ‘Mr. Dieingly Sad’ the next year, and following the departure of vocalist/songwriter Don Ciccone, they recorded a final album and vanished. Ciccone went on to perform with Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, playing a key role (on guitar and vocals) in their 1970’s comeback.