Rock n' roll has always been synonymous with partying. Booze, drugs and punching wives has long been the norm for rock's great ambassadors. In the 1980's Motley Crue, Guns N' Roses and Metallica got paid millions of dollars to do all of the insane shit that people dream of while jacking off in their office. Excessive alcohol and drug use was not only accepted, it was an essential tool in getting the bands onstage every night to plow through another set of the same fucking songs in front of throngs of drooling gearheads.
The 90's were all about heroin and hating your parents. Not too much in the way of fun but it's hard to top shooting poison directly into your heart in the ripping shit up category. The 2000's saw the rise of recreational prescription drug use which, let's face it, really isn't partying since your little sister is probably doing the same thing right now at horse camp.
From The Beatles and The Greatful Dead to Led Zepplin and Aerosmith. Black Sabbath and AC/DC to RATT and Poison. Rock n' Roll has boasted it's fair share of righteous party bands. None, however, even come close to Dr. Hook and The Medicine Show. Don't believe me?
This clip is from a German TV show in the early 70's. Lead singer Dennis LoCorriere has either drank fire from the mouth of a poisonous volcano or he's discovered drugs that no longer exist in this dimension. I honestly can't even tell what substances him and Ray "Dr. Hook" Parker are on. It seems like they're stoned but they have way too much energy. It seems like they're drunk but the music is still tight as shit. Maybe Germany used all the gold fillings they won during the holocaust and created a synthetic, injectable form of gold dust that makes people giggle like Elmo and play kick ass music. We may never know.
You'll notice that when LoCorriere finally stops laughing and gets the song started keyboard player Billy Francis decides to stop playing and spend the rest of the song dancing around like a fucking maniac. At this point, the producers of the show must have started getting nervous. When people start acting like this it's usually not too long before a dick finds its way out of one of their pants. Unfortunately, since there's no protocol in Germany (or any other country for that matter) for what to do when your musical guest is balls deep into a pscyhotropic meltdown, they just had to cross their fingers and Seig Heil to God that everything would turn out OK. Imagine, less than 30 years after my Grandpa and his good friend Uncle Sam blew most of Germany to high hell, we make them put up this kind of behavior from our American rock stars. Not only does America piss all over our enemy's kitchen floor, we come back a few decades later to rub their faces in it while we do drugs and rock out in their garage. Regardless, this is what rock music is supposed to look and sound like. Long hair, beards, guitars, uncontrollable giggling, retarded elf dancing, bellies full of space drugs and frightened Germans looking for the exit. Beautiful.
Here's a clip from a couple of years later of them on The Old Crow Medicine Show. Note that their appetites for booze, drugs and yodeling has only increased while their ability to give a fuck has dwindled down to practically nothing.
Shortly after this period Dennis LoCorriere left the band to go solo and Dr. Hook turned into a soft rock/disco powerhouse, recording hit after hit of forgettable 70's dad rock. For those few years in the early 1970's though, there wasn't a band that could touch them in the field of full contact group partying and, for my money, there hasn't been one since.
Maybe Britney Spears...
The 90's were all about heroin and hating your parents. Not too much in the way of fun but it's hard to top shooting poison directly into your heart in the ripping shit up category. The 2000's saw the rise of recreational prescription drug use which, let's face it, really isn't partying since your little sister is probably doing the same thing right now at horse camp.
From The Beatles and The Greatful Dead to Led Zepplin and Aerosmith. Black Sabbath and AC/DC to RATT and Poison. Rock n' Roll has boasted it's fair share of righteous party bands. None, however, even come close to Dr. Hook and The Medicine Show. Don't believe me?
This clip is from a German TV show in the early 70's. Lead singer Dennis LoCorriere has either drank fire from the mouth of a poisonous volcano or he's discovered drugs that no longer exist in this dimension. I honestly can't even tell what substances him and Ray "Dr. Hook" Parker are on. It seems like they're stoned but they have way too much energy. It seems like they're drunk but the music is still tight as shit. Maybe Germany used all the gold fillings they won during the holocaust and created a synthetic, injectable form of gold dust that makes people giggle like Elmo and play kick ass music. We may never know.
You'll notice that when LoCorriere finally stops laughing and gets the song started keyboard player Billy Francis decides to stop playing and spend the rest of the song dancing around like a fucking maniac. At this point, the producers of the show must have started getting nervous. When people start acting like this it's usually not too long before a dick finds its way out of one of their pants. Unfortunately, since there's no protocol in Germany (or any other country for that matter) for what to do when your musical guest is balls deep into a pscyhotropic meltdown, they just had to cross their fingers and Seig Heil to God that everything would turn out OK. Imagine, less than 30 years after my Grandpa and his good friend Uncle Sam blew most of Germany to high hell, we make them put up this kind of behavior from our American rock stars. Not only does America piss all over our enemy's kitchen floor, we come back a few decades later to rub their faces in it while we do drugs and rock out in their garage. Regardless, this is what rock music is supposed to look and sound like. Long hair, beards, guitars, uncontrollable giggling, retarded elf dancing, bellies full of space drugs and frightened Germans looking for the exit. Beautiful.
Here's a clip from a couple of years later of them on The Old Crow Medicine Show. Note that their appetites for booze, drugs and yodeling has only increased while their ability to give a fuck has dwindled down to practically nothing.
Shortly after this period Dennis LoCorriere left the band to go solo and Dr. Hook turned into a soft rock/disco powerhouse, recording hit after hit of forgettable 70's dad rock. For those few years in the early 1970's though, there wasn't a band that could touch them in the field of full contact group partying and, for my money, there hasn't been one since.
Maybe Britney Spears...
