Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Perhaps One Should Learn Slang Before Hiring the Band

More kudos to the fools who took a perfectly good Masonicesque Veiled Prophet celebration (seriously) and made it into a family-friendly (called sometimes "public-avoided") event. The people who bring to you Fair St. Louis, which is an apt description of the city and metropolitan area itself, have rescinded their booking of main attraction Smash Mouth:

Smash Mouth, the pop act that was supposed to deliver a hipper, younger crowd to Fair St. Louis, has been booted from the July 4 lineup. Fair officials dropped the act after lead singer Steve Harwell offended employees of Enterprise Rent-a-Car at a corporate party in Orlando this month. Witnesses said Harwell called audience members obscene names.

Fair St. Louis executive director Rich Meyers said that he received a call from Pete Wyatt, a former entertainment chairman for the fair and an employee of Enterprise, who said that "the performance was the most vile, profane thing he had ever seen." Meyers said, "We can't take that sort of risk that there will be that sort of behavior in front of families, especially on the evening of the Fourth."

I suspect that the target of the profanity, St. Louis Illuminati-level string-pulling Enterprise Rent-A-Car, has as much to do with the abrupt change of plans as the obscenity or profanity itself. But jeez, you happening old dudes, let's just count up the clues that might have indicated the mindset and style of the group, shall we?

It's named Smash Mouth, which describes a style of speaking that's sort of, um, colorful.
Its first hit album was entitled Fush Yu Mang, alternately entitled on Amazon.com as Fush Yu Mang [EXPLICIT LYRICS]. Fush yu mang is a slurred pronunciation of a Nuyorican spoken unwritten mandate, if you get my drift. If you don't, you should read this blog more frequently.
The first line of their first hit ("Walkin' on the Sun") is It ain't no joke I'd like to buy the world a toke. You know, a marijuana cigaret.

Family-friendly? Geez, man, this is rock and roll. Smash Mouth will only be family friendly in thirty years, when the inured children of this generation curse the next-generation corruptive musicians who have scientific methods of actually altering brain waves through sound to cause orgasm or uncontrolled sobbing, or both when Chris Carrabba, Jr., sings.

Looks like the public/private partnership titans in charge of Fair St. Louis hired the wrong six-figure consultants to tell them what's cool.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:52 PM