Don't listen with mother

As part of their efforts to declutter and remove all of the junk I've hoarded over 20+ years, my parents recently deposited two boxes full of audio cassettes. I couldn't bin them without checking them out so over the last couple of weeks I've been working through them on the commute. Spot the oddball / attention-seeker with the bulky walkman.

100 Hz legend: Need to optimise those sound levels son

I might write more about some of the unearthed gems (and turds) another time, but right now I'm considering sexually-transmitted diseases in music. Haven't we all.

I was prompted to ponder this while a burst of Mansun popped up, taped off the Evening Session. Stripper Vicar - what an odd record!




I'm not aware of anything STD related among the tragic tale of a deceased, cross-dressing member of the priesthood. But hearing it  made me recall the delightful opening line of a previous Mansun single, Skinup Pinup:

'Syphilis, sniff on this'.





...which led me to Turin Brakes' line from Future Boy:
'Syphilis is a bitch, but contracting HIV is much worse'.
Err, yes, yes it is.





And then, like a post-watershed game of Mallet's Mallet, Beck's line on Milk & Honey, 'I can smell the VD in the club tonight'.
I had a similar experience once in the Cabaret Club, Oldham. Perhaps Beck has visited there too.





There's more. Plenty more once you start on hip-hop. For starters, here's the Wu-Tang Clan's 'Shame on a nigga', courtesy of Ol' Dirty Bastard:

"Yo...!
I come with that ol' loco
Style from my vocal
Couldn't peep it with a pair of bi-focals
I'm no joker! Play me as a joker
Be on you like a house on fire! Smoke ya!
Crews be actin like they gangs, anyway
Be like, "Warriors! Come out and playiyay!"
Burn me, I get into shit, I let it out like diarrhea
Got burnt once, but that was only gonorrhea"




Last night I stuck on some L'il Wayne and within 10 minutes I'd collected two more. First, the opening lines of 'A Milli':

'I’m a millionaire I’m a young money millionaire, tougher than Nigerian hair  
My criteria compared to your career just isn’t fair  
I’m a venereal disease like a menstrual bleed
Through the pencil I leak on the sheet of the tablet in my mind'

and then in the superb 'Dr Carter':

"Swagger tighter then a yeast infection
Fly go hard like geese erection.
Fashion patrol police detection
I stay tight like Chinese Connection"

Love the image of a goose flying with a lob-on.
While I'm at it, this website is very amusing in explaining rap lyrics.




Pondering this delightful issue yet further, I remembered 'So What' by Metallica, the source of much amusement during Sixth Form free periods:

"I've had crabs
I've had lice 
I've had the clap and that ain't nice 
So what, so what"



There's 'Crabs' by 18 Wheeler. But that could be about the crustaceans.

So there we have it. Someone could write a thesis on that. Know of any more? Leave a comment. A gold star to anyone rhyming 'human papillomavirus'.