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Weekend Discussion Thread: Best Rock Music ReferenceThe ever-resourceful Susan suggests:
Gotta go for Crow’s comment that “KISS were never cool.” What’s your pick? 151 Replies to “Weekend Discussion Thread: Best Rock Music Reference”Commenting at Satellite News
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We’re from the committee to keep rock and roll white! Giant Gila Monster
@13:
They’ve referenced Black Diamond several times. I think my favorite one of those is when the title card of Swamp Diamonds comes up and Joel sings “Ooo swamp diamonds!”
@29:
Yeah, the Zappa references are numerous. I think there might be more episodes WITH Zappa references than without. Another example is Joel quickly working in “And this a ship too late to save a drowning witch!” in Crash of the Moons.
@36:
\m/ \m/
I’m a big Who fan so I’ve got to say when Tom starts singing Baba O’ Riley in Final Justice. Just imagine Joe Don with Roger Daltrey hair!
In “Manos” Mike, the father, mentions a crossroads. Right after that Tom Servo begins to vocally mimic the Jack Bruce bass line from Cream’s “Crossroads”.
In. “King Dinosaur” a giant Armadillo is seen and someone mentions the ELP album “TARKUS”.
Speaking of ELP there are two “Lucky Man” references in “The Giant Spider Invasion”
“The Projected Man” has a Pink Floyd “Animals” reference when Battersea Power Station is shown. I think Crow even sings a few lines from “Pigs (Three Different Ones)”.
Tom Servo sings the opening lines to Chicago’s “Colour My World” when the woman is playing a slow piano piece.
It just so happens to be one of my favorite riffs in Manos, period, but it fits here perfectly:
Tom Servo on Torgo: “It’s like having Joe Cocker as your bellhop.” Perfectly sums him up.
Every single Gary Numan reference.
Pod People: “It’s Gary Numan and the Tubeway Army! In Cars! In Cars!”
Terror From The Year 5000: “Gary Numan, scientist.”
Monster-A-Go-Go: “Here in my car, I feel safest of all…”
Girl In Lover’s Lane: The Train Song ends with “Cars”.
And more…
“Bring back the Boston rag”
Heck yeah it’s obscure!
Must have been some serious Steely Dan fandom among the Brains.
Meanwhile at Kurt Cobain’s house (Brain That Wouldn’t Die)
Steve Miller reference at start of Pod People
I think they’re that popular grunge sound from Seattle, we’re lucky to get them, just don’t mention Lady of Spain
I thought she was Courtney Hole? (Racket Girls)
This fall, Get Courtney Love! (Sinister Urge)
Let’s sing something from Pearl Jam (Manos)
Come. As You Are (Overdrawn At The Memory Bank)
It’s the Nirvana album cover (Angels Revenge)
and Beck! (Revenge Of The Creature)
(Joel Hodgson and Kurt Cobain have the same birthday)
I always laugh at “It’s the Monsters of Rock tour.”
I gotta ask, has Pat Benatar ever been referenced on MST3K?
I think in Overdrawn at the Memory Bank someone is called “so Pat Benatar.” That help? Not sure about any of her songs.
Don’t mention Emerson, Lake and Palmer around Gypsy!
In “Jack Frost”. when the Hunchback Fairy is doing some weird dance to call the cat, Crow sings, “Love is a Battlefield”.
with the weather being what it is where i live (dc area) the line from the day the earth froze:
watch out where the huskies go and don’t you eat that yellow snow
also
a good little zappa skit is the paladin routine (look this one up kids).
In Outlaw when the elders greet each other “tull” and they all do the “Aqualung” riff. Also “I love how Edgar Winter opens his shows!” – same flick.
I don’t remember who Gino Vanelli is, but Joel apparently thinks that Ro-Man in Robot Monster resembles him, and the empty stadium in X Marks the Spot resembles one of his concerts.
Also from X Marks the Spot:
Judge: “You are now a free ghost…”
J&tB: “Woohoo, ‘Free Ghost’! ‘Stairway to Heaven’!”
Final Justice: “My heart will go ahead on.” Definitely not rock, but cracks me up every time.
Tusk!
And for the Nudge fans, “It’s the Wango ze Tango!” from Cave Dwellers.
From The Movie: “They’re really into Yes on this planet.”
From Horror of Party Beach: “The monster immediately puts on his Metal Machine Music.”
Great topic, by the way — and thanks, Susan, for complimenting mine last week. :)
From Mighty Jack: “It’s the Island of Miles Davis.” (They also reference Teo Macero during that scene, which makes me happy.)
Okay, that’s jazz (and I’m a jazz fan), but Miles went electric, played his trumpet through a wah-wah pedal, and employed as many as three guitarists at one time, so as far as I’m concerned it counts.
Another WDT idea: favourite jazz references (or has that been done?).
Does a reference to the Del-Aires count (in Horror of Party Beach)? Because “original soundtrack not available — you’ll thank us” has always been a favourite riff of mine. :)
Sorry for the flurry of posts — it took me all day to get to this!
Jethro wants to be a Rock Star!
Somebody at MST had a thing for the Prince song “Housequake” — specifically, the “Shut up already, damn!” line. It’s been referenced a couple times, though the only one I can recall right now is at the start of “Prince of Space.” (“I’m in space already, damn!”) It’s one of my favorite Prince songs, so it gives me a smile when it pops up.
The one that always gets me is in Quest of the Delta Knights, in the jail, when they play the “danger sense” sound effect, and Tom immediately follows up with “Ba da da dum ba da” from Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer.
The thing is, the intro sound they’re alluding to isn’t in the song — it’s only in the video. I remembered it from the video, and so I got the joke. Then a few years later I got and listened to the album again — and it threw me off that it wasn’t there. Now in my mind, the “official” version is from MST3k.
Also in Manos: “Ladies and gentlemen! Tonight, at the Copacabana, Jules Bedel proudly presents: Pat Benatar and Tricia Nixon!”
From The Screaming Skull (during the opening credits): Da-da-da-da-da-da — My Sharona!”
And, no, I don’t like the Knack, or Loverboy either!
@71: That was only one Lou Reed-related riff. Shortly after that, the Del-Aires start playing and Servo says “it took the Velvet Underground a while to find their edge.” Love that one
#11: You reminded me of a riff from Secret Agent Super Dragon: “She looks like Geddy Lee.” :)
Yes! Overdrawn at the Memory Bank. Servo says about the creepy girl on that movie: “she is so Pat Benatar”
#79: That’s an excellent one (that I hadn’t remembered) — and you reminded me of one from Daddy-O: (in a whisper) “That’s Lou Reed from the Velvet Underground.”
Another one from Horror of Party Beach: “Original soundtrack by Nigel Tufnel.”
And, Susan, I stand corrected: last week’s WDT came from my significant other; it’s just that we think so alike on everything MST3K (and so much else) that I temporarily forgot where it came from! Definitely my bad.
“It’s all part of my kitchen fantasy!”
Bad Company
Joel: Crow, what do you think of Adolf Hitler?
Crow: Well, I hate him, naturally.
Joel: Right. Now, what do you think of the band Styx?
Plenty of good ones mentioned already-the appearance of a real barracuda in Revenge of the Creature leads to Tom doing the song intro then saying “Me!” was really good. There’s the brilliant cameo of “David Bowie” in Overdrawn, which also had the ‘beep-beep-Fashion’ bit.
Goodbye Mr. Driscoll!
Lots of great ones have been mentioned already, but I think my favorite are Spinal Tap riffs. My favorite is the one in “The Day The Earth Froze,” when the “hero” is breaking the ice that surrounds the advancing “army” and Servo sings, “‘Twas a rock and roll creation.” Also in that same scene Crow yells out “Let’s break in to our Grand Funk medley!” as they all play their harps. I love that one as well.
Interesting that the Brains purport to hate them, (I am not sure where this comes from but it does follow with their propensity to poke fun at anything that is “preachy,” which Rush’s music certainly is.) as Rush actually thanked them in the liner notes of their 1993 album “Counterparts,” along with Gamera(is turtle meat) – clearly a reference to the show as well.
I noted early on in the show during Joel’s era the attitude towards Rush seemed positive, then turned really negative in the Mike era. Someone said it was more of a Frank thing, and after he left everyone was free to pile on or something. Personally I like Rush. Particularly their early-mid 80’s albums. Of course, I actually like Rammstein and Motorhead. But I also like Beethoven and The Beatles. My taste has been described as schizophrenic.
My favorite has long been the riff on the weird guitar lick just before the Atomic Powered Hearing Aid explodes in “Wild World of Batwoman”
“People try to put us down!
Talking ’bout my” BOOM
Close-up of the keyboards on the organ in “Tormented,” and “In-a-Gadda-da-Vida,” by Iron Butterfly is being sung!! Also, the befitting Jethro Tull and Neil Young riffs are awesome!!!
See that cloud it’s Mick Jagger’s, stay off of it.
odd music is played, “must be walking past Robert Fripp’s room…”
Late to the party….sorry
These are great references. There were a couple I remember….
“Anything else on the tape?”
Joel “just Eddie Money’s ‘Two Tickets to Paradise’ that’s all.” (Women of the Prehistoric Planet)
Servo “The Patsy Parsons Project.”
Crow “Dick L’Estrange when your a stranger.”
Joel “I didn’t do nothing for Billy Tinsman.” (All three from Crash of the Moons opening credits.)
Servo “Dog scratch…no..Cat Scratch Fever. That’s it.” (Robot Holocaust, as Neo wakes up suddenly. )
Servo “John, Paul, George…Pete Best.” (Fugitive Alien II as our heroes look up from a dirt embankment.)
It’s a bit of a standard variation but everytime the redneck deputy would show up on Laserblast ,Mike and the Bots would sing “Are you ready for some football?” Which is a take on Hank Williams Jr.’s “All My Rowdy Friends.”
The drug smuggling beach scene in “Angels’ Revenge” where one of the angels has disguised herself as one of the thugs but her long hair is hanging down, and Mike says “pretend you’re Shawn Phillips”. As a SP fan, I appreciated that one.
I forget the movie but the riff was “He died listening to Rush!”
We’re all CAVEMAN! from Teenage Caveman riffing on The Who.
I actually heard the line “I am the Lizard King” on MST before I heard The Doors song it came from.
Joel referring to The Mads as Difford and Tillbrook (Squeeze). That was great.
Well, being a longtime hardcore Deadhead, I couldn’t help laughing at the host segment where they make fun of the Dead, featuring Gypsy as the classic blissed-out tripping chick you saw in every Deadhead parking lot scene: “…and then, the Moon came out, and it was like Jerry willed it!”
Two of my all-timers, though, are Zappa references: one in Hercules And The Captive Women during one of the ceremonial dance scenes where the incidental music sounds a bit like Zappa’s “Dog Breath In The Year Of The Plague” and Crow says “Hey, they’re dancing to ‘Uncle Meat’ by Frank Zappa!”.
There’s another good one in Leech Woman, in one of the jungle scenes where part of the incidental music is nearly a dead ringer for Zappa’s “Movin’ To Montana”, and Servo busts out a chorus of “Movin’ to Montana soon, gonna be a dental floss tycoon!”
They may not have cared much for Rush, but if there’s one band they seemed to be saving up their venom for, it was Asia. Can’t say’s I blame ’em; I, too, was roundly disappointed when I first heard the album released by what was billed as a British prog supergroup. I remember thinking “how could you go wrong with Carl Palmer and Steve Howe?”…
I think that was in the short Design For Dreaming, when the dreaming woman rides down on a elevator platform surrounded by dry-ice mist before bounding across the stage to take a seat in her New Car Designed For The Electronic Highway Of Tomorrow. The dry-ice mist envelops her as she rides down, and Mike starts doing “Black Diamond” in what sounds like an imitation of the original Kiss version.
#95
That was from Operation Double 007. Another riffer followed up by reverently intoning, “2112”. That was back when MST apparently liked Rush. Once Joel commented positively about a letter he was impressed with by saying, “You probably listen to Rush”. As a Rush fan I took note of this and was rather perplexed when all the negativity started being directed their way during the Sci-Fi years. It made me wonder if Geddy Lee had run over Mike’s dog or stolen his keyboard or something.