Generally, more ear pleasing noises can be heard at a hog-calling contest for the hearing impaired than your average karaoke bar.
Now, there are some songs that take a certain amount of panache to bring down the house and avoid being drowned out by some depressed drunk firing coins into the jukebox to hear the real thing. The sonic heights of Bohemian Rhapsody, for one, are best attempted in the confines of the shower provided you close the bathroom window first and don’t own any jittery pets.
With this in mind, if you you are someone given to making more ears bleed than a peckish Mike Tyson, it’s best to call for backup to double the odds that a member of your twosome, even if they ordinarily might not be able to carry a tune without one being strapped to their chest with an explosive device, can handle the sonic load. (With the added benefit of having a partner in crime against musicality, free to refresh your drink during alternating verses)
With four or five pitchers of stale beer often a performance prerequisite (the equivalent of warm-up stretching for the average warbler), it’s even that much more important if you’re going to climb that karaoke mountain, to have a Sonny to your Cher (and ensuring proper safety precautions as you scale back down it) so that fewer words are missed scrolling by on the monitor–a level of skill that might be a precursor to some of the sobriety tests that might have to be passed later on in the evening. [Editor's note: See The Top 10 Bar Songs of All Time and Top 10 Drinking & Driving Songs of All Time]
Given people’s election fatigue, we figured we’d lighten it up a bit and present the followingTop 10 Karaoke Song Duets of All Time, so that 12 scotch and sodas into your next bachelor party, if you’re able to convince someone else to share your bad decision-making, you won’t have to be both Barbara Streisand and Neil Diamond for ‘You Don’t Bring me Flowers’.
10. Picture by Kid Rock & Sheryl Crow. There are some people who’d say that Kid Rock is a multi-talented instrumentalist and songwriter and these people would be in attendance at his family reunion. Generally speaking, someone with migraines, their head in a vice and getting squash balls shot off their ass cheeks makes sounds more pleasant to the ear than anything Mr Rock has ever put out, but the man should be given his due as he’s sporadically capable of rendering something decent, sort of like when a con grinds out a license plate.
Paired with Crow, who was once ridden by Lance Armstrong in between Tour de Frances, the lyric “I was off to drink you awaaaaaayy!” will be met with rousing cheers and much stale ale wiped down off the tables.
9. The Girl is Mine, by Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney. For those of you favoring affirmative action, this ‘up with people’ crowd pleaser (depending on exactly what kind of bar you’re singing in) lends itself to bi-racial performance as Michael Jackson was technically still black when this was performed and you can haul your own black friend out to bring the house down. ['Girl' can even be substituted for 'boy' during the Jacko parts to great applause]
8.Crazy in Love, by Jay-Z and Beyonce Knowles It’s a cliche to say that people have more money than God, but in this case, the power couple can underwrite the man upstairs, bail out Lehman Brothers and still have something left over to take each other somewhere nice. [Caveat: Jay-Z's rap comes at the 2 minute mark of this 4 minute song, leaving the male half in a performance in the unenviable position of having to chose whether to either dance awkwardly on the spot or keep their hands in their pockets throughout]
7. Broken by Seether and Amy Lee ‘Cause I’m broken when I’m lonesome’, a bit of emo redundancy from Seether and Amy Lee. A ’seether’ for those who were wondering, is a cooking pot and all things considered it’s a much better band name than ‘Cutting Board’.
6. Up Where We Belong Joe Cocker Jennifer Warnes
Joe Cocker, a guy who bears a superficial resemblance to Charlie Manson (see our Top 10 Horniest Cult Leaders of All Time) has a voice that sounds like he gargles with Lysol and whose taser-inspired gyrations are legendary, pairs up with the sweet alto of Jennifer Warnes for this Buffy St Marie penned ballad. Producer Don Simpson, apparently claimed “The song is no good. It isn’t a hit” and he was half-right, as anyone in the crowd when a couple of drunken lovebirds take to the stage to belt this one out.
5. I’ve Had the Time of My Life Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes: Ms. Warnes back again, this time teaming up with arguably the more righteous of the Righteous Brothers, Bill Medley. Her collaborations with Leonard Cohen are unlikely to be found in all but the most depressing bars on the planet. This song, guaranteed to thrill a crowd of people whose clocks stopped in the 1980s, featured prominently in the hit movie Dirty Dancing. On ‘Cheers’, Sam Malone in an attempt to bed Rebecca, has Bill Medley serenade her with ‘You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’. Not coincidentally, Dirty Dancing does this to every guy from the waist down.
4. Under Pressure David Bowie and Queen. This one, a good theme song for the workaday world, is an inexplicably popular choice on karaoke night. Bowie shows more range as an actor than as a singer and even though he and Freddy Mercury are both technically baritones, this will demand consummate karaoke professionalism. Most of the time it is a karaoke disaster, as is anything by either of these performers.
3. Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart Elton John and Kiki Dee Elton John may have put Kiki Dee on the map but a GPS is required to find her now. This was back in the days when Elton John’s music was fun to listen to — before he became a Sir and before he changed a few of the lyrics to his lamentable Marilyn Munroe-inspired piano dirge “Candle in the Wind” for Princess Diana — a song that will invite violence upon you if you attempt to subject an audience of antsy drunks to it. For this one, you and your chanteuse partner will need to be quite peppy. For added effect, move around a lot and swing your arms to and fro.
2. I Got You Babe Sonny and Cher: In the 1960s Sonny and Cher were a popular act, also known as “Who’s that nebbish with that foxy chick?” Sonny, despite being one uncool looking hippy, did pen some memorable tunes — and at the very top of that list is “I Got You Babe,” which is a popular karaoke choice for couples to sing to each other right before their relationships collapse and they go to war over who gets to look after Fido every second Sunday in March. It’s always the drunkest and loudest couple in the bar who gets up to out-shout each other with this one. That they “got each other babe” is not in dispute and neither is the fact that nobody else in the bar would ever want to claim them.
1. Islands in the Stream Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton: Kenny Rogers, subject of arguably the funniest impersonation in the history of MadTV, can outcroon anyone within a 10-mile radius. While other country stars have had an artistic rebirth in their declining years — see George Jones, Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash — Kenny has had pretty much the opposite, his most frequent gig being the late-night infomercial salesman hawking a “Best of Country” compilation that features, surprise surprise, a whole bunch of Kenny Rogers tunes. Still though, Islands in the Stream is the coup de grace of karaoke duets, a staple of veterans of the bar mic, and a sure sign that you’re in a place where you’d be hygenically better off drinking from the bottle.
The witching hour is soon upon us, when ‘hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world’, kids are tucked in by Michael Jackson, Donatella Versace wakes up to greet the day as usual and other ghoulish things.
Halloween marks the end of the harvest, or its modern exemplar, snagging a boxed butter chicken before the 7-Eleven closes up shop and even those who are known to wring the last droplet out of that wet blanket, can’t help but get into the otherworldly spirit; even if it means dimming the lights, hunkering down in a basement and carpel tunneling their way through Black Sabbath Guitar Hero and pretending not to hear the knock at the door.
When it comes to costumes, some have withstood both the ravages of time and Second Life avatars, the devils, sexy nurses, vampires, ninjas, Batman & Robin (it’s not difficult to tell which of these pooches is the submissive one and there are few experiences more frightening than the prospect of sitting through the eponymous movie) and for parents stingy with a dollar, ghosts. If you haven’t glanced at a calendar recently and find yourself at a loss for costume ideas, here are a few simple suggestions.
10. Osama Bin Laden
This culturally insensitive classic is relevant until he’s caught (at this point, when Satan snowmobiles to work) and even a few years after Borat’s catchphrases have outworn their welcome.
Twist: Obama/Osama. This one will likely be popular, especially with the catchphrase, courtesy of the Wasilla Whackjob’s supporters, ‘The only difference between Osama and Obama is BS’ [and at this point, with devotees like this, McCain wishes he could raise his arms above his shoulders to slap himself on the forehead]
Tip: Always on the cutting edge with Times Square hooker references, even though they haven’t been seen there since the mid 90s, the spirit of the comedically deceased David Letterman can also be conjured up with crack about “being found driving a New York City taxicab’
9. Polluted Body of Water
This one’s easy, if you’ve managed to master the complexity of ‘ghost’. Grab a blue garbage bag, poke a hole for your head and hang soda cans, wrappers, syringes and whatever else you can scrounge out of recycling and go as your favorite polluted body of water, say Lake Ontario or of course, the East River.
Twist: Say you’re the Potomac and make political jokes so obvious, they’d be crumpled up into a ball during Jay Leno brainstorming sessions (and then flattened out and used that same evening). Be prepared for ‘Hey, I can make out Jimmy Hoffa on the bottom’ if you’re the East River.
8. John Daly Undoubtedly, our favorite sportsman. Daly, powered by the hooch, is known to smack a ball way further than any of his peers, leading us to conclude that this Samson-like strength is related to his copious booze intake. Dropped by his ’swing coach’ (nothing to do with an embarrassing movie craze from the 90s) for being a drunkard, this was borne out by his recent arrest at a Hooters.
You get extra points for being topical.
Tip: if you’re portly and have hair, style it Three Stooges Moe, grab a six-pack, a set of clubs and voila.
7. Johnny Cash Another no-brainer here. Two things that can be found in every guy’s apartment from age 21 and up: a guitar and a dark suit.
Bonus: As you get into your cups, you can ‘Walk the Line’. [Editor's note, for our Top 10 Drinking and Driving Songs, click here]
Twist: find a June Carter lady friend to sing lovely harmonies.
6. Sarah Palin. Though duplicating her wardrobe might require a large home equity loan, this will certainly be a popular one a few days prior to her going down to spectacular defeat in the looming election.
Advanced Tip: With her recent railing against fruit fly research [a staple of genetic research since its inception], set a few pieces of fruit out in a jar overnight, put a lid on it and carry around a few. You betcha, gosh darnit.
5. Wacky Afro Wig Disco Guy / Nerd
Another easy one. Requirements: 1. Afro wig, copious amounts of liquor, ruffled shirt, obnoxious persona, thrift store pants and ideally, fraternity affiliation.
2. Tape for a pair of oversized glasses, a bow-tie or thrift store duds. [Caveat: you may be mistaken for a member of any band that has come out of Brooklyn and been written about in Blender in the last five years. Just nod in agreement if recoginized as such]
4. Survivor Cast Member / Eyes Wide Shut Mask + Robe. Degree of difficulty: 1-2.
a) Last minute standby, requires dirt, a bikini, a walking stick and a self-centered, grating attitude.
Tip: Bring along cards with magic marker names on them for who you’d like voted off the island and hand them out at parties.
b) Grope random strangers in your Eyes Wide Shut Mask and robe.
Bonus: Creepy even for people unfamiliar with the movie, like Nicole Kidman appeared to be when she was in it.
Tip: For extra frights, jump up and down on a sofa while proclaiming your undying affection for someone a foot taller.
3. Michael Phelps Degree of difficulty: 1
Stop by the local trophy store where your boss gets those ‘Employee of the Month’ plaques that always seem to pass you by as you plot his death and procure a bunch of medals. Swim cap, goggles, bathrobe and you’re set.
Caveat: This is extremely time sensitive as Olympians are forgotten almost immediately once the games are over and done with, which will no doubt happen with this medal-hog.
2. Willie Nelson Degree of difficulty 4.
Braided ponytail wig, think Wizard of Oz Dorothy but gray. Plaid shirt, cowboy hat, bandanna, beaten up guitar.
1. Pocahontas Same as the above, substituting the plaid shirt, cowboy hat, bandanna, beaten up guitar for brown mini dress and moccasins. To deflect attention away from not being particularly culturally sensitive, find a Borat or an Osama and refill their glass.
So you’ve decided to join a cult. You’ve dropped your belongings in the bin marked “stuff that we can sell once your spirit has been broken,” learned to call a guy who has fleas “master,” and started doing things like standing on one foot and chanting Tibetan bush-monk hymns in order to rebalance the earth’s energies. After a few months of this, when your guru brings out a goat and turns on the mood music, you may be sufficiently removed from reality to follow his suggestions.
As we discussed in Part One of our Top 10 Horniest Cult Leaders of All Time List, cult leaders, like the owner of a no-tell motel, know the power of sex. The 10 on this list directed — and in some cases continue to direct — their cults to various ends — some of them murder, some (not many) charitable work, some mindless time-fillers like pretending you’re a daffodil - but all of them have made a stop at the guru’s chambers for some private “insights” mandatory. They have libidos that were too large to be reined in by convention (though in some cases law enforcement may yet do said reining). Here they are then, the Top Five Horniest Cult Leaders of All Time!
5.) Jim Jones“Jonestown”: Jim Jones is best remembered as the charismatic nutcase who led over 900 people to their deaths via poison Kool-aid. What may not be as well known about Jones is the fact that he was also one incredibly horny tinpot dictator who led 900 people to their deaths via poison Kool-aid. In his book on cults, author Nigel Cawthorne writes that Jones claimed “that he possessed almost superhuman sexual endurance, technique and potency.” And as a post-coital bonus, he would isolate you completely from friends and family, convince you to join him as he set out to form some godforsaken colony and talk you into suicide. But first, a cigarette.
Jones’ secretary kept an appointment book for these encounters, and he did not discriminate when it came to gender. Jones called his liasons with male members “revolutionary acts,” though this Che Guevera of the flesh ran into trouble when he tried to spread the revolution to an undercover policeman in a public washroom. Jones, like Manson, and others on this list was also something of a voyeur and would orchestrate sexual performances… all in the name of the revolution you understand.
4.) Adi Da“Da-ists”: Adi Da has done more to inspire would-be mystics who are actually pursuing the more terrestrial goal of getting laid than most cult leaders. Born Franklin Jones, Da would go through more name changes than a convention of debt-dodgers, adopting among his monikers Bubba Free John, Da Free John, Dau Loloma, Da Love-Ananda, and later “Da, Da, Da,” because he couldn’t get that catchy tune out of his head no matter how high he got with the yogic flying. Jones was a native of Queens NY, and though he may look a bit like Archie Bunker, the similarities end there. Da started using mysticism to get laid in — surprise, surprise — the 1960s. He was a thumb in the eye to the Eastern mystics who had up until that time been hogging most of the action.
Just listen to some of this from an Adi-Da friendly website (caps all theirs): “Avatar Adi Da has Given His devotees a way of relating to sex that is life-positive, non-puritanical and at the same time more and more ego-transcending and compatible with the fullest Spiritual practice and ultimate Divine Enlightenment.” A word of advice to guys taking yoga and/or meditation classes in the hopes of scoring: take notes — this guy is the master — when it comes to spinning a line that will get you laid, that is.
A less friendly website chronicled, among other incidents, one in which Da invited a couple into his room while he was drinking beer and smoking, poured the liquor out to both of them and said that the woman should be prepared to “commune with the guru.” Da scoffed at her husband’s objections, saying it was the all-evil ego at work and that he should liberate himself from such entanglements. Da? He helped the woman break free from her clothing. The cuckolded husband accepted Da’s explanation until he began to wonder why this revelation needed the assistance of a bottle of hooch to make itself known. Da was already down the fire escape by that point. Da-da-damn!
3.) Sun Myung Moon: Moon’s divinity stems from his account of meeting Christ in the Korean countryside. Jesus was actually asking for directions to the nearest jimjilbang, but given the language barrier it’s easy to understand how Moon made the mistake and began writing his own bible and later founding the Unification Church i.e. The Moonies. Marriage has always been a big part of The Moonie world — these days it mostly means a mass wedding where you’ll marry a complete stranger, with whom you might not even share a language, but back in the early days Moon was more hands-on. Back then, marriages in the cult were deemed invalid until the bride had the chance to, shall we say, see The Dark Side of the Moon. But cult sexing ain’t easy and soon there were simply too many new members for Moon to mount.
His next move was ingenious — he declared that his new members must refrain from sex for 40 days after marriage while the bride metaphysically sleeps with Moon. You’re a newlywed about to get it on with a perfect stranger who is now your wife and your main and most recent competition is essentially God who has been metaphysically pleasing your woman to the extent of her imagination. Check your manhood at the door, and consider yourself Mooned.
2.) Aleister Crowley, “Ordo Templi Orientis”: Born into the Plymouth Brethren and made to read bible passages at dinner time, Crowley decided at an early age that this sort of austere, Bible-thumping misery was just not on. He got his start early as one of the top all-time top sex cultists by schtupping his father’s maid, an act that once it became known to his mother caused her to dub him “The Beast,” as in the Book of Revelations/loose in the streets of Bethlehem sense. He dug that and used it on all his letterhead throughout his life.
He headed up the Ordo Templi Orientis and began staging elaborate and very well attended sex rituals, involving men, women and the occasional farm animal. He called his rituals “sex magick” and wrote a book of poems on sex that had one of the all-time least erotic names of any such collection, 1898’s “White Stains.”
Crowley was inexplicably popular with the ladies. Maybe it was the hat. He would sharpen his teeth to points and bite the wrists of anyone who took his fancy. This technique was effective — even as a bloated bald old goat he would still have women throwing themselves at him and he obliged. They then mostly went insane and were driven to the funny farm. Subject of an Ozzy Ozbourne song, pictured on the cover of the Sgt. Pepper album, Aleister Crowley could no doubt have kept on getting laid well into the 1980s — at least — had he not died in the gutter a penniless junkie. But still, Sgt. Pepper… Pretty cool.
1.) Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho): The late 1960s were good to horny cult leaders the world over and none more so than Bhagwan (which means “Master of the Vagina” — if there are any who would dispute his top billing here) Shree Rajneesh, who welcomed a generation of young western tourists in search of Eastern enlightenment with open arms and a soft, if crowded, bed. Those Western seekers handed over all of their worldly possessions — which barring the odd celestial silver dollar meant everything they owned — donned rose-colored robes, and participated in a form of meditation that was part three-year-old child throwing a tantrum — participants were asked to kick, bite, and scream at one another to release stress — and part Club-54 — they were encouraged to have as much sex with one another as they could without dropping dead from the effort.
At the top of this pyramid of deluded sexed-up Westerners was Bhagwan himself. He stayed perched at the top of this lecherous extremely profitable empire until the 1980s when he underwent a Prince-like identity crisis. Perhaps looking for an image change, and tone down the fact that he would make Wilt Chamberlain look like an agorophobe he decided to drop Bhagwan, and simply call himself Gautam the Buddha. Likely realizing that this was a bit much, he settled on Maitreya (friend of the Buddha), then Zorba the Buddha, then that creepy guy who screwed a whole lot of people’s moms in the 60s, before finally settling on Osho. It is under this name that the profligate prophet’s teachings — what little there were that didn’t relate directly to mattress gymnastics — live on.
Problem: You are an ugly, obnoxious sociopath shunned by society, even those parts of it with really low standards like the music business, BUT you still want to get laid. The options open to you are few and most of them involve sending money to a broker in Eastern Europe who may or may not be scamming you as he plays the role of cultural ambassador to his cousin Svetlana. The other option is to start a cult.
Throughout history cults have given the demented both a soapbox from which they can preach their babble as well as the ideal opportunity to get their freak on with the deluded folks buying into the particular brand of BS. When it comes to nailing confused strangers, even Club Med places a distant second to cults. If you’re looking to take over the world with your cult, the two most effective tools at your disposal are the strength of the philosophy you’re espousing and sex. Given that the philosophies of most cult leaders are moon-barking insane, sex then becomes an important part of cult life and can be manipulated in one of two ways – you can preach indulgence and “free love”, or you can insist that your members exert strict control over their nether regions, while observing no such control yourself. Either way, you’re getting laid.
Here then is Part One of our list of The Top 10 Horniest Cult Leaders of All Time — those who sexed up their cults good, some for cheap thrills, some for power and some, it would appear, just to give the rest of us some creepy mental imagery.
10.) John Humphrey Noyes “The Oneida Perfectionists”: Like everybody else on this list, John Noyes had an ego of polar-ice-caps-before-global-warming-like proportions. As a young man, he underwent a religious transformation, coming to the conclusion that he was “perfect” because he had surrendered himself to God and therefore anything he did came from his pure heart and was beyond questioning. What “perfectionism” actually meant to him was the ability to act strictly on impulse, with no regard for anyone else. “Upset I booted your poodle into the next postal district? You would be, you’re not perfect.”
Noyes went about “perfecting” things for the rest of his life. He found marriage to be in need of perfecting when the wife of a close friend made a pass at him while the two were out on a garden stroll. Noyes decided the best solution was to formalize the practice of bedding other people’s spouses, and thus the Oneida Community, a 300-person strong wife-swap spectacular, was born. Everybody became married to everybody, so the next time somebody got a bit frisky with ole Noysie on a garden stroll, all bets were off.
Despite being a colossal egomaniac and the kind of guy who outlines a great plan that results in him bedding your wife, he did actually do some good — apparently coining the term “free love,” a boon to retro 60s T-shirt sellers, and being one of the first to advocate “male continence” or what we might call getting off one station early… i.e. the pull-out method. He thus avoided having a massive horde of cult kids running around, whose presence, as any modern-day cult leader will tell you, is sure to send the Feds around snooping.
Noyes disbanded his colony in 1887 and, like many eccentrics before and after him forced to flee American law, he fled to Canada, to Niagara Falls, where he no doubt spent many a meditative moment comparing his own libido favorably to the force of that natural wonder.
9.) John Kilminster, Satanist (circa 1995):John Kilminster is the bored suburban dad of horny cult leaders. He is referred to in Nigel Cawthorne’s handy pocketbook “The World’s Greatest Cults,” as having been “a furniture-maker, chess champion and pillar of the local Conservative community.” Given that description, it’s not a great leap to also conclude that he was the kind of the guy who couldn’t get laid in a woman’s prisons with a fistful of pardons, so when it came to some extramarital frolicking, he needed to get creative. He went for it — founding the “English Church of Satan,” which he announced in the local newspaper. That he started his church by putting an ad on the same pages selling used lawnmowers and deals on roofing is ridiculous, that the cult’s first meeting took place at a Little Chef fast-food restaurant, and do-it-yourself werewolf kits were passed out to the assembled takes it to a level of farce that would not be seen again until the Nicolas Cage remake of “The Wicker Man.”
Still though, people did get laid. Kilminster promised free love to his attendees, so of course men came, but surprisingly so too did women. The highlight of club nights was when Kilminster would lie in a coffin while his followers pranced around naked under their black robes chanting for his “resurrection.” Once he had been sufficiently resurrected, Kilminster would pop out of the coffin and, just like in the Bible, an orgy would commence. It was all creepy fun and games until one of Kilminster’s acolytes accused him of spiking her drink. The case went to trial and he was exposed publicly — much to his chagrin as his wife hadn’t known anything about the cult till that point.
8.) Sathya Sai Baba (International Sathya Sai Baba Organization): With his big afro, long flowing robes and ability to vomit gold eggs at will, it’s of little surprise that Sai Baba rose to the top of the guru racket during the 1970s, and he continues to hold sway in Indian political affairs. The 80-plus-year-old Baba is renowned for producing objects out of thin air or, in the case of the golden eggs, from his own body. His followers call these acts “manifestations,” but you may know them as “cheap parlor tricks” that make him about as much of a miracle-maker as your uncle who always found a quarter behind your ear (and occasionally pocketed it, the cheap bastard).
Baba is viewed among his followers as an incarnation of Christ, a living god in other words, but for many the most blinding Saul-on-the-Road-to-Damascus revelation has come behind closed doors at the guru’s ashram. A BBC documentary (entire video available here) revealed that behind that placid smile and beneath that peaceable afro beats the heart of one horny, licentious operator. Baba’s modus operandi according to the sources in the BBC doc is to invite young men into his chambers — the invited are thrilled at the attention, until, that is, the Baba breaks out the massage oil, hikes up his robes and introduces his guest to the secret swami.
Much like the Catholic Church back in the day, the Sai Baba foundation has done everything in its power to silence these claims and dismiss them as baseless. Despite all of the vast and varied claims against him from around the world, and spanning from the creepy to the criminal in the case of some allegations against him, Baba seems untouchable. An article in Salon (click here) quotes a devotee of Baba, basically admitting he’s a perv, but arguing that “any sexual contact Baba has had with devotees — of whatever kind — has actually been only a potent blessing, given to awaken the spiritual power within those souls. Who can call that ‘wrong’?” Also, when Baba asks you to pass the loofah sponge, doing so is something in the order of a sacred offering.
7.) Charles Manson, “The Manson Family”: Charles Manson, likely the most recognizable nutter in all of cultdom, spent much of his early pre-cult years in prison where he learned the valuable lesson that men 5′1 in stature get raped frequently. Equipped with this knowledge, he sought ways to compensate for his pint size by manipulating and BS’ing those around him. Enter Scientology, which Manson studied in prison and which equipped him with enough mystical-sounding bosh to last him through many a long-night’s campfire-side acid trip.
In any other period of American history, a guy like Charles Manson would have went straight back to prison or he would have become an itinerant worker, going from roofing jobs to picking fruit off of low-hanging trees. This, however, was the 1960s, so when this disheveled looking psychotic troll started preaching his gobbledy-gook, there were many — mostly middle-class suburb-raised young women — willing to listen, and, more importantly to Manson, to shag anyone at any time. Manson would initiate his recruits with an LSD and sex session, later choreographing orgies. Manson became popular among Hollywood types for his ability to bring loose crazy women to parties, but what he wanted more than anything was to break into the music industry. His only problem: an utter lack of talent. Angered by this, Manson got progressively crazier, his orders eventually resulting in the famous Manson murders, which sent ole’ Chuckie M’ back to the Big House, and no doubt to the kind of loving to which he had once been accustomed.
6.) Reverend Henry Prince/John Hugh Smyth Piggott, “Agapemone — The Abode of Love” (1846-1927): A tie here for the two irreverent reverends who presided over Agapemone, Greek for the Abode of Love, or, as the B52s would have it, “The Love Shack.” As a young reverend in the Church of England, Henry Prince (left) believed that the voice he was hearing in his head was God, and took it upon himself to blast his congregation as ignorant and slothful. This being the 1800s, and with any form of entertainment being welcome, the people liked this and he became popular, but church officials, realizing he was insane, did not, and eventually gave him the boot. Prince then set up his first Abode of Love, appealing to well-heeled spinsters and unmarried women of the congregation. What started off in one house soon expanded to an all-out Shangri-La with Prince, his religious fervor mellowed by the good life, at the fore. Prince needed manual labour so he found some 200 men who thought of him as a living God to work the land. These poor slobs were given the privilege of being dubbed “saints”, while living in separate houses from their wives (and even they were the ones who Prince had passed on).
Prince told the faithful that he was immortal and with a lifestyle like his, he surely must have wanted to believe it, but, alas, one day he dropped dead. Rather than coming to the conclusion that they had been victims of a long and humiliating con, his supporters stuck together and a successor to prince, John Hugh Smyth-Piggott, was crowned.
The new messiah may not have had Prince’s religious roots, but he was every bit the horn-dog. Smyth-Pigott, who a historian remarked was “If not a sexual maniac, at least a man obsessed with sex in his daily life,” died in 1927, and the House that Love Built closed its doors shortly thereafter.
10. Picture by Kid Rock & Sheryl Crow. There are some people who’d say that Kid Rock is a multi-talented instrumentalist and songwriter and these people would be in attendance at his family reunion. Generally speaking, someone with migraines, their head in a vice and getting squash balls shot off their ass cheeks makes sounds more pleasant to the ear than anything Mr Rock has ever put out, but the man should be given his due as he’s sporadically capable of rendering something decent, sort of like when a con grinds out a license plate.
8. Crazy in Love, by Jay-Z and Beyonce Knowles It’s a cliche to say that people have more money than God, but in this case, the power couple can underwrite the man upstairs, bail out Lehman Brothers and still have something left over to take each other somewhere nice. [Caveat: Jay-Z's rap comes at the 2 minute mark of this 4 minute song, leaving the male half in a performance in the unenviable position of having to chose whether to either dance awkwardly on the spot or keep their hands in their pockets throughout]
7. Broken by Seether and Amy Lee ‘Cause I’m broken when I’m lonesome’, a bit of emo redundancy from Seether and Amy Lee. A ’seether’ for those who were wondering, is a cooking pot and all things considered it’s a much better band name than ‘Cutting Board’.
6. Up Where We Belong Joe Cocker Jennifer Warnes
5. I’ve Had the Time of My Life Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes: Ms. Warnes back again, this time teaming up with arguably the more righteous of the Righteous Brothers, Bill Medley. Her collaborations with Leonard Cohen are unlikely to be found in all but the most depressing bars on the planet. This song, guaranteed to thrill a crowd of people whose clocks stopped in the 1980s, featured prominently in the hit movie Dirty Dancing. On ‘Cheers’, Sam Malone in an attempt to bed Rebecca, has Bill Medley serenade her with ‘You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’. Not coincidentally, Dirty Dancing does this to every guy from the waist down.
4. Under Pressure David Bowie and Queen. This one, a good theme song for the workaday world, is an inexplicably popular choice on karaoke night. Bowie shows more range as an actor than as a singer and even though he and Freddy Mercury are both technically baritones, this will demand consummate karaoke professionalism. Most of the time it is a karaoke disaster, as is anything by either of these performers.
2. I Got You Babe Sonny and Cher: In the 1960s Sonny and Cher were a popular act, also known as “Who’s that nebbish with that foxy chick?” Sonny, despite being one uncool looking hippy, did pen some memorable tunes — and at the very top of that list is “I Got You Babe,” which is a popular karaoke choice for couples to sing to each other right before their relationships collapse and they go to war over who gets to look after Fido every second Sunday in March. It’s always the drunkest and loudest couple in the bar who gets up to out-shout each other with this one. That they “got each other babe” is not in dispute and neither is the fact that nobody else in the bar would ever want to claim them.
