Buy My Book: Hang The DJ is a book of alternative music lists. There’s lots of interesting and funny stuff in there. There’s also a list that I wrote. Buy several copies and give them to all your friends. Then maybe somebody else will pay me to write something.

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I realized that I’ve posted a couple of songs about losers recently. So I decided to go full-bore and post a whole bunch of songs about losers.

Vanilla Fudge “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” (Rod Stewart)
If you need to ask, you’re not. The drummer for Vanilla Fudge wrote this song so I guess this is what it’s supposed to sound like. Amazing that Rod Stewart got it so wrong.

Adam Brand “Teenage Dirtbag” (Wheatus)
It’s the age-old story of the high school loser pining for the hot cheerleader who doesn’t know who he is. But it’s got great lyrics. The singer refers to himself as a teenage dirtbag fer cryin’ out loud! And how many other songs can you think of that actually say “her boyfriend’s a dick?”

Sfuzzi East/West “I’m A Loser” (Beatles)
There are millions of Beatles covers but way too few of them bring anything new to the song being covered. This one loses the inexplicable chipper bounciness of the original and replaces it with a somber reflectiveness that suits the lyrics well.

Dave Alvin “Loser” (Grateful Dead)
I was never a big Grateful Dead fan before I went off to college. When I got there my assigned dorm roommate was a pretty severe alcoholic. He would drink a quart of rotgut vodka at a sitting. He would black out two or three times a week. I asked him if it bothered him that he blacked out two or three times a week. His response was “It used to bother me but I got used to it.” He was not the greatest person to be trapped with in a 12 x 12 room. I figure that by now he’s either sober, in jail, or dead.

He also claimed to be a Deadhead. What that meant to him was that he had two Grateful Dead albums. They were both greatest hits collections and about half of the songs on each record were also on the other. He played them incessantly. I came to despise the Dead and to associate them with hopeless loserly booziness.

It took me years to work my way back to being indifferent to the Dead. At least I’m to a point now where I can post this song.

Danny Barnes “Loser” (Beck)
The former Bad Livers banjo player loads this song up with so many weird sound effects that I’m sure Beck would approve.