from Every Moment to Everybody Ready

Day 410, Session 84:
When/Where: Monday August 6th - On the train from work to home.
First song: Every Moment by Clem Snide
Last full song: Everybody Ready by Action Figure Party
Progress: 1173-1185 of 5185
Total Songs Heard: 985

Dear Poison,

While working on a project recently to listen to every song on my iPod, I came across your song Every Rose Has Its Thorn. This song brought back many fond memories of 1988 (ah, 7th grade... did I really call Mr. Ritts (the history teacher) a nazi in the middle of Mr. Batts' English class? Yes. Yes I did.) as well as memories of just about every night of karaoke I've ended up attending since. However, I feel it is my duty (19 years later!?! YIKES!) to inform you of a several very basic issues with some of the main points of your song:

Every rose has its thorn

Actually, if you check here, you'll see that there are several types of roses that don't have any thorns at all. While it is true that at one point every rose did have thorns to protect itself from potential predators (can plants have predators?) through the knowledge of hybrid and selective breeding it is now quite possible to grow a thornless rose. I suppose it's possible that the selective breeding/hybridization process had not yet perfected the thornless rose in 1988, so I'm willing to overlook this error.

Just like every night has its dawn

I'm assuming here that you're using the term "night" to mean the portion of the day that most people use for sleeping and not just any period of darkness. Of course we all know that astronomical polar night (the period that no trace of light can be seen anywhere) occurs for up to 179 days a year at latitudes above 84° 33′, which is exactly 18 degrees within the polar circle, or five and a half degrees from the pole. So in those areas the "night" doesn't necessarily have a dawn. Now perhaps you'll counter with the argument that there are no permanent human settlements at such latitudes. You'd be correct, but there are scientific stations in Antarctica that fall within this area. For those poor scientists, there are quite a few nights without dawns. (Also there are frequent run-ins with alien monsters. Mike, feel free to back me up on this.)

Just like every cowboy sings a sad, sad song

While I don't have proof that every cowboy doesn't sing a sad sad song. I would assume that only sad cowboys sing sad songs and yet if you google the phrases "happy cowboy" vs. "sad cowboy" you'll find that "happy cowboy" wins 14,300 to 556. There's no way that every one of the 13744 extra happy cowboys sing "sad, sad" songs. (One sad maybe, but not "sad, sad.")

So while I know it was your biggest hit, I find myself now unable to appreciate the song as much now that I know how untrue it is. I look forward to the corrected version on your soon to be released Poison:Revisited cd.

Sincerely,
Matt DiMarco
12-years old in 1988

p.s. What the hell is up with Bret? That dude is creepy now. The very concept of "Rock of Love" is horrifying.

On a completely different note, this set also brought me Everybody Hurts. Now there's a song that maintains the emotional wallop from the first time I heard it. As soon as I hear the first notes of that song I'm brought back to those weird days during the first weeks of college (when I really started listening to that cd) when I hadn't really found my stride and was trying to convince myself that I hadn't made some horrible mistake.

And finally -

Welcome to the 1000th visitor! If you're wondering if it's you, it probably is.