Homer’s Flanders’ Hate Song

Hi all and welcome to another Simpsons On Sundays post, again on Saturday morning. On the birthday front, , former Simpsons writer and talk show host Conan O’Brien turned 60 on Tuesday. Here is a Simpsons guest star, giving Conan advice on turning that mile stone age, as I will be turning 50 on June 2. https://youtu.be/-YFIDRNXNK4

Because of his past as a Simpsons writer and his late-night talk shows and all the bands who had played on them over the years, I can link The Simpsons to a lot of different people. The same goes with J Leno and much of the same musicians he had on the Tonight Show. There are people who post bands playing on both shows on Youtube and I can’t help, but link them to The Simpsons, thanks to both of these men. After all, bands like: Linken Park, Deftones and all sorts of bands who will probably never appear in Springfield are linked, thanks to these two funny guys.For example: you know that I like Slipknot. Right? Well, here is the masked men doing a popular song of theres, on Conan’s show in 2000. https://youtu.be/GxZwN88EZmE

This week I thought we could go back to Season 14 and the episode Dude, Where’s My Ranch? Let’s look back on this episode and especially, its big song.

Homer decides to write a song about Flanders that becomes so popular, the Simpsons leave town to avoid hearing it played. They end up at a dude ranch, where Lisa falls for an older boy, while Homer and Bart get involved in a range war with a herd of beavers. Then, Lisa almost kills the boy’s sister, mistakingly thinking that she is trying to get between the two.

That is the basics of the episode and what I’m going to talk most about today is that song. So, let’s start by hearing the song itself. https://youtu.be/XxC5cs0WihA

Okay, let’s take a listen to OMG by Usher and see if you can hear a similarity with the melody. https://youtu.be/1RnPB76mjxI

Someone on either Wikipedia, or one of the Simpsons fan sites had pointed this out and it hit me right away, as the line “Christmas in December, wow wow wow, give me lots of presents, now now now” has a quite similar melody and meter to the verses in OMG. So, did Usher, or whom ever had written the song realize this similarity, or did they even know about the song itself? If Usher watches The Simpsons, surely he should have known this song and the episode and if not, probably someone else in management could have said something like “hey, check this out. It’s from a Simpsons episode and it sounds similar to this new song you are hoping to put on the new version of your current album.” I don’t know, but I just wanted to point it out for myself as this could also just be a sonic coincidence, on the part of Usher.

As for the rest of the episode, not much else to say about the episode. The only thing is, I wonder why it was included in an iTunes collection of Christmas themed episodes, when clearly it has nothing to do with Christmas, except for the first couple of minutes. The family are going around singing Christmas carols and make the mistake of visiting the blue-haired lawyer, , who tells them to stop caroling. He says that they are forbidden from performing the songs without paying royalties to the copyright owner. Homer gets annoyed at this and decides that he can write his own Christmas carol. So, he goes home and starts to write a song, but Ned Flanders decides to help out and Homer gets annoyed and throws Ned into the snow and, the song comes to him. Yes, that song about everyone hating Ned and somehow, David Byrne formally of Talking Heads get involved. Huh!

I first heard the song when I had purchased Testify (Original Music from the Television Series) on CD, as the track Everybody Hates Ned Flanders (Medley) and I thought it was cool, but I hadn’t watched the episode until I had purchased it on iTunes in 2014. I’m glad that I did and I would eventually get Season 14 in 2019, after it and Seasons 4 through 19 would become available for digital downloads on iTunes in 2017. The iTunes collection is called The Simpsons Christmas and it would include such episodes as: Simpsons Roasting On an Open Fire, Miracle On Evergreen Terrace, Grift of the Magi’, Skinner’s Sense of Snow, Tis The Fifteenth Season, Simpsons Christmas Stories and this episode from April 2003. I only found out about the collection when I had started getting into the series full-on in 2013 and 2014, when only the first 3 seasons and season’s 20 to 25 were available for download. All of the collections are still on iTunes and this includes the Christmas one I had mentioned.

Anyway, I’m not going to comment on Homer and Bart and their battle with the beavers because, there is no need to. Besides, nothing wrong with beavers and those of us who live in Canada, we know the beaver is on our Canadian nickel. Right? For more on the beaver, here is something I remember when watching TV as a boy in the 1970s and 1980s at my parents place in East York. https://youtu.be/H-aoWSpFor0

Well, either tomorrow or tonight (depending on when you are reading this post) is the night for the return of new episodes and Fan-ily Feud sounds interesting, in that Homer publicly disparages a popstar and has to deal with the wrath of her army of fans, who are not only highly organized, but very vindictive. Seems like a normal episode for Homer when he does something as dumb as that, without considering that everyone is smarter than him, even his own bratty son. Anyway, let’s enjoy the episode and see how weird things get.

just A Bit

Hi folks and welcome to another Simpsons Sunday post. Happy Easter and also, April Fools day, so there will be plenty of exploding Easter eggs, with pronouncement “April fools” after the recipient of them had been had. Okay, I’m kiding about that but it’s not hard to dream of such a thing happening like that, with both days falling on the same day.

Did you watch the latest episode 3 Scenes Plus A Tag From A Marriage? There are a couple of songs which have played throughout the first 8 minutes of the episode, which you should listen for. The first is a song by Talking Heads called swamp from the album Speaking In Tongues, which came out in 1983 when I was 10. I hadn’t heard that song for years on the radio and when I figured it out, I remembered how much the band had somewhat of a relation with The Simpsons. After all, singer David Byrne appeared as a guest Star, with my favourite moment being his contribution to the song Everybody Hates Ned Flanders, from the episode Dude, Where’s My Ranch?

The second song of note is Time Has Come Today by the Chambers Brothers, which came out during the “psychedelic era” when it was all about flowers in your hair and love. I’ve heard that song more frequently on the radio, on a classic rock station in Toronto, during a show dedicated to playing music from 1965 to 1975.

On the birthday front, guest star Alec Baldwin turns another year older on Tuesday. He of course, guest starred as himself along with his wife Kim Basinger in the episode When You Dish Upon A Star.

Not much to say this week, except happy spring and I am looking forward to tonights episode Fear’s Of A Clown, which should hopefully be good. I like Krusty and a Krusty episode is usually one worth watching and especially, the early ones. They have been a bit less good lately but, I still look forward to them, to hear Krusty and his raspy voice, done by Dan Castellaneta.