Love and Spam

Growing up in the 80's, there were (was?) a plethora of "hair bands" or "heavy metal" rock bands that came out. It seemed that the bands had a competition to pick the scariest or most dangerous names they could think of. Example of a dangerous name? Poison. Then there was Motley Crue, Slayer, Iron Maiden, Anthrax, Venom, Dark Angel, (I'm not making these up) Possessed, Motorhead, Nitro, Slaughter, Extreme, Thunder, T. N.T., The Scream and Hurricane. The most dangerous name of all? That would have to be Danger Danger. You can tell they are dangerous because they used the word "danger" twice in their name. If only they had been bold enough to go with Danger Danger Danger.

If you couldn't think of a dangerous name, (and who could after all the good ones were taken as noted above) you could always go with naming your band after an animal. That brought us Whitesnake, Scorpions, W.A.S.P., Ratt (spelling didn't matter), King Kobra (not to be confused with Cobra), White Lion, Faster Pussycat, Jackyl, and of course: Def Leppard. Pretty scary, eh? An animal with a hearing condition.

Then there were those that tried to sound cool, but didn't quite hit the mark. Twisted Sister (Okay, maybe twisted, but it is still a girl!), Quiet Riot (The sound of mute discontents roaming the streets), Guns 'n Roses (Ah, how sweet, you brought me roses. . . and guns?), Killer Dwarfs (insert your own joke here), Y & T (because those letters are much more dangerous than X & Q) and Kix (Finally! A heavy metal band that is kid tested, mother approved!)

Being the smart aleck I was, while working in the meat department of a grocery store, I would pass the time by making up names for bands. I came up with the best one ever--it was the most ridiculous name I could think of. My fellow co-workers loved it too and so we would joke about it anytime a customer came in wearing a T-shirt from one of the bands mentioned above. Then one day, a customer came in wearing a T-shirt that bore the name of my made up group. At the time, I couldn't believe it. But then, it was only a matter of time before someone would use the name Megadeth (yes, to make it even cooler, they left out the "a" in death).

With that joke taken away from me, I turned to something I thought was sillier: Spam. Now, back then, Spam was only mystery meat--it wasn't used to describe unwanted emails. Spam was just inherently funny--no doubt due to a certain sketch by Monty Python.

So what do you do with a funny word? Simple, you replace the word "love" in all the song titles you can think of with the word "spam".

Imagine the following:

"I will always spam you"--Whitney Houston
"Lost in spam"--Air Supply
"Endless Spam"--Diana Ross & Lionel Richie
"Tainted spam"--Soft Cell
"Addicted to spam"--Robert Palmer
"Can't help falling in spam"--UB40
"Greatest spam of all"--Whitney Houston (again)
And of course, the one that sums it all up:
"I want to know what spam is"--Foreigner

Don't we all, Foreigner. Don't we all.