The Chartreuse Microbus goes live! Well, live-ish…

Right. Where to Start? First, welcome to the Chartreuse Microbus. If you have found this site you have either typed in the wrong search word, or Chartreuse Microbus means something pornographic in your part of the world.

Sorry to disappoint.

Or you are, like us, dedicated to the cause of Good-Bad Music.

The title comes, of course, from one of the greatest Good-Bad songs, CW McCall’s ‘Convoy’.

It was a portent, that song. Coming out in 1975, it was the first sign of the tax revolt in the US. It was followed by state tax revolts in California a few year’s later, and then by the Ronald Reagan presidency.

And it captured the spirit of a generation, a way not seen since  the sixties, when rebel singer songwriter Mike Sarne teamed up with Wendy Richards and sang of the frustrations and hopes of a generation caught up in a world of Morris Minors and indicative economic planning:

Good-Bad songs have a certain quality which sits alongside their essential naffness. ‘Convoy’ has some quite clever lyrics – yes, including the one about ’11 long-haired friends of Jesus in a chartreuse microbus.’

This sort of music is to be contrasted with Bad-Bad music. This is music which is (a) annoying and (b) takes itself way too seriously. Example 1: ‘You Light Up My Life’. Eample 2: its close cousin, John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’. These two songs are very similar: an earnest, plodding piano and an earnest, plodding self-regard.

Horrible.

Or there is this, which we were reminded of the other day by a quite promising young chap who now faces a tricky operation to remove his ipod from his upper sinuses:

Finally, there is what we are going to call, because we’re a bunch of sad middle-aged blokes, Booty Bad music.

This is crap music, but sung by a female lead singer with a nice arse.

And yes,  we at the Chartreuse Microbus have a policy of saying ‘arse’, not ‘ass’. It was one of the first policy decisions we made.

Anyway, nice arse or other attributes. Like this:

Now, we have to acknowledge that even old farts like us would have been too young to fully appreciate her delicious derrierre. But that is the beauty of the internet. One can appreciate the finer things in life, from the distance of 40 years.

With the sound turned down.