The Shocker Presents: Summer Slow Jams That Make Having The Sex Less Terrifying

Slow Jamz

We here at the Shocker generally find the concept of so-called “slow jams” filthy, horrid, revolting, not to mention emotionally manipulative. This is how the Blue Dog feels about most music, but slow jams are a specific and sinister sort of chicanery. Music that specifically makes one want to shed clothes for a proverbial bone-jump in the humping hay or gives one the secret horn-dog disease is exploiting the humors of one’s body in a most foul and barbaric (we’re talking Visigoths, baby) fashion. In the main, we at the Shocker have either not had sex or are well-known for how bad we are at having sex (references available upon request), so we prefer not to dwell on hypothetical crotch themed power-hours and French Kiss Spells. Our personal feelings aside, we’re not blind to the fact that occasionally, when the moon is sexy as a hangnail and the augurs say it’s permissible to go all Dionysus on that ass, you’ll need the latest and most cutting-edge tune-songs to make the act of getting down less frightening and weird. We here at the Shocker have compiled a list of the best songs to listen to at irritating volumes when there’s no recourse but committing to the waltz of shame.

{note: We did not embed or link to any of these songs, save one. It may be that these are not even real songs. That’s not for us to prove. If some of these are indeed real songs, we wish to stress our respect for the accepted copyright laws of the Land. The Shocker is against two things: 1) internet piracy 2) our famously lazy readers always taking shortcuts.}

Screaming Females “Burning Car”

My mother taught me to assume every song is about hard drug use. This one might actually be! The only thing I know for sure is to play this one loud and with the windows down, as if you are really given the choice. PSA: If your car is actually burning, put out that fire before it spreads. We are going through a drought and I wouldn’t want that incinerated engine on the roadside shoulder to turn into a full-blown forest fire. Smokey the Bear would not be pleased, and have you seen him lately? He’s yoked!

-RJ Casey

The Fall “Idiot Joy Showland”

This is a great “summer slow jam” if you are too cool for summer and/or currently pumped full of chemicals that make you think moderately aggressive and fast things are in fact slow and jamful. Which, actually, you might be those things and that would be fine and I would probably like to be your friend. I just think you’re being a little harsh on the other people in line at Six Flags, who didn’t do anything to you more offensive than have that haircut and maybe…actually, yep, that is a Confederate flag tattoo. Okay.

-Ben Johnson

Jay Reatard “Rotten Mind”

A true slow jam provides you with sensual vibes. There are few vibes more sensual than those exuded by fallen lo-fi crown prince Jay Reatard on “Rotten Mind,” a song in which Reatard jauntily admits his friends are terrified by his drug use. Bright double-time strumming and a Kinks-indebted melody provide the perfect soundtrack for the confessions of a man who’d soon die with more cocaine and alcohol in his body than Robert Downey Jr. on the average Natural Born Killers shooting day. I feel like Reince Preibus might find solace in this song and its gleeful embrace of impending doom.

-Liam Green

Mansour “Farrari”

This is a song in a language I don’t speak but there are dog barks and a ton of synth runs so I can only assume it’s about escaping from robot police sent from very far into the future and that there’s no room for sadness in the pace of this jam, which means there is no room for me and gosh I hate when my sad people experience erasure. Zero stars.

-John Wilmes

Blue Öyster Cult “Don’t Fear the Reaper”

You’re in a dungeon with a skylight. Having your tarot cards read by a blackjack dealer. He pulls a ten of swords, and you see a portrait of yourself dead on the beach. On vacation. You try to buy the woman a drink, but when you open your wallet a moth flies out wearing a Vote for Cruz button. But none of that shit matters. Because your chances of getting laid fizzled out as soon as this song came started to spin. Maybe it was the pack of grown dudes singing “la la la la la” in harmony bookended with lyrics about fear of death. Or maybe the cowbell. The stress of the umlaut. Or the ghosts. Just know that when this jam starts to spin, you’ll be taking your tuxedo off alone. We all die alone.

-April Glaser

James Carr “You’ve Got My Mind Messed Up”

This song definitely fucks. James Carr, I’ve never heard of him before, but this feels right away like something my parents put on at low volume in the shag-carpet basement while I passed out after The Wonder Years, covered in the loathsome clean film of a recent bath and eager to assault other children at pre-school the next day because I didn’t understand love. There are horns in this song, which are important to note because they sound nice, but no horns have never been nice-sounding enough to make me behave, and as this track fades out Carr yowls with a manic passion that suggests he doesn’t care about the rules, either, baby!

-John Wilmes

Galaxie 500 “Oblivious”

Galaxie 500 make cheap suits and rich melodies. This song makes me want a gin and tonic. There is a real college radio vibe to it, which scares you when you pass the age of 30. But at least you’re old enough to buy that gin and tonic.

-Tom Keiser

Joyce Manor “Constant Headache”

The concept of a constant headache is the punk version of the idée fixe, a psychological concept related to obsession. Monomania in other words. It’s also a concept brought over to classical music by composer Hector Berlioz for Symphonie fantastique. A programatic piece of music about an artist who, in a bout of unrequited love, takes a large dose of opium. The idée fixe is a melodic figure that repeats throughout the piece and represents the object of the artist’s affection. It’s a concept Richard Wagner goes all out with in his operatic works: a leitmotif. The repeated musical figures represent people as well as abstract concepts and ideas. So too does the constant headache serve as persistence of punk memory for Joyce Manor.

-Andrew Crowley

The Paper Chase “We Know Where You Sleep”

Do you know John Congleton? You don’t think you do, but you do. Ever hear of David Byrne? Or St. Vincent? Congleton produced music for both of them, among probably hundreds of other Pitchfork-approved faves. (I don’t know how many offhand, I didn’t come here to do an audit, leave me alone.) But before he was a Grammy-winning producer to mid-tier indie rock stars, Congleton was the mastermind behind creepcore/alt-noise band The Paper Chase.

Powered by whatever weird shit they put in the water in their home state of Texas, Congleton and The Paper Chase specialized in dissonant, eerie songs with sinister titles like, “Abby, You’re Going To Burn For What You’ve Done To Me” and, “Who Can Deny How Delicious It Tastes?” Almost every song was as likely to feature snippets of a John Wayne Gacy death row interview as Congleton’s signature twangy yelp. I once put my jam, “We Know Where You Sleep,” a cheery tune about waiting to spring the most perfect and devastating carnal revenge on a deserving enemy before laying waste to the rest of the world (I think?), on a mix with the note ‘Don’t play this for anyone you want to have sex with unless that someone is me.’ I stand by that statement.

I’m a totally normal and nice person.

-Krystal Farmer

Swami John Reis “Sea-saw”

Captain Ahab had a sea saw — it’s what his carpenter used to fashion a prosthetic leg from whale bone. What Ahab lacked was “Sea Saw” — the not-so-slow summer slow jam from Swami John Reis. Had the irascible Cap access to this blast of ska-surf madness, he might not have gone mad himself. Imagine Ahab in his quarters, letting his worries ride the wave of whining guitars and saxophones, skanking — yes, skanking — to that nasty rhythm. He gives up chasing the White Whale and writes a memoir, “Skankin’ on Whale Bone”. “But then we wouldn’t have Moby Dick!” you say. True, but nor would his crew die, and who are we to ask anyone to die for art?

-Damon Agnos

Emperor “I Am The Black Wizards”

This song always makes me think about the unholy trifecta of humping, pumping, and Forest Gump-ing. Sick and tired of the long soggy months of energy bills run amok and swamp-ass run amok and cicadas crawling into your tiny mouth while you dream about losing your teeth run amok? Dim the lights, spray a pre-arranged amount of Febreze throughout your goofy bedroom, and load up your Emperor playlist on Spotify. In no time you’ll be having hellof adequate sex whilst simultaneously sonically transported to a ruined-gone soundscape in which evil is the only game in town, son.

-Alex Siquig

Silver Jews “Punks In The Beerlight”

I’ve never heard this song, but handsome Alex Siquig said I should write about it anyway. I have heard “Random Rules” by this band before, though, and I like the horns in it and the sad way it makes me feel. This song is less sad than that one so I like it less. “Slow Jams” is not really my strongest musical category because said micro-genre typically implies sex, which I’m not that comfortable with, because of how closely its been wedded to capitalism and because of how bad I am at it. But “Punks In The Beerlight” is worth listening to because it has a very convincing “I love you to the max” refrain in it.

-John Wilmes

Refused “Summerholiday vs. Punkroutine”

When it comes to “Summerholidays vs. Punkroutine”, no one wins, unless you deign to live in the late 2000’s when you’re back playing NCAA Football and are too lazy to turn down the sound and put on the Eagles game, back when you could lie to yourself and say that Andy Reid could still win himself a Super Bowl.

-Tom Keiser

Mission of Burma “Devotion”

In proud slow-jam tradition, Mission of Burma begin “Devotion” by talking about their dicks. How is “No matter what the size, we always try to hit the mark” not a dick metaphor? Later in the song there’s a lyric that states, “I see something staring us in the eye.” And that is obviously either from the point of view of a dick about to go into some orifice or the POV of the orifice preparing to be dick’d. Dicks are everywhere in music. No matter what you preening academics and BernieBros think, “Devotion” is not about the vagaries of Reaganomics or any of the other hippie shit you believe in. You can’t hide the fucking truth about this from me. Not anymore.

-Liam Green

Silkworm “I Hope U Don’t Survive”

This is a thing I often say at those fancy summertime parties, wearing my waterproof Dockers and Transitions-lensed glasses. This phrase is understood to be quite popular, much as myself, much as Silkworm is clearly known to be. The fears that our fun is frail, that good times are fleeting, and that summer is only a precursor to fall are all bound up in this song that your significant other will absolutely love. Also something about love and murder, which is a totally normal mixture of emotions to express to that special someone. Make sure to tell them the story of how one of the members of Silkworm died, and press them to watch the documentary Couldn’t You Wait, which they cannot find on any popular streaming sites.

-David Baker

Jimmy Merritt “I’ll Forget About You”

Jimmy Merritt’s song is also one I haven’t heard, but it retains that doo-wop boner inspired by the Carr track — not that erections are encouraged by The SHOCKER; they are not. There are these dope little string flourishes that come in later and are really pretty easy to rhythmically do air violin to if you hear the song twice, so now I’m doing that. Soon I will upset the old lady who owns my building by trying to learn this on my bad guitar.

-John Wilmes

Shirley Collins “The Murder of Maria Marten”

Now That’s What I Call Murder Ballads! With all due respect to Johnny Cash and those other weak-ass, box-car-riding poseurs, this one’s truly got it all: a grief-stricken mother pulling out her hair; a dusty, blood-red barn; a clear lack of motive. The list goes on and on, and so does this song, clocking in in just under eight minutes — the perfect amount of time to lather on that sunscreen for a frolic in the sand. And don’t forget to spread that SPF on your chest. You wouldn’t want a sunburn on the very same place Shameless Shirley’s narrator plunges a pickaxe into his love-to-be.

-RJ Casey

Ralph Stanley “John The Revelator”

It’s beyond cliche at this point to speak of the year 2016 in apocalyptic and/or eschatological imagery. But the seemingly unending parade of horror since the turn of the calendar gives one pause. It’s trite to talk of the world as if it’s the final season of a scripted program designed to mark time between ads for consumer durables. Stanley’s voice is touched by age. His brother Carter is dead nearly 50 years. Carter’s absence is a phantom limb in this late-career recording. “John The Revelator” is a tune for an anxious age, for an era on the brink of annihilating itself.

-Andrew Crowley

Brandy and Monica “The Boy Is Mine”

This summer slow-jam is an intersectional nightmare that I don’t want to touch with a ten foot pole in this description, and that’s probably why there was no such thing as the internet in 1998. I think, and this is just a personal opinion, there may be some opportunity for growth for both Brandy and Monica to respect the boy’s personhood here, not to mention the bond of sisterhood they share. The boy is neither of theirs. The boy is a human being. Not trying to get #AllBoyLivesMatter here, but come on.

-Ben Johnson

Le Tigre “Decepticon”

When I was 15 or so (maybe 16?) I went to see Beck at the Memorial Coliseum in Portland, Or, the original home of the Portland Trail Blazers and a protected architectural landmark. Le Tigre opened and kind of scared the shit out of me. I was afraid that they would leap off the stage and kill me and hold my head high as a trophy for feminism. And wouldn’t you know, they did. I’m dead now and Kathleen Hanna keeps my ghost in a jar and trots me out to write internet articles. Sometimes Ad-Rock pees in my jar, absent-mindedly. In these moments, I take a urine soaked physical form and try to call out for mercy or compassion, but I receive none. I have begun to value my absurd existence. Someday, I hope the High Coven of Riot Grrl will allow me to be transferred into the body of a creature more moral than Man, such as a dog or a friendlier wombat. Truly, it is I who have taken the bomp.

-Corbin Smith