Shout-out to Bacchus and Metallicanor and anyone else whose videos I have linked here. These guys work hard to get these videos uploaded for us to enjoy! Bacchus has a great library full of CTD performances and footage. It’s really amazing! Check them out and subscribe : https://youtube.com/user/ShuffledCTD
He screws up on the first verse (0:52) and starts singing the second one “Once there was this kid who got into an accident and couldn’t come to school, and when they finally made- uh, BACK!” 😂 Ha!
First off, let me say that this episode was awesome! And it was the highest rated episode in years, at that. JDM and his wife, Hilarie Burton did a great job as the onscreen couple of Negan and Lucille Smith.
But why did Negan remind me of Nicholas Cage during the entire episode? 😂 His expressions and mannerisms were very similar. But that’s besides the point….
At first glance, Negan was a total scrub before the apocalypse started. He lost his job because of a violent bar fight, and he wasn’t looking for another job. Plus he spent almost $700 on that snazzy leather jacket he wears. He played Fortnite with kids on Xbox, and worst of all, he cheated on his wife with her sister!!!! If I were Lucille, I probably would have shot him.
Negan also seemed very sensitive, and he cried a lot. This was in striking contrast to the character we know as Negan. This was a guy who was totally screwing his life up, and was way old enough to know better. But after learning his wife had cancer , he straightened up, broke the affair off with Lucille’s sister, Janine, and became the supportive husband Lucille needed. He even made her gourmet dog food for dinner! Ha ha, now we know why Negan was so excited to get into Rick’s kitchen!
The director of this episode was Laura Belsey, who I admittedly don’t know anything about. But I found it very interesting that she mirrored the final scene from Season 6 so effectively. In calling back to what we consider is our intro to Negan in Season 6, we are shown Negan’s true introduction, when he was actually born… of anger and despair and immeasurable grief.
I would have appreciated Belsey appearing on Talking Dead , so that she could discuss the parallels between the two episodes, from the music and sound effects down to the lighting. (And yes my daughter picked up on it first, before I did!)
Hook(ist) was a little project Brad did that consisted of collaborative song-writing and a contest of sorts. I didn’t know about it at the time, or i would have submitted a line, even though it would be crap lol.
He is so sexy when he plays the guitar! However, he says he doesn’t play much anymore because he feels he’s mastered the guitar and taken it as far as he can.
Brad performing on July 13, 1994 in Munich, Germany
•Birthday: January 10, 1964
•He’s a Capricorn. Ambitious, practical, disciplined, arrogant… Sounds like him, right? He’s a fucking sea goat. I suppose that explains his fondness of sea shanties. What the hell is a sea goat? Per Wikipedia, “The sea goat is a legendary aquatic animal described as a creature that is half goat and half fish. The constellation Capricornus was commonly imagined as a type of sea goat.”
•If he could rename CTD, he said he would call them The OxyMorons. I think this is an awesome name! Keep it witty, Brad!
•To my never-ending heartbreak, he is married. We won’t talk about her here. It’s too painful. But I think they’ve been together for 20 years. 😲 Married around 2005.
•Brad has never wanted kids. I even read that he had a vasectomy but it was “botched”. I have no idea what that means lol. I’m assuming pain was involved.
•Brad has a tattoo on his right arm of a big heart that says ‘MOTHER’. It is featured on the cover of the album, I Don’t Care That You Don’t Mind. He says he got this tattoo because he loves his mom so much, but she is “probably horrified” by it. How sweet 🥰
•Brad says that he cut that gorgeous long tresses because he was living in London and felt like the only person with long hair. He felt that people thought he was trying to draw attention to himself, so he cut it 😡😡 I also think he cut it so he wouldn’t be recognized. I say we start a petition for him to grow it back! 😁
•Brad really enjoys cooking.
•He’s been spending this pandemic intensely studying piano. He has a piano teacher, and he practices every day! Determined, remember?
•Brad is really smart. Like a highly intelligent being. He not only reads books for fun, he reads big, thick books about everything from Philosophy to Mathematics. 😱 He majored in Philosophy and English Literature in college, and says that this helped him tremendously in his song-writing.
“I wanted to write a song on this record that, on the one hand, would be extremely sexually explicit but, on the other hand, would do so in language which was so veiled in flowery metaphors that it would be just as palatable as you could imagine for any little, for any little child’s ears to take in. And uh, so, I guess a kind of a geography thing to get it off the ground.”
Well done, Brad. That’s why I can listen to it in front of my kids 😉
Some observations about one of my favorite Crash Test Dummies performances…
#1 My deepest gratitude to the person who posted this performance! I just wish the whole thing had been televised!
#2 Hearing CTD play live always makes me like the songs that much more. I mean, in my opinion, this performance of these three songs is better than the album versions!
#3 Ben’s mic doesn’t work for almost 5 whole minutes into the performance! Poor guy is just blowing away into that harmonica, and you can’t hear it!
#4 Brad’s pants… Need I say more?
#5 Ellen is always so happy!
#6 I love all the hair in this video!
#7 Young Brad is so vibrant and happy. I mean, he really looks like he is thoroughly enjoying himself. I know he is older now, and it’s to be expected that the stage presence and energy may have changed a bit, but this was a completely, different vibe.
#8 and that vibe is the hippie festival that I’ll never get to experience 😭
#9 Ben is adorable. I just love watching him play. I’m pretty sure he thought he was going to hit Brad in the face at one point, because he looked behind him (12:15).
#10 Brad is so unbothered by any of it. I love seeing this side of him!
#11 Brad is just gorgeous. Take off those sunglasses so we can see your beautiful face, baby!
#12 Honorable mentions of Dan and Mitch. They are awesome and deserve recognition.
#13 I like this version of “Here On Earth” better. (I know I already said that), but the album version does not have the same music. On the album, they play and abruptly stop after each beat of the bridge, and once you have heard this live performance, it just leaves you wanting more. I think they should re-record it. Ha!
#14 At the end, when the dumb hosts won’t shut up, Brad says something like “perhaps you’ve figured out by now…. that I sound like a …. with a hangover” then he goes into “The Country Life” . I really have tried hard to hear what he’s saying and it’s frustrating that I can’t hear. Grandpappy? Bullfrog? Ha! Who knows?!
A photo of the band on the day of this performance
So I’ve been trying for years to decide what to do with this blog and what to write about that people would be interested in. But people are all weirdos, and doubtful anyone will read this thing anyway. So I’m gonna write about what I’m interested in, and currently that is Crash Test Dummies and my obsession with Brad Roberts. And it’s BAD. But maybe I can turn ONE PERSON onto Crash Test Dummies, because they deserve way more recognition than they get! So stay tuned, folks!
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