RINGO? LEAVE, YO.

I'm not sure if anyone will get that pun, which is based on a childhood game (ringalevio or ring-a-levio...). But speaking of childhood games, the game of Ringo trading in on the personality we remember from childhood...has gotten OLD.

SO OLD.

And yet, he hasn't. With the dyed hair and dyed beard and the same surly-but-cute pout, RINGO is still RINGO. And his albums still suck.

"Good old Ringo, the one fixed point in a changing age."

See what I did?

That's a Sherlock Holmes movie line. I just substituted Ringo for Watson.

IF I'M BEING HONEST, I would much prefer if the voice on the new Ringo Starr album was Nigel Bruce. Nigel Bruce talking the lyrics would be much less nauseating than Ringo's "baritone" slogging sleepily through the most predictable melodies and the most facile and familiar production this side of an E.L.O. outtake.

RockCellarMagazine did us a favor by not only reminding us that Spring is here and the rusty All-Starr band is grinding into GEAR, but supply samples.

Do they think their readers (including me) are totally fossilized? Or that we're going to spin in our wheelchairs and cry out "Oh (Sam) Goody!" for this gift of THREE "leaks" of Ringo's drippy tunes? Plus some kind of endless link to old Ringo rock videos as well??

"Right Side of the Road" is another of those dirges that could only be saved if Roy Orbison sang it. The all-too-familiar Lynne-styled wimp lead guitar (faux George Harrison) could make anyone gently weep...out of boredom. The melody rises and falls between major and minor like a snoring dog.

I know. You're saying, "At least he's not being ANNOYING with his fucking smugness, his strutting, and his laconic lyrics that spit in your face about how happy he is with all his money and his leisure time."

Look out. The website's next offering is dull visuals, a cakewalk melody and Ringo singing...

"Lahhhhhh, lah dee dah! All you got to say is LAH DEE DAH!"

In case you didn't understand:

"Lahhhhhh, lah dee dah! All you got to say is LAH DEE DAH!"

In case you didn't get it:

"LAH DEE DAH, just like Doris Day said: QUE SERA! Lahhhhh dee dahhhhh, everybody...lahhhhh dee dahhhhhhhh...."

Don't you want to take a drumstick and smack him over his swim-cap toupee or whatever that is?

Somehow, the Rock Cellar page included a bunch of past music videos, but they were all so terrible and boring and forgettable, I couldn't be sure what was new shit and what was old shit, till "Back Off Boogaloo" (the immortal "Back Off Boogaloo") started. That's when I STOPPED it.

The last link, which everyone is pointing to as the highlight of the NEW album, is...get this...a SONG MADE OUT OF BEATLES LYRICS!!!!!"

RINGO once again flogging the memory of Liverpool and The Beatles? You dih-ent do it AGAIN, Starr-frenn, didja? You deeeed. Lordy, you DEEED.

Is it as dreadful as you'd think a song made out of Beatles lyrics could be?

"If you could be my honey pie, 8 days a week you will be mine, and getting better all the time."
"Im begging you don't pass me by, and if you do please tell me why."
I know you saw me yesterday You've got to hide your love away."
Lahhhhh-deeeeeee-dahhhhhhhh, man.

PS, that tune sports such a lumbering beat you'd have to ask yourself "how could any drummer STAND to hear that??"

If you want to know what's worse than checking Macca's jowls and hair dye, or suffering through another totally insincere and happy version of "I'm Down," or that "new song that's really just as good as ANYTHING he ever did with Wings, really, no really..." it's RINGO.

It's been about 40 years that he's played the "feel sorry for Ringo" card, and the "that's not SO awful" card, like it's the ace and queen in a winning game of blackjack. Actually it's the douche of clubs...the clubs being his drumsticks and the douche being him.