Mating Parade
It's a recurring fantasy in so many songs. A parade of romances passing through your life. Autobiographical for me? Nope. I recall girls fleeing from me and bruises from being poked with a ten-foot pole.
Perhaps autobiographical for musicians? Maybe but nothing more poetic than Ron Haydock's 99 Chicks:
I got 99 chicks knockin' down my door
198 eyes … it's just my luck not a one of them I want …
The women seem more thoughtful, more like the Marvelette's, Too Many Fish In The Sea:
There are short ones, tall ones, fine ones, kind ones...
Too many fish in the sea...
My favorite lyrics are always those that are so lame that even a kazoo player with a phone book could become a song writer. Songs like The Redcoats' Girls, Girls, Girls:
Judy, Jean, Ann, Sue
Girls, girls, girls, girls, girls, girls, girls
Linda, Joan, Lynn, Pat, Mary, Gail Jill
Girls, girls, girls, girls, girls, girls, girls
Donna, Jane, Kate, Ruth, Debbie, Sally, Frank (what?), Clair
Girls, girls, girls, girls, girls, girls, girls
Nancy, Amy, Lee, Julie, Connie, Jan, Sammy, Betty
Girls, girls, girls, girls, girls, girls, girls
That's it. The entire lyrics.
We've also got music from The Contours and Jerry Reed to help winnow down these huge lists. Unfortunately, these guys contribution to Western Civilization is at the level of Eric Weber's classic cassette tape, “How to Pick Up Girls."
Not that the rest of the show's gonna be much higher brow as we'll riff on the Jimmy Dean song, Big Bad John and Jean Knight's, Mr. Big Stuff with a series of answer songs like;
Big Jess(ie Helms)
Big Chief Hug-Um An' Kiss-Um
Don't Big Shot Me,
Mr. Big Wheel,
I'm Too Tough for Mr. Big Stuff
As always, collectors music and sound clip interstitials from the trash cana of Americana including the first recording of disk jockey Sly Stewart (later to be known as Sly Stone) singing the surprisingly good dance instruction song, “Scat Swim.”
Music for the post-culture vulture crowd. No artifacts or music provenance rants. No hipper-than-thou contests. On Saturday night in New Orleans? Most of my audience has always been drunk.
Comments
sober Sunday
Dear Jamie,
and once again: thanks for the show!
But: Not all your listeners are drunke! Unfortunately we are quite sober! It's a lovely sunday morning here in Germany and we are enjoying our morning COFFEE... which is really great.
Have a nice night and sleep well,
yours
Susanne and Gregor
Seek out! Speak out!
I'm thinking the drunk to sober ratio in the Sunday morning European time zones are probably the reverse of the New Orleans Saturday night listeners. Here, we're at three drunks to every sober caller into my radio show (according to Gemma, my fifteen year old niece, who kept statistics for me one night).
A few weeks ago a guy told me he was going 80 mph on the spillway road between LaPlace and New Orleans. He then recited the a bunch of goofy political conspiracies before telling me his 1972 Ford Econoline van was shaking so much that he had to drop the phone to get both hands on the steering wheel.
The herd can always use some culling amongst the conspiracy population (there's a seeker born every minute) so i redialed him and told him the speed record for his van is 90 mph.
Ah, another Saturday night at WWOZ.