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I love that song. Particularly that lyric, which makes me no end of happy.
However, I still maintain that they ripped off part of the melody from the Beatles’ “Lady Madonna.”
Which is precisely what makes me no fun to be around sometimes.
Best wishes (to myself) for a speedy recovery.
xoxo
I had never heard the song “Jive Talkin’” until one Clay Aiken performed it on American Idol (dang, do we italicize TV shows or put them in quotes? I apparently do both). As he Clayed his way through it, I watched in wonder, then said to my fella, “What the hell was that?”
My fella’s wonder matched my own, but his was at the fact that I’d never heard the song. “You don’t know ‘Jive Talkin”?!” He then proceeded to regale me with tales of how that was one of the songs burned into his own brain from the era when his father worked in D.C., and flew back and forth to the family home in southeastern Mass. Dutiful Ma Fella would pack up fella and his twin sister in the old AMC Gremlin and hit the road to the airport, cranking the pop hits the whole way. And so it was that Little Fella was exposed to such wonders as the Bee Gees as they were happening. What’s the fancy phrase for that? In situ? Au courant? Sorry, I have the flu.
Anyhow, I love the image of Little Fella rocking out in the old car, so excited to go meet his dad at the airport. I also love messing with his head, so lately I’ve been trying to co-opt his memories. I don’t know why, really. But recently, when “Jive Talkin’” came on, I regaled him with tales of how I used to go with my family to meet my dad at the airport, and could never forget hearing this song. Puzzled at first, he soon played along, and completely nabbed me by asking what kind of car we were in. Dammit! The Gremlin got me!
I also recently told him how Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May” reminds me of a guy I knew whose ex-wife was named Maggie, and he could never hear that song without thinking of her … this is completely my fella’s story, not mine. But it’s kind of fun to try on other people’s memories for size.
P.S.: Have we not touched the Rod? Oh, the day is coming. The day is coming.
1. I have noticed that one particular radio station in my area is awfully fond of AC/DC, and that I can count on hearing either “Back in Black” or “You Shook Me All Night Long” most mornings on my way to work. I enjoy this VERY MUCH.
2. Last night, a high school friend of mine and MamaKitt’s put nearly every photo from our high school’s 1989 yearbook up on Facebook. (Now, let’s be clear: 1989 was HIS senior year, not OURS. We are old, but not that old.) I will venture a guess that MK and I responded similarly to the photos: First, a groan at our own hairstyles in the shots in which we appeared; second, a giggle at the horribly dated hairstyles and fashions of all our classmates; third, a shudder at how intensely we must have studied this yearbook to remember most of the photos so frighteningly well. Am I close, Mama?*
Anyway, seeing all the poufy bangs and acid-washed denim made me think once again about the girls who drew band names and logos all over their jean jackets, and wonder if this was something people did all over. I am pretty sure I remember sharpie-d AC/DC logos on more than one jean jacket, with much care devoted to the lightning bolt in the middle.
Oh, late eighties and early nineties. Whither Angus Young and his shorts? Whither the poufy bangs and acid washes of yore?
Also, MamaKitt: Did we not both have jean jackets at some point? Why were you decorating your notebooks instead of your jacket? Not a fashion statement you wished to embrace?
*I may also have swooned a bit over the pictures of boys I had crushes on, but I won’t attribute such lameness to my colleague.
I’ve mentioned a few times that my fella is a current source of musical knowledge. But back in high school, it was someone else entirely, a friend I’d had since first grade. She was tall for her age, always, and advanced both physically and culturally. Thanks to a hip dad and a hip brother, she possessed an immense familiarity with the music of the ’60s (in fact, both her first and middle names were tributes to classic songs of the era). And she was eager to share.
Thus it was that she played Cream’s “White Room” for me, which I pretended to like. And “Reach Out of the Darkness,” which I really did like — it was so groovy now, that people were finally gettin’ together! Both of these songs I still associate with high-school gym class, and with a shared set of Walkman headphones. Those were the days when the gym teacher had given up all hope of getting any of us to participate, and let us saunter around the gym perimeter or lounge on the bleachers instead. Your tax dollars at work.
My friend also educated me on other matters musical, such as when I asserted that “Hello, I Love You …” was by the Beatles. Or when, as a fan of “The Wonder Years” and its mellow, aching theme song, I reported with disgust that I’d heard another band try to pull off a bouncy version of said song. The songs in question were, respectively, Joe Cocker’s take on “With a Little Help From My Friends” and the Beatles’ original.
If I dwell, my memories of this friend are wrapped up in all sorts of teenage conflict and heartache, because she was also busy having s-e-x and going to parties and this was the era when we, after years and years of friendship, started to split ways. But I didn’t go so deep this morning. Instead, I thought about happy times listening to Cream and the Beatles and lounging on bleachers — if not a physical education, a musical one to be sure.
I hear any Led Zeppelin song but “Stairway to Heaven,” and I am immediately in the backseat of an old Saab, hurtling up the coast of Maine. (I’ve got other stories about “Stairway to Heaven.” I just choose not to tell them, MamaKitt, so don’t you tell on me!)
When I was a junior or senior in high school, I went to a weekend retreat for young writers along with two of my classmates. It was a big deal that my parents let me make the three-hour trek with these classmates, neither of whom they knew super well, and one of whom would be driving. I do seem to recall a parental confab at the driver’s house (oh how embarrassing) in advance of the trip, to make sure we’d all behave and act responsibly.
The retreat was populated by the pretentious, arty crowd to which I always (for some dumb reason) aspired, and my two classmates fit in much better with this gang than I did. They were long-haired, hippy-dippy, semi-pretentious and semi-arty girls, long and lean and prone to dancing down our high school’s hallways and draping themselves all over one another (and whoever else was nearby). At times I wanted to be their bff; at other times I wanted them to buzz the eff off.
At any rate, our trip to the retreat was quite fun, and featured much drinking of Snapple and car-dancing/swaying to Led Zeppelin. The song I remember us playing over and over, and singing loudly, was “Fool in the Rain” — a song whose title I somehow didn’t know until today. Huh. Anyway, the road trip was a great one; I felt wonderfully free (of parental control) and cool (with my messed-up perception of cool) and in with the in crowd.
I actually think the semi-pretentious girls ditched me once we got to the retreat, and focused on being fully pretentious with the arty folk, but I remember the retreat itself less than I do the trip to get there. I do recall that my parents came to fetch me at weekend’s end, so there was no chance for our enjoyable car time to be ruined by an exhausting, cranky trip back.
The coda here is that one of those long-haired girls actually died a couple of years ago. I still can’t quite believe that. I mean, we like to moan about how we’re old, but are we really old enough for our high school classmates to start dying? Pretentious as she could be, she was also very beautiful, very kind, and very full of life. Utterly unfair for disease to have taken her so young.
So now, for me, “Fool in the Rain” is both a memory of and a little prayer for KF.
Friending your teenage nephew on Facebook is either really hip or really lame, depending. It is most certainly not creepy! Right? But sometimes it feels a little, especially when you don’t actually interact with him, just lurk about and read his status updates when they surface. And when his updates are earnest, angsty song lyrics directed at … someone? No one? If I lay here, if I just lay here, would you lie with me and just forget the world?
Would s/he/they? I don’t want to know. Although it does remind me of my own teen obsession with lyrics I found moving. We had no Facebook back in the day, so I mostly wrote the lyrics on my schoolbook covers. Not the actual covers, silly! The covers we diligently made from brown paper grocery bags at the beginning of each term. My Spidey sense tells me people don’t do that these days, but it would do my heart good to find out that they did. Anyhow, mine were covered with such profundities as “This is the time to remember, ’cause it will not last forever. These are the days to hold onto, but we won’t although we’ll want to.” Oh, deep.
Back on the Facebook front: this particular teenage nephew has a slightly younger, also teenage brother — who flat-out ignored my friend request. And maybe that’s best for both of us.
Much as I love the Beyonce, I had never heard the song “Halo” before the “Glee” gals performed it as part of their assigned mash-up a few episodes back. They mashed it with “Walking on Sunshine,” and wore bright yellow dresses, and it was all perky and adorable. (I did hear “Halo” on this morning’s scan, though. Meh. It’s no “Single Ladies.”)
And, much as I love the “Glee,” I have to agree with the articles and petitions that have been coming out lately imploring the show to back off the Autotune. We here at Auto Tunes (!) would much prefer to hear the raw, pure voices of our “Glee” folk. We see little need for gloss and digital manipulation when those gals and guys are clearly so talented, and even think a little imperfection in their performances would add to the central conceit of the show. It is a HIGH SCHOOL GLEE CLUB, Fox. We do not expect, nor do we really want, polish and perfect pitch.
I also have a bit of a quibble with last week’s episode, in which Mr. Schuester gave the glee kids an assignment – to find a song that makes for a good mash-up with the CLASSIC AND AWESOME “Bust a Move” – that went completely unfulfilled by the episode’s end. Now, it’s possible that the lack of a viable mash-up in this instance was meant to mirror the impossibility of combining Emma and Ken Tanaka’s preferred wedding songs, “I Could Have Danced All Night” and “Thong Song,” respectively. But it did rather feel, to me, like a dropped thread.
And I have been thinking about it all week.
PROPOSED “BUST A MOVE” MASH-UPS:
“Forget about the Boy,” from Thoroughly Modern Millie: I can hear the “Bust a Move” bass line running under the jazzy melody of this tune; I can see the Jazz Age tap dancing alongside the b-boy moves of Young MC. Thematically, too, it’s kind of a nice match – caddish boy chases gals; gal tries to get over boy she thinks is a cad. I think it could work.
“I Believe in a Thing Called Love,” The Darkness: Again, it’s the bass line that supplies the connection for me here; I also think the shrieky, operatic singing in The Darkness’s song would be a good complement to Young MC’s low, groovy vocals.
“Sweet Caroline,” Neil Diamond: Okay so when Noah Puckerman, who I LOVE, performed this in last week’s episode of “Glee,” I at first thought it was his contribution to the “Bust a Move” mash-up competition. And I think it could potentially work as such! Can you hear the songs sort of bleeding in and out of each other, the “bah bah bah” refrain of “SC” leading into that “BaM” bass? I like the juxtaposition of the lyrics, too – the good-time guy looking for a party and the soppy, relationshippy song. Maybe it could work?
Call me, Ryan Murphy.
The brain is odd, isn’t it? Or mine is, anyhoo. While working on this blog with TGOTS, I’ve been amazed at the musical associations that rush in for both of us — memories we didn’t even know we had, moments big and small. But today’s scan dredged up a moment positively microbial: As the thumping bass line of the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” flew out of my car radio, I was suddenly in a line at a post office, six years ago.
It was a long line, shuffling slowly forward, made tolerable only by the catchiest of catchy bass lines quietly underlying the business at hand. The song was new enough then that I puzzled over it, trying to remember who it was by. The errand was one of my last in the old neighborhood before moving to a new neighborhood across town, and moving in with my fella for the first time.
I guess maybe that last fact is what made it significant enough for my brain to capture and tuck away. And Jack White’s bass line got tucked away with it, like a trigger placed by a devious hypnotist. Amazing.
Remember 1999? When all the gals were wearing little flowery bobby pins, and Latin pop was beginning to explode — explode! — all over the airwaves?
And do you remember when Ricky Martin showed up on “Saturday Night Live” to perform “Livin’ La Vida Loca”? OH MY GOODNESS, I DO. (The interwebs [or NBC] do not want us to recall, however; I cannot find a clip to insert here.)
This would be one of the things that I found magical, taped on my VCR, and made my friends watch repeatedly.* If you do not recall, it was an AWESOME performance, this dude I had never heard of throwing himself joyfully and energetically into the singing and the dancing. Oh, the dancing! Methinks Ricky has joints that no one else has, the way he shook his junk.
I looooooved “La Vida Loca.” To the point of, I shudder now to admit, even buying the record. It is also possible that, when RM performed at the stadium a few blocks from my job, I dragged a colleague down to its loading docks to see if we could spy Ricky himself (we couldn’t). Also, at some point during those heady months of Ricky Fever, my co-workers took the Ricky Martin cover of Time and superimposed my head over his in a truly frightening use of Photoshop. This all suggests to me that my obsession must have been both intense and vocal. OH HOW EMBARRASSING.
Sigh. I just can’t help it. I am a sucker for the song, the dance, the enthusiasm. I was THRILLED when my radio served up “Livin’ La Vida Loca” today. And it is VERY POSSIBLE that I will go home and dowload that song from iTunes tonight.
*MK: Were you visiting me the Saturday of this SNL performance, or did I just make you watch the tape another time? For some reason I am thinking the performance was the weekend of one of your visits.
