As a teenager I lived three miles from my school. Sometimes my brother and I were allowed to walk home from school; that was a special treat. Usually our commute to and from school involved a thirteen-mile bus ride in which we were the first ones on, and the last ones off, a bus built to seat 66 small children that was used to carry about 75 small, medium, and large ones. Some of the kids--I wasn't one of them--begged for and got permission to wire up an old, bad, monaural radio to blast "Rick Darby's Rock Time" show from the back of the bus. Darby was a local AM radio DJ who may never have made it to the big time, but he was certainly longwinded, maybe even longer-winded than Rush Limbaugh; almost any time of day it seemed as if he was spinning his 45s at his designated space on the radio dial. I thought of this as a good reason to try to sit near the front of the bus. As a teenager I had heard, and believed, that God did not want us to listen to rock music.
I still heard about an hour's worth of pop music a day. Occasionally, if a singer or group was very good, I even heard the lyrics as words. I didn't hear them clearly enough to hear most of them even as funny mondegreens; I think some of them may actually have been "La la la da la la ba la," and some of them merely sounded like that, from the front of the bus, blared above all the chatter and singing along from the back. At best I'd hear words in one or two lines. It's been interesting, as these songs have been archived on YouTube, to find out what the words were.
I heard that a band called Kiss was playing at a concert hall in a nearby town one year. I was not one of the kids who wanted to hear them. I was, nevertheless, one of the kids who heard all the reasons why we shouldn't listen to them. The musicians wore grotesque makeup. Was it satanic? Was "Kiss" an abbreviation for "Kids," or "Kings," or "Knights In Satan's Service"? Would addictive drugs be dropped into our drinks, or even manufactured as patches that might be slapped on our hands if we paid for tickets? Even if no drug dealers were travelling with the band, would we catch disgusting diseases from being in the same building with the kind of people who were rock fans?
Part of the baby-boom experience was hearing these things. Most of us laughed and affirmed rock music as ours. I just said, "Why would anybody pay to listen to songs we hear while riding the school bus? Is that an experience anybody wants to remember or recapture or prolong?" and bought records by John McCutcheon, whom my parents liked too.
(Early McCutcheon record, digitized: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdmP505uNTw)
I have no memory of hearing, if I heard, that Kiss was the band who made this song a hit. I didn't pay much attention to Darby's patter. What I heard sounded like "Oh, babe, what can I do," and I thought of all kinds of reasons why a person might sing those words. I think most of them were still more respectable than what the song lyrics actually say, which I still understand to be expressing, basically, a concept like "I'm an inadequate musician, which is making me an inadequate husband, and I should try to keep music as a hobby and get a steady nine-to-five job that will give me a reasonable amount of time for my home maintenance and child care responsibilities." That raspy voice certainly supports this interpretation.
Maybe the song would have been more relatable if the lyrics had gone like this.
I'm in this airport waiting for the next connecting flight.
I missed the one I'd counted on, and the next one's late at night.
No one stays in this city if they have a choice, it's true.
How I wish I were home already, but then, what can I do?
Or the songwriter could have gone for drama:
I'm alone in this four-bed hospital room with a view of a brick wall.
They say I'm here for treatment, but I've seen no doctor at all.
It feels more like a prison, and it just might be one, too.
I wish I'd not punched the traffic cop, but now, what can I do?
Or gone with the expectations women form when men call women "Babe," which is a name for a blue ox, or at least someone very sad and fat:
I'm with another woman, as I'm sure you've guessed by now.
She doped me and picked my pocket, but I will make it home, somehow.
I'm stalling for time, trying to stumble in at a time I won't see you,
'Cos I think you just might kill me, and tonight, what can I do?
Or corny country comedy:
I wish I were back in the city, but I'm stuck here on the farm,
'Cos I slipped on the old hay wagon, took a fall, and broke my arm.
Then I almost drowned in the duck pond, and got stung by hornets, too.
The doctor said I'd better stay in bed, so what can I do?
Or a more inclusive, updated version:
I'm in a nice big office. Everything is shiny new,
A skinny little computer, and a water dispenser, too.
I completely faked my resume and lied at the interview.
And so I got a posh office job, but now, what can I do?
Another, more timely, way to expel the earworm...
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