Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Keep On A Mockin' Me Baby

As much as I love the internet and the "oh-so-easy" access to virtually any kind of information (and misinformation) a person wants, I sometimes miss those days of my teenage and early adult years before there was an internet.

I'm thinking about those really fun discussion and arguments over misheard lyrics. You'd be singing along to a song on the radio (or your 8-track or cassette) and your friend would stop you and say: "That's NOT what he's saying, you idiot. He's saying THIS" and he would quote what he believed were the proper lyrics. You would, of course, tell him that he was the idiot and didn't know what he was talking about.

The argument would potentially go on for months until either one of you or perhaps another friend would show up with the album (yes, the vinyl album, those lovely beautiful giant art covered albums that sometimes had a record sleeve which contained that oh so precious thing: the lyrics to the songs) and put the argument to rest. The winner (if there was one, because sometimes the lyrics were ANOTHER thing entirely) would punch the loser in the arm and dance around the room quoting from Eddie Murphy's stand-up video "Delirious" -- "I got my ice cream, you didn't get none!"

Then another song would come on the radio and a whole new argument would begin over some goofy lyrics that your friend misheard or misinterpreted.

Now don't cheat, but here are some lyrics I heard on the radio just this morning that I have ALWAYS had trouble figuring out, no matter how many times I've heard the song or rewound the tape and listened to it again and again. For some reason this one line (and the only line in the entire song, BTW) eludes me.

(Steve Miller Band - Rockin' Me)

Well, I been lookin' real hard and I'm tryin' to find a job
But it just keeps gettin' tougher every day
But I've got to do my part 'cause I know in my heart
I've got blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

Well I ain't superstitious and I don't get suspicious
'Cause my woman is a friend of mine....etc, etc

Now, c'mon, before you cheat and go google for the lyrics online somewhere, please tell me, what is old Stevie singing there? C'mon, don't wait to tell me, I've been wondering this for a couple of decades and have completely RESISTED the urge to google and look for the answer. To me, it sounds like he's saying "I've got to squeeze my blah blah blah blah yeah."

But maybe it's just me and everyone else can clearly distinguish what he's saying there -- but I'm sure you have your own favourite confusing bits of lyrics. (And yes, you're likely to go google them right now rather than have a fun argument with your best friend about it. Sigh. The internet has taken away some of the fun.)

3 comments:

lime said...

lol, i have absolutely no idea what the guy is saying either.

and honestly, even though i had the internet for years i never bothered to googled 'blinded by the light......blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblah.....' i was too afraid i might be correct in the way i misheard them and it was kinda gross. finally i was told, just a few months ago that it's 'blinded by the light, revved up like a douce....'

had trouble with jimmy buffett's 'margaritaville' looking for my lost shaker of salt....i never had even the slightest clue what he was saying there until recently.

Anonymous said...

since you don't want us to look up the lyrics on the internet, I can't help you there...

I much prefer listening listening to songs and making up my own lyrics, kinda like what radio stations do...like "walking round in women's underwear" instead of "walking in a winter wonderland"

a friend of mine comes up with his own "special" lyrics to songs that are much to rude to post here...after all this is a family rated blog.

Melodie Norman Haas said...

Ok I just spent the last 15 minutes clicking next on Yahoo radio til they finally played the song and it is

I've got to please my sweet baby yeah

or at least that is what I heard LOL and I am resisting the Google to see if I am right LOL