On the backseat screaming don't stop

Getting the words right

One of the useful things about the Internet has been the opportunity to sort out the mondegreens that I had learnt over decades. Songs that took my fancy that I tried to learn by ear but never got the words right because inflexions, accents, tonality, and variations could change the way words sound apart from the necessities of musicality.

I notice that a lot in Yoruba music, the words are tonal, but when put to song can change so much that if the context is not known the meaning will be completely lost. I will leave that analysis to linguists.

When Kenny Rogers died early this year, I remembered some songs that I took the time to playback on the turntable, stopping after a few words as if taking dictation, I thought I had it completely with Lucille. The refrain of the song is one example of how wrong I was. I think my dad had a record executive for a friend because he sometimes came home with a clutch of vinyl albums and that became the framework of my musical reminiscences.

My version

You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille,
Before wrong the children crapping with feel, (This seemed to make some sense to me.)
I've had some bad times, lived through some sad times,
This time you dishearken nor heed, (I really thought dishearken was an antonym of hearken)
You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille.

The lyrics [AZLyrics – Lucille]

You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille,
With four hungry children and a crop in the field,
I've had some bad times, lived through some sad times,
But this time your hurting won't heal,
You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille.

Hearing right and speaking better

There are too many songs that suffered a mangling from my either my hard of hearing or my trying to make a sense of what was being sung. Now, if a song sweeps into memory, I do not assume I know the words, I immediately search for the lyrics and compare with the total recall, I have, smiling and glad that no one caught me out like when I did not know how to pronounce bronchitis, yacht, or beau correctly.

What is strange is, I can remember each person who helped me out with getting those words right. I would think because I mainly sang to myself rather than to an audience, my mondegreens were karaoke gold dust.

I may as well shoot my gun

Earlier today, from one thing to another, I found myself searching for Ray Parker Jr. one of his songs that caught my ear, I heard on the cassette tape recorder and player of my neighbour. Let’s Get Off from his album, The Other Woman, sounded like Let’s Get On, I put it down to the quality of the recording.

Reading through the lyrics today, all he had to say was Parental Guidance steamy windows stuff. How was I to know? Yet, if you do have a lover, you probably and definitely want to do everything there and more. To say I have been promised more than a night of passion would be to put a finer point on a suggestion not too polite.

Poor teenaged Tevin Campbell whose amazing voice gave life to words of straight alluring whilst having an uncertain disposition. Not that we care anymore, the love songs lose their gender specificity whether babe, woman, man, lady, lover, and honey, whoever you squeeze is deserving of the songs you want to share. Ours is My Funny Valentine, someone does shed tears to it. [Tevin Campbell – Can We Talk – YouTube] [Anita Baker – My Funny Valentine – YouTube]

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Let’s Get Off, Ray Parker Jr. (Courtesy of AllTheLyrics)

Don't know, what's come over me.
Since we met, I've had this fantasy.
Of you on the backseat screamin' don't stop.
Just before the good part, I wake up.

Oh honey - to dream just ain't enough
Gotta have the real stuff.
C'mon baby - we can rock 'n roll each other crazy.
Give it to me, nice and slow
All of it, make me beg for more.
We love each other, so it can't be wrong.
Let me have it all night long.

If you feel the way that I do then let's get off.
If you want it bad as I do let's get off.

Sittin' at, my TV set
Watchin' dirty movies, and diggin' it.
Lookin' at the folks behind the green door.
Only make me want you more.

Oh, I wish that you would stop playin' games.
Can't put out this flame.
Hotsuff.
Oh, you got me burnin' up.

Give it to me, nice and slow
All of it, make me beg for more.
We love each other, so it can't be wrong.
Let me have it all night long.

If you feel the way that I do then let's get off.
If you want it bad as I do let's get off.

Ever since, I was a little boy.
Always liked to play "ridin' cowboys"
All you gotta do is holler "giddy up"
Cause I can take it, no matter how rough

Bang bang - I may as well shoot my gun.
Cause that's how the West is won.
Hey you! I mountin' up for round two.

Give it to me, nice and slow
All of it, make me beg for more.
We love each other, so it can't be wrong.
Let me have it all night long.

Get up, just me and you.
Come on let's get off.
If you want it bad as I do, let's groove.
Come on let's get off.

Please don't make me stop. No baby,
Till you make me bop.
Just warmin' up - I don't wanna stop.
Till you make me bop.

Oh! - me and you.
Come on let's get off.
Let's groove.
Come on let's get off.

Kokkaburra! Gay my life has been

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I was tricked

I do not know who taught me the song but I remember singing it many times recapturing a sense of self in what was a foreign land of sorts.

How do I mean foreign land? I was tricked when my parents asked if I would like to go to Nigeria, they said nothing else about Nigeria to give me an idea of where we were going. I did not learn of the civil war that had just ended, at least not until I was leafing through the photographic diary (Nigeria. A decade of crises in pictures) of Peter Obe many years later.

However, they were excited, had packed up everything and we had gone to the docks to see our trunks of goods loaded on the ship. I thought it was the QE2, but it wasn't.

Us to float, goods to boat

We travelled in style, boarded a BOAC flight to Lagos, my mother heavily pregnant with my sister. There is a picture of that send-off party, many of those who smiled in the photograph and pinched my chubby cheeks in playful jest, now in the pantheon of the Great Beyond.

Style, it was because I first visited Gran Canaria amongst the seven Canary Islands in 2003 and toured the capital city of Las Palmas guided by my hotel host. Since then, I have taken time to visit Las Palmas at least twice on any visit to the island.

I then learnt that many Nigerians returning home from the UK, returned by ocean liner and always berthed at Las Palmas. I never had those childhood memories and then it became clear to me why people talked of Casablanca and Las Palmas with such longing of an exotic past never revisited again.

A very strange land

We landed in Lagos, I have no recall of the flight, I must have slept through it just as I do today if I find the comfort of a moving form of transport like a child being rocked away to sleep in a perambulator.

In the excitement of getting off the plane, I was momentarily lost and then made aware of the reality that I was in a foreign land, the place called Nigeria had noticeably more black people, I cried in my utter confusion as I was led back to my anxious parents.

I felt I did not belong there and many things I am usually reminded I said in the few days after our arrival showed I felt completely out of place and seriously threatened as a boy.

All the English world of school

We settled first in Kaduna, but it was not until we moved to Jos and I began to go to school at Corona School, Shamrock House that I began to reclaim my mixed identity of being English and Nigerian.

Our reading books, Janet and John were written by a New Zealander, I watched The Pied Piper by Canadians, I swotted on the revisionist history of the Americans and our Land Rover school bus was full of Britons. The song? Australian and how I ended up with the nickname of Yankee at home, I cannot tell, if I always say I am an English.

With words awry

I only knew one verse of which many words were wrong.

I sang:

Kookaburra sits on the oceans cliffs,
Merry, merrily on the bushes trees,
Laugh Kookaburra laugh Kookaburra,
Gay all life's must be.

When it should have been:

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree,
Merry, merry king of the bush is he,
Laugh Kookaburra laugh Kookaburra,
Gay your life must be.

But who was listening and how did Australians come about the literary construct of the second line? In a time when gay meant happy, full of joy, merry; light-hearted, carefree, I do wonder how gay my life has been and I laugh at the thought of how things have changed. [Etymology of gay.]

Now for the rest of it and there is nothing politically correct about it apart from the fact that we all sang it with glee.

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree
Merry, merry king of the bush is he
Laugh, Kookaburra! Laugh, Kookaburra!
Gay your life must be

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree
Eating all the gum drops he can see
Stop, Kookaburra! Stop, Kookaburra!
Leave some there for me

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree
Counting all the monkeys he can see
Stop, Kookaburra! Stop, Kookaburra!
That's not a monkey that's me

Kookaburra sits on a rusty nail
Gets a boo-boo in his tail
Cry, Kookaburra! Cry, Kookaburra!
Oh how life can be

Courtesy of KIDiddles and written by Marion Sinclair (1932)

Thought Picnic: Where Everybody Shares Your Pain

Some cheers for the dawn

This morning I woke up to the playback in my mind with the refrain - Sometimes you want to go, Where everybody knows your name – and as I thought that through, the words of the song formed into a sense of existence - And they're always glad you came.

But, I really did not feel like being there, the familiarity, the catching up, the questions, the answers, the concern, the sympathy, the empathy and much else was weighing on my mind – I wanted to be present somewhere whilst being absent elsewhere.

Somewhere elsewhere

Basically, I did not want to be where everybody knows my pain, and whilst some might be glad I came, I was not ready to take the strain, even though my excuse does sound lame.

There were some things I was not ready to deal with until a more convenient time. So, I moved to another section of the song - You want to be where you can see, Our troubles are all the same; - I wanted to be in church, just not my church.

Antipodean flavours

My friend observed that the churches I seem to have an affinity for were planted by Australians, I dare say, there is something refreshing about the antipodean perspective of the same revelation that has been in Europe, gone to America to be exported round the world and emanating from Africa too with the contaminants that belie a tendency to error, levity and licence, I am persuaded of a different allegiance.

And though having attended C3 Amsterdam and now C3 London, I found myself visiting Hillsong London at the Dominion Theatre on Tottenham Court Road where I found welcoming and friendly faces unified in song and common humanity that one had to reflect on whether one was being swept away by the awesomeness of mass hysteria or a personal experience similarly expressed by others.

Words and meanings together and apart

I began to understand the need for songs if you did understand what the words meant; for in song, you invariably were chanting the affirmative in the structure of verse and chorus almost repetitively without it becoming a mantra – the accompaniment of music then engaged your whole being with some being exercised or overcome with emotion.

There is life in participating, and when the prayers are said, you being to realise that our troubles are more or less the same and we all want insight, ideas, inspiration, results and solutions to take us to a better place.

Sometimes, that is what church is all about, amongst friends and amongst strangers, the fiendish and the strangest things can find root, but we can find firmer foundations in how we believe that together we can reach for a better day.

Cheers!

Making your way in the world today 
Takes everything you've got; 
Taking a break from all your worries 
Sure would help a lot. 
Wouldn't you like to get away? 

All those night when you've got no lights, 
The check is in the mail; 
And your little angel 
Hung the cat up by it's tail; 
And your third fiance didn't show; 

Sometimes you want to go 
Where everybody knows your name, 
And they're always glad you came; 
You want to be where you can see, 
Our troubles are all the same; 
You want to be where everybody knows your name. 

Roll out of bed, Mr. Coffee's dead; 
The morning's looking bright; 
And your shrink ran off to Europe, 
And didn't even write; 
And your husband wants to be a girl; 

Be glad there's one place in the world 
Where everybody knows your name, 
And they're always glad you came; 
You want to go where people know, 
People are all the same; 
You want to go where everybody knows your name. 

Where everybody knows your name, 
And they're always glad you came; 
Where everybody knows your name, 
And they're always glad you came...

Theme song for the situation comedy TV series – Cheers, written by Gary Portnoy & Judy Hart Angelo – Where Everybody Knows Your Name.