2017-08-09

Lost songs about commas
and men in traditional men's jobs

.

When I first moved to Provo in the a*****e-end of the Twentieth Century, one of the songs well embedded in my Internal Jukebox™ was James Taylor's "Handy Man," a song utterly forgotten by American radio and apparently equally unknown to those of my generation.



Skip to 1:47 to start where my spontaneous outbursts would start---the famous comma comma comma bit.

So there I am singing comma comma comma and people like yeah, I'm into it, and then they start singing about lizards.

I had never heard that song before. Not ever.

(This could lead into a discussion of how my knowledge of '80s music and Lady Steed's knowledge of '80s music barely overlapped at that stage in our history ... but not today.)

Eventually I had to push "Handy Man" back down whenever it arrived because it was subdesirable to have it hijacked by this . . . other song.

After Lady Steed and I wed, my music diet changed such that now I know about things like Culture Club and Depeche Mode and The Cure and U2 and stuff I'd never listened to as a kid and now I know "Karma Chameleon" perfectly well, thank you very much. And it feels like I've been hearing it all the bleeding time these past 17+ years. Which would be fine except everyone thinks IT invented comma comma comma-ing!

But then, two days ago, in my less-than-once-a-year trip to the bank, I heard "Handy Man" over the speakers.

Holy smokes!

Then! Tonight! In the grocery store! "Handy Man"!

Incredible.

Maybe the rest of the world has finally discovered what I've known since 1977.

(Incidentally, the original version of "Handy Man" by Sparks of Rhythm (listed at the link as Jimmy Jones) and the first charting cover by Del Shannon can be heard here.) (Just kidding. The Del Shannon version's not on Spotify. But isn't "Runaway" a great song?)

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

As long as we're here, why not one more song? This is "Delivery Man" by The Cruel Sea. Big in Australia. I got the album with a punched cover at an American dollar store. And it was awesome.

Turn up your bass.

No comments:

Post a Comment