Is "Hey Soul Sister", like, the "Brown Sugar" of the new millennium? For weeks now snippets of that ukulele reach out and snatch me whenever I succumb to the radio waves on my drives to and from work. I usually skip past it--not because I dislike the folks who invited me to "Meet Virginia" via "Drops of Jupiter"--but because it's on nearly every station. That's never a good sign for me. If I like a song well enough, I'll buy it and play the hell out of it myself; I don't like my radio interfering with this method. That's mainly because I still remember when you used to turn on the radio to hear something new. At any rate, I finally decided to give this song a listen. And I'll tell ya, the ukulele has got to be the gosh-darn catchiest-sounding instrument ever. It's in my second favorite part of Janelle Monae's "Tightrope"--the first is the way she sings "Now, shut up!" I saw Jake Shimabukuro at Tipitina's and thought he was just the coolest kid I'd seen in a decade, and that Israel 77-character-last-name-dude 'bout lulled me to a yellow brick road for some ol' fashioned skipping. Anyway. I am Hey-in' my way through this song when suddenly I hear "untrimmed chest." That was odd enough to give me a skeevy mental vision of Austin Powers tweakin' his nipples. But I Hey'd on because I loved Mister, Mister and the ukulele, with its summery sounds, was really Calgon carrying me away.
And then suddenly, "You're so gangsta, I'm so thug ..."
...
...
Ehhh.
Thugs and ukuleles. If ever you wanted opposite ends of a spectrum, I think you could find them right about there.
Now I want to know who this sister is. It's the same want-to-know that I have for "Smooth Criminal's" Annie. Did anyone ever find out if she was okay?
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Tonight, courtesy of VH1 Soul, Terence Trent D'Arby spastic-danced to "Wishing Well" across my television screen. I soooooooooo remember when that song came out. It was right around the time I was composing--via my beige, standard-issue recorder-- my own composition about a chicken who played the flute who was backed up by the owl who gave a hoot. In "Wishing Well" I found a kindred, animal-loving spirit. Monkeys were seeing and doing (what I wasn't sure), bandits were stealing and crocodiles cheered. This was my kind of zoo.
And he was interesting looking, too, this TTD. He was half Prince (beauty mark, finely etched eyebrows, gyrations of which my mother did not approve)and half Michael Jackson (boxy shouldered jackets, skinny, high-water pants, sharp gesturing). Then I heard "Sign Your Name" and it hypnotized me much in the same way that "We are Siamese if you please" did. I pantomimed the hell out of that song.
Seeing him on screen tonight though, I wanted to feed him a few sandwiches, hire a choreographer and tell him to stop flippin' his hair around like he was some white girl. My god, hindsight is fierce sometimes.
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Speaking of skinny dudes, David Bowie (as Jareth in Labyrinth) singing "Underground" just played on my iTunes. Junk was so good I had to put it on repeat for a spell.
Also, earlier tonight VH1 Classic was showing Let's Spend the Night Together and Mick Jagger's stage apparel consisted of Pop Warner-sized football pants and P.E. knee pads (worn on the outside of said pants) that were primary colored--back when magic markers were just named "blue" and "yellow."
I was disappointed that kool-aid socks didn't make an appearance, but the jock strap did and that was funny enough.
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This has nothing to do with music, but pogo has essentially unearthed a vortex of time-wasting by letting me play free online Scrabble. Addicted. Like, Robert Palmer, style addicted.
