This is such an odd little song. First time I heard it, I hearkened back to my youth when I used to climb the trees every morning and wake the neighbors doing my Tarzan yell! I was a weird little kid back then. This is also the opening theme to Robin Williams' singular film, "Club Paradise" which I really liked, the critics notwithstanding.
I've always been fascinated by Tarzan. He's a hero figure and kind of a lonely guy living there among the apes. It's hard not to become one of the apes if you ever grow up to have any power over others, especially when the apes used to push you around when you were little. The great temptation is, as another song I posted earlier put it, to be "sittin' around in some junglescape, dumb as an ape doin' nothing." I admit it. The whole jungle thing appeals to me.
So here are The Kinks with a live version of their classic, "Ape Man".
The first time I heard this song was in a Danny Kaye movie musical, "On the Riviera", but I think the definitive version is in the little known and highly under-appreciated Gene Wilder/Gilda Radner movie, "Haunted Honeymoon". It's a little dance number called "Ballin' the Jack". I don't know what that means, but Gilda Radner and Dom Deluise (in drag) demonstrate it if you want to see how it's done. Deluise was hilarious in this clip and Gilda kept up with him every step of the way.
If you haven't seen the movie, I highly recommend it. It's hilarious. Sheila and I watch it every Halloween.
It's one of our favorites and it's become a holiday tradition. We also
watch John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara in The Quiet Man every Saint
Patrick's Day, Christopher Reeve and Roseanna Arquette in The Aviator
every Thanksgiving and Albert Finney's fantastic musical version of
Scrooge at Christmas. There are other holiday movies for other holidays that we watch, but I digress.
I heard this song and realized it was my baseball theme song. I was the nerdy skinny kid with glasses who always got picked last. Like the guy in the song, I made it my practice to ask to play right field. That way it was my choice to go out there and pick dandelions. I even had one of those "ball dropped right in my glove" moments once. It was my personal equivalent of Willy Mays' famous over-the-shoulder catch*
Here's Peter, Paul & Mary with "Right Field".
It's an eerily accurate depiction of the plight of guys like me in elementary school. I love Paul Stookey's sense of humor. He's a really lovely guy.
Tom
*NOTE: For those of you who missed it, here's the Willy Mayes catch. I actually saw this happen one day when I was accidentally watching a baseball game. Always wanted to do that. Nearly got a concussion trying to make that catch - twice. Fortunately I have a thick skull.
Willy Mays' over-the-shoulder catch - the man could play center field.
Willy Mays' over-the-shoulder catch - the man could play center field.
Truth be known I always played right field and I have a song for that one too, but this one is probably my favorite baseball song of all time. The inimitable John Fogerty's classic "Center Field" has some wonderful baseball lines like this one....
A roundin' third and headin' for home, It's a brown-eyed handsome man. Even someone with relatively sad baseball playing skills like me can
dream. I did improve somewhat with age, but then my knees started going
and I gained weight, so I never really achieved baseball glory, but I do
like the sport. It's very American in that it's a series of personal
contests between pitcher and batter with a break between. American
football is like that too. There's a reason we never warmed to
"football" the way everyone else in the world did. We need to see the
little individual victories - the pass caught, the home run hit, the
slam dunk. In soccer, you get a bunch of guys running around kicking a
ball for two hours and the final score might wind up being 2 to 0.
That's just downright unAmerican.
Here's Fogerty singing about the great American sport and a nice video of vintage film from America's great baseball history.
Didn't that make you want to just dig up your old baseball glove and
go throw a few with some kid you've got laying around the house playing
video games?
I've always been fond of porches. This Creedence Clearwater Revival
song is kind of my "sittin' on the back porch" theme song. Meanwhile, I
"...got to sit down, take a rest on the porch." Now what happens next
is somewhat ambiguous. It could be a straightforward reverie or
something more chemically induced, but I prefer to think of the
tambourines and elephants bit as a daydream. So here's CCR front man,
John Fogarty, live with some back porch music for a Monday morning....
Here's one from the inimitable Mason Williams of "Classical Gas" fame. We used to sit around on the boat dock and sing this when some gal had stomped on our hearts. Only John Denver could deliver a line as great as "You know you just sorta, stomped on my aorta" with a straight face.
I thought this time out, I'd throw out one of those "she done you wrong"
songs as a kind of throwback to my days of being dumped with stunning
regularity by a stable of attractive women (including the one I married
who also dumped me but felt so sorry for me she couldn't make it stick).
It was a tossup choosing between "Stomped" or "Homemade Dummy" the folk version of Louis Armstrong's "Dumb Dumb Dummy". I need to make a video of that one because I can't find the campfire version anywhere.
Here's John singing Mason's monumentally pitiful "You Done Stomped on My Heart."
I first heard this song in the movie, "O Brother Where Art Thou." I liked it so much, having seen my fair share of outdoor baptisms, I put it in our Youth Sabbath School Songbook. The kids liked this old-time style gospel song too. Who said our young people only like rock n' roll? This song has all sorts of room for harmony and some gentle percussion, it's a lovely song to sing at a baptism or a campfire worship.
Here's Alison Krauss with "Down in the River to Pray".
