Sunday, June 29, 2014

Better Slade Than Never

I don't know if my international reader are familiar with the British seventies glam-rock band, Slade. If they don't recognize the name, they will probably recognize their most famous hit, the Christmas fixture 'Merry Christmas Everybody'. (Which is absolutely splendid.)

I am a seventies nut. Slade are distilled seventies.

They have many good songs, but today I've been listening to one of their lesser-known hits: "Thanks for the Memory".

It's subtitled "Wham Bam, Thank You Ma'am", but it's not a sex song, even though Slade liked to throw double entendres into their songs. In fact, one of the reasons I like it is because the lyrics don't seem to be about anything-- just a collection of phrases that seem to go well together, with a few puns thrown in:

Como estas chickadee?
Have a housemaid on your knee
eat an apple every day
An onion keeps everyone away
Have an athlete on your feet
have some honey with your meat
Eat an apple every day
the doctor has got to keep away
He'll tell you
Thanks for the memory
thanks for it all
Wham bam
thank you ma'am
thanks for the ball.

Have a burgular alarm
Have a milkmaid on your farm
can you raise a ballyhoo
If only there's nothing else to do.
Have some butter with your fly
They sald bananas could get you high
Eat an apple ev'ry day
the doctor has got to earn his pay.

(This song is also an example of how censorship can be beneficial, artistically as well as socially; the version they played on TV is different from the album version, and the difference is definitely an improvement. The line 'have some honey with your meat', in the original, was a rather insalubrious sex reference which always makes me grimace when I listen to it.)

I also like the bouncy melody.

Well, this blog needs a break from the heavy philosophical stuff from time to time.

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