Pink has nothing on Steve Miller’s lyrics
I know I’ve gotten old when a song lyric can make my mouth gape
open. It’s true.
This, from the same little girl who got a huge kick out of Steve
Miller Band’s
”
Jet Liner,
”
with the ever-popular verbiage to the grade school set,
”
Funky s–t going down in the city.
”
As a kid, I sang to anything, whistled to anything and hummed
along to anything.
Pink has nothing on Steve Miller’s lyrics
I know I’ve gotten old when a song lyric can make my mouth gape open. It’s true.
This, from the same little girl who got a huge kick out of Steve Miller Band’s “Jet Liner,” with the ever-popular verbiage to the grade school set, “Funky s–t going down in the city.”
As a kid, I sang to anything, whistled to anything and hummed along to anything.
I would wait with bated breath, and shush my elementary school friends until the moment when he sang the dirty word. Until one day, on commercial radio, Steve had the audacity to sully his original words with “funky kicks.” Boy, did I feel ripped off. And to this day, I still chuckle when I hear the version of the song as it was originally intended.
Later, in high school, Tipper Gore’s big campaign for ratings on record albums (I’m over 35, so back then CDs weren’t quite ready for prime time) spawned a lot of talk among us kids. Come on, where was freedom of speech? It’s music, man. It’s gotta be heard as it was written. It loses something. Just ask Steve Miller.
But times, they were a-changing, to paraphrase Bob Dylan.
Recently the Boy was all excited about a school function that happens every year at his school. It’s a fund-raiser that brings parents and kids together on a warm afternoon for games and raffles and fun. It is fun. Music and snow cones. Baskets of goodies to be raffled off, kids running everywhere, because at events like these, kids just never walk. The makings for a perfect afternoon.
After stuffing a box with raffle tickets next to a basket of holiday decor to hopefully add to the usual cacophonous display that is The Sinon Family Christmas, The Husband and I sought out shelter from the afternoon sun under a canopy. We watched The Boy run with some friends while waiting for the raffle to commence as songs from a DJ streamed through the balmy air.
Absently, I realized I was swaying to Pink’s “Get This Party Started.” I felt almost “cool” as I sang along (silently for the sake of those around me) to the words that I did know.
The kids had all settled down a little bit because the raffle was about to begin. The music was still blaring, “…I’ll be burnin’ rubber, and you’ll be kissin’ my a–“, wails Pink.
My head snapped up to look at The Husband in disbelief. Did I just hear that? I looked around. No one else seemed to have even heard it. How could they not?
I turned and locked wide eyes with the woman manning the raffle booth. We stared at each other in astonishment. We seem to have been the only people who were listening.
This is a school function, so the function must go on. The raffle started and there was a flurry of activity as names were read off, and lucky for us, not ours. We walked there, and I was sure The Husband wasn’t relishing the idea of getting to walk the four blocks home with his vision obstructed by a Santa who shakes his… well, you know… to “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas.”
On the walk home, I whistled to the tune in my head.