We got some beautiful Saturday afternoon WPXN action driving from DC to NJ. It was about 4:20, and brother, could you tell from the requests coming into the all-request show. It made for compulsive listening and kept me wondering why I don't tune the computer to that station more often. My daughter, on the other hand, has become enamored of old-time radio shows and DH has downloaded a bunch onto the iPod, so that's why she keeps nagging about Dragnet. It's resulted in some interesting conversations about cars, the death penalty, and smoking cigarettes.
The story you are about to read is sort of true.
[Scene: Car, that stretch of Helaware that's all tolls.]
DH: Is this Country Joe and the Fish?
ME: (Thinks for a minute.) No, Allman Brothers. My sister used to play it all the time.
DD: (Sings along with guitar runs, trilling along in the booster seat.)
[Next song cued up.]
ME: This song sounds so familiar. It's something my brother or sisters listened to. It feels like around the same time as...I don't know, some kind of British progrock, same time as Tull, living in the past?
DD: This song is weird.
ME: Who the hell was this? (Sings along: "Just like your woman loves you...just like your woman loves you...") I know this song, I really do. How weird.
[It is Andy Pratt's Avenging Annie, a pleasant earworm, and it is weird. One of the instruments listed is "Cat." I'm not sure how I feel about that.]
DD: Can we listen to Dragnet now?
ME: Just a few minutes. I want to hear the end of this set.
[Long cymbal clash I can't even hear, but DH picks it up.]
DH: This is Mahavishnu. Birds of Fire.
ME: They haven't even started playing it yet. How did you know?
DH: I've played this one a lot.
ME: It sounds kind of like King Crimson. Are you sure it's not King Crimson?
DH: If I know it from one cymbal, how would I not be right?
DD: Has it been a minute yet?
ME: I really know this song too. Everything is sounding familiar in this weird time-bending way. Jesus, what is the deal with that guy? Why does he want to kill me? Oh my god, his license plate says "three times a lady." [3X A LDY]
DH: I've probably played it a lot. Since college.
ME: (Forgetting DD is in car) You probably played it for me when I was high and it freaked me out. Oops.
ME: (Sings along really loudly with There is a Light that Never Goes Out, probably traumatizing DD for life.)
[DJ cues Roxy Music Remake/Remodel]
DH: It's the all-Maria request hour.
ME: Yeah, it's like we're sending them secret signals.
DD: Can I listen to Dragnet? It's been WAY more than a minute.
Photo: If you can figure out the connection, I'll bring you back a zeppole.
7 comments:
DD sounds like so much fun. Does she sing along delightedly to the "Dum-de-DUM-dum" the way we used to?
Last summer when my daughter was 3 she berated me w/ car requests for "I've Come all the Way from Dublin" by the Clancy children. Either the Irish in her or the prospect of little girls chanting "I'll set the house on fire, fire, fire..." Now she knows Barnes & Barnes's "Fishheads" by heart.
When she was a baby her favorite music was the Misfits. Their uninspired rhythms would lull her to sleep no matter how colicy.
Oh yeah - the picture looks like a still from "L.A. Confidential," which I always saw as a warts & all riff on "Dragnet." Am I in the ballpark?
I believe it's WXPN outta Philly, and yes, it's a great station. I'd guess that photo is of officer Bud White (the estimable Russell Crowe), giving a foot massage to the great love of his life, Lynn Bracken, in the form of Kim Bassinger from the always-stops-me-on-cable L.A. Confidential.
I'm gonna guess the connection is that you have one lucky husband?
Slothrop wins the zeppole! Now to figure out how to get it to you. Also, Jack (kevin spacey) was consultant on a Dragnet-clone show, to further point out the reality-vs-Hollywood theme. As for DD, she just likes all the lurid stories--think I watched too much Law & Order while trying to keep still and cool in the last weeks she was cooking. And Anon?--even if I looked like Kim Bassinger, would that I did, a long car ride with me would still be intolerable.
oh, and i fell out at the "fire, fire, fire" and at the words "foot massage."
oh, and i fell out at the "fire, fire, fire" and at the words "foot massage."
When I was my daughter's age "I've Come all the Way from Dublin" would freak me out. The girls chanting, "I'm going to marry YOU sir, YOU sir, YOU sir!" & the line about setting the house on fire. But she seems to respond to the air of mischief; hopefully not a nascent pyromaniac....
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