Getting REAL High - THAT'S "What's Goin' On"!

"What's Up" by the 4 Non Blondes. This is not one of my all-time favorite hard-to-find songs!  I went looking for as bad a rendition of this stupid song as I could find (as if the original screecher wasn't bad enough) to try to ruin it for you the same way my sister ruined "Blowing Kisses In The Wind" by Paula Abdul for me (by singing it in a mocking falsetto that immediately made me think of the heavyset bookstore manager I worked for).  But that is another post.

If you ever liked "What's Up", and really didn't mind that much hearing it whenever you were on line at the bank, I'm hoping to put an end to your complacency.  Truth be told, I did eventually hear a single from lead singer Linda Perry's solo record that made me reconsider her.  She actually does have a capable voice, with lots of power and range (when she stays within it).  But the absolutely crummy lyrics and her tendency to slip in and out of falsetto took a couple years for me to get over.  A college friend of mine told me she said "Oh my God" in that same staccato fashion during sex.

The only reason this song could possibly have such a long shelf life is because of the line "AND I GET REAL HIGH".  Seriously! But for that one line, this song would have gone nowhere.  Whether or not she was talking about getting stoned first thing in the morning or not, I can hear the big roar of approval from the teenybopper college-rock alt-punk kids who filled their women's music festival audiences whenever she belted it out.  Finally, pot-smoking hippie chicks everywhere had their anthem!

It seems like old fogies are getting a lot hipper these days.  Or else I'm witnessing the Starbuxification of every service business establishment. Today, I've been inside two banks, and one coffee shop that isn't Starbuck's, and not a sign of local land-based radio.  No announcers, no commercials, no music so overplayed that it screams mainstream radio format.  Seems like the tellers, account managers, or baristas increasingly get to decide what gets played over the in-store music system, and not just in those "independent" businesses.  Still, it was downright weird to hear Carl Perkins singing "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" instead of Jerry Lee Lewis - in a Dunkin Donuts!  As cool as it was, it was somehow - not right for the orange and pink and wood and fluorescent coffee joint.  Watching them upgrade their stores, replace pink counters and grey walls with orange and wood to compete, I wonder: "who are they trying to be?" Today, with the transformation complete, I wondered, "where the hell am I?!"  What am I gonna say to the millenial immigrant who works behind the counter? "Hey! This ain't no Starbucks! Put on Oldies 103!"  That would make me an old fogie, wouldn't it?

This ukelele-based rendition may not be as awful as I would have hoped.  It's quite good, and they have a sense of humor about the whole thing.  This is what it might be like if Kirstie Alley did the song at karaoke. 

Enjoy your memories, ladies!

Bill Barilko 50 Mission Cap

I bought The Tragically Hip’s “Fully Completely” album (on casette!) in 1993, the spring of my junior year of college. We were playing the single “Courage” on WQRI-FM, the Roger Williams University college radio station, and I bought the album on the strength of my liking for that one song. I played the tape over and over until I had every song and every note committed to memory. That’s why this song "50 Mission Cap" came to mind today in that insidious way. It was easy to diagnose why. I never got the spelling of the hockey player’s name straight, and I was cooking a dish to bring to a potluck dinner at my friend Jason’s place. He had thrown it together to introduce his new girlfriend, whose name is Marilka. Easy diagnosis, eh?

I remember a radio interview with the band where they explained how they come up with their songs; The band jams, and Gordon Downie, the lead singer, “stands in a corner” and just comes up with stuff. I don’t know what a “50 Mission Cap” is. The comment in this YouTube video is a better guess than mine. I thought it was a sports thing, not an aviation thing. I wonder how he introduces it in concerts.

Here again, through numerous YouTube postings of the song (an apparently very popular one) si an example of how you get more insight into a song, and get the rest of the story that didn’t fit into the song format. Most of the comments on this page were again about the Maple Leafs.