Koli and I are going to a wedding in Jamaica next month (Maria Gray and Allan Cohen’s), but a conversation we had yesterday reveals that one of us may not be easily assimilated into the island’s culture (and suggests a great idea for a mash-up, for someone more musically and technically competent than myself — are you reading this, DJ Lunchboy?):TODD: Were you just humming the Banana Splits themesong?
KOLI: Banana Splits?!
TODD: Weren’t you just going “la la-la, la la-la la, la la la-la”?
KOLI: Yeah, that’s “Buffalo Soldier” by Bob Marley: “Woy yoy-yoy, woy yoy-yoy yoy, woy yoy yoy yoy, yoy yoy-yoy yoy!”
In related news, a band I mentioned in the previous blog entry, My Favorite, startled me yesterday by having, I noticed, a track called “Le Monster vs. Chuck Blake.” “I don’t even remember My Favorite meeting Chuck, much less seeing him battle a monster,” I thought, “though I could see Chuck doing that” — but the title refers (via the recently-fashionable use of the “vs.” conjunction to denote a guest singer or in this case producer) to the music producer who remixed that version of their “Le Monster,” not to the man by the same name who I’ve known since high school and who criticized climate-change theories at our February debate.
Music can be confusing — like the time I met the lead singer of the Arrows, who sang the original “I Love Rock n’ Roll” and let slip the fact that I thought Slade had done the original (the source of my confusion: Slade did the original “Cum on Feel the Noize,” which isn’t quite the same thing). But I can tell the difference between the Fixx and Frozen Ghost, which is the important thing.
7 comments:
The Buffalo Splits! Awesome. This makes me want to light up a massive fleegle.
To make matters weirder, you might find it easier to work with Liz Phair’s cover of the song (technically called “The Tra La La Song [One Banana, Two Banana]“) from the 1995 compilation _Saturday Morning Cartoons’ Greatest Hits_ than to work with the brief original.
Let me also note that I love the themesongs to _Underdog_, _Battle of the Planets_, _Johnny Quest_, and _The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse_ and have all the words to the first-season themesong to _Starblazers_ memorized to this day: “We’re oooooff to outer spaaaace/ We’re leeeeeaving Mother Earth/ To save the human raaaaace/ Our Star-bla-zers/ Searching for a distant star/ Heading off to Iscandar…” etc.
The Great One is Back
Todd, I own that compilation. Great song.
Maybe “Banana Soldiers” would be a better name for the mash-up, it now occurs to me.
bwa-ha-ha! That’s funny, and even though I know about the Marley song, my first thought would have been “the Banana Splits theme song” too.
That Todd Seavey would not be easily assimilated into Jamaican culture probably wasn’t something we needed any proof of, though.
Funny you write about this now, as 3 days ago (ere I stumbled onto this site) I bought a CD of “Television’s Greatest Hits – Volume 5″ with which I have been grooving to the original “Tra La La Song”.
But clearly, the proper title of the mash-up would be “The Banana Spliffs”.
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