Too cute to survive
The one they call neo-neocon laments the loss of the novelty song:
They occupied a special niche that doesn’t seem to exist anymore in this far less innocent age: a nonsensical bubble-gum type of music/lyrics, meant mostly to amuse in the lightest of ways. They were silly even back when they first came out, in the 50s and early 60s of my youth.
I think the key word here is “nonsensical.” This is not to say that there isn’t nonsensical music being produced today, but it seems to me that its intentions are always deadly serious. And you couldn’t put out a compilation called Too Cute! today unless somehow you could assure the buying public that the title was dripping with irony.
More to the point, you can’t get this kind of stuff on the radio anymore: even something like Hanson’s “MMMbop” has to have some kind of edge to get airplay. (“You go through all the pain and strife / you turn your back and they’re gone so fast.”) And novelty songs, almost by nature, transcend genre, or at least mock genre, so the risk-avoidance types who run radio stations keep them off the playlists if at all possible. The only real national outlet for this sort of thing any more is the Dr. Demento Show, and its days may be numbered.
As for her list, well, I dearly love “Surfin’ Bird” — even my dad liked “Surfin’ Bird,” and he never had any use for that rock and/or roll stuff — and she was kind enough to provide a link to the lyrics. In return, I will refrain from mentioning Brian Hyland’s sequel to that bikini song, an ode to a less-than-perfect motor vehicle.
“Poison Ivy” has an unusual resonance for me: in 1972 the drill sergeants were marching us to this song with new lyrics. “Late at night while you’re sleeping, you know Charlie comes a-creeping all around.”
And Too Cute!, incidentally, was an actual 1995 compilation (now out of print) on DCC Compact Classics. It contains, among others, “Witch Doctor,” “Itsy-Bitsy…” and the ever-popular depilatory anthem, “Short Shorts.”
Francis W. Porretto »
22 August 2008 · 5:13 pm
But does it contain Beep-Beep! — ?
CGHill »
22 August 2008 · 7:12 pm
Surprisingly, no, though I do have that elsewhere.
The late, lamented Fifties revival band Big Daddy used to twist Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” into the “Beep Beep” format; it’s bizarre, but massive fun.
Vaguely related:
“Wait For Me”, a smallish (#37 in Billboard) hit for the Playmates in 1960 — you may remember them for “Beep Beep”, the tale of a Cadillac driver’s scorn for a little Nash Rambler, a couple years earlier — is basically the logical extension of the Poni-Tails’ yearnfest “Born Too Late”, this time told from the guy’s point of view: he looks upon this young girl as mostly a pest, and by the time it dawns on him that maybe she was The One, she’s already spoken for. The song (by Lee Pockriss and Paul Vance, whose biggest hit that year was Brian Hyland’s straight-faced reading of “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini”) isn’t exactly on par with the saga of Abelard and Heloise, but it left me with a case of the shivers. Not that anything like this has ever happened to me, of course.