Yes, we ARE Canadian!

In these times of divisive political strife, resentment against the Machiavellian machinations of the monster soon to become U. S. President, and other things that are just a plain drag, man, my mind attempts to turn to other things.

Like chocolate bars.

The kind YOU guys don't have.

Never has it been more important for Canadians to cleave to a national identity. Almost by definition, a Canadian is "not an American": Robertson Davies once famously wrote, "Historically, a Canadian is an American who rejected the Revolution."

This either makes us a bunch of lily-livered cowards who don't know how to blow a redcoat's head off with a big musket, or - different.

We didn't so much run away from the Revolution as get up and walk until we found a good place to settle. No bloodshed, no battles or wars. Boring as hell, is Canadian history, but I'm proud of it.

"They think we live in a bunch of igloos," my husband rather bitterly said the other day, speaking of the genius executives who tried to make a go of Target stores across this country and failed utterly. Meaning, they had no idea at all of the spending habits of Canadians, and decided they would just take American spending habits (or what they saw as American spending habits) and ram them down our throats.

No thanks. Store by store, the Targets fell down (like. . . targets?), and, shockingly quickly, the company had to admit defeat and withdraw at a gigantic loss. They had misfired because they had misread the habits of the Canadian population so drastically.

Americans think we're funny, with moose wandering down the street (actually, that DOES happen sometimes), winter all year long, beavers in the back yard, saying "eh?" and "aboot" all the time (which, yes, does happen a lot). They think that instead of policemen, we have Mounties in red coats who ride horses. Well. . . sometimes they do, on ceremonial occasions, but the rest of the time they just look like cops.

But there are a few central facts Americans don't know, very simple ones that might help them understand what we are about.

Canada is only 150 years old. It's a young country, much younger than yours, Bucko! So it has had way less time to establish an identity. It has approximately 1/10 the population of the States, spread out over the second-largest land mass of any country in the world. (Only Russia is larger.) Meaning, there are concentrated blobs of population in a few key areas, with almost nothing in between.

This, too, affects our identity. 

We don't have states. We have ten provinces, plus the Northwest Territories, the Yukon and Nunavut. That all sounds very Northern, doesn't it. Plus our flag has a leaf on it and has only two colours. (And by the way, we only got our flag in 1965! Before that we used the British Union Jack and the hideous Red Ensign.) 

Our history is incredibly dull. Virtually no bloodshed, except that Quebecois stuff which has now died down to a dull roar. Quebec hasn't separated officially, but emotionally and spiritually it's a nation unto itself. So within our Little Big Country, we have ANOTHER Little Big Country with a culture all its own.

One thing, a party trick I like to do with Americans (after I've shown them our loonies and toonies and see-through plastic money) is tell them, "You know, I've never seen a gun."

"What? You mean you don't own any."

"No. I've never seen one. Ever. In my life. In fact, I don't know anyone - have never known anyone who has. Oh, except one. A cop."

Does that sound lame, America? Does that sound un-colourful? (Note the "u" which lingers in colourful, along with certain other words which have retained their British spelling.) Don't underestimate us.

You've never had our chocolate bars. 

And they are the finest in all the world.

We don't have "candy bars", by the way, just like we don't have "soda". It's POP, for your information. These things matter to us.

The chart at the beginning of this post pictures OUR chocolate bars, proudly Canadian, and many of which are now "vintage" (no longer made). Seeing this was like Proust's madeleine moment, when biting into a tiny cake released a flood of memory:

"But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection."

(Caption: How do you like your coffee? 

CRISP! 

You like your coffee crisp? 

I like my Coffee Crisp!)

I was going to do a roundup or review of all these chocolate bars, one at a time, but there are so many of them. When I look at them now I feel simply overwhelmed. When you see or hear something you haven't even thought about for decades, it gives you a weird feeling. This is a phenomenon closely tied to the internet, social media, and nostalgia sites, which I haunt, dredging for meaning in the past and present.

Somebody will post a picture of something, and I'll think, my God, my God. . .I didn't think anybody else in the world remembered that! 

The most unusual of these was Neilson Treasures, which was really a mini-box of chocolates within a bar. No kidding, all sorts of different centres (note the spelling!): Turkish delight, bordeaux, chocolate, caramel, strawberry cream, and nougat. We had Sweet Marie, which was - well - yes, sort of like O Henry, but different somehow. Nicer name, for one thing. And Smarties: DON'T compare these to those waxy, tasteless M & Ms, please, because they are totally different, with a crunchy sugar shell and a milk chocolate melt factor that makes them ultra-superior.

Mackintosh's Toffee (good Canadian name, with a plaid wrapper) came in a bar, but you whacked it on something, kind of like Bonomo's Turkish Taffy, and it fractured into little pieces that warmed in your mouth, becoming deliciously chewy. I still buy this, but in wrapped kisses that have to be kept in the fridge. These have enough real butter in them that they won't keep for very long.

It's hard for me to believe that Americans don't have Aero and Caramilk and Coffee Crisp, but who knows? (The spelling of Aero might be changed to Arrow.) Crunchie has sponge toffee in it, but do Americans know what that is? Do they have it? The original recipe calls for boiling up a sugar syrup, throwing in some baking soda, running out in the back yard and jamming the pot into a snowdrift. Sounds like a Canadian thing to me.

Only some of these treats are obsolete. I had half a Crunchie with my coffee tonight. Half, because the bar is just too whacking BIG to eat in one sitting. Did the taste of it make me go all Proustian and madeleine-ish?

Not really, but I felt a certain melancholy. I keep thinking of that Joni Mitchell song about the fiddle and the drum, and the way she refers to "America, my friend". I don't hate Americans, but I am NOT friends with what is happening, because it seems evil. And I don't see how anyone can call that stupid, misogynistic jackass they elected "the answer" to anything. 

I just hope you guys, you know, survive the next four years, and for God's sake DON'T re-elect him. And don't try to come to Canada. You won't be able to. We have a strict immigration policy, you know?

I'll bet you didn't. 

50 gifts Canadians gave to the world!

You can never go home any more

My kind of town
my hometown was

My kind of town

a church made of bricks and boards
bannister slivers and varnish
old hallway, stained glass
school from the 1800s
squeaky floors
a purple runner on a communion table
horse pulling wagon with milk bottles rattling
a house made of glass and cedar
and the paste-white face of Milky the Clown

we sang the Elmer the Elephant anthem
here's what Elmer has to say 
on the street you never play
pilgrims of safety 
and obedience
an ivy-smothered brick partition
standing around the convent
old school        an old school
TV on all the time always the TV 
Captain Jolly and Poopdeck Paul
showing up late for choir the gown that got dirty
oh come and join the happy fair
if wonders you would see
all down the front I shouldn't be eating in it
"my teacher's name is Mr. Service"
riding on my brother's back
a cat named Timothy
who crawled behind the stove

we sat in rows, I couldn't see anything
the seats folded up on our desks the sides wrought iron
you had to have a milk ticket don't forget your milk ticket
I sang in rows it was junior choir
a song came on the radio
Maple City Maple City
"it's the store with the heart in the heart of town"
and then we went to the Spudnut Shop

Jesus Saves it said on the church on the corner
that no one ever goes into
or maybe I just don't see them
brown people 
kept separate
horses I remember riding horses
and the communion table
and all that stuff on TV hi-yo Silver 
horse chestnuts all brown and shining
a dog named Skippy skipping 
skipping double-Dutch
and growing up           changing
not wanting the changes very much

I see my town in amber and it's old and it's brown
it's my town
it's my kind of town

The clown that haunts my dreams

In the past I've spilled quite a lot of ink on Milky. Well, not literally, or his suit would be all splotchy. The Milkster was the creature who haunted my childhood from his roost on Detroit TV during the early 1960s. Everyone was supposed to love Milky, and the thing is, we did, no matter how freakish he looked. Clowns weren't viewed as creepy then, nor were dolls or puppets, which explains a lot about children's Christmas programming back then.

I hesitated on doing one of these giffer things about Milky, because all my photos of him were so shitty. Some of them were about the size of a postage stamp, but that's all I had.  A few were gi-normous scans of ads that look like they appeared in newspapers, since they have that yellowed, crumbling look. So I had to try to scale those down to fit.

Everything IN this montage is yellowed, when it isn't red, the waxy red of Twin Pines milk cartons. The stylized cartoon version of Milky is even more nightmarish than the original. Then there is the Milky merchandizing, which makes up most of this tribute because it's all I have. God, but it was awful. Those tshirts look like they're rotten, the wall clock is the color of a bad urine sample, that game is a shitty piece of plastic - but none of them can hold a candle to the ultimate piece of Milky memorabilia:

Yes. It's the Milky the Clown ash tray. 

BONUS FIND!  Who knows how I get into these nightmarish things. I just found an ad for a complete set of brand new, unopened, unused, pristine drinking glasses WITH MILKY ON THEM. You heard me. God knows how much they want for these things, because they are up for auction somewhere in the States. Compared to the plastic tumbler, they're pretty impressive:

One wonders, however, who would buy a set of these and just put them away somewhere. A time traveller, perhaps. Someone from the future who could see how valuable these were going to be. But I have never understood time travel. What if you met yourself? What if you gave yourself all sorts of advice about things NOT to do, so you would end up not having any of the learning experiences of your life and would end up a complete idiot? How could there be two of you at one time? But there would have to be, wouldn't there? Yet, my Einsteinian husband says time travel is theoretically possible. The whole thing makes me want to go to bed and stay there.

"Do you inhale?": Vintage cigarette advertisements

Here is another of my gif /slidehows of old ads. I've wanted to do one of cigarette ads for a while now, but once I started researching, I was inundated. There are just thousands of these things out there. I found whole sites devoted to them. They had all been neatly archived according to date and type. The fascination with these things continues, so full of jaunty lies.

Cigarettes were so normalized, so much a part of culture. They were associated with sophistication (long gloves and cigarette holder), rugged masculinity ("Come to where the flavour is!"), femininity (a bride throwing a bouquet after stubbing out her Lucky), and certain psychological benefits - lifting you up or calming you down, depending on which direction you needed to be levelled. And of course, there was smoking as social ritual, a harmless and fun form of recreation.

These ads exhort you to "be happy - go Lucky!" They depict adorable babies posing questions to their Moms and Dads about their smoking habits. Doctors exhort their patients to smoke Camels, because that's what THEY smoke. More than one ad asks "do you inhale?" Women are bursting with athletic health and glee, never getting fat because they smoke rather than eat.

Did all this shit work? I mean, did people actually buy them because of this propaganda?

Must have. Took a long, long time for the public to catch on. Mad Men was actually about the tobacco boondoggle and its eventual defeat, though the show then had to go on to other things (like foreign cars that wouldn't start, thus defeating carbon monoxide suicide attempts).

I saw a documentary about all this - hair-raising, it was, because by the end of it, it turned out Big Tobacco was doing better than ever, shipping their lethal substance overseas to the Third World where smoking makes the horrors of life just bearable. This is where you see pictures of three-year-old kids smoking.

Let's look at a few of these things in detail.

Babies abound in these things, and it's puzzling. Of course they're cute, but are the ads somehow, obliquely, telling women that it's OK to smoke while they're pregnant? They DID tell women that. Also that it was OK to smoke around them. Everyone did anyway. But I find this association especially creepy because it makes no logical sense.

One of the more chilling Lucky Strike slogans was "Smoke a Lucky to feel your LEVEL best!" This usually depicted a widely grinning young woman - in this case getting married and throwing her bouquet.  But it's the fine print that makes my stomach drop: "Luckies' fine tobacco picks you up when you're low. . . calms you down when you're tense - puts you on the Lucky level." Level seems to be the operative term here, the desirable thing. Cigarettes are being used as a drug to regulate mood. Did it work? Look at the explosion of antidepressant use today. Maybe we should bring back the Leveller?

No. No! Not one. NOT ONE SINGLE CASE OF THROAT IRRITATION due to smoking CAMELS! Now I know why we're asked not to use all-caps on the internet because it makes you seem to be shouting. In this case, an official-looking man in a white coat, presumably a doctor, is displaying case studies of people who have gone and smoked their brains out for months, and STILL do not display ONE SINGLE CASE of throat irritation. "Start your own 30-Day Camel MILDNESS Test Today!" Mildness is a term you see in a lot of these ads, along with flavour. To me, sucking smoke into my lungs via my mouth and tongue just wouldn't taste very good. But I may be wrong. I can see why it might put you off food, which in these ads is considered a good thing.

Let me just transcribe the text below the photo: "A really mild, flavorful smoke that enters your mouth pleasantly cool and filtered. Embassy's extra length of fine, mellow tobaccos provides extra enjoyment plus an extra margin of protection. Try Embassy! Inhale to your heart's content!"

This is completely chilling in light of what we now know about the value of filters in protecting people from cancer. They did absolutely doodlysquat, but for decades the public was told over and over again that they filtered out "tar" and other unwanted things. This was an obvious attempt to assuage public anxiety about all those silly things the Surgeon General had been telling them, that their lungs would rot and they would end their days coughing up blood in a cancer ward.

This is another aspect of the cigarette ad: gorgeousness. Some of these are just so beautiful to look at! How could anything so sophisticated and artful be bad for you? But soft! What lie through yonder advertisement breaks? Could it be - more reassuring text?

DO YOU INHALE? Luckies "makes no bones" about this vital question. "Keep that under your hat," said the cigarette trade when first we raised the question - "Do you inhale?"

But silence is golden only when it's unwise to speak. Let others explain their striking avoidance of this subject. Lucky Strike makes its position crystal clear. . . for certainly, inhaling is most important to every smoker.

For everybody inhales - whether they realize it or not. . . every smoker breathes in some part of the smoke he or she draws out of a cigarette.

Do you inhale? Lucky Strike "makes no bones" about this vital question, because certain impurities concealed in even the finest, mildest tobacco are removed by Luckies' famous purifying process. Luckies created that process. Only Luckies have it!  "It's toasted"

"Toasted" seems to imply that the tobacco has somehow been purified of carcinogens (a word that might not even have been coined back then). Someone in the tobacco industry waved a magic wand over it, rendering it harmless. Surely the good folks at Lucky Strike, the LSMFT people ("Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco") would know best, and would never do anything to harm the public. But those ads seem to bespeak certain nameless jitters among the general population, not to mention the tobacco industry itself.

Was it the fact that 90% of heavy smokers were pulling a Humphrey Bogart or an Edward R. Murrow in their final days and gasping their last in the cancer ward? Did no one put the pieces together? But if they tried to, Lucky reassured them: pish-tosh! WE don't mind discussing the matter even though everyone else is being needlessly coy about it. WE are honest about the fact that smokers inhale. But our product is so magically-produced, with shamans sitting out in the tobacco fields moaning incantations over it day and night, that those delicate throat membranes surely won't start to ulcerate, bleed, fester, bubble, blister and turn black.

A FRANK DISCUSSION AT LAST

on a subject that has long been "taboo"

"Let sleeping dogs lie!" So said the cigarette trade when first we raised the subject of inhaling. But dodging an important issue is not Lucky Strike's policy!

Do you inhale? That question is vitally important. . . for every smoker inhales - knowingly or unknowingly. Every smoker breathes in some part of the smoke he or she draws out of a cigarette! And the delicate membranes of your throat demand that your smoke be pure, clean - free of certain impurities!

No wonder Lucky Strike dares to raise this vital question! For Luckies bring you the protection you want - because Luckies' famous purifying process removes certain impurities concealed in every tobacco leaf. Luckies created that process. Only Luckies have it! 

So, whether you inhale knowingly or unknowingly, safeguard those delicate membranes!

"It's toasted"

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author page!

Really stupid things about the '60s

As with most of my posts, this one started off as something else: '60s phrases that are still in common useage today. This is unusual, given that by the '50s, most of the lingo from the '30s and '40s was kaput. Nor do we say "Daddy-o" or -. I cannot think of ONE more phrase from the 1950s still in use.

Likewise, the '70s: who remembers catch-phrases from that bland polyester era? All I can think of is "stayin' alive, stayin' alive," and that isn't really a catch-phrase at all.

But I do know that in the '70s, nobody said "23 skidoo". Nobody said "I love my wife, but oh you kid". And most especially, no one said that syllable that everyone used to preface EVERY sentence: "Saaaaaaaaaaay!"

Likewise, "I think you're swell". Or, "Are you sore at me?" Those phrases only exist in late-night movies on TCM.

But it never ceases to surprise me how often expressions from the 1960s still crop up in ordinary conversation, usually among people who didn't live through that memorably confused era. It was, shockingly, 50 years ago, and hanging on to catch-phrases like that never happens - never has before, and never will again. These are, in alphabetical order, as follows:

Boggles the mind

Blows my mind

Bummed out

Bummer

Do your own thing

Far out

Freak(ed) out

Freaky

Guilt trip

Hangup

Laid back

Lay a trip on

Mind-blowing

Mind-boggling

(not) my bag

(not) my thing

Oh wow!

Ripoff

Spaced out

Trip

Tripped out

Turned off/on

Uptight

Wiped out

Wired

Add your own, but these are the ones I skimmed off the top. Most of them are lame, and seem creaky and anachronistic, even inappropriate, in a setting like 2023 when most people aren't talking much at all any more (not even into their phones - they talk with their thumbs now, which is why we evolved with opposable thumbs to begin with). But still they pop up with alarming regularity, every day.

Having run out of ideas about this, I started thinking about related lame '60s things that somehow never go away.  And oh boy, there are a lot.

Item: 1960s pop songs with unintelligible lyrics. I already covered the Dada-ist mishmash Nikki Hoeky in another post (and I don't want to go there again). In some cases, there is just ONE line you can't decipher, a line that drives you absolutely crazy and leads to one bizarre mondegreen after another.

Like so:

A Hard Day's Night

It's been a hard day's night, and I've been working like a dog

It's been a hard day's night, I should be sleeping like a log

But when I get home to you I find the things that you do

Will make me feel alright

You know I work all day to get you money to buy you things

And it's worth it just to hear you say you're going to give me everything

(so what's the next line, what's the next line, what's the next line?)

So why on earth should I moan,

 'cause when I get you alone

You know I feel OK

(etc. etc.)

OK, what did YOU think it was? It was just an unintelligible blob of words to me. I don't know if anyone got it. No one asked, because even then, nobody listened to the words anyway, until Bob Dylan came along.

She Loves You

She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah

She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah

With a love like that

You know you should be glad

You know it's up to you

I think it's only fair

 (next line, next line, next line)

Pride can hurt you too

Apologize to her

Because she loves you

And you know that can't be bad

Yes, she loves you

And you know you should be glad, ooh

That one, I thought, was "frighten her to do", which doesn't make much sense unless you take into account John Lennon's shocking possessiveness with women ("I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than see you with another man").

And then there are a few songs that are just plain stupid, that make NO sense or are so dumb we can't quite believe they made the Hit Parade.

Little Green Bag

Lookin' back on the track for a little green bag,

Got to find just the kind or I'm losin' my mind

Out of sight in the night out of sight in the day,

Lookin' back on the track gonna do it my way.

Lookin' for some happiness

But there is only loneliness to find

Jump to the left, turn to the right

Lookin' upstairs, lookin' behind!

Lookin' back on the track for a little little green bag,

Got to find just the kind or I'm losin' my mind,

Alright.

(Note: the rest is just endless repetition).

Little Black Egg

I don't care what they say

I'm gonna keep it anyway

I won't let them stretch their necks

To see my little black egg with the little white specks

I found it in a tree

Just the other day

And now it's mine, all mine

They won't take it away

Here comes Mary, here comes Lee

I'll bet what they want to see

I won't let them stretch their necks

To see my little black egg with the little white specks

Oh, goldurn, what can I do?

The little black egg's gonna tell on you

I won't let them stretch their necks

To see my little black egg with the little white specks

The little black egg... [repeat to fade]

The "little black egg". Right. Knowing the '60s, people probably argued all night long in an altered state  of consciousness about "what does it mean?"

Beautiful People

Beautiful people

You live in the same world as I do

But somehow I never noticed

You before today

I'm ashamed to say

Beautiful people

We share the same back door

And it isn't right

We never met before

But then

We may never meet again

If I weren't afraid you'd laugh at me

I would run and take all your hands

And I'd gather everyone together for a day

And when we're gather'd

I'll pass buttons out that say

Beautiful people

Never have to be alone

'Cause there'll always be someone

With the same button on as you

Include him in everything you do.

Beautiful people

You ride the same subway

As I do every morning

That's got to tell you something

We've got so much in common

I go the same direction that you do

So if you take care of me

Maybe I'll take care of you

Beautiful people

You look like friends of mine

And it's about time

That someone said it here and now

I make a vow that some time, somehow

I'll have a meeting

Invite everyone you know

I'll pass out buttons for

The ones who come to show

Beautiful people

Never ever have to be alone

'Cause there'll always be someone

With the same button on as you

Include him in everything you do

He may be sitting right next to you

He may be a beautiful people too

And if you take care of him

Maybe he'll take care of you

'Cause all of the beautiful people do

And you're all beautiful people too

OK now, where do I start? It's just the general sappiness that I object to here. Melanie Safka DID have some good songs, I'm pretty fond of the "brand new rollerskates", Candles in the Rain was OK, and she wrote one - I just found out - called The Nickel Song that I heard Nana Mouskouri do decades ago, and loved. The lines that leap out and assault me are "'Cause there'll always be someone/With the same button on as you". I think of Eldridge Cleaver and "Kill All the White Men".

It's just that general, swampy, I-love-absolutely-everybody sentiment that sticks in my throat. "I'd gather everyone together for a day" for some reason reminds me of the afternoon I was held prisoner by some Jesus freaks in the 1970s. To this day I remember the mindlessness, the void I saw in their eyes, and I wonder whatever happened to them all. "Everyone" could include pimps, serial killers, Neo-Nazis, or . . . am I just too jaded by the horrors of 2016? No! This thing is DISGUSTINGLY naive! It's just. . .sorry, Melanie, I can't buy it. I don't have the same button on as you.

Any Guy

I was bored

I would not compromise

Wanted more

So I looked in your eyes

But it could have been any guy's

It could have been any guy's eyes

But your eyes were there

And they started to stare

But don't think that I care - No.

Now you got

The feeling you're great

'Cause we shared

A few looks

And I made one mistake

But it could have been any one

I was looking for that kind of fun

And you were right there

In love, all is fair

But don't think that I care

Now you got

A new friend I know

So I'm packing my things

And I'm going to go

Please don't make a scene

Don't cry

You can't stop me if you try

I love being free

It's the best way to be

Is she as pretty as me, huh?

Is she as pretty as me, huh?

Is she as pretty as me, huh?

Is she as pretty as me, huh-huh?

Is she as pretty as me, huh.

I included the whole lyric here because the ending is so obnoxious/nonsensical. I first heard Melanie perform this on The Mike Douglas Show, except that I didn't know it was Melanie because unless you read fan magazines, you didn't know what pop stars looked like, and I missed the introduction. It was the "huh, huh" stuff that drove me crazy, and the INTENSE way she did it. Before singing it, she explained to Mike that it was "kind of torchy". I didn't know what that meant.

ADDENDA. Hey, guess what! I found out some stuff here (on Wikipedia, so it MUST be right) that makes SOME sense of these lame lyrics. As with Nikki Hoeky, Little Green Bag might be a mixup in translation:

"Little Green Bag" is a 1969 song written by Dutch musicians Jan Visser and George Baker (born Hans Bouwens), and recorded by the George Baker Selection at the band's own expense. The track was released as the George Baker Selection's debut single by Dutch label, Negram, with the B-side being "Pretty Little Dreamer".

The track's original title was "Little Greenback", in reference to the color of the US dollar. The first line of the lyric, "Lookin' back on the track for a little greenback", has three rhymes (underlined); "green bag" would not be a true rhyme. However, the single was given the erroneous title, "Little Green Bag", which some took to be a "bag of marijuana". The "Little Green Bag" title was then retained for all subsequently released versions of the single as well as the group's 1970 debut album, also titled Little Green Bag. This is an example of a mondegreen.

I realize this explanation is a lot longer than the song. Sorry. But if you want to prove this to yourself, just listen to the recording of The Little Green Bag. It's very plain he isn't saying "green bag" at all, but "greenback". The k sound is very distinct. But we don't hear it that way unless we're expecting to. Makes me wonder about all the other things we accept on faith, because everyone else is doing it, or because we've been told it's the way it is - even though "they" are plainly wrong.

The Little Black Egg

"The Little Black Egg" is a song first performed by Daytona Beach, Florida garage band The Nightcrawlers in 1965. It was a minor hit in both the US and Canada, reaching number 85 on the US Billboard charts in 1967, while doing slightly better in Canada, where it hit number 74. The song has been since covered by multiple artists including Inner City Unit, The Lemonheads, Tarnation and The Cars. It was The Nightcrawlers' only hit, though many have claimed it was the first guitar riff they learned during the mid-'60s. The song was written in 1965 for an Easter concert, in which the band opened for The Beach Boys. Allmusic reviewer Matthew Greenwald describes the song as a "slightly bizarre nursery rhyme", with lyrics about a rotten bird's egg. Other explanations claim the song referenced miscegenation in segregated Florida.

Ohhhh. . . kay.  "I found it in a tree, just the other day." Miscegenation. Sorry, guys, it just does not work.

I do remember my friend Carmen's mondegreen on this song, so potent that everyone in the schoolyard went around singing it wrong:

"To see my little black apron with the little white specks."

At least it makes a bit more sense.

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

Cynthia on the throne

Get up and dance to the music!

Get on up and dance to the fonky music!

Dum-dumm du-du-du-du-du-dum-dumm

Du-du-du-du-du-dum-dumm - du-du-du-du-du-dum-dumm

[All:] Dance to the Music, Dance to the Music

[Freddie:] Hey Greg!

[Greg:] What?

[Freddie:] All we need is a drummer,

For people who only need a beat, yeah!

[Drummer]

I'm gonna add a little guitar

And make it easy to move your feet

[Guitar]

[Larry:] I'm gonna add some bottom,

So that the dancers just won't hide

[Bass]

[Sly:] You might like to hear my organ

I said 'Ride Sally Ride'

[Organ] 

Cynthia, Jerry!!

You might like to hear the horns blowin',

Cynthia on the throne, yeah!

[Trumpets]

Listen to me

Cynthia & Jerry got a message they're sayin':

[Cynthia:] All the squares, go home!

Aaaaah, yeah!!!

[Trumpets]

Listen to the basses:

Dum-dumm du-du-du-du-du-dum-dumm

Du-du-du-du-du-dum-dumm - du-du-du-du-du-dum-dumm

[All:] Dance to the Music, Dance to the Music

Written by Sylvester Stewart • Copyright © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner/Chappell Music, Inc

It took me a while to deal with this song, and it's not because I don't like it. Quite the opposite. I wanted to find the original so I could do a "mondegreen"/lyric clarification on it: none of us ever knew what all the words were, especially not through tinny AM radios in the mid-'60s. And it was intriguing to decipher them at last. The song is an example of soul music at its finest, flamboyant, infectious, full of spangles and stars. Later versions of Dance to the Music, some of them 14 minutes long, really let the band rip, and boy are they good, better than I ever remembered. This version seems tame by comparison.

Listening to a really clear stereo version of this is a revelation. We never had such an option back then. The little "guitar riff" I hear right after "dance to the music" isn't guitar! It's saxophone. Cynthia screams her head off like a banshee, which is great: whereas then, I wasn't sure there WAS a Cynthia. That shows how much I knew. This band not only has women in it (unheard-of in a major rock band), it has women brass players! And everyone knows a woman can't blow a trumpet. Don't tell that to Cynthia.

There was something glitzy about Sly and the Family Stone which would later be transmogrified into the much-slicker Fifth Dimension, but since they had the incredible Marilyn McCoo, all was forgiven in my eyes. I've never heard a voice with greater honesty and clarity, but at the same time, it was plaintive. "Bill!" she keened. "I love you so, I always will. . .Oh won't you marry me Bill, I've got the wedding bell blues." And this was right around the time I met MY Bill. Hey, the pop music of that era is so potent in my mind, so fused with those dizzy times, that I still do a little mental back-flip when I hear Crocodile Rock.

I'm working up to it, I'm working up to it, what I am going to write about. I can feel it coming on like a bad cold. It was the summer this song came out, my sister was home from university or Europe or wherever-the-hell-she-always-disappeared-to, before reappearing with something like an illegitimate pregnancy, a new fiance or a few quarts of very expensive booze. She considered herself to be a Liberal with a capital L, consciously cultivated friendships or at least associations with non-whites and radicals at whatever-the-hell-school-she-went-to, but when she came home one weekend from wherever, I made some reference to Motown music. 

She said, her face puckering in a disdainfully puzzled way: "What's MOW-town?"

I had the radio on CKLW (Windsor/Detroit), like I always did. Hey, this was Chatham, Ontario, with one of the largest black populations of any city in Canada, and a terminating point for the historic underground railroad (which I wouldn't find out about until many years later). Motown music was the pulsebeat of our lives. We were saturated in it. It blasted open the stodginess of this Victorian small town and brought it alive.

So. . . what is MOW-town. I will show you what is MOW-town.

I turned up the radio just as this song was starting. Well, someone on YouTube just pointed out to me that technically it's "soul music" (some might say "funk"), because it was never on the Motown record label. But never mind, it's the spirit of the thing.

To her credit, she did listen to it, all three minutes of it. I don't remember what she said, if she said anything, but her reaction was a sort of puzzled disdain.

The unspoken message was: if it wasn't by Brecht and Weill, if it wasn't by Alban Berg or Rautaavara, it was primitive and declasse and not worth listening to.

You can see why I have trouble with this. Oh, it's not this, not specifically. She was thirteen years older than me, and lived in another universe. I'd go stay with her in Toronto - it was a real treat for me, or at least it was seen that way - and she'd take me (I was fifteen) to adult parties and encourage me to drink heavily, and sometimes smoke pot. Older married men (I mean, in their 30s) hit on me constantly, since I was tender meat and would never say anything. The one time I DID go to my sister, terrified I would get pregnant, she looked at me with an arched eyebrow and said, "Nothing wrong with a little smooch and a snuggle after a date."

I understand all this somewhat better from my vantage-point of being about a million years older. I see now she was likely jealous of the fact that I attracted so many men - and I did, though the sloshing drunken atmosphere at these things was a factor, for sure. She once slashed at me for wanting to go sit in the living room: "Oh, so you want to go in there and sit with Derek and snuggle up to him and romance him?"

The really weird thing is, I didn't even know it was emotional abuse for years and years. The reason is, I was supposed to be grateful for this opportunity to have a social life. They were being nice to me by allowing me to drink and dope among them. And the weird thing is: I was grateful. It was a chance, and I was lucky. A chance at what? I probably had nine or ten full-strength hard-liquor drinks at these things, and went home and barfed my guts out.

What about my parents? Did they not have a clue, or what? My parents turned over in bed and went to sleep, telling themselves my sister and older brother were "taking care of me" and protecting me. But they attended some of these parties themselves, and they knew exactly what was going on. They even watched it happen.

So this song is like one of those jack-in-the-boxes, or those things that jump out of a can - you know, like the magicians have. This is but the tip of the iceberg, of course, and the abuse went on for years and years and years, but the very suggestion that ANY of it was abusive would be met with a "whaaaaat?" or a "Well, Margaret. . . you're crazy", said with a dismissive, who-gives-a-fuck shrug. In fact, "I don't give a shit" was one of her favorite expressions.

The thing is, though, my sister not only didn't find lasting happiness, she didn't seem to find any at all. She gave away her baby daughter, went through men (most of them married) like water, then slammed the door and decided she didn't need anyone. Maybe she doesn't. I am not sure.

I'm not big on this forgiveness stuff that is so fashionable right now, nor do I think I'll be consumed with anger and never find any peace unless I forgive her. A lot of people only pretend to forgive because they feel like they're supposed to. It's the thing, nowadays - you see it on television, on Dateline maybe - someone murders someone's daughter and they forgive the killer. Makes them look pretty damn saintly, so there is payoff. 

You know, this is pretty incredible, but I actually found a Facebook page for my sister, though it was established in 2012 and has two posts. I see this a lot, and I am not sure what it means. Why establish something you're not going to use? I also found a Facebook page for one of her old boy friends. I really liked him, and though he was very nice to me and flattered me, he never once made a pass. That was rare. I found a photo of him, and he's just an older version of himself, and you see the goodness shining out of his face.

But she dumped him. He had problems (her being one of them). He wasn't good enough. So fuck him, he was out.

There's a lot on the internet now about narcissism. Back then, I called it "Pat". It was this inchoate mass, this churning in my stomach, this feeling I would never be good enough and I wanted to die and it was my own fault. Now I know my sister was the queen of gaslighting, and she did it due to the sucking void, the great nothing, the three zeroes at the centre of her own life.

"So now you think you've got your whole life solved. Is that what you think?" This is what she said to me, verbatim, at my wedding. After watching me play Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, her reaction when she came backstage was, "You weren't boring." When I looked hurt, she gave me the "whaaaaat?" reaction. It's just incredible. But that's how it was, and maybe still is, or maybe not. Though I think she is still alive now, and living alone. She'd be 75 years old.

This always brings me around to "where we are now", and it does seem like a bloody miracle that my current family brings me such joy, such pride, so many good times, such laughs. But in spite of what she thinks, it didn't land on my head out of the sky. I co-created this situation with my husband, over 40-plus years of commitment and devotion. Some of it was very, very hard. Can you believe there was fallout from all that sexual and emotional abuse? I once told a psychiatrist about it, and halfway through the story I noticed his mouth was hanging open. "Why didn't you tell me about all this before?" "I didn't think it was important."

I was on the track of forgiveness, and got sidelined. What I can manage, at least part of the time, is pity. I just feel sorry for anyone who would feel that OK about slashing and burning and leaving the scene. I don't think she feels this nearly as much as the people in her path, however. Narcissists are good at dealing out cards, poison-dart tarots of death, but lousy at playing the cards they are dealt.

I'm not sure how Dance to the Music got me here, and I was sure if I followed this path it would take me into some rough waters. I still feel baffled, and I feel pity - I suppose condescending pity, but that's all right. Hey, feeling anything at all, being above GROUND after going through all that, is quite admirable, I think. 

My sister has always called herself a writer, and when she decided to be a novelist, she took home a hoard of my grandmother's old diaries and believed that if she read them, a novel would appear. She kept talking about wanting to get in touch with Margaret Atwood. They were obvious colleagues and just hadn't met yet. The novel never materialized, nor did anything else. In what world would a person like that ever risk shattering her most cherished illusions?

I've pursued my writing doggedly, written three published novels and keep on blogging, I suppose mainly for myself. But I do the work, that's the thing, I don't just talk about it. For some reason, trying to wind this up, I keep thinking of the setting for a gemstone. It has to be held by something, surrounded by something. In my case it was a sort of molten meteorite hurtling down from a death-planet, but somehow or other, the gemstone, the amber or hematite or whatever-it-is, stayed intact. It didn't really crack up after all.

Post-whatever. It occurs to me that my representation of the lyrics to Dance to the Music sucks raw eggs, because you can't even tell what it SAYS. I was too busy being fancy with the text, playing around with colour, etc. So here are the "real" words. I did change one word, sensing a mondegreen. Instead of "listen to the basses", I substituted "the voices", because I can hear an "oi" sound in there.


Get up and dance to the music!
Get on up and dance to the fonky music!

Dum-dumm du-du-du-du-du-dum-dumm
Du-du-du-du-du-dum-dumm - du-du-du-du-du-dum-dumm

[All:] Dance to the Music, Dance to the Music

[Freddie:] Hey Greg!

[Greg:] What?

[Freddie:] All we need is a drummer,
For people who only need a beat, yeah!

[Drummer]

I'm gonna add a little guitar
And make it easy to move your feet

[Guitar]

[Larry:] I'm gonna add some bottom,
So that the dancers just won't hide

[Bass]

[Sly:] You might like to hear my organ
I said 'Ride Sally Ride'

[Organ] 

Cynthia, Jerry!!
You might like to hear the horns blowin',
Cynthia on the throne, yeah!

[Trumpets]

Listen to me
Cynthia & Jerry got a message they're sayin'

[Cynthia:] All the squares, go home!
Aaaaah, yeah!!!

[Trumpets]

Listen to the voices:

Dum-dumm du-du-du-du-du-dum-dumm
Du-du-du-du-du-dum-dumm - du-du-du-du-du-dum-dumm

[All:] Dance to the Music, Dance to the Music

Written by Sylvester Stewart • Copyright © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner/Chappell Music, Inc