The first in an ongoing series, unless I change my mind and don't do any more
I've got less than a year and a half before joining the creaky ranks of the thirty-and-over crowd, so now is a good time to reflect back on some things I've learned in the past decade.
For example, while there very well may be someone named Annie Cavanagh somewhere on this planet, she is not mentioned by name in the J. Geils' song Love Stinks. For the first twenty-odd years of my existence, I'd thought Annie Cavanagh was someone who'd spurned Peter Wolf, and calling her out by name was some sort of revenge. Take that, Annie! You got served in a top 40 radio staple!
The other idea was that maybe Annie Cavanagh was a noted romance or etiquette guru with a weekly advice column/radio show, like Dear Abby or Dr. Joyce Brothers. I'd never heard of her, but lots of songs name-drop people who were famous when the song came out, but lose their relevance as time goes on, like Sir Edward Heath in Taxman, or the little-known fifth verse of America the Beautiful that praises James Henderson Blount's plan to overthrow the Kingdom of Hawaii. So the idea that Annie Cavanagh was a well-known talking head in the late seventies/early eighties that has since drifted from the public's consciousness is not unheard of.
But alas, there was no Annie Cavanagh. Turns out the line is actually "I don't care what any Casanova thinks". Even so, I still think Annie Cavanagh sounds better. That Casanova line sounds like it's missing a syllable. Cas'nova. And really, who cares what Annie Cavanagh thinks?
Monday, January 21, 2008
Things I Found Out In My Twenties
Monday, January 21, 2008
John
5 comments
5 comments:
Maybe Annie Cavanagh is thinking about "big old Jed in a lighthouse", which is what I used to think Steve Miller was singing about.
Nahhh... she was wrapped up like a douche, another runner in the night.
I'll be curious to see what else you learned. Other than little girls cry a lot.
I was in my twenties before I found out the proper words to "Hotel California." I knew the ones I was singing weren't the right words, but I couldn't come up with anything better, so I used to just belt out...
"On a dark desert highway
Cool wind in my hair
Once smelled a policeman
Rising up through the air."
Someone explained to me that it was
"Warm smell of colitas
Rising up through the air."
That didn't make much sense. I looked up colitas, but couldn't find a definition. Then, I thought maybe they had meant "colitis," which is an inflammation of the colon, but that just makes the song disgusting.
In a related story, I was really confused by that part of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" where:
"Somebody calls you
You answer quite slowly
The girl with colitis goes by."
Sigh... no wonder those damn hippies did so many drugs.
There's an Eric Clapton song called Forever Man, which I thought A.) was called Fall River Man, and B.) was sung by John "Gomez Addams" Astin.
Won't you be my Fall River woman?
I'll try to be your Fall River man,
Try to be your Fall River man.
River man, River man, River man.
Fall River Man, try to be your Fall River Man.
I don't know why I thought Mr. Boogedy had recorded an adult contemporary rock song about Fall River. But I did. And he didn't. I'm sad now.
I always thought Clapton was singing about a "Floor Level Man."
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