In the opening theme to the “Maude” TV series, ably vocalized by singer and gravitational acceleration experimenter Donny Hathaway, there is a line that I misunderstood when I was a kid:
Joan of Arc, with the Lo-ord to guide her–
she was a sister who really cooked
When I watched this program as a kid, I thought he was saying “she was a sister who really could.” Could what, I didn’t know, but never gave it much thought. Now that I know better, the actual word does make a little more sense.
That show had CONRAD BAIN!!! So you know it’s gonna kick butt, ooooooooh yeah!!!
Another famous cryptic line from a sitcom theme song is where Archie and Edith on All of the Family sing “Gee, our old Lasalle ran great” but it sounded like it could be “GRO and Sal ran great” or “Giarola Sour Grapes”. I believe that they even redid that part of the intro in the show’s later years, with Archie and Edith enunciating that line more clearly.
When TV Guide magazine did an article a couple of years into the show’s run, they printed the first couple of lines from the intro, to which I said, “Aha!”
Apparently, I was not the only one, because in a subsequent issue, a reader sent in a letter that said, basically, “I’ve always wondered what they were saying.”
Just sang the enire thing. Thanks. I’m still waiting for a group like Me First and the Gimee Gimee’s to do an album of old TV theme songs in punk. (and yeah, I have the one of the cartoon themes.)
::Walks off singing “One Banana, Two Banana, Three Banana, Four…”::