No offense intended at all, but I have to disagree. Brilliant, yes, but lampooning, no. If anything, I think Andre 3000 was paying tribute to those great sounds of yesteryear in “Hey Ya.” The guy is an accomplished musician as well as a rapper, and his side of the new Outkast album, “The Love Below,” has a lot more soul and funk and smooth retro-Prince-style jams like this song on it. He even looks like he’s having a great time in the accompanying video. I don’t think he was lampooning at all, but paying homage to music he loves and probably grew up listening to.
An old one from the 50’s: Transfusion by Nervous Norvus.
“Slip the blood to me, bud; shoot the juice to me , Bruce; pass the crimson to me Jimson!”
And, God help me, I used to love Telephone Man by Meri Wilson (1977):
*Hey, baby, I’m your telephone man
You just show me where you want it and I’ll put it where I can
I can put it in the bedroom, I can put it in the hall
I can put it in the bathroom, I can hang it on the wall
You can have it with a buzz, you can have it with a ring
And if you really want it you can have a ding-a-ling
Because-a hey baby, I’m your telephone man"
…
My heart began a-thumpin’ and my mind began to fly
And I knew I wasn’t dealin’ with no ordinary guy
So while he was a-talking I was thinkin’ up my plan
Then my fingers did the walkin’ on the telephone man
…
I got it in the bedroom, and I got it in the hall
And I got it in the bathroom, and he hung it on the wall
I got it with a buzz, and I got it with a ring
And when he told me what my number was I got a ding-a-ling*
Have you ever heard her other Dr. Demento nod, Peter, the Meter Reader?
*Here we go again
I was lying on my back porch just a-getting some sun
Had my hair done up in pigtails had my swiming suit on
I was just about asleep when there came a shadow over me
I opened up my eyes to peek and what did I see-ee
There was a man what a man looking down on me
Tall dark and handsome, six foot three
There was a look in his eyes that was telling me
He knew that there was something that he wanted to see
He said “Hi my name is Peter
And I’m here to read your meter
I’d like to see your kilowatts
Could you take me to your box”
I didn’t have the slightest notion where that box could be
But I said to Peter won’t you follow me
We went upstairs downstairs inside and out
I just loved having Peter follow me about
He said “Hey what’s with you fox
Can’t you take me to your box
I came here to see your meter
They call me Peter the meter reader”
By the time he found my meter it was a quarter past four
And he said to watch my heater as he was walking through my door
Every single kilowatt was a-looking just fine
And he’d be coming back to see them in another month’s ti-i-ime
So now I’m waiting yes I’m waiting so patiently
To have my sweet sweet Peter read my meter for me
Maybe I should tell you so you’ll understand
That Peter used to be my telephone man
Singing hey-laddy-laddy hey-laddy-laddy hey-laddy-laddy
Get it any way you can
I’ve never done anything like this before…well…
*
Also, Ms. Wilson died just about a year ago, December 28, 2002, of multiple injuries in a car accident.
Yes, I did hear Peter, the Meter Reader, but not on Dr. Demento. Meri Wilson actually got her start right here in Atlanta in the mid-70’s performing at a nightclub in Underground Atlanta (back when Underground had nightclubs). So her novelty songs got fairly regular airplay locally. Eventually she came back to Georgia to raise a family and teach choir. Her death last year in an SUV accident came as quite a shock.
Some other somewhat contemporary groups that pushed goofiness out into the mainstream:
Presidents of the USA
Primus
They Might Be Giants
So novelty music isn’t dead, it just takes some looking…
Boogie - John Hartford
Hey babe, you wanna boogie?
Boogie-oogie-oogie with me.
Of course, you have to hear HOW he sings it…
A few no one has mentioned
Smut by Tom Lehrer.
Some have a hobby
Like tennis or philately
I have a hobby
Rereading Lady Chatterly
and the words I live by
- When correctly viewed
Everything is lewd
I got it from Agnes is not bad either. Isaac Asimov, in vol. 2 of his first autobiography, gives the words to Lehrer’s song about the Boston Red Line subway, which is sung to the tune of that awful “put them all together they spell mother” song.
The Homecoming Queen’s got a Gun is nice and sick.
Flanders and Swann have many very good funny songs, including one on the three laws of Thermodynamics, to go with The Elements.
Well, if heavy double entendre makes for a novelty song, I nominate
Baby, Let Me Bang Your Box
If You See Kay
and
She-Bop
Poppa’s Got A Squeezebox
One of my favorites was “I Wanna Kiss Her But She Won’t Let Me” by Tim Cavanaugh (sp?).
He would sing it with a gap so it sounded like, “I wanna kiss her butt … she won’t let me.” Then the song was filled with puns referring to where the sun don’t shine. Very clever stuff.
TROGLODYTE (CAVE MAN) - Jimmy Castor
“She was a big woman. BIG woman. Her name was Bertha. Bertha Butt. She was one of the Butt sisters.”
I had that LP too!
“He was sitting there, twirling his gun around / and Butterfingers Irving gunned himself down.”
That climactic line was hilarious when I was 10. Most of the song I didn’t quite get, though: the Jewish stereotypes, i.e. nearly all of the lyrics, flew over my head until much later.
Buttered Popcorn-Supremes
The Thing -Phil Harris
My Ding a Ling- Berry’s Biggest hit & ironically he didn’t write it. Written by Dave Bartolomew & sung AFAIK 1st by the Three Bells in 1953.
Name Game- Shirley Ellis
Psycho- Bobby Hendricks
Anyone recall the one where the guy stole a car from the factory he worked in, one piece at a time? I remember hearing it while doing laps around the Cincinatti airport, and it almost made it bearable.
And then there’s pretty much anything by DaVinci’s Notebook, especially their most popular song, “Enormous Penis”. Other good ones to consider include “Heather Graham” (a pretty good ode to a really hot gal) and “Kingdom in the Sky” (an old-timey gospel song about the Magic Kingdom that awaits us all… in Orlando Florida).
*All my life I have been searching
for that fabled promised land.
With my sisters and my brothers,
I shall walk there hand in hand
through the trials and tribulations,
and the Devil’s cruel temptations:
I know that we will all get there someday (some day).
After years and years of wandering
Oh, the kingdom we shall find (find the kingdom!)
And the doors may not be open,
But we’ll gather in the line.
And our hearts will swell with pride
The day those gates swing open wide
And we take a walk down Main Street USA (ay, ay, ay…)
Oh that Magic Kingdom in the Sky (in the sky)!
We will all be there together by and by (by and by)!
We will all drink from the fountain
and go riding on Space Mountain
when we reach that Magic Kingdom in the sky.*
I just gets funnier from there.
One piece at a time - Johnny Cash
http://www.lyricsondemand.com/j/johnnycashlyrics/onepieceatatimelyrics.html
The guy stealing a car was by JCash-forget title.
Shell Silverstein’s Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout, who would not take the garbage out.
Okay I have to throw this out there 'cause there’s enough Baltimore dopers that one of them will remember this…
it being the holiday season and all, especially
There’s a local radio station (98 Rock,I think) that does a wonderful spoof version of “Walkin’ in A Winter Wonderland”
entitled “Walkin’ in an Essex Wonderland” or something like that.
Who can forget lyrics like “you kin make an orn’ment frum a Bud Can”?
BTW, any B’more dopers that know what I’m talking about and know where I could get a copy of that online, I’d be much obliged.
Cheers
A Former Baltimoron
“May the Bird of Paradise Fly up Your Nose” was not by Lonnie Donegan! It was by “Little” Jimmy Dickens!
The Teeming Millions are hereby invited to give me the Flaming I deserve. :o
Any fans of the “Yoopers” here?
“I want a Rinky-Dinky Dodad for X-mas” A great song for the season.
Ah, Da Yoopers!
Forty Point Buck is hilarious.
Deer Hunter’s Widow and I Married a Couch Dat Burps are also funny.