The Judge
RAVES!
Date: 10/12/21
An Outstanding Proposal
Long-term readers will know that I have a somewhat veering sense of humour.
You may, therefore, imagine my response when I saw this headline the other day in the Gurniad:
I immediately had this image of foundering old men shuffling around the care home with a part of them pointing permanently at the moon while they struggled to recall what the hell it was they used to do with it.
It also brought to mind the following song, which I first heard on a Dr. Demento show back nearly twenty years ago.
Viagra® In The Waters was performed by Camille West (with her producer Scott Wodicka as co-author) and appeared on her 1999 solo album Diva's Day Off. A studio version appeared the following year on an album by Camille's band The Four Bitchin' Babes, entitled Beyond Bitchin': More Life According To Four Bitchin' Babes.
The solo version was recorded live, and what you're about to hear was obviously snipped from Dr. Demento's show, hence the slightly odd start and the rather poor sound quality.
What adds to the interest (for me, at least) is that it is clearly a take-off - in concept and to a smaller degree in lyrics - of the late, great Harry Chapin's song 30 000 Pounds Of Bananas. Here's the live version of that song - showing Harry's rapport with an audience and his band - from the double LP Greatest Stories - Live (1976):
(A song which, incidentally, he agreed never to perform in Scranton, Pa. This was because the song - as Harry explains near the end - was based on a true story, and the widow of the truck driver asked him not to. Chapin, being a tender-hearted man by nature, readily agreed.)
So, anyway, here's Camille West's re-imagining in a more modern context:
