Boy do I feel dumb
When I was in the music business a flash in the pan act called Ugly Kid Joe played at my nightclub, they had some radio success in 1992 with (I Hate) Everything About You, a song that was featured in the Wayne's World movie.
They arrived at my club, a place in Charlottesville called Trax where I did more than four hundred gigs as house sound engineer and probably another one hundred as an apprentice engineer or soundman for a band playing at the club, with what we called the LA Attitude, they rolled in on a tour bus, had an all business staff of west coast pros, would not mingle with the locals and were quite simply total dicks.
They filled the club, probably more than 600 people that night, maybe more, my recollection is hazy. They performed their hit to end the show, then performed their other big radio hit as an encore, an electric cover of Harry Chapin's Cat's in the Cradle. The almost completely under 30 crowd went nuts.
In the aftermath of the show as I wandered the stage and floor tearing down for the evening I eavesdropped on a number of conversations by young people in the crowd waiting for the band to come back out and sign autographs and visit with the fans, which they never did, after cursing us jerkwater rednecks and our shitty club, dressing room, staff and facilities they hopped they ass back on they tour bus and headed out of town.
In these overheard conversations I was struck by a common thread: there were young people in the crowd, mostly teenagers, that ACTUALLY THOUGHT CAT'S IN THE CRADLE WAS AN UGLY KID JOE ORIGINAL. Comments like dude how did they come up with that song and wow he must have had a hard time growing up judging from those lyrics.
After the show on beer detail we had a good laugh about that, there was some kid who was going to hear the Harry Chapin original on the radio or on his dad's stereo and say hey those guys are covering Ugly Kid Joe! Upon which the dad would have a good laugh and pop another Prozac.
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Well today on my iPod a Pretenders song popped up, from the soundtrack to the movie Boys on the Side, the song was called Every Day is Like Sunday. I recognized it immediately from the NFL commercials that started running last year, I love the refrain from that song and the accompanying NFL imagery and often find myself singing it alone when I am working on the blog because well, when you write a seven day a week blog about the NFL every day is a little like Sunday.
I confess I had not heard that song before and did not even know it was a quote real unquote song, for all I knew it was made up for the commercial and performed by union studio cats making scale in LA. Ha, a Pretenders song used for an NFL commercial, pretty clever I thought.
Then I decided to Google it. Every Day is Like Sunday is not a Pretenders song, it is a Morrissey song. It was originally released on Morrissey's 1998 album Viva Hate, the Pretenders covered it for the soundtrack to Boys on the Side, released in 1995.
A quick check of the Google results finds a lot of people pissed off at the commercialism or having a good laugh at how dark the lyrics actually are if you listen to them.
But the Jeff Bridges - Jessica Lange King Kong from 1976, the one where he climbs the World Trade Center towers, that's totally the original that Peter Jackson copied, right?
Idiot test from here.
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