I made some muffins earlier, and was reminded of the old children’s song 'Do you know the Muffin Man', and this in turn brought to mind a memory from my teens. *WARNING* This blog will be slightly swearier than my usual posts.
When I was 14 I had a friend called Jimmy, who didn't go to my school, but lived locally, and we soon fell into one of those intense friendships that you have in your teens. We'd hang out more or less every day, either at his place or mine, do bus trips to central London, and get up to the usual kind of teenage boy stuff that sometimes bordered on relatively harmless mischief.
Jimmy was not very impressed at my early attempts to learn the guitar. I could do G and C chords, but, as I'd not heard Jonathan Richman's 2-chord Roadrunner by that point, they weren't an awful lot of use to me. One evening we were drinking something - cider, maybe, or cheap lager, maybe those cans of Tennants with scantily-clad women on them to make teenage boys buy them - and got slightly tipsy. Jimmy picked up my 'Learning the Guitar for People Challenged by the Basics of Music' book. I'd not got as far as the 'advanced' section. Jimmy pointed out that there were actual songs there, and that I should try to play them. As they featured more chords than G and C, I failed miserably.
They were a mixed bag of children's tunes, and I can only remember 'Do You Know the Muffin Man', 'The Wheels on the Bus', 'Jimmy Crack Corn' and 'Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush', all songs that tend to repeat the title then add one more line.
As we were slightly drunk, we started singing the songs a capella, but instead of singing the last line, we just sang 'What a Fucking Cunt', so we went:
Jimmy crack corn, and I don't care
Jimmy crack corn and I don't care
Jimmy crack corn and I don't care
What a fucking cunt
…and so on... and collapsed into teenage boy laughter at each repetition of the new, 'improved' line. It seemed a good idea at the time. I still don't quite know what 'Jimmy crack corn' actually means... but as in the song so it is in real life, and I still don't actually care.
(In the Camberwell in which I grew up, the immediate answer to the question 'do you know the muffin man' would be: who wants to fucking know?)
If Jimmy is out there somewhere, we are, in theory, still available to sing at children’s parties.
When I was 14 I had a friend called Jimmy, who didn't go to my school, but lived locally, and we soon fell into one of those intense friendships that you have in your teens. We'd hang out more or less every day, either at his place or mine, do bus trips to central London, and get up to the usual kind of teenage boy stuff that sometimes bordered on relatively harmless mischief.
Jimmy was not very impressed at my early attempts to learn the guitar. I could do G and C chords, but, as I'd not heard Jonathan Richman's 2-chord Roadrunner by that point, they weren't an awful lot of use to me. One evening we were drinking something - cider, maybe, or cheap lager, maybe those cans of Tennants with scantily-clad women on them to make teenage boys buy them - and got slightly tipsy. Jimmy picked up my 'Learning the Guitar for People Challenged by the Basics of Music' book. I'd not got as far as the 'advanced' section. Jimmy pointed out that there were actual songs there, and that I should try to play them. As they featured more chords than G and C, I failed miserably.
They were a mixed bag of children's tunes, and I can only remember 'Do You Know the Muffin Man', 'The Wheels on the Bus', 'Jimmy Crack Corn' and 'Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush', all songs that tend to repeat the title then add one more line.
As we were slightly drunk, we started singing the songs a capella, but instead of singing the last line, we just sang 'What a Fucking Cunt', so we went:
Jimmy crack corn, and I don't care
Jimmy crack corn and I don't care
Jimmy crack corn and I don't care
What a fucking cunt
…and so on... and collapsed into teenage boy laughter at each repetition of the new, 'improved' line. It seemed a good idea at the time. I still don't quite know what 'Jimmy crack corn' actually means... but as in the song so it is in real life, and I still don't actually care.
(In the Camberwell in which I grew up, the immediate answer to the question 'do you know the muffin man' would be: who wants to fucking know?)
If Jimmy is out there somewhere, we are, in theory, still available to sing at children’s parties.
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