One of my favorite albums is "What Up, Dog?" by Don and David Was' amalgamation of artists, Was (Not Was). It's a funky, eclectic mix of music styles including disco with heart. Somewhere In America Is A Street is one of the tenderest and most sinister songs you'll ever hear of the times. For the sake of reference, note that the album was released in 1988. Ronald Reagan was leaving office. The McMartin day care trial had been going on for 4 of the 6 years it lasted. Folks were shooting up fast food joints on the regular.
Listening to the song now to write this, I'm compelled to write the lyrics of the whole song because it's so darn, I don't know, darkly and subversively wholesome. To whit:
At night only crickets
No prowlers, no sirens
No pinkie-ring hustlers
No angel dust Byrons
No bars on the windows
No sabre-toothed neighbors
Just good simple folks
In a rainbow of flavors.
Somewhere
In America
There's a street named after my dad,
And the home we never had.
I'll work for Mr. Fowler
Making 50 cents an hour
And I'll save what I can
So I can get a piece of land.
I'll raise some cows and carrots.
Get ahead on my own merits.
And if I fall
I'll take it
Like a man.
Somewhere
In America
There's a street named after my dad,
And the home we never had.
No more bland TV dinners.
No ten car collisions.
No show biz beginners
Making global decisions.
No day care Fellinis.
No fast food assassins.
No billboard bikinis.
Just truth and compassion.
Somewhere
In America
There's a street named after my dad,
And the home we never had.
Universal Music Group won't allow embedding, but here's the link to watch the video.
That's how the album starts. It ends with Hello Dad, I'm in Jail, a screaming screed from a son who's...in jail.
In between is Out Come The Freaks, a Hollywood story. "Little Rita and her sister Betty/Met some mook who drove a purple Chevy/He took them for a ride/One summer night." Yeah. Woodwork squeaks and out come the freaks.
Earth To Doris, a melody-less beatnik story telling with percussion, recites a smarmy hook-up at a "loveless hotel and restaurant out on highway 33."
The "hit" Walk The Dinosaur. "Boom/Boom/Ackalacka Acka Boom"
Spy In The House of Love, is sung by my favorite artist on the album and frequent Don Was collaborator, Sweet Pea Atkinson.
Here's Sweet Pea whose name I love saying, twenty years later but still cool with the fedora. Watching this confirms that side men are the smoothest futhermuckers on the planet.
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