Friday, April 21, 2006

Sweet Home Buckinghamshire?

This scene has played out three times in as many days: I'm sitting at my desk, surfing the web for recipes that will somehow allow me to whip up a meal using the ingredients I have in my fridge (mustard, salad dressing, shortening, frozen peas) when I suddenly hear the strains of "Sweet Home Alabama."

I leap to my feet, scurry to the window (getting tangled in my computer/radio/reading lamp electrical cords and almost causing half my room to collapse in on itself) and realize the sound is coming from a vehicle stopped in traffic out front of my house. But WHICH VEHICLE?

Today, I determined two things:

1. It's not the old school Lynyrd Skynyrd version of "Sweet Home Alabama," (you know, the song that was actually a big screw you to Neil Young for his song "Cortez the Killer" which Skynyrd considered anti-South American*), it's just that distinctive - what do the kids call it? a riff? - with some guy rapping over it. And I don't even think he's rapping about Alabama, but I can't really tell.

2. It seemed to be coming from a black SUV with UK plates.

If this were an episode of "Murder, She Wrote" it would be the beginning and Jessica would now find out who was driving that SUV and why they were so devoted to "Sweet Home Alabama" that they played it constantly (because they must - this has happened at completely different times each day).

This is MY show, however, and I say "It came from a black SUV with Brit plates - CASE CLOSED."

Roll credits.

*I know, I know, it was "Southern Man." But I'm a total spaz when it comes to knowing things about the music I listen to - things like who sings it, what's it called, what's the name of that pear-shaped instrument with the strings the lead singer plays? I always come to grief in discussions about music because I run up against people who can not only answer questions like these, they can also tell you what the studio musicians had for lunch the day they recorded this track, what brand of guitar pick the bass player used, where the drummer bought his pants. So I've decided to give up any attempt at being right and concentrate instead on being extravagantly, gloriously WRONG!

1 comment:

maire said...

sylvainsylvain, how right you are. maybe i could actually rip the CD out of the player in the SUV while it's parked at the lights some day.

stepan, i always suspected you were doing more than covering your business sector (moravian knee socks)when you were typing up a storm at the people's news agency, and now i know - you were pumping out "murder, she wrote" scripts!

i'm looking for a good recipe for enriched uranium even as we speak...