Hook the Rock--Rock the Hook

 

NOT the Clash

In their song “Hook,” Blues Traveler tells us that no matter what they say, the Hook will bring you back—that catchy little phrase that we all like to sing with when the chorus comes around.

                In the 1982 song by Clash, the hook was all I seemed to listen to, or at least quite understood.  There was something about the order of the prophet, but other than that, the chorus was the most singable part—sort of.  To my youthful ears, I was unsure of what we were supposed to be rocking.  It sounded like “catbox,” but why on earth would anyone want to shake the litter box?  Eventually I decided it must be “catwalk.”  Perhaps I decided that about the time Right Said Fred’s 1991 song “I’m Too Sexy” came out—he was always singing about models on the catwalk, after all.

So whenever the Clash’s song came on the radio, I always sang along:

"Sherri don’t like it. :: Rock the Catwalk, :: Rock the Catwalk.”

                 And then I found out that they were rocking the casbah.  What the heck is a casbah?  It is an Arabic word describing a citadel or an old part of a city.  I then began to suspect the song was more like something out of Arabian Nights with rajahs and harems and all that stereotypical stuff.

                Nope.  This is no Bollywood opening night thing.  The chorus actually tells us,
“The sharif don’t like it.”  Sharif is a term used to describe a noble and is a traditional Arab title.  The whole song came out of the banning of rock music by certain governments.  It’s a 1980s “stick it to the man” hit.  I really had it all wrong.

                So—the hook may bring us back, even if we have no clue of what the hook even means.  We will still “Rock the Casbah.”

                One day when I had grown up and knew the word was casbah, I was working an event which involved collecting money.  When the event had finished, I took the box of money back to wherever it was to be stored.  I held the box in my arms and began rocking it like a baby.  The people with me asked what I was doing.  I told them, “Rock the cash box!”  Yeah, the ones who got it groaned.  The others were like, “Huh?”  Some people just don’t get the hook (even if they should).

Vanity, Vanity

     My dad was always full of pithy sayings.  One day my sister and I were painting our fingernails, and he walked by and said, "Vanity, Vanity, all is vanity."  That, of course, is a quote from the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible.  Chapter one, verse two in fact.  In this chapter, "vanity" means pointless or meaningless or futile.  My father was critiquing my sister and my desire focus on our looks.

    Of course, this leads me to the most vain of songs: In fact, you probably think this song is about you.

    Carly Simon's 1972 hit "
You're So Vain" has had people asking for decades: "Who?"  Of course, Who is the band who let the dogs out into a teenage wasteland, so it seems to be the wrong question.  Oh, wait, sorry.

    We may never know the "you" of Carly Simon's song.  Part of it, she revealed is about Warren Beatty, but as to the rest, she keeps that a closely guarded secret.  There has been speculation over the years that it could be any number of men, but the world still waits to know.

    All that said, there is a misunderheard lyric--one that I did know know was misunderheard until today!

    The line I misunderheard makes me think of a guy I went to high school with.  Every day he would walk into the choir room for rehearsal and went straight to the mirror to look at himself.  In the song this guy did too, apparently, for she sang, "You had one eye in the mirror, as you watched yourself go by. . ."

    Apparently, he was a little more vain than that.  What she sang was, "You had one eye in the mirror as you watched yourself gavotte."  A gavotte, as you may or may not know, it a French dance (of peasant origin, funnily enough) in which the feet are raised instead of slid.  Apparently this guy liked to watch himself dance--he really thought quite highly of himself.

    At the end of the second verse, we find these lyrics:  "I had some dreams they were clouds in my coffee."  What is it with clouds and songwriters in the late 60s/early 70s?  After all, Judy Collins sings about clouds in her 1969 song "Both Sides Now."

    Anyway. . .I never misunderheard the part about clouds in my coffee--I always knew they were clouds in my coffee (esoteric much?).  Yet sometimes I can't help think that she says "clowns in my coffee."  That must make your coffee taste funny. (rim shot)

     I hope you don't think this blog is about you, but I hope you read it so that what I have written is not vanity.