Simple Times, Stupid Music

The thing is, I like old stuff. I’m not someone who goes around only looking at the popular culture of previous generations with my mind focused on now and how all the not-now things are different and therefore bad. But there’s a certain era of music that I don’t really understand, and its the same one that gave us that “You say potato” song and that “Roly Poly” song from Pillow Talk. At this point in American culture, adults seem to have found entertainment in the kind of songs that today are sung by babies and perhaps children on bus trips who want test how close they can push their driver into taking the entire vehicle over a guardrail. I mean, what other purpose could “One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall” possibly serve?

Not long ago — but long enough, and you’ll shortly realize why — I was standing in a Borders and was subjected to one of these songs: Cab Calloway’s “Everybody Eats When They Come Over to My House.” I’m not saying it’s managerial decisions like this one that caused Borders to cease, but I’m willing to bet it didn’t help.

(And no, I do not know why the background image for the song is a butt. The other version I found was actually more offensive.)

Listen, if you like, or just check out the lyrics, but I’m boggled as to how this was okay for adults to enjoy. I’m actually further confused about whether ol’ Cab meant for, like, half of his food rhymes to sound sexual, though it’s hard to imagine he didn’t think about the implications of that opening pair of lines, “Have a banana, Hannah / Try the salami, Tommy.” And then the thing that seems strangest to me is Calloway’s seeming inability to find actual human people’s names that rhyme with food, which caused him to invite to his dinner party people named Mandrake, Irvy, Mendel, Fagel and Nashville. (Maybe everyone eats at your house because all the party guests suck?)

If this sort of thing gets to you to — and it should, thinking humans! — please examine below the lyrics to “Everybody Eats When They Have Come Over to My House,” which I wanted to highlighted in a matter that reflects my frustrations but I could not figure out how to do that on the new Blogger:

Have a banana, Hannah
Try the salami, Tommy
Get with the gravy, Davy
Everybody eats when they come to my house 

Try a tomato, Plato
Here’s cacciatori, Dory
Taste of bologna, Tony
Everybody eats when they come to my house 

I've fixed your favorite dishes
Hopin' this good food fills ya
Work my hands to the bone in the kitchen alone
You better eat if it kills ya 

Pass me a pancake, Mandrake
Havin’ a derby, Irvy
Lookin the fendel, Mendel
Everybody eats when they come to my house 

Hannah, Davy, Tommy, Dora, Mandrake
Everybody eats when they come to my house 

Pasta fazoula, Tallulah
Oh, do have a bagel, Fagel
Now don't be so bashful, Nashville
Everybody eats when they come to my house 

Hey, this is a party, Marty
Well, you get the cherry, Jerry
Now look, don't be so picky, Mickey
Cause everybody eats when they come to my house 

All of my friends are welcome
Don't make me coax you, moax you
Eat the tables, the chairs, the napkins — who cares?
You gotta eat if it chokes ya 

Oh, do have a knish, Nisha
Pass him the latke, Matke
Chili con carne for Barney
Everybody eats when they come to my house 

Face, Buster, share, chops, fump
Everybody eats when they come to my house
Everybody eats when they come to my house

Also, moax you? Also, I feel real bad for the guy nicknamed “Taste of Bologna” Tony.

Also, neither here nor there, really, but no one pronounces it “poh-tah-toh.”