"She's So Funky Now" [sic]

I was grabbing some lunch the day before our trip to Montreal (which, of course, was the day before my wife and I were going to see Peter Gabriel in concert) when I heard "Games Without Frontiers" playing on the radio.

And when I did the math in my head I suddenly felt very, very old.

Because when I heard the song it brought back the memory of when I was young and how I thought the chorus to the song was "She's so funky now". It wasn't until I read the liner notes that I realized the chorus actually was "Jeux sans frontieres" and I was struck by the fact of how wrong I had been and how cool Peter Gabriel was: he was saying the title in French and I had misheard it in English. (Years later I learned that Peter Gabriel took the title and the chorus from a French game show. Which didn't make it any less cool. As a matter of fact, it managed to make the song and its title even more relevant once I read the premise of the television show.)

(Oh, and I still think that "She's so funky now" is a rather interesting mishear-ment of a song. Perhaps it's not as interesting as the classic and horribly incorrect "Excuse me while I kiss this guy", but it's still pretty good.

And my other great mishear-ance was from Randy Newman's "Sail Away": Rand sings "We will cross the mighty ocean into Charleston Bay". But I heard "We will cross the mighty ocean in just one day." The true lyric has historical context, but my lyric is perfectly acceptable within the cruel salesmanship of the song.)

Back to jeux sans frontieres: I remember doodling the words on a French test in high school because I thought they were cool and because I wanted to show my French teacher that I knew something besides the verb conjugation I had learned so very inadequately in his class. Because of all that I'm able to place the song at a certain time in my life.

But then, after all that flashed through my mind, I did a wee bit of quick math and I realized -- ahh crap! -- that if I scribbled the song's chorus in high school, it means that the song is now more than 30 years old! Which makes me -- well, much older than I usually think I am.

(As an aside, Wikipedia informs me that the song came out in 1980 which indeedly-deedly-doo confirms that the song is 30 years old. But it also goes to prove a point: I don't need wikipedia as long as I can rely on simple math skills and the continued kindness of women who continue to wear sandals so I can count on their beautiful painted toes when I've run out of fingers and toes of my own.)

(Oh, and did I mention that Peter Gabriel recorded an Oscar-nominated Randy Newman song for the soundtrack of "Babe, Pig in the City"? Randy Newman finally won an Academy Award a couple of years later. Peter Gabriel was nominated for a song in "Wall-E" but hasn't taken the trophy home yet.

Having said that here's a clip with Peter Gabriel singing "That'll Do" with Rand on the piano...)

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xan3b7_peter-gabriel-randy-newman-thatll-d_music


As for the concert in Montreal...