FRITTERIN'! FRITTERIN' AWAY! Go. Go now and read Linda Holmes' deep dive into The Music Man's "Ya Got Trouble," and not only will you enjoy her analysis of how cultural panics never change, but you'll also find out, finally, what Bevo and Cubebs are:
And ragtime! Shameless music that will grab your son, your daughter in the arms of a jungle animal instinct
Well, it wouldn't be a classic cultural panic without a little appeal to racism about a genre of music that originated in black communities and how it's going to bring out the out-of-control, sex-having jungle animal in your nice little kids (including daughters, mentioned here for the first and only time during a rant that's been mostly about boys).Yes, it's another song for which there is a performance by the My Little Pony players.
Clearly, the solution to this problem is to buy our city a bona fide, electrified, six car monorail!
ReplyDeleteMon-o-rail, mon-o-rail, mon-o-rail >.
ReplyDeleteAs I said over there, when Mandy Patinkin sang the song on one of his albums years back, he
ReplyDeletekind of highlighted a similar point by inserting a line in the
"knickerbockers" section--after the line about nicotine stains he adds
"is there a crack vial hidden in the corner?" The modern reference jars
the listener into putting the warnings Hill is using to rile up the
crowd in context. That said, that he chooses a "crack vial" to do so is
odd - crack being more of a real danger, I'd posit, than ragtime.