Cancel Culture Club #8: In The Summertime

Welcome back to the feature where distinguished members of the blogosphere decide whether certain dodgy-opinion-voicing records of the past deserve to be cast into Room 101 (or sent into exile, which as I'm sure you'll know, if you've read 1984 rather than just watched the BBC show with that name, is a very different thing).

Eurythmics - Room 101

After last month's weighty debate about whether domestic abuse should be excused via the medium of popular song, I thought I'd choose something a bit lighter this month. Of course, the danger of that was that nobody would have much of an opinion either way... or, as Swiss Adam put it, "I can't really come up with anything for Mungo Jerry - I'm pretty ambivalent about it."

Membership of the Cancel Culture Club is on an unpaid, and entirely voluntary basis. So if you ain't got no opinion, you are fully entitled to say that and watch the tumbleweed blow across your screen. But before we see if anyone did have strong feelings one way or t'other, let's remind ourselves of this month's defendant...

When I initially searched the web for "songs that should be cancelled", this was one that initially had me scratching my head. A radio staple from my youth - what could possibly cause offence? 

C from Sun-Dried Sparrows... can you answer that question?

I'd almost forgotten about this one, sorry! But I think it's because 'In The Summertime' doesn't elicit any strong response in me other than the memories of hearing this so much as a kid and being mesmerised by Ray Dorset's sideburns on ToTP performances.  I'd never seen anyone like him.  I've never really given it much thought other than to accept it as one of those catchy, singalong, happy sounding songs, part of the soundtrack to  my childhood.  And, apologies, but to use words that come up so frequently in this series, it's another one of those that's very of its time.  Maybe we're being more conditioned to take things literally now, but to me this song is just too lightweight for the lyrics to be of concern that way.

Therefore - yes, it references drinking and driving, it's laddish and hedonistic, but it's just not a song to be taken seriously on any level. so I wouldn't cancel it.   

I'd cancel his sideburns, but that's just me.

(I think their follow-up 'Baby Jump' may give more cause for alarm - although it's a great grungey track!)

Mungo Jerry - Baby Jump

Baby Jump? What on earth's wrong with that, C?

She wears those micro-mini dresses

Hair hanging down her back

She wears those see-through sweaters

She likes to wear her stockings black

And if I see her tonight

You can bet your life, I'll attack

Oh.

OK.

Did I choose the wrong song this month?

She got beautiful teeth

A toothpaste ad-man's dream

She got a beautiful form

The best I've ever seen

I'm gonna get her tonight

I don't care where she been

On second thoughts - "a toothpaste ad-man's dream"? I hope that's not your best chat up line, Ray. Or you're definitely going home alone tonight.

The Maccabees - Toothpaste Kisses

Anyway, back to In The Summertime. I was just about to draw the shutters down on this particularly uninspiring edition of the Cancel Culture Club when a last minute missive flopped through my virtual letterbox. And boy oh boy... it was a doozy.

Joe Jackson - Rant And Rave

A hearty welcome back to SWC from No Badger Required...

There are a lot of things wrong with ‘In the Summertime’.  Obviously, there are the lyrics, but I’ll come back to them.  But before all that, you’ve got the awful plinky plonky piano nonsense that is trundling along in the background and the stupid noises that Ray Dorset makes across the song and all his grunts and groans that make it sound like he is dry humping his pillow during the closing bits of the song – all that I suppose is bad enough to cancel not only this song, but the band, their entire back catalogue and most of the seventies with it.  Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if ‘In The summetime’ erm, popped up in one of those awful ‘Confessions…’ films starring Robin Asquith.

Anyway, let’s look at the lyrics, which were, even 50 years ago, depressingly stalkerish.  You can imagine some crazed sex offender playing this track as he packed his little rape kit up and stuck it in the back of his Ford Anglia.

It starts, ok:

 

In the summertime, when the weather is high 

You can stretch right up and touch the sky.

There is not much wrong with that to be fair, although I’m not sure how weather can be high, but we can skip over that. It’s the, well, rest of it that is a bit squirmy.

When the weather's fine

You got women, you got women on your mind 

Have a drink, have a drive 

Go out and see what you can find

Hmm, women on your mind, eh, well we’ve probably all been there, but have a drink, have a drive, go out and see what you can find….  I’ll refer you back to my line about the crazed sex offender and his Ford Anglia. It, unbelievably, gets worse.

If her daddy's rich, take her out for a meal, 

If her daddy's poor, just do what you feel.  

Speed along the lane, do a ton or a ton and twenty-five. 

When the sun goes down 

You can make it, make it good in a lay-by

So….Ray….rich girls, needs to be spoiled, before they let you have your wicked way, but those poor working class lasses, well they’ll probably put out for 50p and a bag of grapes,  right??!?  

You can tell he's the South West Correspondent. "Bag of grapes"? How posh is that. It'd be a bag of chips where I come from, lad. 

Personally, I'm always impressed that they managed to get the word "lay-by" into a song, with all its sordid connotations. I was going to look if I could find any songs about dogging, but I decided to not risk putting that term into my search engine.

Porcupine Tree - Heartattack In A Layby

Apologies, SWC. Do continue...

But not content with a planned molesting of a some really unfortunate female, you are also going to scare the life out of her by driving at a hundred and twenty fives miles a hour, after ‘having a drink’ and then pull into some layby for a bit of how’s your father…I’ll refer you back to my comment about Robin Asquith…

But its ok, folks, because Ray has a philosophy….Oh goody.

We're not grey people, we're not dirty, we're not mean. 

We love everybody, but we do as we please.  

When the weather's fine, we go fishing or go swimming in the sea.  

We're always happy, life's for living

Yeah, that's our philosophy

Not quite sure which school of philosophy that comes from, possible Foucault and his Idea of Top Down Coercion or maybe Kant’s lesser known Theory of Blatant Misogynistic Bollocks. 

Ray – love – you are grey, you are dirty and you are pretty mean.  I don’t care if you love everybody, you really can’t do as you please, not now, not then.  That’s why Dave Lee Travis can’t be on the radio anymore, he had that attitude and it wasn’t cool.  Stick to your fishing and your swimming, at least then might get washed away by a rogue tidal wave.   

Ah, I do love a good rant. They're the very oxygen this feature lives by. So thank you to SWC for that - and the rest of you, with your mild ambivalence: look what you're missing.

We might do another one of these next month. Or this might really be the last gasp. That's my philosophy.