To the Editor:
This is a message for columnist John Governale. I am a long-time Advertiser Democrat reader who admittedly skipped over your column most of the time, until I retired, and found time to read all sorts of things I had been missing. I find “What I’ve Learned” is now my favorite part of the paper, and follow you most every week. I was amused by the recent column about misheard lyrics to popular songs. I remember hearing about a book called ‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy by Gavin Edwards. It’s a collection, with commentary, about these so-called “Mondegreens”, the title referring to the Jimi Hendrix song “Purple Haze”, and the oft misinterpreted lyric ” ‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky”. it contains such gems as “The ants are my friends/They’re blowin’ in the wind”, and “Sweet dreams are made of cheese”. I had unwittingly created several of my own when I was young, and forming a rock band in the seventies, when, in order to learn a song, we had to listen to the records, and give it our best guess as to what the actual words were. How I wish we had the internet back then! I would give some examples, but most are far too embarrassing for me to ever repeat. My personal favorite was one a high school friend had told me about. He said if you listen to the Beatles’ “Lady Madonna”, and sing along, using the words “knee deep in donuts”, that Paul McCartney would sing those same words along with you. Try it sometime!
Richard Larsen
Oxford.
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