A new old song about the girl I couldn’t get…
So, as mentioned, the aim for 2023 is to release a song a month, and song number 2 just went live yesterday.
It’s called Couldn’t Get the Girl, and if you have ever been to one of our live shows you probably know it because we do it almost every time. And we tell the exact same joke every time. Well, I guess not the exact same joke, because the joke has gone through a certain process of evolution.
I wrote it waaaay back, probably around 2004, and in the beginning performed it mostly with our band in Japan – a mixture of ex-pats and Japanese friends that we called fatblueman. The song won a contest that got it included on a compilation CD and that compilation made it’s way all over Japan, at least in the English-speaking community. At some point I should tell the story of fatblueman, but it’s a longish one, so we will save it for another time.
When Simon and Mick were 13 and 9 respectively and wanted to start busking at the Forks, it was one of the first songs that we did regularly. Simon was 13 and interest in girls was a new thing, so the obvious introduction banter for the song was,
“We call this Simon’s theme song. It’s called: Couldn’t Get the Girl.
Har har har. Everybody would laugh at the dad taking shots at his pubert son. That’s what my own dad used to call me when I was going through the awkward stages of adolescence. Pubert. It was at the same time Q*bert was popular. Yeah, he thought it was hilarious.
Anyway, Simon was a good sport about being the target of the joke, but little did I know how the turn tables...
Because eventually Simon did get the girl and the joke no longer made sense. So then we moved on to making Mick the punchline.
But things got real at a gig a while ago, our first post-covid show, during a time when Mick also found himself in a relationship. I unthinkingly launched into the song intro saying, “This is Couldn’t Get the Girl. We used to call this Simon’s theme song but now it’s Mick’s…. Wait a minute, Mick “got the girl” now too – so I am not sure who’s song it is…”
And without any planning (or warning), Mick says, “Well, you’re the one whose marriage fell apart so maybe it’s your theme song…”
The hundred or so people who were there erupted in laughter and cheers. I’ve always encouraged my kids to deal with difficult things head-on, with courage and honesty, but I’m not sure I meant that to be in front of a large crowd of people. But here we were.
So I told the audience, “You know how earlier I said that sometimes the luxury of songwriting is that it allows you to work through some heavy issues by writing in codes and riddles? Well, apparently tonight we are talking straight!”
And then somewhat magically, the whole night ended up carrying that theme. We spoke more honestly about the biggest questions of life and growth than we probably had ever done before. Live shows are funny that way. They take on a character and a certain life of their own that you can’t predict, sometimes in a good direction and sometimes not. But this night was one of the best ones. Near the end one of the audience members asked if we would sing happy birthday to a woman in attendance whose husband was at the previous year’s event, but had recently passed away. We sang the old traditional song The Parting Glass and she came up to us in tears at the end of the night speaking of just how much it meant to her. The whole night was like that.
So should I pour my heart out in this email, explaining away all the codes and riddles, and make it clear, once and for all, what the song is saying? Well, wouldn’t be any fun at all, would it? Who wants to limit all the possible interpretations, to squeeze all the art and mystery out? The closest I’ll come to that is this annotated lyrics sheet that Mick had me do:
