Dr. Frank's What's-it

I'm in Love with the Girl on the Manchester Virgin Megastore Checkout Desk

The recitation of label names in that Reunion song put me in mind of the label list-patter verse of the Freshies song with this post's title.

It's one of my all-time favorite singles, and one of a handful of songs that still play almost daily as fully-realized recordings in my head despite many years of exposure to other items that really ought to have replaced, or at least dislodged, them.

A legal threat from Virgin required that they re-record the vocals to replace the word "Virgin" with "certain," a seemingly minor change that nevertheless makes the re-done version nearly impossible bear. (They had to switch the words around to make it make sense in the new form, altering the scansion, a big part of the reason my brain refuses to process it without protest, I'd imagine.) A truncated recording of the real, non-grating one is on this myspace Freshies fan page. (I don't know where to direct you for the bowdlerized version, and perhaps that's just as well.)

Googling around, I found this article describing Richard Branson's quest to locate Helen, the girl the song was actually written about, in order to include her as a "guest of honor" as part of a promotion for something or other. Which is a bit rich, don't you think?

Posted by Dr. Frank at July 24, 2008 07:17 PM | TrackBack