October 19, 2017

You're My Hostess Cupcake

(Cross-posted at Medium, with photos.)

Earlier today, mostly because I had seen an article that mentioned cupcakes, I started thinking about cupcakes, and social media'd these lyrics:

...and you're my cute little melon ball, my Lawry's Season Salt, you're my dearest wish, my gefilte fish, my alcohol, you're my Bud Tall, and you're my baby doll...
I figured most people in my sloppy, oozing, bootless inner circle wouldn't be fazed or confused by it, and that those outside it wouldn't care. But I did get some questions about what the heck it was.

So... the lyrics are from a song I wrote for the Go-Nuts, which is a Mel Bergman (Phantom Surfers) project featuring the scarily talented Deke Dickerson.) It appears on their Dunk and Cover album (LK243) and sounds like this:

Well, when I say I wrote it for the Go-Nuts, it was actually more like, Mel called me up and asked if I had any songs.

"Sure," I said. "What kind of songs would you like? Buy one, get one half off."

Go-Nuts songs, he explained, could only be on any of three topics: snacks, superheroes, or gorillas.

Luckily, I happened to have one in stock that fit in the broad category "snacks."

The title as written was "You're My Hostess Cupcake", but they changed it to "Bombay" to make it funnier. (This was around the time when the Smugglers recorded my "She's Another Thing" and "Coffee, Tea, or Me?" -- I was on a song shark roll there for a brief stretch.)

I've always liked the song. Maybe one day I'll release my own version in some form. Then again, maybe I won't.

Anyways, though it's not strictly a "cover" I suppose because it's the original recording that just happened to be written by me, I don't happen to have a playlist for that, so... on the covers playlist it goes.

(I once opened for John Waters's spoken word show at a theater in Philadelphia and happened to play that song. I had to rush off to another show after but as I was leaving he said "gefilte fish" and nodded rather knowingly, which I took as an oblique expression of approbation and which was my second favorite thing he ever said to me. The first was: "so, I've heard you have a human skull.")

Posted by Dr. Frank at October 19, 2017 02:14 AM