Long ago, I was one of the New Savanna Stompers. We were an intellectually improvisational group headquartered on somebody's Mac. That somebody, Cuda Lee Brown has disappeared into the mists of time. But one of the central stompers, whose pseud I forget, Bill Benzon remains as he was, a musical shaman with that rare gift of extraordinary literacy. There are few I've ever known whose life of the mind was not squandered on tutoring undergrads or chasing the sinecures of academic departmentalism. In other words he is a scholar without being a scholar-squirrel, and he understands the joy of discovery.
Well, Bill, whose work with any luck will come to help us understand exactly what goes on inside the brain when we hear music, has picked up the old riff of the New Savanna. And he's started off with researching that little piece of music we all know that is the cliche whenever we see a snake charmer in a movie. You and I sung it on the school yard. In 90016, circa 1970 it went a little something like this:
There's a place in France
where the naked ladies dance
and the men wear bikinis
and the ladies suck their weenies.
Don't ask me how I know it or how I know it like that. It's a mystery. This version, which claims me, bears the telltale signature of that meme is a fifth grade memory. You know the tune too, probably. What were the lyrics in your case?
Now that I think about it, the riff came back in hiphop form with the song 'Egypt, Egypt' by the Egyptian Lover back when I was in college and nobody could think to do anything else with that electronic sound that came out much better than Newcleus' Cosmo D from outer space. Thought I do recall that the good Doctor Spence fondly recalls 'Space Cowboy' from the same period. Spence too was a Stomper.
So do check out Benzon. Now is a good time to return to the savanna.
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