swimming.
After a long and nasty day of deviltry involving automobiles and the demon spawn of men, something a bit more refreshingly triumphant, like diving headfirst into an ice-cold beer, is surely needed:
The Swimming Song
This summer I went swimming!
This summer I might have drowned!
But I held my breath, I kicked my feet
I moved my arms around
I moved my arms around!This summer I swam in the ocean
And I swam in a swimming pool
Salt my wounds, chlorined my eyes
I’m a self-destructive fool
I’m a self-destructive foolThis summer I did the back stroke
And you know that that’s not all
I did the breast stroke, the butterfly
And the old Australian crawl
The old Australian crawlThis summer I swam in a public place
And a reservoir to boot
At the latter I was informal
At the former I wore my suit
I wore my swimming suitOh, this summer I did swan dives
And jack knives for you all
And once when you weren’t looking
I did a cannonball
I did a cannonball!This summer I went swimming!
This summer I might have drowned!
But I held my breath, I kicked my feet
And moved my arms around
I moved my arms around!
Take a fair use splash here
(Lyrics and music by Loudon Wainwright III, originally from the album “The Earl Scruggs Revue – Anniversary Special Volume One” (1975), featuring Earl Scruggs on banjo; Gary Scruggs on bass; Randy Scruggs on acoustic guitar, electric slide guitar, & banjo; Reggie Young on electric guitar; David Briggs on piano; Kenny Buttrey on drums; Doug Kershaw on cajun fiddle; & Loudon Wainwright III on vocals.)
My first encounter with Loudon Wainwright III came as a wee ten-year-old in 1972, when his novelty hit “Dead Skunk (In the Middle of the Road)” rode the pop charts.
He was married, from 1973 to 1977, to Canadian folk singer Kate McGarrigle. Kate and Anna McGarrigle, whose divine recordings have sat atop my Desert Island Discs since my full-baptism discovery in 1994, arrived on the music scene in 1976 with a self-titled debut LP of utterly irresistible traditional and modern folk (Anna’s “Heart Like a Wheel”, Kate’s “Talk to Me of Mendocino”) that topped critics’ lists at year-end. Enjoy their version of Loudon’s “Swimming Song”, set to video by others:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=lub6sxijTeA
http://youtube.com/watch?v=v3u_XzLx8ck
http://youtube.com/watch?v=eo2rm71D-Ak
Their sophomore effort from 1977, Dancer With Bruised Knees, was to their inner circle what Rumours, from the same year, was to the Fleetwood Mac ménage, adorned with searingly bittersweet odes chronicling love, longing and loss, and sustained the critics’ hosannas garnered the year before.
I saw Kate and Anna McGarrigle twice, at the Barns at Wolf Trap, Vienna, Virginia, mid-1995, and at Kaufman Auditorium, Marquette, Michigan, within Graveraet Middle School (formerly High School, my father’s, Class of ‘57), November 2003, the latter concert demanding without question my delaying a planned move. Go to YouTube, type “McGarrigle”, sort the results after your preference, and enjoy. CDs and DVDs will follow soon after, while I glance at my watch.
Loudon and Kate’s two children, Rufus (b. 1973) and Martha (b. 1976), have become noted musicians as well, rendering in tone, like their parents, their by turns thorny and comic family lives (recall, e.g., Loudon’s “Rufus is a Tit Man”).
Ha-ha-ha! I remember “Dead Skunk”, LOL! But, day-um, I wasn’t up on all this discography…I’ll have to check out these McGarrigles. Would it be presumptious to wonder if, as a Yooper, Gordon Lightfoot has also caught your ear?
Wo, one of my all time favorites. I used to sing his lullaby to my kids. Drove my wife nuts as it is not PC or particularly child appropriate. One of my all time fav lines was from the Man Who Couldn’t Cry. “The theologians were last and practically least”. Guess you have to hear the song and maybe have a beer on board.
OK, I am actually holding his Attempted Mustache ALBUM (yes, album) in my hand. The Swimming song is the first with all the lyrics on the back cover. Pretty weird and wonderful stuff. I cant remember if I ever played this for my son so maybe well put it on tonight. Thanks for the inspiration RJ. Now Im gonna go back and re-read all my Simon and Garfarkel album covers too.
Steve
Gordon Lightfoot assured his mythic status in the Great Lakes above the 45th parallel, of course, once his memorial tribute to “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”* hit the airwaves.
I attended a concert by Lightfoot in, I think, 1977, aged about 15, when we lived in the Cincinnati area, the time of his Endless Wire album tour. Imitating his voice and delivery, I gather, has become second nature in more households than mine growing up, as I gathered from the cultural afterlife of his signature song chronicled by
*Wikipedia:
# In the Seinfeld episode “The Andrea Doria,” Jerry and Elaine discuss the song. Elaine believes that Edmund Fitzgerald wrote the song and that Gordon Lightfoot was the ship that sunk. Jerry sarcastically responds that perhaps “it was rammed by the Cat Stevens,” another folk singer of the 1970s.
# Radio talk show host T.D. Mischke had an interview with an expert on the tragedy, but opted to sing his questions to the tune of the song. This was done without any warning to the person interviewed, who nonetheless answered back in a straightforward manner. Details of his interview made national media, including The Atlantic Monthly.