#doesn't even need to be folk rock but like a titular artist

[gimmeshelter]

why did we ever stop making movies like the graduate and harold and maude... there should be as many coming of age movies about social misfits in an age gap relationship connected to counterculture with a central folk rock soundtrack as there are folk rock artists

[allthemusic]

Week ending: 12th February

I kind of appreciate when a novelty song lets you know on first glance that it's a novelty song. None of these novelty songs with plausible titles for me - I respect it when a song doesn't try and trick you into listening to it. And this song, whatever else one may say about it, is at least honest about its joke status.

Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour (On the Bedpost Overnight?) - Lonnie Donegan (peaked at Number 3)

Yeah, the title of this song tells you everything you need to know. It's about whether your chewing gum loses its flavour when you stick it to a bedpost overnight. That's literally all you need to know. I have no clue why Lonnie wants to know that, or whether this was a common pratice, back in the day. And notably, "back in the day" here means back in 1913, which is when the first version of this song came about, and was used in a sketch by a Vaudeville artist. So yeah, despite the obvious silliness of the premise, this is actually a song with a history.

I think the Vaudeville connection explains a lot of the vibe of this song, actually. Because you've got that same quick shift between daft bits, like the one about a church choir interrupting a groom's wedding vows to ask the titular quesiton, or the nation going to the White House to ask the president, little unconnected jokes and one-liners, like the If tin whistles are made of tin / What do they make foghorns out of? bit, and even just nonsensical patter, like the line that's just a series of weekdays. It's scatter-brained, and just feels kind of random.

Also, a bit of a tangent, but after the lame foghorn joke, Lonnie shouts boom boom, which I only knew, before hearing it here, as the catchphrase of kid's TV talking fox Basil Brush. Intrigued, I looked it up, and it turns out that "boom boom" was an old music hall meme that developed from somebody playing a sort of "boom boom" on the drums after jokes, a sort of proto-"ba doom tshh" sound. Performers began doing it verbally, after that, which you still apparently get in panto - which is the tradition Basil's creator was drawing from. I'm really not a panto-goer, so I had no clue that was what was going on at all. A fun side-track.

Honestly, I'm having a lot more fun with this than I expected to. I normally don't like novelty songs, because they're trying to hard to get a laugh from me, and a lot of the time, the jokes just don't land. And it's not that they land here, exactly. Quite the opposite, there's a lot about the song that kind of grosses me out, but it's still somehow not as cringey as I thought it might be. There's enough skiffle in it, I think, between the frantic pace and strummy guitar and shouty, repetitive delivery, that I can kind of forget that it's Lonnie trying to be "funny" and just appreciate it as an extension of Lonnie's generally quite chaotic vibes. It's not an American folk song, but the overall effect is stunningly similar.

I also appreciate the live recording - the wild reaction from Lonnie's fans at the end make him sound much more punk rock than he has any right to come away from this sounding. By the end, I'm almost convinced I'm listening to something that's actually cool. And then I see the title and remember that this is a song about sticking chewing gum on your bedpost overnight. Which... yeah. Still gross.

I had a lot more fun with this than I expected to. I can absolutely see how Lonnie's mix of wild delivery, cheap production values and slightly daft music hall lyrics could have been pretty influential with later bands like the Beatles, honestly. Even the accent's not a million miles away - or it's at least a step towards proper regional British accents in music. Normally Lonnie's doing his best impression of an American hillbilly, so it's kind of nice to hear his "normal" accent here. Or at least a distinctively British accent, because he still doesn't sound very Glaswegian. Ah, well.

Favourite song of the still-gross-but-surprisingly-okay bunch: Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour (On the Bedpost Overnight?)