Honey Got A Booty Like Pow Pow Pow

The radio hosts were interviewing Robert Matthew Van Winkle. I did not know the name, but I guessed he was a relative of Rip Van Winkle. Wrong. Van Winkle is actually quite famous, but under his stage name, Vanilla Ice. That name I had heard. The hosts were apparently about the same age as my children, teenagers in the 1990s, and they recounted just how rapturous they became when they heard the opening bars to Ice Ice Baby. While I knew the name, it occurred to me that I had never actually heard the song. Spotify helped me correct that lapse in my education. It was, to my surprise, a rap or hip-hop tune (to this day I do not know the difference between the two) and apparently it was one of the first of that genre to become a big hit. 

I quickly decided that this tune, no matter how famous, was not my cup of tea. My music is jazz from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, and samba and bossa nova from the 1960s. But it did start me thinking about why different generations have such vastly different tastes in music.  

As best I can tell, we become bonded to the music we hear in our pre-teen through teenage years. The quality of that music seems not to matter at all. It is our music because it is of our time. So, for me, it is the big band music I listened to at night as I fell asleep. Of course, during the day, I listened to the Raleigh rock and roll radio station, and some of that music resonates with me today. But my real love is big band music.  

I associate that music with a very happy time in my life. My parents would see to it that no harm came to me, which gave me a feeling of security that vanished the moment I became an adult on my own in the world. A happy childhood, a feeling of security, and warm memories associated with particular music on the radio fused in my brain in such a way that the first few bars of Take The A-Train never fail to make me smile. Something similar is probably operating in the brains of the younger generations, the ones who apparently think that rap is actually music. 

Still, one would think that at some time the quality of the music would come to the forefront. There are some wonderful lyrics to my big band music. Not all are winners, but you can hardly go wrong with a Hoagy Carmichael tune with lyrics by Mitchell Parrish or Ned Washington, or just about anything by Cole Porter. The tendency to write quality lyrics tended to fade a bit in the 1950s (“You ain’t nothing but a hound dog, cryin’ all the time”), but there were some winners even in that decade (“Darling, you send me”). And, yes, even the 1960s had its star lyricists, such as George Harrison (“Something in the way she moves attracts me like no other lover”).  

Compare those lyrics with “Honey got a booty like pow pow pow”. 

Brad Upton does a comedy skit about children and their music, which he calls the worst music he has ever heard in his life. You should watch it on YouTube. He did ask his son to listen to Harrison’s Something and describe what he heard. What his son heard was “Honey got a booty like pow pow pow”. 

Upton did all fathers a favor, though, in teaching us how to convince the kiddies to change radio stations: just sing along. 

“Honey got a booty like pow pow pow.” 

“Dad!” 

“You can call me Flintstone ‘cause I can make your Bedrock.” 

“Dad! STOP!!”