Music In My Shoes
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Music In My Shoes
E79 From Smokey and the Bandit to Someone Saved My Life Tonight: Love Will Tear Us Apart
Jim and Jimmy explore iconic cultural moments from the 70s through 90s, connecting the dots between classic films, personal memories, and music history touchpoints.
• Smokey and the Bandit and its filming locations throughout Georgia
• Memorial Day memories spanning from 1977 to 1990
• Joy Division's tragic story and how Ian Curtis's suicide led to New Order's formation
• The existence of "Callin' Oates," an emergency Hall & Oates hotline
• Deep dive into Elton John's "Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy" album and its autobiographical themes
• The significance of They Might Be Giants' "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" and The Clash's "Train in Vain"
"Music in My Shoes" where music and memories intertwine.
Learn Something New or
Remember Something Old
Please like and follow the Music in my Shoes Facebook and Instagram pages and share the podcast with your friends on social media. Contact us at musicinmyshoes@gmail.com.
He's got the feeling in his toe-toe.
Speaker 2:He's got the feeling and it's out there growing. Hey everybody, this is Jim Boge and you're listening to Music In my Shoes. That was Vic Thrill kicking off episode 79. As always, I'm thrilled to be here with you. Let's learn something new or remember something old, Eastbound and down, loaded up and trucking. Are we gonna do what they say can't be done?
Speaker 1:We got a long way to go and a short time to get there. Way to go and a short time to get there. I'm eastbound. Just watch old Bandit run.
Speaker 2:You're familiar with it, those famous words by Jerry Reed in the movie Smoky and the Bandit. You like the movie.
Speaker 1:Love that movie. Yeah, classic.
Speaker 2:It is a classic. I absolutely love it. I just re-watched it, probably about two weeks ago.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, I probably haven't seen it in 30 years, but I still hold it in high regard in my mind.
Speaker 2:I still enjoyed it. I love that We've talked about that several times where you listen to something or you watch something and then you re-look at it years later. Does it stand that test of time? Well, smokey and the Bandit definitely did so. It was good. So it stars Burt Reynolds he's the Bandit. Sally Field as Frog, as the Bandit called her. Jerry Reed as Cletus the Snowman that was his handle. Yeah. Jackie Gleason as Sheriff Buford T Justice, I mean, I laugh just every time you hear that name. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And they shot a lot of it right around Atlanta here.
Speaker 2:Yes, they did. They sure did. Pat McCormick was Big Enos Burdette and Paul Williams was Little Enos Burdette, so Pat McCormick was a comedy writer. I think he wrote for Carson and wrote for different people. He actually streaked across the stage on one of Carson's monologues in the early 70s, but he didn't really do much except write comedy for other people that would use it on their shows. Right Did a good job with it, mm-hmm for other people that would use it on their shows.
Speaker 2:Right Did a good job with it, mm-hmm. Whereas little Enos Paul Williams, he wrote or co-wrote and tell me if you knew this. He wrote, I knew some of it co-wrote or wrote Three Dogs Night, an old-fashioned love song, the Carpenters We've Only Just Begun and Rainy Days and Mondays. Barbra Streisand Evergreen, which is from A Star, is Born back in the I guess that's the 70s, and I just find that just amazing when a person that is playing a comedy role in Smoking and the Bandit is someone that wrote all those songs.
Speaker 1:Yeah right.
Speaker 2:It's just crazy Things like that that really grabs my attention.
Speaker 1:Did we talk about Paul Williams once before? I can't remember if I'd.
Speaker 2:I feel like that might be on my list. I feel like we might have, I don't know, all right, for some reason, while I was thinking, I was like did we talk about Paul Williams doing this?
Speaker 1:I know that I found out recently that he worked with the Carpenters and I can't remember the reference, but I'll figure it out at some point.
Speaker 2:I believe the song We've Only Just Begun was actually a commercial for a bank?
Speaker 1:Yes, exactly.
Speaker 2:And then somehow the Carpenters got into and like yeah, I think karen carpenter can sing this, and somehow it became this big song yeah from a commercial that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1:So paul williams wrote it for a commercial and richard carpenter literally heard it on the air and was like gosh, that's a cool song, I think we can make something out of that. And they got together and like made the full version of the song and the Carpenters recorded it and it was a hit.
Speaker 2:Sharing horizons that are new to us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that sounds like a commercial, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:Watching the signs along the way Good for you.
Speaker 2:Talking it over, just the two of us. I mean, it's so funny talking about the Carpenters, but it is because of Paul Williams, who is little Enos in Smokey, and the Bandit. I love when things are all connected. That's kind of like my thing. Really, do they need to go get some beer from Texarkana because there's a bet that they can't get it to Atlanta within a certain amount of time? Smokey is Sheriff Buford, t Justice the police officer. The bandit is driving the Trans Am and then Cletus the snowman Snow is driving the big rig that they're going to get the beer with. And you know all kinds of misadventures and gags and all kinds of things that are happening.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you just took it for granted back then that okay. Well, if you're a trucker, you need like a Trans Am that follows you around to confuse the police, like that was just okay, that's part of the movie. All right, that's cool.
Speaker 2:And it worked. It worked, it worked. It really did work. Um, you know, it opened up Memorial Day weekend in the South. One of the things they did with the movie is they opened it up earlier in New York city at radio city music hall. It did not do well, did not go over well whatsoever at Radio City Music Hall.
Speaker 1:It did not do well, did not go over well, whatsoever Weird place to open it.
Speaker 2:Yes, then they ended up opening it up in the South Memorial Day weekend and as the summer went on, they opened it up in different parts of the country. Very crazy, you know. I'm not sure if that was a common practice, but that's just. You know what they did. So, as you mentioned, a lot of it was filmed, you know, here in Atlanta. I believe just about the whole thing was filmed in Georgia. Yes, a very cool place to see a concert, and Lakewood Fairgrounds had this roller coaster that, if you not to be a spoiler, but if you haven't seen Smokey and the Bandit 2 yet, you're probably not going to see it. In Smokey and the Bandit 2, they actually have a scene where it comes down because of a chase through, you know, underneath the trestles or whatever you call that's holding up the roller coaster.
Speaker 1:Yeah, an old wooden roller coaster.
Speaker 2:Called the Greyhound. That was in effect used from 1915 to 1974. That's a long time for a wooden roller coaster.
Speaker 1:Oh, so it had been defunct for a little bit and they were like, hey, what if we blow this up for the movie? What?
Speaker 2:if we blow this up. Yeah, they actually painted it so that it looked good to just blow it up and take it down, which is crazy. So all of that area, except for the amphitheater, is a studio with multiple locations to do different things sound and everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Including that one building, that Spanish-style looking building. That's where you know they used to have the flea market. The Lakewood Antiques Flea Market was there forever. If you wanted to find something, you could go there and find it. No matter what it was, they had it. It was insane. They just had so much there. It was really cool. Some of it was, they had it. It was insane. They just had so much there. It was really cool. Some of it was filmed up in Helen. Some of it was filmed Highway 54, the chase scenes, a lot of the chase scenes between Jonesboro and Fayetteville, jonesboro a lot of the town was used in the movie.
Speaker 1:I drove past a restaurant that they ate at in the movie and it's the one when Buford T Justice walks out. He's got toilet paper stuck on him, mm-hmm. And uh, somebody pointed that restaurant out to me. I think it's over in Jonesboro.
Speaker 2:Really yeah. So recently I found out that some of the film was done right by where I live and I've been on this kick trying to find out different spots, different things that you know took place. So exit 13, on Georgia 400, right by me, the bandit drives North on Georgia 400, the entrance ramp, so he's the southbound entrance ramp, he's driving north, and then he comes up and he goes over Georgia 400. And then on the other side he comes down the grass with the police chasing him and that's where the police car kind of like starts tumbling over and goes around. That's my exit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'll tell you back then because I lived in Atlanta back then. Exit 14, which back then was called exit 10, was no man's land, Like that was out in the boonies. There was no commercial development or anything around there then.
Speaker 2:And exit 14, which is Highway 20. That's.
Speaker 1:Highway 20.
Speaker 2:Exit 13 is Peachtree Parkway For anybody that's out there. It also becomes, I think, bethelview once you get on the other side of 141.
Speaker 2:But it's really cool because now I'm like always looking like, oh, this is the exact thing, you know, it's still kind of the same, like the bridge is still the same, the embankment is still the same, everything. And when you look at it it's really cool to be like, oh, this is where they filmed. So they also did the scene where the police car ends up on the back of the flatbed truck and the officer yells out to the truck driver can you drop me off at the next exit. It just cracks me up. I just laugh. I kept rewinding that. I just find that so funny. Still Buford Dam, another place that's right by me that they filmed it at. So it's really cool that I didn't know this for all these years.
Speaker 1:And then, recently I've you know found out about it and I just thought I would share it you should host tours of like Smokey and the Bandit, you know star tour thing where you show people where everything is.
Speaker 2:And I could act like Jackie Gleason, please. You know I got to be honest with you and I think that's a great idea. Jimmy, maybe I will do that when I'm not podcasting. I could do some tours of the film locations. But as much as you had Burt Reynolds and the Trans Am because the Trans Am was its own entity in the film you know some people watch it just for that, that's all they wanted to see and as much as you know the whole story of Frog you know leaving her, you know groom at the altar and everything I don't think this film is anything. What it's become without Jackie Gleason. He was unbelievable as the sheriff, oh yeah, and had his son. You know the guy that portrayed his son in the movie. It was just unbelievable.
Speaker 1:So just so people know, jackie Gleason as Buford T Justice was the movie dad of the guy who got stood up at the altar, so he called him Junior, correct, yeah.
Speaker 2:And throughout the movie would say things like I can't believe you've come from my loins, I can't believe when I get home I'm going to punch your mama. I mean just all these different things, because it's just something else. And if you take away the jackie gleason part, that movie is nothing like what it became true, yeah, he was an important part oh yeah I mean the music was a big part.
Speaker 1:Jerry reed's music was integral to to the movie and what a good singer too.
Speaker 2:I mean, his voice was perfect. You know, he could do a great job.
Speaker 1:And we know the song as Eastbound and Down, but actually when they were driving west to get to Texas he did a version that said Westbound and Down.
Speaker 2:Which is like 10%, as good as Eastbound and Down.
Speaker 1:Because by that time they had the beer.
Speaker 2:Westbound and Down is playing right in the beginning of the movie. It's not anything. But then, when eastbound and down comes on, you want to get in a truck, you want to be driving and you know, you want to be going. You know, just like they did in the old days.
Speaker 1:Yeah when you drive past a trucker, when you're a kid and you do that thing with your arm, and then they honk their horn.
Speaker 2:They honk their horn. Yeah, it was fantastic. I used to do that all the time. I think every kid would do that. You know, of course, why wouldn't you?
Speaker 1:It's your right as an American.
Speaker 2:I didn't think of it that way. I'm going to look and see if it's part of the.
Speaker 1:It's not in the Constitution, okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:But hey, I would have looked.
Speaker 2:I would have looked so like I said, smoky and the Bandit was released Memorial Day weekend 1977 in the South. Let's move up three years to 1980, memorial Day weekend when the New York Islanders won their first NHL Stanley Cup championship on May 24th. So they went on a Saturday and it was their first you know championship. And I live probably about 10 houses off of a road called Hempstead Turnpike in Levittown and that's like the main you know road around the horns and people screaming, just driving up and down. People were lining the streets like a parade was going to happen but they just won. There was no parade yet it wasn't decided. It was so cool, it was like nothing I had experienced before and throughout the entire night just the horns and you know the Islanders thing is you know.
Speaker 1:Oh, so everybody's doing that yeah everyone's doing that.
Speaker 2:It was super cool. So the next day, sunday, I delivered the paper. Back then I was a newspaper delivery boy and on Sundays I had a shopping cart because the paper was big and on the front page, you know, it was black and white newspaper, but they actually put kind of a little bit of added some color and they had Dennis Poppin, the captain, holding the Stanley Cup over his head and then they had like Islander colors, a little bit in actual color. And I'm like, all right, which one of the people on my route really isn't going to mind not having the front page of the paper, because I wanted to have, you know, a few of them and I have a bunch of them. I truly do all these years later. And I remember pushing the shopping cart and I'm going and at the same time I had a radio and it just seemed like they kept playing Pat Benatar's Heartbreaker, for some reason, nonstop on the radio. I just have vivid memories of that weekend.
Speaker 2:So your paper route, you had a shopping cart On Sundays because I had so many papers I delivered and the papers were huge, I'd have to put them there. Makes sense. The rest of the week I could just deliver on my bicycle, but on Sundays I couldn't.
Speaker 1:So did you have to buy a shopping cart, or did you acquire a shopping cart?
Speaker 2:I went to Food Town that's no longer there I got a shopping cart. Everybody had a shopping cart. It was funny because you would always see people. You know, I don't remember when I think on Fridays we picked up like all the advertisements and like the leisure section, like you picked up everything except the main part of the paper. So I think on Fridays you'd see everybody going down the place to pick up the newspapers was actually right on my street so everybody would go by. You'd see everyone it was. You'd always see kids with shopping carts. It was kind of crazy.
Speaker 2:So finally, jimmy, memorial Day 1990, 10 years later after the Islanders win their first Stanley Cup, 13 years after Smokey and the Bandits released, a bunch of us went to my friend's, girlfriend's house and we played wiffle ball and had like a wiffle ball tournament. You know you would set up a chair and the chair would be the strike zone and you know I got to be able to throw. You know, like a wicked curve and stuff that would hit it and you know if it hit any part of the chair. You know it was a strike and you know if it hit any part of the chair. You know it was a strike and you know it was fun, cooked out burgers and everything. Well, my buddy, he says I want to go fishing. Well, like where we were, it's not like you go fishing. There wasn't like fishing right around there, by any means.
Speaker 1:I mean, you lived on Long Island, yeah.
Speaker 2:There is, but we were like in the middle. I want to. You lived on Long Island. Yeah, You'd think there'd be fishing. There is, but we were like in the middle. I want to say we were in this town, Hicksville, like right in the middle, there's nowhere to go fishing. So I'm like where are you going to go fishing? He says next door, like next door. And the people that live next door to his girlfriend, they never went to the house. They owned it and they paid someone, I guess, to you know, mow the lawn, just so no one would say anything. But they were never there and somehow their pool, they had a built-in pool in the backyard. They ended up with those big goldfish in the pool.
Speaker 2:And they lived there Like koi, koi, that's it. He takes a branch and like rigs up a fishing pole out of it. And I had a you know back then the video cameras. They look like you belong to the eyewitness news. They were these big huge things.
Speaker 2:And I had it and I'm videoing him fishing in this pool and catching fish. It was absolutely insane. Did he eat the fish? No, no, he put the fish back. No fish were harmed in catching them. He was doing it just so he could prove that he could really catch fish. It was insane. It really really was like that you're catching fish out of someone's you know, an in-ground pool. To me was like, you know, you live better than the way I was living at the time, you know, yeah, so it should be different than you not being at the house and they're being fish in your pool, you know you know there's a certain jeff foxworthy uh level to that of like you might be a redneck if there are somebody's fishing in your above ground pool I agree with you on that, jimmy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree that, jimmy. Yeah, I agree. Just as the band Joy Division was getting ready to go to America for their first tour, over here, singer Ian Curtis hangs himself. A month later, the song Love Will Tear Us Apart was released. It's a fantastic song and part and part of that song I think is part of what was going through his mind.
Speaker 2:Not that I know, but you know there are talk that he was depressed, he was having some, you know, issues with his wife, different things going on, and I I wonder if he just put it all out into this song, because it's an unbelievable song. It really truly is the words, the music. They recorded it. Each band member recorded their part and then they put it all together just so that it would be, you know, as perfect. As you know you can get a song, and the fact that it comes out a month after he's no longer with us and to be able to see all of this, you know, excitement over this band, I think also played a part that he wasn't ready for, the excitement that would come by reaching that kind of popularity Mm-hmm, yeah, very sad reaching that kind of popularity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very sad.
Speaker 2:Title as a response to the 1975 Captain and Tennille song Love Will Keep Us Together. It was actually recorded in the same studio that Neil Sedaka recorded his 1973 version, so Neil Sedaka wrote the song.
Speaker 1:Love Will.
Speaker 2:Keep Us Together. Yes, he records it in a studio in England and then Joy Division records Love Will Tear Us Apart in the same exact studio. That's just crazy. Like you know, it's not a coincidence, you know, it's just crazy how it worked out that way. The remaining members of the band Bernard Sumner, peter Hook and Stephen Morris went on to form New Order later in the year and they just kind of changed their musical direction and when they first started it was still some of the Ian Curtis Joy Division songs, but then they started to write their own and really get into electronic and dance and everything really changed. And it's amazing how one event, the case of what he did, how it changed so many people's lives and that they went in this different direction. And who knows what would have happened with Joy Division? Who knows what way they would have went as far as musically. All we know is that New Order has done really well for themselves, a lot of good stuff.
Speaker 2:We talked on the last episode, I believe, love Vigilantes you know, so you know, it definitely triggers a lot of different events from one thing. Like the song says love. Love will tear us apart Again. According to my watch, it's Minute with Jimmy. It's time for Minute with Jimmy. Minute with Jimmy. Minute with Jimmy. It's time for Minute with Jimmy. Minute with Jimmy.
Speaker 1:Minute with Jimmy, all right. So I wanted to talk about the show I went to the other night, the Damned English punk band. They actually had the very first English punk record that they put out, the first single uh, it was called new rose. Back in 1977 they beat the sex pistols by a couple of months. Uh, sex pistols later put out anarchy in the uk as their first single, but uh, the damned have stayed together ever since.
Speaker 1:They've literally been putting out records for 50 years almost 50 years now and they've gone through a lot of different eras and it's pretty cool. They had their original punk stuff and then they had some stuff that was early hardcore punk and then they had a kind of a goth. They were early on the goth thing, like before the cure, you know, around Bauhaus kind of time. Uh, they were, they were goth, and then they were kind of English pop in the eighties and their show had all of that stuff. One cool thing about it was you go to see a band that's been around for 50 years. Usually it's people our age and older. You know, it's like it was at least, I would say, 30 percent people in their 20s and younger. Really, yeah, so they've got a good following that is pretty cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like that. And in 1977 I wonder if they made time to go see Smoky and the Bandit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow.
Speaker 2:Well, that was Minute with Jimmy. Minute with Jimmy. Let's revisit some more great music from the past. So, Jimmy, a person I know posted on social media that there's an emergency hotline for when you need a fix of Hall Oates. I'm not making this up. Have you heard of this before?
Speaker 1:No, but I'm glad it exists.
Speaker 2:It's fan created. It's called Call Oates.
Speaker 1:Oh good.
Speaker 2:Yes, so you call it. I called it because I didn't believe it and I called it. Lets you pick one of four songs to listen to rich girl man eater, private eyes and one-on-one. And I just was like there's no way, there's no way at all, and I called calling oats and it worked and it's been around. I think it's been around like 14 years or something.
Speaker 1:So is there a voice that tells you you know how to select the songs?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like a robotic voice. Yeah, it's crazy. It's a robotic voice that tells you what to do. It's a woman's robotic voice.
Speaker 1:I wonder if Hall Oates know about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they have to. Everybody, like if there was something you know, a music in my shoes thing you know call the music in my shoes. I'm sure I would know they have to know it's been around that long, but I'm not sure why. Like this emergency hotline. It's like I got to hear Rich Girl right now. But it's there, jimmy, it is there.
Speaker 1:Well, it's like when Homer Simpson called the Lost Baby hotline, when he lost Maggie one time and they put him on hold and the song was Baby, come back, my player.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh my God, welcome to Color Notes, your emergency Hall Oates helpline. To hear one-on-one, please press 1. To hear it go, please press 2. To hear man-eater, please press 3. To hear privatized, please press 4. Call-a-notes Call-A-Notes. We just rang up Call-A-Notes, call-a-notes, call-a-notes. We just rang up Call-A notes, calling notes. We just rang up calling notes. You better try it. You should try it. We try it. We call calling notes. Alright, the Clash Train in Vain Stand by Me Peaks at number 23 on the Billboard Hot 100, may 24th 1980. And it's such a different song for the Clash Not, you know, like any of their other. You know songs that they did and off of the london calling album, but what a great song, I mean song great, great song.
Speaker 2:It's not listed on the original album because they recorded it, I guess too far into the process. Um, you know, with the the printing.
Speaker 1:They finalized the artwork yep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I mean just a great, great song. I mean I cannot get enough of that song.
Speaker 1:Yeah, mick Jones is such an amazing songwriter and it's a poppy song really catchy, but there's no other song really quite like it.
Speaker 2:No, I agree with you, it's a very unique song.
Speaker 2:I agree, istanbul, not Constantinople, by they Might Be Giants was Shriek WDRE, shriek of the Week, fourth week of May 1990. Now this is a great album. This is off of Flood. We had talked a few episodes ago about Birdhouse and your Soul. This is the second song from the album. It's just cool and I think for a lot of people they learned about different things that they never would have. You know, even old New York was once New Amsterdam, because it was that's what New York was originally called. You know Istanbul and you know it's nobody's business but the Turks. I mean, it's just really cool. It's like a history lesson when you sing it, but it's cool, it's fun, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is fun, I just like it.
Speaker 2:I do like it a lot. Elton John, captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy Album comes out May 23, 1975. First the album cover looks like a comic book. It's just so cool. It's got Elton. It's got like this little face mask on him you know it's cartoonish and it looks like he's standing in a glass with his piano.
Speaker 1:And then it looks like yeah, it's real kind of 3D looking almost.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like almost 3D looking and like a garden outdoors and just so much going on, but it's really cool. You know, that was the first thing that made me like look at this album, like, wow, this is cool. So it peaks at number one the first week that it comes out, which is that's admirable. Back then, albums didn't necessarily do that. They had to kind of work their way through things.
Speaker 1:There was a lot of competition back then.
Speaker 2:A lot of competition, stayed at number one for seven weeks and it's the last album with the classic lineup of Elton Davy Johnstone on guitar, d Murray on bass, nigel Olsen on drums and Ray Cooper on percussion. They didn't all perform again on an Elton album until 1983, when Elton started to make his comeback, and it's kind of funny. This is the last good album for a long time until 1983, and it had all of them and the other ones didn't. You know, that's not a coincidence by any means. So it's got some great songs the song titled after the album Tower of Babel, bitter Fingers, we All Fall in Love Sometimes, Curtains and the only single on the album, the autobiographical Someone Saved my Life Tonight. You almost had your hooks in me, didn't you dear? You really had me roped and tied.
Speaker 2:I love the opening piano chords on this song and it just kind of builds. You know there's a little like maracas or something, or castanets I'm not really sure the difference between them, but you hear that. And then it builds up and all the instruments come in and musically by itself it's fantastic and lyrically by itself it's fantastic. It's in my top 100 favorite songs of all time and the song came out 50 years ago and I was eight when it came out and I felt that way 50 years ago Like I couldn't get over this song and my friends were kind of like, hey, I want to listen to David Cassidy, and I just was enamored by this song. It just was like so cool, the recording of it, the sound of the drums, the piano, everything about it, and that's why it's in my top 100.
Speaker 2:Alterbound, hypnotize. Sweet freedom whispered in my ear you're a butterfly. So one of the reasons that I like the song is he says Sugar Bear. And Sugar Bear was a person who this song is about, elton John attempting suicide, oh really. And Sugar Bear was the person that kind of saved them from what was going on. Elton was at a point in his life where he was about to get married. He didn't really want to get married, kind of felt trapped in what he was doing, felt that maybe he wasn't going to be able to do his musical career if now he was, you know, starting a family and it was just a tough time for him. Sugar Bear to me was this character for cereal that I was eating at the time.
Speaker 1:Again.
Speaker 2:I'm eight years old Super. Sugar Crisp, super Sugar, crisp, super Sugar. Can you believe anything would be titled Super?
Speaker 1:Sugar. Okay, and then in the 80s they changed it to Super Golden Crisp. They did like we didn't know it was still the sugar cereal and it's now called Golden Crisp.
Speaker 2:I think they got rid of the super as well of all of that they get rid of the bear.
Speaker 2:I don't know. Yeah, I don't eat cereal anymore. He's called like health bear now or something. Maybe. Maybe he is. But it was like how can they have a song that sounds so good and they're saying sugar bear? Because, again, I don't understand all the words. It's kind of cool when you listen to it, the words you do understand. It's just super cool. All right, understand it's just super cool, all right.
Speaker 2:So summer of 1975, little rocky ways going on at my home and the beginning of the summer we end up moving to my grandparents' house Me, my brother and my mother and we're there and that's when this song comes out, and we're there, and that's when this song comes out and it's playing and I'm listening to it all the time. Like I said, I'm eight, but I think the world of this song where my friends what is this song? You know, they wanted to hear, like I said, david Cassidy or Donny Osmond or Bay City Rollers and and I'm not saying any of them are bad, I mean I like songs by them, but I just was like that's what most eight-year-olds wanted to hear back then, there you go, you were cut from a different cloth.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess so, because I love this song and it reminds me of being able to. I wasn't sure I'm eight. Am I going to see my friends again? You know? Am I going to go back home? Am I not going to go back home? What's going to happen? And you know, am I going to go back to school there. And right before the summer ends, right before school was about to begin, we end up moving back home. And that part all worked out Well. When we moved into my grandparents' house the next day, my grandfather wakes us up early. We don't get up early at our house. He's like okay, you're getting up early today. He says we're going to get a haircut. I said a haircut. We're allowed to grow our hair and my hair wasn't super long, but it was long for my grandfather, right, and I'm like we don't have to get our hair cut at my house. He goes you don't live at your house anymore, you live at my house, oh god.
Speaker 2:And he took us to get our hair cut and it was just 1950s haircuts it was close and it was kind of like wow, like it was bad enough that we now had to leave her home, but it's worse that we had to get our hair cut. You know, right, any identity that you had.
Speaker 1:It just kind of goes there was a thing in the 70s and anybody that didn't live or grow up in the 70s doesn't quite understand this but like if your hair didn't reach all the way to your eyebrows and you had skin showing on your forehead. That was a problem. As a kid, your parents had to at least let you grow your hair that long, and my parents would not. My dad was born in the 20s and he would give me haircuts at home. That's the way it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my parents really didn't make us get our hair cut. I'm not saying that we had super long hair we did not but we had longer hair and it wasn't like, oh, you need to go get a haircut. My grandmother always said we needed to get one, and when we moved into the house we got one. That's what ended up happening. The song peaked at number one on Billboard August 16, 1975. And butterflies are free to fly, fly away, high away, bye, bye. That's it for episode 79 of Music in my Shoes.
Speaker 2:I'd like to thank Jimmy Guthrie, show producer and owner of Arcade 160 Studios located here in Atlanta, georgia, and Vic Thrill for our podcast music. We talked about a lot of heavy things today. If you are having any sort of crisis and feel the need to talk to someone that's a professional, you can reach out to 988. You can either text or make a phone call or reach out to a friend. I'm sure they would love to listen to you and do anything that they can help. This is Jim Boge, and I hope you learned something new or remembered something old. We'll meet again on our next episode. Until then, live life and keep the music playing. I'll be waiting for you.
