http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmVusVh4TRQ
"The Joker" is a song by the Steve Miller Band from their 1973 album The Joker. The song is one of two Steve Miller Band songs that feature the neologism "pompatus". The song topped the US Billboard Hot 100 in early 1974.[1]
More than 16 years later, in September 1990, it reached number one in the UK Singles Chart for two weeks[2] after being used in "Great Deal", a Hugh Johnson-directed television advertisement for Levi's, thus holding the record for the longest gap between transatlantic chart-toppers. This reissue of "The Joker" also topped the Irish Singles Chart,[3] the New Zealand RIANZ Singles Chart,[4] the Dutch Nationale Top 100[5] and the Dutch Top 40.[6]
The first line of the lyrics is a reference to the song "Space Cowboy" from Miller's Brave New World album. The following lines refer to two other earlier songs: "Gangster of Love" from Sailor and "Enter Maurice" from Recall the Beginning...A Journey from Eden.
During the song, Steve Miller references lines from the 1954 The Clovers song "Lovey Dovey" four times when he sings "You're the cutest thing that I ever did see/ Really love your peaches, wanna shake your tree / Lovey dovey, lovey dovey, lovey dovey all the time"; the second of these mentions is during the fade-out.
The song is noted for its wolf whistle played on a slide guitar after the "lovey dovey" parts and the "some people call me Maurrice [sic]" part.The song appears in the twelfth episode of the second season of The Simpsons.
The song was referred to in the 2012 film Dark Shadows by Johnny Depp, playing the part of vampire Barnabas Collins. After claiming to a distant relative: "I'm rather fond of the music of the day", he poetically recites the lines, "I'm a picker, I'm a grinner, I'm a lover, and I'm a sinner. Playing my music in the sun", while sticking his hand into the sunlight, causing it to sizzle and smoke.
The song is mentioned at length in chapter 30 of the German novel Nachhinein by Lisa Kränzler.
No comments:
Post a Comment