Have you ever ordered the Super Tacos at Jack in the Box? Friends, confession is good for the soul. Three tacos of the Devil‘s own making, individually wrapped in thin paper. Paper translucent with molten lard from a vat that has held a shimmering pool of said lard for days--long enough for the ghosts of a thousand tacos (and should Fortune smile upon you, a few straying French fries) to endow each newly-minted taco with the purest distillate of joie de vivre.
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. A nation mourned the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy at the very moment that America’s music industry was stoked by a new fire of creative juices: Bubblegum music. Call it a fad. Dismiss the entire genre as merely a byproduct of the need for bloated corporate conglomerates to sell breakfast cereal and cheap plastic toys to kids who watch Saturday-morning television. But verily I say: Dismiss at your own risk.
Alright then. Today I listened to my ‘Best of the Archies’ CD. I say that with no particular pride. In fact, my head is hung low at this moment. Yes, you are right, the Archies were Saturday morning cartoon characters. Those Riverdale chums, Archie, Jughead, Veronica and Betty lived their entire primary-color existence on story boards.
Call them a faux Caucasian street gang if you aim for crassness. Or really take the low road and compare them to a greasy Jack in the Box taco. But you know what? They could ROCK! They took the song “Sugar Sugar” (and let it duly be noted that the song had been previously offered to --and rejected by--the Monkees for Chrissakes, as too superficial and insipid)--they took it and sent it heavenward with vocal phrasings and a Rachmaninovesque organ that have likely never tickled your ear hairs if you have the misfortune of being below the age of 40.
And then there is “Jingle Jangle.” My head is lifting! Shame? A small price to pay for the transcendent joy of the voice of lead singer Toni Wine. If I’d admit it--and so I shall--hers is a voice so hyper-feminine that when I hear it burble from my speakers, I experience undeniable engorgement of my nether regions, unbidden and perhaps unwarranted. Ah! To couple with a cartoon character! Unnatural? Incestuous? Call it what you will, but the urge is there, pulsating greedily right beneath the surface veneer of civility. Exists there an oral cavity in this god-almighty world that does not long to satisfy every primal urge of Toni/Veronica when she coos, “Sing me, sing me bay-bee”? I rather think not.
