"Imagine a store!"
Sometimes the provincial and parochial nature of London is disheartening and not cute. Today is several of them.
London has a jingle! It's happy! It's peppy! It's bursting with love!* It's sung by Jim Chapman. More to the point, Jim Chapman and the Incontinentals. Not surprisingly, Jim and the Boys favour music from the 50s and 60s, much the same way Jim favours outdated political ideology and longs for the days of white privilege, when kids knew their place, when dogs didn't bark, and you could leave you Nash Rambler unlocked while you filled out your liquor order form at the LCBO. Good times.
Anyway, London developer and ever present force of dyspepsia, Shmul Farhi, who evidently lets Jim sleep under his desk, must have once again threatened to pull out of London and let it crash under the weight of his absence unless they let Jim and his band perform the song. Seriously, no other explanation makes any sense, especially in a town so full of musical talent as London.
I think we can offset the happy joy joy song best with a cover from Jim and the Incontinentals. It's souless and depressing and devoid of originality. Like the real London and it's jingle.
*Did you get the reference? Please tell me you got the reference.
I can never think of London without remembering the time I visited a friend there in university. I took the bus up from Toronto on a Friday night, after a beery afternoon and napping on the bus, wasn't sure if I was in London, Kitchener, Guelph or if I'd slept all the way to Windsor. I got off and asked the first person I saw in the bus terminal - a fry cook at the snack bar - "What town is this?"
ReplyDeleteHe looked at me like I had just spit on the floor and indignantly told me this was "not a town, it's a major city!"
I knew it could only be London, the city that tries too hard.
(if he'd said "world-class city" I'd have know I was back in Toronto, the city so insecure it has to declare itself "world-class" on an hourly basis.
and got the reference, though I could have happily lived out my life without ever seeing Jack Klugman play the tambourine.
ReplyDeleteThat's a great London anecdote, very apropos. And be glad I didn't post the slow, sexy version of Happy & Peppy.
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