Thursday, January 05, 2012

Hair: "Do-Re-Mi"

Hair Poster

Remember, from that old musical Hair, the "Do-Re-Me" song that so offended everybody by its choice of off-color subject matter and explicit terms? I was just recalling it from how I first heard it -- more on that later -- and at that time construed the lyrics, which I take to be more or less correct:
I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Do-Re-Mi,
Pellagra-oh!
Country linguist,
Pedal faster!

Father, why do these words sound much vaster?

Constipation
Can't be done.
Join the wholy gorging.
Come and suture,
Everyone!

That's how I understood it in 1967 at ten years old, anyway, when I heard it late at night in my grandparents' dirt-floor basement through the earphone from my tiny battery-free transistor with its alligator clip attached to my bed's iron bedstead for an electrical source sent circulating by the very radio waves that brought the music to my ear, and I still can't understand why folks found it so offensive ("Constipation" excepted) . . . though I can't swear to recalling the precise words in my forty-four-year-old memory from my ten-year-old mind.

But please, don't correct me if I'm wrong . . .

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