Come with us Evil Squirrel. Yes, yes, your “friends” Mitzi and Snuggle can come along too. Everything will be just wonderful where you’re going.
It’s that week when all the crazies are out on the loose. Of course, at The Nest, that could be pretty much any week, not just Halloween time. Let’s kick off this nutty time of the year with the next fucked up selection from our Top 30 Novelty Songs of All Time countdown! DJ Scratchy’s feeling a little insane in the brain today, and will be using the hand not inserted inside her fishnet vest to drop the needle on this funny classic… while the Sponkies try not to get their nice white coats dirty playing outside. Let’s kick off the Top 10 paddy wagon style!
#10. “They’re Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!” – Napoleon XIV
Once upon a time, you could make fun of the entire padded cell experience of being declared legally insane without looking like a hateful piece of hyenashit. A sound engineer by the name of Jerry Samuels did just this in 1966 while experimenting with techniques to slow down and speed up recordings. Samuels donned his three pointed hat, and taking the name Napoleon XIV came up with this brilliantly quirky song about being driven crazy by the one he loves abandoning him…
“They’re Coming To Take Me Away” was not only an instant hit, it added a lighthearted phrase to our vocabulary to describe the process of being driven crazy to the point of needing institutionalization. The percussion track over the perfectly times spoken verses mixes very well with the pitch altering chorus where our singer describes the joys of being sent to the funny farm. Flipping one’s lid never felt so good…
Well, just fit me for one of those tight fitting white coats then!
While doing my token research on this song for any interesting semi-factual tidbits I could unearth, I discovered something about this song that troubled me. From the Wiki article…
However, the last verse of the song finishes: “They’ll find you yet and when they do, they’ll put you in the ASPCA, you mangy mutt” implying that the singer is actually referring to a runaway dog.
BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! NOT ME! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK!
I thought at first this had to be merely one of those bad references Wikipedia can be known for… I mean, come on! He’s just calling his ex a mangy mutt and saying dogs like her will end up at the pound, right? Well…. in listening to the song again with this knowledge in mind, I have to admit it’s probably right. The antagonist of the song actually is a canine who wanted to get away from Napoleon’s shitty cooking. It’s a great novelty song nonetheless, but damn if this doesn’t ruin it just a bit for me to know I was wrong all those years…
Watch who you’re calling a mangy mutt while your arms are tied up!!!
Next week’s countdown entry is another alumnus of Monday Muzak past, so I’ll present song #9 next Tuesday… while keeping Mondays fresh with a special edition of Mecca Muzak Monday! Until next week, don’t go nuts on me…
I think one of my cousins had the whole record with the bdlam song and a lot of weird stuff… we enjoyed it at night instead of telling scary stories ;O)
I was in high school when this song debuted. Weird…looking back now, maybe this could have been the inspiration for rap?
Interesting observation. Maybe it was ahead of its time, and may explain why so many people panned it today…
It’s perfect for this week as it has a very Halloweeny sound!
It certainly gets pretty kooky. Play this on your front porch, and the kids will definitely stay away…
I should have bought some speakers to blast it off my porch! I was counting on the rain keeping the number of trick-or-treaters down but we must be in the rain shadow today.
I’ve got it from a good source that the dog found a new home across town. Holy cow that was annoying. Now I have to play Monster Mash, Amish Paradise, and do the Time Warp to get that ear worm out of my head.
I was afraid I had lost my touch on picking music that seems to annoy more people than make them want to sing. I had no idea so many folks loathed this song…
I did not know that. I never liked the song, but I think the “like-ometer” just moved to “dislike.”
You have a lot of people helping move that like-ometer” even further into the negatives…
If only someone would come along and take this song away… for all times. With Marilyn on this one.
Three bad reviews in a row. There was a blurb in the Wiki article that this song was once played on a jukebox back in its day, and all forty people in the diner had cleared out before it was even finished. I did not know this one drove so many people to insanity, but at least I have learned that fact for future reference…
It certainly has an air of the crazies about it.