Oh boy! It’s my day! My very own day! You all love me!!!!
Monday is always a very special day here at The Nest…. but it’s even very specialer when it falls on January 21st. Yes, you know what that means… today is National Squirrel Appreciation Day!!!!! Look at your calendars, they even marked the day in red! As much as we’d love to take this most important of all holidays off and go out and spread random acts of appreciation to our furry friends… we still have work to do. That’s because it’s the day we dig up those long buried classic songs from that underground nut cache we like to call the Dusty Vinyl Archive! DJ Scratchy got her fuzzy tail pinned over her unicorn tail just for the occasion, while the Sponkies are trying to figure out why there are no squirrels in their homeland of Australia. This song goes out to all the squirrels I loved before…
Pop music is not exactly littered with songs about squirrels… or even songs that mention squirrels. And most of the ones that do are pretty awful (I’m looking at YOU, Oran “Juice” Jones). So while we can’t quite directly honor our cute little critters with a musical tribute on their special day, we can sing about another cute grey animal that got its own song! And who do we have to thank for this?
This is the face you make when someone sticks a live squirrel where the sun don’t shine.
Yes, Mr. Reginald Dwight… who we all know better as Elton John, recorded a rather famous fucking album back in 1973 that you may have heard of before called Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. It’s actually a double album since it was so chock full of Bernie Taupin and Elton John creations that it wouldn’t even fit on one damned record. That album produced a few of Elton’s more recognizable hits like “Candle in the Wind,” “Saturday Night’s All Right For Fighting,” “Bennie and the Jets,” and of course the title track. But do you know what the best song on the Yellow Brick Road was?
No, tell me!
This one that was inexplicably never released as a single. It fucking rocks and would have been a huge hit…
How can you not love such an upbeat, peppy rocker like “Grey Seal?” I have to thank the 70’s radio station I listened to two decades ago for playing this on occasion, or it may have never crossed paths with my eardrums. I know a lot of Elton John songs since he had more hit singles than Justin Bieber has personality flaws… and this is one of my absolute favorites of his. It sure as hell beats the extremely overplayed and very tired “Tiny Dancer” and that fucking piece of shit “Rocket Man”….
Hey, it’s just my job five days a week!
Have a very happy Squirrel Appreciation Day, and come back next Monday for another classic chestnut…
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
the elton song I can not stand is good bye norma jean, englands rose, my hair, my glasses, my dignity my whatever…
The live version of that song sucks (And don’t get me started on the schlocky Princess Di rewrite)… but I do like the original album version that’s on Yellow Brick Road.
Grey Seal is an excellent tune indeed!
I am definitely celebrating Squirrel Appreciation Day – mine got a big bowl of acorns this morning.
Your squirrels will definitely be celebrating Human Appreciation Day…
Definitely a solid gold chestnut in the Reginald Dwight’s catalog. Happy Squirrel Appreciation Day.🐿
It was a cold and nasty day, and the squirrels were smart enough to stay in their nests Monday. But I played this song a few times and it got better…
Squirrels definitely deserve a day.
They’ll always have January 21st… and if that’s not enough, October is Squirrel Awareness Month. Because awareness and appreciation are obviously two different things…
I’m guessing appreciation means extra nuts…?
Except for the parts of the country where appreciation means the squirrel is the delicacy…
I’m never visiting there!
Gray seal how does it feel to be so wise with such darling seal eyes. I love seals. The Selkies approve too. Good choice. And I’m not reading anything into this except it is a REAL SEAL not a symbol for something else.
I have no idea what the song’s actually about, I just love listening to it. And I don’t think I had ever heard of selkies before your blog, so thank you for expanding my knowledge of lesser known creatures!
I’ve NEVER heard that one but it’s certainly a rockin’ tune. I hope there was a lot of squirrel celebrating around the Evil Squirrel Kingdom yesterday. We had an incredible crowd of them at our bird feeders all day yesterday – I think they were having a PAR-TAY.
Pam
The squirrels know when their day is! I’m sure the party would have been in full force here on Monday had it not been about 10 degrees and snowy…
Hope your squirrels had a happy Squirrel Day! One of our calendars was the whole little page devoted to the special day. 🙂
I hear it mentioned every once in a while on January 21st. For a celebration that’s only 18 years old, it’s got some legs (and a furry tail) behind it…
grey seal total lee rocked…one of elton’s best in my opinion….squirrel over at moms is getting
“picky” gave him some walnuts; shelled and he was in 7th heaven; then set out some
peanuts; unshelled and he flipped us off !! 🙂 ♥♥
LOL! Squirrels aren’t the most grateful creatures out there. Maybe they get that from the cats!
Fairly typical 1970s Elton (he said trying to pretend he knows anything about Elton John outside of his excellent acting in Kingsman Golden Circle).
Hey, if I didn’t pretend to know more about these musicians and songs, I wouldn’t have much to post about on Mondays….
Here’s another song that I like! But I don’t know who’s singing it or really anything about it… other than it’s great! End post.