S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y
ONE OF THE USUAL SUSPECTS asked me what I was planning to do this weekend. Before I could answer another of the bunch started singing, not very well, a fractured rendition of the old number by The Bay City Rollers: “Saturday Night.”
If you were not at least 10 years old in the mid 1970s that name will mean nothing. Even if you were around during that era The Bay City Rollers might not trigger a memory burp for you. Either way I refer you to the following link.
Caveat Emptor!
I’m not saying that the video clip is any good. I’m not saying that the song is any good. I’m not even saying that The Bay City Rollers were any good. I’m just saying that they existed and had a song called “Saturday Night.” That’s it. I make no promises and this may void any warranties extant in your life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBn2ux5vRHk
For those of you still with me I will now continue.
The Bay City Rollers were/are/am/was a group of boys from Scotland who popped up on the music scene in the middle part of the 1970s with songs that could be called “Bubble Gum Rock Lite.” The bulk of their fan base was nudging its way into puberty and had enough disposable income to buy the Records, Cassettes, and 8-Track tapes that spewed onto the market.
The boys in the band were mercilessly marketed wearing Scottish Tartan plaids and short kilts. Hey, at least they were getting paid, right? Or so they thought. It turned out that, apart from the kitschy Scottish clichés they were also the cliché of a rock group that is financially raped by their management and record companies. The efforts to recover the money are still wending their way through the courts in Great Britain. Lotsa luck there, boys.
Of course, close to forty years have passed and the “boys” are now dealing with male pattern baldness and buying bigger belts.
The lead singer, Les McKeown, has been keeping the dream alive, such as it is, for some time. After battling both drug and alcohol demons, he put together his own group, minus everyone else from the original band – “Les McKeown’s Legendary Bay City Rollers.” It is sort of a “Tribute Band” to itself.
It seems that there has been some bad blood between Les and the other boys from the original band. I can see how forty years, financial fraud, drugs, alcohol, and trying to explain to your children why you were dressed like that in public, could make any thoughts of reuniting a little hard to swallow.
Oh, well – it’s not my problem, thank God, and I don’t have to hide any pictures of myself dressed in plaid kilts. In the 1970s I was wearing double-knit lime green leisure suits. I have my own burdens to bear.
This entire blog entry has turned out to be little more than a tangent branching off of … of nothing really. Someone asked me a simple, innocuous question about my weekend plans and some other yutz has a senior moment and starts singing S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y.
Its days like this that I wish I was a drinking man.
Down the Hall on Your Left 