Album: We’re the Banana Splits, 1968
Justification: I first came across this song thanks to They Might Be Giants’ superb version but only recently realised that it was a) a cover and b) from the Banana Splits. It turns out that the Hanna-Barbera live-action series that I loved as an undiscerning child had a warehouse out the back of the studio where hacks were employed to churn out bubblegum pop songs until their careers took off. Or at least, that’s what I assume: the people behind the show’s songs were all notable writers, including Al Kooper and Gene Pitney.
This one, however, was written by Joey Levine, later to become a very successful jingle writer and perhaps most notable for co-writing and singing the 1968 bubblegum hit ‘Yummy Yummy Yummy’ by the Ohio Express. Yeah, that one that Homer sings in The Simpsons that time.
Thanks to the good people of eBay I just got my mitts on a CD of all of the Banana Splits recordings, and they have a glorious seat-of-the-pants, written-this-morning-and-recorded-this-afternoon feel to them only matched by the still-fucking-amazing American Song-Poem Anthologies, which you should hunt down and be amazed by.
THIS TIME IN 2010: Split Enz were in their imperial period with ‘Dirty Creature’.
