There's Something About Mary: Along Comes Mary

The Association: Along Comes Mary

[purchase]

I know nothing about The Association, other than the fact their "hit" tunes were part of my life soundtrack in the mid-sixties... as I was growing into young-womanhood and anticipating/fearing everything it entailed - Cherish was the first song I ever slow-danced to... in my eighth grade year at my first boy-girl party in a semi-darkened basement of my friend's parents' home. I remember looking around at a few other couples making out on the lone sofa in the room - I knew every note/nuance of that song, and ached with the angst that only a 13-year-old could, in hope/terror someone would one day feel that way about me...

On the flip side... somehow the words to Along Comes Mary went completely over my head - in typical American Bandstand style, all I knew was that it had a good beat and I could dance to it. Imagine my surprise to find out decades later (15 minutes ago!) that one of the interpretations suggests it is about marijuana... a.k.a. Mary Jane ("and then along comes Mary, and does she want to set them free and let them see reality from where she got her name" - hmmmm...) - I'm also quite impressed at the dense and literate lyrics, not the modus operandi of songs of that era (Sweet Pea, Red Rubber Ball and Hang On, Sloopy as but three examples)...

P.S. Mari content below, copied and pasted from my own blog - the photo above shows Mari and a friend (bottom left-hand corner) from *her* early high school days:

We have a variety of running jokes, one of which comes from the long-since-retired TV show thirtysomething, in which the character Melissa is speaking to her younger sister about the differences in their family roles according to birth order - Melissa says, "as the older child, it's my job to fulfill all of mom and dad's deepest hopes, dreams and desires. All you have to do is stay out of prison." So true, so true - I got in major trouble in high school (I plead the fifth on details) and was told I had dragged our family name through the mud but, when Mari did the same thing 13 years later, I recall the party line was "kids will be kids" (no fair!).