purchase Ray Charles: Mess Around
purchase John Mayall :All Those Heroes
purchase Peter Gabriel :And Through the Wire
Andy La Ray Gun and I are neighbors. His digs are an apartment; mine a secluded house with its own garden. And a decent charcoal grill. As the designated cook of the household, I used to be considerably more dedicated to the grill method, but we’ve cut down on the meat consumption. Well, red meat, that is. The grill for us is primarily a variation for our fish, and the city where Andy and I live is famous for its seasonal fish such as the palamut and the lufer as they swim south through the Bosphorus starting in the fall. Fish season here starts after summer is over, so … it’s grill season for me.
That said, as others here have noted, I
belatedly found that although I was able to research and come up with a list of
hundreds of songs that include grill or BBQ in the lyrics, there is no small
number of them that are actually about teeth grills – and most of them are not
familiar to me. Says something about our times or my musical knowledge, I
guess.
On the other hand, a little digging
produces a number of classics (classics partly by dint of their age) in which
the grill we originally meant to feature is a … er, feature … of the song. None
of the below are songs about grilling, per se. They just happen to mention that
grilling is a pleasant part of life:
Take for instance the Ray Charles tune
called “Mess Around”. Based on a boogie tune from the 30s/40s, Ahmet Ertegun is
credited with writing the song. (Atlantic Records, and a man who would have
been well versed in the art of grilling the palamut): “You can talk about the pit
barbeque, the band was jumpin’ …” just watch them jump!"
Or, you might relate to John Mayall’s “All
Those Heroes …”. You’ll have to listen closely or dig a bit to his tangential
reference to “Barbeque Bob Blind Fuller”, but you are sure to relish the man’s
ability to transition between vocals and mouth harp. At that age! I was left breathless.
One more similarly tangential reference to
grilling pops up in Peter Gabriel’s “And Through the Wire,” where he sings “
barbeque parties on blood red sands…” – your interpretation ... belongs to you.