guilty pleasure monday: stuck in the middle with you (stealers wheel)

i’m stuck in the middle of the 1970s in guilty pleasure mondayville. there is SO MUCH fodder from the 1970s that i could cite. i may cite it all yet. (i’m sure you can’t wait.)

in fact, i should probably nominate my brother larry to write a guest column for guilty pleasure mondays. there is no one else who likes really awful 1970s music more. (yes, if there were a museum for bad 1970s music, he’d be the master curator — only he likes most of it.) and besides, y’all need to meet larry. he is the smartest, funniest, and nicest one of we three kids.

now that i think of it, it may even become my mission to make His Laziness Mr. Attila the Hun my beloved middle brother contribute a guilty pleasure one day, if only because it will give me hours of fun. and a day off 😉

in the meantime, i bring you a song i absolutely adore and have done since i first heard it on my friend jeanne’s jukebox: stuck in the middle with you by stealers wheel. i actually had two friends who had jukeboxes in their basements; but as i spent a lot more time in jeanne’s basement, i had a much greater familiarity with her jukebox, filled with lots of 1970s hits — as it was the 1970s at the time — and, much to jeanne’s chagrin, her ballet recital record. yes, a parent in that house had a good sense of humor and stuck the 45 (remember those?) in the last jukebox slot. whenever i wanted to piss jeanne off, i would press it. she’d go spare.

but i digress. per usual.

i don’t think much else happened to this UK band after this hit, which has been covered by at least one jillion different groups; but a few years later, the lead singer, gerry rafferty, ended up with a few hits of his own; but this early 70s group put out a song with an unforgettable guitar riff… so unforgettable that sheryl crow stole it in all i wanna do. (lucky for my girl sheryl, i love that song. and considering her brilliant choice in first names — spelled correctly, no less — it is difficult for me to get too annoyed by the creative ripoff. instead, i will consider it an homage to this earlier work.)

but why, why, WHY did quentin tarantino have to go and ruin it all by using it in a lighthearted scene in that fun, rascally romp known as reservoir dogs?

yeah. i’m definitely asking larry to write a column. i need the time to get certain images out of my brain.