Mungo Jerry
Listen – Mungo Jerry – Alright Alright Alright- MP3
Greetings all.
How’s by you?
Me, I thought I was going to have a peaceful weekend, that would allow me to recover from several straight weeks of chaos.
Little did I know….
We went out to run some errands, and as we drove down the block to our house, what should I spy on our front lawn but a rather large limb, that had just that morning been attached to a rather large tree. Sometime after we went out the wind convinced said tree to relinquish said limb and it came crashing to the ground.
Naturally I had to postpone my date with the sofa, and head out to the shed to get an axe (which I haven’t had cause to unsheathe in about five years), a wheelbarrow and various and sundry other implements of destruction, all of which I used to dismantle the limb.
All told, a hoot.
So, I sit here, and my typing fingers are the only part of my body that are not sore, thus the blog post.
Way back I March of this years I dropped a tasty bit of punky Gallic beat by the legendary Jacques Dutronc. That tune, ‘Et Moi Et Moi Et Moi’ is, as you’ll see if you go back, pull down the ones and zeros and soak in it for few minutes, a killer.
At the time, I saw that there had been a cover/reworking of the tune in the early 70s by Mungo Jerry. I was – how do they say – intrigued, and pasted that tidbit on the walls of my brain for future reference. I didn’t have to go that far into the future, as about a month later, I was down in Washington, DC on a family trip and did a little digging, and what should I turn up but an old Mungo Jerry comp that happened to have that cover (‘Alright Alright Alright’) on it.
Now, if you’d asked me before the Dutronc connection, would I buy a Mungo Jerry record, I would have, in all likelihood rolled my eyes and kept on walking, sure you were some kind of nut.
I mean, I like ‘In the Summertime’ as much as the next slob, but there’s just no way in hell I need to go out and buy a copy of the record, since it gets played heavily on oldies radio, and is used in commercials all the time.
Once I heard about them covering Dutronc, I was – as I said – intrigued, and when I found the LP in question for a low, low price, I figured if it sucked, I could always turn it into one of those ‘melt your record into a chip bowl’ thingys.
As it turns out, that was unnecessary, because the ‘cover’ (they use the same tune but the lyrics have little or nothing to do with the OG) is very cool. There are still traces of the loose limbed skiffle-i-zation of the early Mungo Jerry sound, but here they’re mixed with a certain glam ne sais quoi (I dig the drums and guitar too). The tune was a big hit in the UK and on the Continent, and even managed to chart regionally here in the States.
I hope you dig the tune, and I’ll be back later in the week with something unusual.
Peace
Larry
Iron Leg 
just listened to them back to back — give me dutronc any jour of the semaine.
great post, by the way — and great blog!
best from tokyo
Thanks!
I kind of like both.
I worked for Ray Dorset’s agent for a while, it was a ramshackle place, the afterglow of success seemed long gone the one time I saw the man himself. Showbizz’s underbelly always rears it’s ugly head in time.
If metaphorical bellies have heads.