Steve Martin “King Tut”

Five songs I’m looking forward to hearing again, in Newport.

I had already established that my parents didn’t know everything. But who knew that it went so much deeper than that.

Previously, I had realized that my parents didn’t know everything there is to know about everything. And I had come to terms with that. I mean, the amount of information their two brains could hold was finite. I could forgive them for that.

But my head was really turned around when I learned that not only did they not know everything, there were things that they didn’t know, that other people knew.

It was around 3rd Grade that I started making friends that weren’t just based on who my neighbors were or who my parents’ friend's kids were. I was making friends with kids in school, who’s parents were (gasp!) different than mine.

And not just different. Younger.

I mean, my parents weren’t physically older than the parents of kids I knew, but certainly some of those parents had a much younger sensibility than my parents.

So it was a whole new world.

I can remember romping around this big, old, drafty, wooden, Colonial house where my best 3rd Grade buddy lived. They had twisty weird staircases, and a dumbwaiter, and a carriage barn. And a shaggy dog.

We didn’t have a dog. Too hairy.

And his parents seemed funnier. Or, funny in a way that my folks weren’t anyway. And certainly much cooler.

His Dad had records. Current records.

My Dad had records, but they were mostly from a decade earlier. I don’t know if I ever heard my Dad say, “I’m going to the record store.”

I can remember crashing up one of those uncarpeted back-stairs, headed to a room that my friend’s Dad was painting. And on the way up, I could hear talking. But it was big echoey talking, with an audience.

The Dad was painting this room, and had a record player there, with Steve Martin’s “Wild & Crazy Guy” on while he painted.

The pop culture stream had trickled down far enough that a third-grader like me knew the phrase “Excuuuuuuuuuusssssssssssssse Meeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!” But that’s all I knew about Martin, really.

We didn’t have comedy records at home. So the whole idea of putting talking on a music player machine was enough to blow my mind.

And what he said, captivated me.

Why? I’m not sure. Because here in 2010, I can tell you with no uncertainty, that I had no idea what Martin meant when he said, about his girlfriend, “If she is like a cat, I have kitty litter. If she is like a dog, we do it on the paper.”

Definitely no idea what that meant. But I thought it was hilarious.

We listened to that record on my next visit, and the next and the next, until I could recite whole parts of Martin’s routine, whether I understood it or not.

But the coup de grace of the record was something I could wrap my head around: a song.

For all of the wildness and the craziness of the rest of the record, the simple, catchy rhymes of “King Tut” were what resonated with me.

It was the bridge between the Beatles songs and Broadway tunes I could get at home, and the slightly dangerous, out of control comedy shared by these people who weren’t my parents, yet seemed to know so much.

(ed. note: I don't really expect him to play this tonight . . .)