I woke up from this afternoon's nap with an earwig in my head. I could hum the tune pretty well as I remembered it but I only knew a few of the lyrics. "Tonight, tonight. Completely. Tomorrow."
And how they really went together, I wasn't totally sure. But in my head I was singing it perfectly.
It was one of those oldie ditties from my father's era. Oh yeah, right up his alley. In fact I'm pretty sure it was one of his favorites that he had a scratchy vinyl copy of that he played when he'd be drunk, way too loudly, and try to get all lovey dovey with mom, goading her on to dance with him. Sometimes it'd work, most times it wouldn't, especially when these drunken nights really started getting old as we kids, especially me, weren't little babies anymore and we're all getting the full impression of our melodramatic, narcissistic alcoholic daddy.
"Tonight, tonight, I want me with you dear?" I don't know about that line. The earwig won't go away, so it's off to Google we go.
I know there's an app, I think it's called Shazam or whatever, where you can play a tune and it can do an AI search based on that audio information to find out what the song is but I pretty much believe that if you're going to acapella sing it, especially with sketchy lyrics, you pretty much will be just humming it, so you better be near pitch perfect 'cause I mean AI sucks even when you get a description fairly accurate, never mind it trying to figure out what you think sounds great in your head but because you actually suck as a singer, comes out probably sounding nothing coherent, so I decided to skip that.
I knew that if I typed in "Tonight" as the only information regarding lyrics of the song Google would interpret that as the title and I'd get a whole gamut of songs with that title. I realize that, so of course I didn't go that route either. Instead I thought I'd go for a group which I figure was in the same sound genre. I didn't know the name of the group, but I thought of the song "Teenager In Love." Turns out Google showed me that was famously done by Dion and the Belmonts. I listened to that and I thought, yeah it must be them because that's pretty much the sound I'm going for.
But I listened to a few of their other hits, including one that was way off; it was featured on a video clip from American Bandstand from 1959 in which AB host Dick Clark is interviewing a very young television and Broadway star by the name of William Shatner and they're talking about a play he's in called "The World of Susy Wong" and I'm momentarily fascinated by the fact that, of course, not only is Dick Clark dead but probably a lot of the other people around them in the audience in this video clip are also dead but there's William Shatner, still kicking to this day, and then I realize, I'm going down the rabbit hole too far, I need to get back on track. I don't think it's Dion and the Belmonts.
I decide to focus on another of the lyric's words "Completely." Immediately it comes up with the song titled that by Michael Bolton from 1993. Well we sure as hell know that's not it! For shits and giggles I play the video for a few seconds and I nearly vomit. Oh why did I do that? Again, need to get back on track!
What was the refrain Michael? What was the refrain? Nail that, and it's likely the title! The songs of this era weren't exactly witty. That doesn't make them less awesome, in fact, it's their simplicity and purity that make them so iconic. That and the awesome vocals. Let's face it these vocal groups were the best of any era. Think! Think!
This lack of memory isn't a Shameless issue, it's just simply been a number of years since I've heard the song and after all it's not my generation's music, like I said, it's dear old dads.
That's it Michael! Drunk daddy, full-on inebriated, yearning for his Kid Chase youth being sapped away by his grueling mill job and his growing family and "adulting" responsibilities (though the term "adulting" was not a thing in the seventies when my father would have been summoning up these late night phonographic memory lane parties). It has to be about love. That's it! Will you love me tomorrow.
Clickety clack, what say you Google? The Shirelles! Same era, same music style, similarly vocals-focused pop music group, but not white boys -- black girls. Should have known.
My father, a raging racist all his life, yet he always had an incredible soft heart for African American singers. In fact I'd say, the Motown sound defined his sound above all the other white competitors of the late 50s early 60s era, yes, even that poser Elvis. In fact thinking of it now, I don't think he played Elvis very much. He probably didn't like Elvis. I wonder if he was pressured to pretend he liked Elvis as a teenager but he secretly snuck into the record stores to buy 45s of black artists like Little Richard, who I know he played a lot during those late night jamathons in the 70s as we kids were trying to sleep in our beds. But I digress. Again, out of this rabbit hole we go.
Click. No music video for the YouTube clip for this song, just a still image of the album cover. But this is it. Earwig satisfied. Song completes. Little tear in my eye.
I know it was a couple weeks ago -- but happy birthday dear old dad. Will I love you tomorrow? Were you asking all of us as you sang that during those drunken nights? Well, I guess 2025 qualifies as "tomorrow," and I guess I got a little misty -- so we'll leave it at that.