I wrote the song lyrics below when I was eleven years old in the summer of 1973.
How do you do Joey?
How are your neighbors and friends?
What do think of the war going on?
Is it me?
Or is it Vietnam?
Or is it the way
That I brought you up wrong?
Is it wrong?
(Reprise)
That previous Christmas my mother had bought me a kid’s drum set from the Sear’s catalogue. It was real groovy. It was blue and the bass drum had some sort of Peter Max psychedelic design. I set them up in my basement and would pound away till one of my siblings would scream... “STOP!”
My 12-year-old neighbor Richie shared my love for the Beatles, he also had an acoustic six string guitar that was only missing two strings.
With these qualifications we decided to form a band. Since both of our initials were R&M we decided to call ourselves…Double R-Double M.
The first thing we did was to hire Richie’s 17-year-old brother George to be our manager.
Big mistake! George was a horrible manager and didn’t get us booked anywhere. The one thing that George DID do was to write our second song, “Maggie Baggie.”
Maggie Baggie lived in Clinton Claggy
She wore cotton in her baggies
Maggie Baggie
Do do do do do
Do do
(Reprise)
Richie was born legally blind and was given a tape recorder by the State of Connecticut. The idea was that he could bring this to school and record his lessons instead of taking notes.
Richie never brought the tape recorder to school. He did however; bring it to our first recording session.
Since we were such big Beatle fans we inflected our deliveries in a Liverpool accent. I recorded “Joey” first. I tried to sing “Joey” in a mellow Paul McCartney style. Richie, on the other hand, sang “Maggie Baggie” with a more nasal sound, much like his hero John Lennon.
Unfortunately, Double R–Double M disbanded at the end of that summer. It wasn’t anything romantic like a Yoko that came between us. It was probably more like... I put a hole in my drums or the State repossessed Richie’s tape recorder.
In the deep recesses of my brain I still remember that summer and our songs.
Now if I could only remember where I put my car keys!
8 comments:
Maggie Baggie sounds pretty hot.
That's awesome- when are you getting the band back together?
I actually did run into Richie not too long ago. He works as a bagger at the local Stop&Shop. I tapped him on the shoulder and I had to tell him who I was do to his vision problems. A big smile came to his face and he launched into a rousing version of "Maggie Baggie."
If you play your songs backwards, does it say "Bobby is dead man, miss him miss him"?
Good at rembring things not good at finding things
Rock on!
All I can say is like uncle, like nephew...the song writing gene is alive and present in the next generation... One of my favorites by the nephew is: "This is my shortest song" and " EEEEEEEEEEEEE minor"! Get a copy quick if you haven't heard them....
I believe it was "SANTA" who brought you the drum set!
KPM
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