Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Yes, I should be asleep already. I had to write this first.

I just heard "Rock The Boat"[1] on the radio, a song I've known for a Very Long Time, a song I remember hearing on the PA at the swimming pool as a child -- most of you probably know it, right?

[...]
Our love is like a ship on the ocean
We've been sailing with a cargo full of love and devotion
So I'd like to know where, you got the notion
Said I'd like to know where, you got the notion
To rock the boat
  don't rock the boat baby
Rock the boat
  don't tip the boat over
[...]

Except that despite the length of time that song has been in my brain, I couldn't help having it remind me of something I only heard as an adult -- in my thirties -- and nowhere near as many times:

Sit down sit down sit down sit down
Sit down, you're rocking the boat[2]

The thing is, that second tune has visual attached: a whole bunch of actors and actresses singing it and moving around, while I watched from behind a bass guitar in the orchestra pit.

Wow, musical theatre (which I discovered awfully late) trumps stuff that's been in my brain since I was a pre-teen. Okay, the fact that I performed it probably has something to do with it as well, but it's the images that keep dancing through my brain, not the memory of what my fingers were doing at the time[3].

[1] by The Hues Corporation, which I had to look up just now using Google. The name of the band had never sank in. Come to think of it, there are a bunch of songs from around then that I don't know the band names for. Hmm....
[2] from Guys and Dolls.
[3] Contrast to what happened with my first experience with musical theatre: for a couple of years after playing in Little Shop of Horrors, I couldn't hear the words "Feed me" without muscle memory kicking in and making me want to grab a real or imagined bass guitar to play the BOOMP BOOMP troo woooooo diddy BOOMP BOOMP troo woooooo diddy riff from that song. But that was the show where I started learning to read bass clef four weeks before opening night (that's when I got recruited), so there was all sorts of wonkiness in my learning circuits that autumn.