Bum Doo

February 5, 2009 by Ro.

We are either on fire or we are attempting ridiculously easy arrangements. Whatever, we nail down “Dock of the Bay” in one rehearsal. The only issue is whether Jeff should sing “Bum” as written, or switch to “Doo” to match everyone else. This is a major decision when you are the bass. The absurd dialog goes thusly:

“Do you like Jeff’s “bum” or should he “doo”?”
“I’ve always liked Jeff’s bum.”
“That’s all well and good, but which sounds better, bum or doo here?”
“Well, does he do doos before or does he do bums?”
“Did you say doo-doo?”
“Let’s not be immature. We’re discussing Jeff’s bum.”
“So, the question is, do you want to doo it with Jeff or should he bum?”

By now we are teary-eyed and rasping with near-hysteria.

This is heightened by the ending of Dock of the Bay which, you may recall, ends with Otis Redding whistling. We all try whistling and are hopelessly inept. It sounds like a laryngitic parrot convention. Since we can neither whistle nor summon Otis back from the dead to help us, Audrey decides to scat the whistle part. Of course, Ro has a better idea. She suggests doing the whistle part like a chicken: Brrruc buc bucca, brr bucca bucca bucca, brr bucca bucca bucca brr bucca bawww, while flapping her chicken wings and shaking her tail feathers. She is quite good. The entire performance is greatly enhanced by Audrey adding additional barnyard noises, including her horse nicker which is beyond compare. Her cow “moo” sends Ro over the edge and both girls default to flamingo impersonations. The boys are oblivious, still working on the bum vs. doo conundrum.

For some reason, this leads Jeff to tell us of his daughter’s turtle’s eye infection. The turtle is in grave danger of losing its eye. Ro suggests that perhaps the turtle might be happy with an eye patch, a sort of rakish, pirate-like look. This leads the girls to embellish the whole turtle-as-pirate theme, complete with supergluing a little parrot on the turtle’s shoulder and installing some sort of turtle pegleg.

No, we were not drinking. Perhaps we should.

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