Sometimes our TiVo captures old episodes of “Saturday Night Live” and we’ll always check out who was the musical guest and fast forward to the good parts. Last week TiVo recorded an episode of SNL with a leather-pants clad Eddy Grant as the musical guest, and after a few reggae chords he ripped into, “Electric Avenue.” I was immediately reminded of my early youth when MTV was contraband in my household and leather pants signified a transgression against the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I asked Jon if he, like myself, thought that the lyrics were really, “Valetric Avenue,” because that’s exactly what it sounded like and I have never heard it otherwise.
He shook his head in disbelief and asked, “You really didn’t just ask me that, did you? Valetric? That’s not even a word. And the name of the song is ‘ELECTRIC Avenue.'”
“But I always sang it as Valetric, and so did all my friends,” I explained, and then I went ahead and graced him with a rather loud and convincing rendition of, “Valetric Avenue, and then we’ll take it hiya.”
“Heather,” he said, “That’s very cute, but what did you think when you saw the name of the song?”
And I tried to remember how my eight-year-old brain reconciled the contradiction, and then it came to me, “When I saw that it was ELECTRIC and not Va-LETRIC, I just thought, well Eddy knows the truth and I know the truth, AND THAT’S ALL THAT MATTERS.”