MERRY MONTH OF MAY . . .

"Merry Month Of May" was the first song that was composed, performed, and recorded when the Surf Whammys started the "She Loves To Play" project, and it draws from the opening song of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (Beatles), with the first part of "Merry Month Of May" being a surreal satire of the start of the classic Beatles album and with the end of the middle part of the song being reminiscent of the end of the last song on the Beatles album.

From this perspective, one might suggest that "Merry Month Of May" is a one-song surreal satire of the entire "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (Beatles) album, except that the "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" (Beatles) bit is at the end of "Merry Month Of May" rather than in the middle, although this is only one of many perspectives, since virtually everything about "Merry Month Of May" has many levels and interpretations, hence is not so simple as it might appear to be. In a nutshell, the general structure of the classic Beatles album is a big beginning and a bigger ending with a lot of stuff in the middle, which certainly describes "Merry Month of May" (since nothing beats a Scottish bagpipe played through an IK Multimedia Amplitube 2 guitar plug-in for a truly big beginning and a strange barbershop quartet singing even stranger nursery rhymes for a remarkably bigger ending).

After all the songs for "She Likes To Play" (The Surf Whammys) were mixed and mastered, the original sequence and order of songs was changed, since by that time it was obvious that the album was more than a surreal satire of the greatest rock and roll theme album of the 20th century. As the band studied the way the songs fit together as a Gestalt, it made sense to move "Merry Month of May" to the ninth position, since following it with "Somewhere", the last song on the album, is a nice segue.

As an additional insight, the impact and power of the lyrics for "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (Beatles) become obvious when you listen to the opening line of "Merry Month Of May" and observe that even though the singer is singing "forty years ago today", what you probably think you hear is "twenty years ago today" (from the opening line of the classic Beatles album). If you listen very carefully, you will hear that the singer is singing "forty years ago today" and then you will understand that hearing something else is nothing more than a curiously strange auditory illusion.

[Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!]

Forty years ago today,
[Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!]

In the merry, merry month of May,
[Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!]

Milford Whittle and the Finger Puppets played,
[Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!]

In the merry, merry month of May . . .
[Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!]

Though it's been many years since then,
[Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!]

The Finger Puppets want to play again,
[Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!]

So greet them with a great big smile,
[Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!]

'Cause they're gonna to play with Milford Whittle a while!
[Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!]

[Instrumental Chaos . . . ]

Merry, merry toads and fairies,
How does your garden grow?

With tortoise shells and cockle bells,
And pretty, pretty bows . . .