30 Sep 05

The Muffin Man

I tend not to dwell on the past too often. But few memories bring me as much joy as the time my old band Blame it on Eve performed a genre-bending cover of "The Muffin Man" at the Hammonton High School "Battle of the Bands" to a packed auditorium.

It starts out simply enough: Steve accompanies the lines "Do you know the muffin man, the muffin man, the muffin man? Do you know the muffin man...." with a minimal slow strum on the guitar. Then for the next lines, "...who lives on Drury Lane," he cranks up the distortion and plays a crescendoing chugga-chugga riff. Then the song explodes, drum, bass, and guitar, into what can best be described as a pop-punk interpretation of the song. At this point I gathered that most of the audience was fairly incredulous. But it gets better.

After the pop-punk fiasco, Rob, the drummer, transitions into a breakbeat. This is followed by the following priceless exchange between myself and the audience:

- When I say muffin, you say man - muffin!
- (silence)
- Muffin!
- (silence)

This is repeated once or twice, then followed by something like "Muffin man! Say it as loud as you can! Yeah, muffin man. Alright."

It was pretty much a flop, but high school students aren't really known for either their subtlety or their sense of humor. I'm still bitter that we lost to that Nu metal band. Maybe if I too had taken off my shirt during the performance, I wouldn't be griping. But I had to think about all the poor girls that probably would have fainted if I tried to pull off such a stunt.

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