In my profession: school teacher, I inevitably have to play some role in helping the youngsters of today decide what they want to do or be tomorrow. Inevitably, every single teenager I ever ask declares that they want to be rich and famous. They have as much idea about how this is going to occur as they do about how to fly a space shuttle, and I remind them that they are about as likely to become famous as they are to win the lottery. But of course, this is the other ambition that everyone shares. I am often impressed and appalled at how impassioned they are about their impending fame and fortune. Without having any discernable talent, looks or ideas I have seen young people in tears of insistence that they will, some day, join a boy/girl band or somehow, anyhow, get on TV. The worrying thing is that when I ask them what they will do if, just by chance and bad luck, that doesn’t happen, they have no answer. There is no plan B. When Pokemon cards were around I was especially depressed by a young lad who, by using the kind of Maths that lots of dotcom investors used, insisted that his Pokemon card collection would be worth millions in years to come. I tried explaining to him that, for complex economic reasons that even economists don't understand, this would simply not happen. He carried on collecting them long after the fad was over, believing that since people were now literally giving him their previously precious collections for nothing, it would only increase his future profits.
I guess everyone has fantasies about being rich and famous. My friend Graham emailed me today to tell me he'd come across a copy of his long forgotten album. It was a four track demo that he wrote and I produced many moons ago. I particularly remember one track which was very delicate and ballady for a bit and then exploded into a 7 minute face-melter of a guitar solo that I still consider my finest recorded work. Even while we were doing it we kind of knew it was never going to strike us gold, but you never know.
My ambition was always to have one monster hit and then retire. I actually know someone who managed this trick, a singer whose hit I sometimes, fifteen or so years after it was ubiquitous, hear on the radio. The royalties are still trickling in, I guess. I am not her accountant but it seems she is able to live quite comfortably from the proceeds of her nine months of fame. Good for her.
But it took my friend a lot of lead up work to achieve a global hit record. And that won’t do. Like the youngsters that I encounter my real ambition is to become wealthy and famous for doing hardly anything at all. I want it now. I want to be Gram’ma Funk.
Everybody knows Gram’ma funk because she wrote and spoke just fourteen words. As far as I can gather, Gram’ma funk’s career is still going strong after several years on the back of these words. You may be baffled, asking “Who the hell is Gram’ma Funk?” Well, you surely know seven of the words very well, perhaps all fourteen. They are: ‘I see you baby shakin’ that ass’ and ‘this is the house that funk built’. The second seven aren’t even original, but a pretty common phrase with one word changed.
Now, I have no idea about Gram’ma Funk’s royalty deals or copyright on these 14 words, but even if she has one tenth of a penny for each time they are used commercially, then she is probably doing alright. Firstly there are the records themselves, the remixes and the rereleased remixes. But possibly more lucrative, there are the fees she must get for use of her words on advertising, radio and TV. In the UK her words have been used on a car commercial for a car that has a slightly unusual behind and, in a world where TV producers seem to slather their shows with endless incidental music, anything buttockular or ass-related from workouts to clothing to dancing is inevitably soundtracked by her voice intoning those deadly seven words. It is almost as much of a cliché as using ‘Come Fly With Me’ to soundtrack anything to do with holidays or aeroplanes.
And then there’s MTV Cribs. Four times in each show we hear the words This is The House That Funk Built. Extensive research by me (i.e. I am guessing) suggests that Cribs is shown in lots and lots of countries, therefore Gram’ma Funk must air hundreds times a day world-wide.
It must be close to the least amount of work for the most amount of exposure in music history. It even trumps Warhol’s prediction. He should have said “In the future, some people will be famous for fourteen words.”
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