sweet effay

Well, despite Martin begging me not to, the Little effay and I settled down to watch Yellow Submarine the other day. We got as far as the Sea of Time section before she turned to me and said “Daddy I don’t like this.” I had to admit that she had a point.

I hadn’t seen the film in years, but I remembered it as being a pretty crap story with some quite entertaining visuals to go with the musical sections. Instead I was simply squirming with embarrassment; some things you just can’t go back to. I loved the film when I was kid and then later, used to watch selected bits when chemically challenged. ‘Hey Bulldog’ was the best bit, but I didn’t have the heart to fast forward to it in case I ruined all those fond memories.

Generally, my taste in films and music doesn’t change over the years (T. Rex and the first series of Scooby Doo still kick ass); I just add more items. However there are the odd occasions when I realize I was in error and this is obviously one of them. I’m never going to try to foist that bloody horrible film on anyone ever again.

I had a similar revelation over The Doors when it eventually dawned on me that Jim Morrison wrote the most execrable gibberish possible. Prior to that, and I shudder to admit it, my favourite ‘Doors album’ had been An American Prayer, because of all Jim’s marvellous poetry such as:

Words be nimble, words be quick
Words resemble walking sticks

To a certain extent, people of my generation were conned into thinking The Doors were deep and meaningful because of ‘The End’ being used in Apocalypse Now. Footage of helicopters and animal sacrifice are bound to give a tune a sort of intellectual gloss. Mostly though, I blame the drugs: I obviously hadn’t taken enough at that point. I still listen to The Doors occasionally (although definitely not An American Prayer), but never again will I sit halfway up a mountain in Snowdonia first thing in the morning, with a big spliff and a Walkman, communing with nature and really getting to grips with the lyrics of ‘The Soft Parade’.

So anyhow, we abandoned Yellow Submarine and then washed the taste of it out of our mouths with a marathon session of Tom and Jerry beating the shit out of each other to a much better integrated soundtrack.