Monkey Business Top Ten: Monkey Time (#7)

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Hopefully you’re having a good day. If anything’s wrong maybe this countdown about songs with monkey in the title will get a monkey off your back. Thanks to @DocAndersen for the suggestion! And here’s today’s primate tune. #7: Monkey Time - Boz Scaggs Quick note (as if everyone in here is as old as I am and listens to everything I do ): this is NOT the “Monkey Time” that Major Lance did in the 60s. As I said earlier in this countdown, when there’s a monkey in the title you can occasionally find humor. This song might not be the knee-slapped of “Let the Monkey Driver” earlier in the list, but nobody will mistake this for “We’re All Alone.” Got a monkey on your back? Boz Scaggs knows how you feel, according to this song. He’s feeling his age (“back in ‘64 I was feeling 63” [for the record, Boz was 28 when this song came out]) and miserable (“I looked into my mirror and I just wasn’t there”). Enter monkey. He “grabbed my coat and took away my hat” and proceeds to show Scaggs just how to live. They go out together, and the monkey has all the fun (“it was hard to hold the poor boy down….he even made the teenage queen”). Now, if you take this song at its face value, it is funny. However, from what I read, having a “monkey on your back” has been used in drug rehabilitation circles since about the time this song came out (1972) to reference drug problems. Of course, having a monkey on one’s back has long been used as a metaphor for any sort of problem, real or imagined. I remember the press asking Mike Krzyzewski about “getting the monkey off his back” when Duke won its first national title in 1991; similarly, Phil Mickelson was saddled with a “best player to never win a major” label until he won his first Masters. In the light of a drug problem, it’s not all that funny. However, if you don’t probe that deeply, you can take this as Boz having a good ol’ time. He probably even learned how to do the “Lido Shuffle” from this monkey. Monkey Time Written by Boz Scaggs and Clive Arrowsmith Recorded by Boz Scaggs From Boz Scaggs and Band, 1972 It’s all right and it all comes easy: