Musical Poll: Blinded by the WTF???

A very silly musical poll question, brought to you by the local classic rock station’s music selection this morning:


On an unrelated note, it’s deeply unfair that sleeping really late puts SteelyKid into a worse mood than not getting enough sleep does.

14 comments

  2. I love the word play of Bruce’s early songs, Blinded by the Light, Spirits in the Night, For You, Kitty’s Back, and Growing Up.

    “I was open to pain and crossed by the rain and I walked on a crooked crutch
    I strolled all alone through a fallout zone and came out with my soul untouched”

    On recent albums I have searched for such free association. From Counting on a Miracle

    “Your kiss, your kiss, your touch, your touch
    Your heart, your heart, your strength, your strength
    Your hope, your hope, your faith, your faith
    Your face, your face, your love, your love
    Your dream, your dream, your life, your life”

    Of course you can have word play that says something which is the best. From a song I do not have to name.

    “Wendy let me in I wanna be your friend
    I want to guard your dreams and visions
    Just wrap your legs ’round these velvet rims
    and strap your hands across my engines
    Together we could break this trap
    We’ll run till we drop, baby we’ll never go back
    Will you walk with me out on the wire
    ‘Cause baby I’m just a scared and lonely rider
    But I gotta find out how it feels
    I want to know if love is wild
    girl I want to know if love is real”

  3. Never really did understand why they went with “Wrapped up” rather than “Revved up”, since the latter actually makes sense and the only reason — they claim, at least — that it came out that way was that someone messed up the azimuth on the recording.

    On the other hand I don’t actually have the album on me, so I can’t recall if the album notes actually said “wrapped up” or “revved up” or if that was even a mistranscription in the first place. But I think I recall it being the first, for what that’s worth.

    Honestly it’s one of my least favorite of their songs despite (or maybe because of?) being the one that gets the most recognition. I’d FAR rather be listening to a live performance of Captain Bobby Stout, preferably from circa 1977 to, say, 1982 or so.

  5. I always that it was “revved up like a deuce…”

    “Revved up” is just barely possible, though it sounds much more like “wrapped up” to me. There’s no way he’s saying “deuce,” though, unless he inexplicably decided to slip into a bad Sean Connery impression for the chorus (“You’ll get yoursh, Trebek!”) and only the chorus.

  6. Were they playing a worn out 45 rpm record?

    It refers to a “deuce coupe” being wound out on an open road after the cops have gone to bed, not to be confuse with being tached up [*] at a light, like my 409.

    [*] Increase the rpms before dropping the clutch at the start of a drag race, to avoid having the engine bog down when the car launches.

  7. We were both hitchhikers but you had your ear tuned to the roar of some metal tempered engine on an alien distant shore. So you left to find a better reason then the one we were living for and it’s not that nursery mouth I came back for, or the way your stretched out on the floor, cuz I’ve broken all your windows and I’ve rammed through all your doors and who am I to ask you to lick my sores? And you should know that’s true: I came for you, for you, I came for you………………spoke to me…but she never did get it….

  10. I always thought it was “wrecked up like a deuce…”

    And yes, I thought it was referring to a deuce coupe…

  11. Obligatory response to obligatory video:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsjvR5eZUTk

    This is an MGB-GT in the same sense that a deuce coupe is a ’32 Ford. The motor inside the MG that you hear being revved up on a dyno is a circa 1980 Jaguar V-12 motor being tested prior to being brought into racing trim.

  12. You know, guys, a little research never killed anybody. From Wikipedia:

    “Blinded by the Light” was the first song on, and first single from Bruce Springsteen’s 1973 debut album Greetings from Asbury Park N.J. The band’s version was unsuccessful and did not appear on the music charts.

    Manfred Mann’s Earth Band’s recording of the song features several changed lyrics. The most prominent change is in the chorus, where Springsteen’s “cut loose like a deuce” is replaced with “revved up like a deuce.”

    This is commonly misheard as “wrapped up like a douche.”Springsteen himself has joked about the controversy, claiming that it was not until Manfred Mann rewrote the song to be about a “feminine hygiene product” that it became popular.

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