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| Note the legs. |
I’ve been thinking about Music to Watch Girls By, the 1966 tune composed by Sidney ‘Sid’ Ramin and recorded as an instrumental by The Bob Crewe Generation. The trumpet on it sounds like a faux Herb Alpert.
Then in 1967 there was a version with lyrics by Tony Velona, recorded by Andy Williams. Some of the lyrics run
‘The boys watch the girls while the girls watch the boys who watch the girls go by
Eye to eye, they solemnly convene to make the scene’
Words from a different age obviously – how rarely anybody ‘makes the scene’ these days - And we all know that the male gaze is bad and wrong, but here I guess there’s a certain gender equality – the male gaze encounters the returning female gaze. Cool.
Music to Watch Girls By was, in some sense, a kind of update of the song
Standing on the Corner
by Frank Loesser from the 1956 musical The Most Happy Fella, originally recorded by a group called the Four Lads. The girls were no doubt walking, the men just mooching.
The lyrics here run
Standing on the corner watching all the girls go by
Standing on the corner watching all the girls go by
Brother you don't know a nicer occupation
Matter of fact, neither do I
Sounds innocent enough, it even sounds ‘nice,’ but is it? Later lyrics in the song run:
Brother, you can't go to jail
For what you're thinking
Or for the woo look in your eye
But it seems possible that you can. Here’s a sign that was up in the tube station at Walthamstow. I assume it must be in other places too:
‘Intrusive staring of a sexual nature is sexual harassment and is not tolerated.’ I’m sure our courts will make some clear and prudent definitions of when a look becomes a stare, and when a stare becomes an ‘intrusive stare.’
