Little Brooklyn Foxes
Me and Iris, just kids
Listening to rock and roll on scratchy vinyl
Listening to Murray the K on AM radio
Submarine race watching
Which really meant make out music
‘Though we weren’t supposed to know ‘bout that yet.
We wanted to see what it was all about
So we take the train to Brooklyn by ourselves
To see Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jan and Dean
And some Girl Group.
We were just eleven
But we were already little Brooklyn foxes.
We get off the train just like papa said
We find the right subway just like papa said
Walk to the Brooklyn Fox Theater just like papa said.
‘Cept he remembered the ‘hood from the 1930s
When he went to see nickel matinees
Sit in the balcony, marvel at all the art deco
Watch Perils of Pauline, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin
Now we’re marching through broken sidewalks, broken dreams
But we get to that broken down theater in time to see
Little Richard playing that piano
Not the way my piano teacher played, no
Not the way my mother played, no
Not the way the nuns played, no
He just tutti-frutti-ed all over that keyboard
Kept that beat a’goin’ and hittin’ all those high notes
But wait a minute, he looks different, he looks weird, he looks
White. Is it? Yeah.
He’s wearing makeup he has on pancake makeup
The kind my mother puts on with a little wet sponge
But he has it spackled on his face
Something my dad would put on with a trowel
We weren’t even wearing makeup yet
But we were a couple of little Brooklyn foxes
Who couldn’t get enough of that rock and roll music.
We start screaming when Chuck Berry comes out on stage
Playing his guitar walking that crazy duck walk
The crowd goes wild he’s playing Maybellene
Then he’s down on the floor of the stage
Still playing those riffs on his back
Then all of a sudden everybody rushes the stage
We get swept up in it
The only little white girls from the ‘burbs
Right out front of all those tough kids from Bed Stuy
Tryin’ to cop a feel
And when Chuck sings ‘Why can’t you be true?’
I’m practically on the stage eye level and he’s singing right to me!
And it felt good ‘cause we were just a couple of little Brooklyn foxes
Who couldn’t get enough of that rock and roll music.
Then out comes the cutest blond teenagers ever, Jan and Dean
And they really do sing a song about me:
Bar bar bar, bar Barbara Ann and we’re screamin’ and yelpin’
Dancin’ in the aisles
And now there’s a couple of cops with nightsticks
Tellin’ everybody: ‘Back off and get in yer seats’
But we keep dancin’ till the lights come up
We leave that theater a couple of years wiser
And all wound up.
Go next door now to the coffee shop
It’s a mob scene and we have ourselves an egg crème and fries
There, bigger than life, we see the Girl Group
Oh how I want to sing in a Girl Group
Be my, be my baby
They’re all chiffon gowns and beehive hair dos
But look close and they look like they’re wearin’ Halloween masks
Tons of makeup false eyelashes, Be my baby now!
But they were too scary to us
They looked like very big foxes
Foxes that would eat their babies now.
So we head out and walk ‘round the corner
See two white teenagers
In the alley back of the theater.
One of them is throwing up
Maybe high, maybe sick, maybe scared
They were just a few years older than us
Just a couple of California surfer boys
Iris and I look at each other
They were Jan and Dean
And we were just a couple of little Brooklyn foxes
Who couldn’t get enough of that rock and roll music.
