Hello all you dirty people. I am JC Penny, front man for Dirty Penny. I hate this but I’m gonna be writing these from now on. If you’ve been following our news thru this blog at www.thatsmydirtypenny.com/news or via the feeds on our myspace, etc., you know about Alex. Alex was our band biographer and keeper of this news blog for the last year, a freelance journalist and graduate of the old Ryerson University. He was an unstable sort and we did our best to ground him. Unfortunately, he was apprehended in a public school gym dressed as a woman and has been charged with sexual perversion and endangerment to minors. We were doing a benefit concert for the school’s french immersion program at the time. We wore those little hats with propellers on them like you see in cartoons. “Beanie Props” I think they’re called. It was a genius idea and I forget which one of us came up with it at rehearsal. It might have been me. Anyways, in schools these days they start kids off at four years old! Can u imagine 5 strange men playing devil music in their gym all of a sudden while they’re sitting on the floor with their little chums eating squares.. they’d run right under their mommy’s skirts! But 5 strange men with propeller hats made them all flock right up to us. We even had to push some off the stage. It was very great. I can’t tell you how touching it is to see a sea of children eating a performance with their eyes and ears, not rocking out in any way because they don’t know how yet. This was for most their first rock show. They were all gazing at the equipment, the fingers, the pedals. Of course there were a few that ran away with their hands over their ears. Now I have kids. I remember playing on a synth with my stepson when he was seven and some sounds would actually cause him pain. He’d say “Ah! it’s too loud!” I discovered it was more the range of frequency than volume because other settings like ‘bassoon’ wouldn’t bother him at the same volume. So I know that kids are extra sensitive to sound but that doesn’t explain the rest that were pressed against the amps gazing at us. I guess those other ones are our future progressive conservatives.
Here’s the other great thing about us that night: I modified our songs to be kid friendly and then translated them to French! So normally, “If I Wuz a Cat” is the story of a married joe with kids tanked on bourbon, ranting on the streets about all his fake mistresses and bad boy adventures. I changed it to “Scaring the Cat” which is about a five year old playing with toys alone and starts doing all the voices for the dolls and sound effects for fights and destruction. Check it:
“Scaring the Cat”
Took my toys
and lined em up
and smashed em with my truck
I’m a monster with laser beam eyes
Boom
AH!
Blew up my sister’s dolls
Play my games the way I want to
[chorus]
the way I play with that is scaring the cat
the way I play with that is scaring the cat
the way I play with that is scaring the cat
my mom says I’m going crazy!
_______________________________
(here’s the original adult version)
“If I Wuz a Cat”
In just a tie
I steal your car
And punch you in the jaw
Call your mom when I need money
Drink
Fight
Maybe wear pants
Got 47 dates between 11 and 3
[chorus]
get away with that if I wuz a cat
get away with that if I wuz a cat
get away with that if I wuz a cat
call your mom when I need money
So we now have all our songs in family friendly format. We’ve decided we like playing for kids and perhaps “Shiny Dime” will be our band name for when we play for kids. Please contact our management@thatsmydirtypenny.com for booking.
Hey so this wasn’t so bad. I like writing about us. It’s so sad about Alex. We didn’t really didn’t get to know him that well. I hope he’s getting along in jail. I hope they got him his own cell. I want to state that in no way do we feel that Alex was and is a danger to children. We, Dirty Penny, stand firmly against this sort of thing. Alex had his demons but in no way was the Norman Rockwell of the cop that buys the lost little boy a soda at the diner counter one of them.
Oh yeah I almost forgot: I wrote a new song for our next album. It’s about two maids that clean our minds. One is named “Remembering” and the other I forget 😉 Our next album will be all story songs.
JC Penny