Watch Your Step

Song 271: If you get around to the playlist this week you'll get to Walk Like an Egyptian by The Bangles, written by Liam Sternberg. From the first time I heard this song I assumed that Steve Martin's King Tut skit from a few years earlier must have played a main role in inspiring it, although the songwriter does not credit the Tut bit at all. Martin's sketch became a standard comic routine between me and my Oakland housemate Doug not long after we first saw it, and we both would often Walk Like an Egyptian for a few moments of shared personal comedy, so when this track lit up the airwaves in the early fall of '86, it felt like such a natural fit that it sounded as if I'd heard it before, in a previous life or something, perhaps in the incarnation of an old painting on a tomb in the shadow of the pyramids. This cut, BTW, is but one highlight on an excellent album called Different Light that contains many more, and I highly recommend it, particularly if you like this track. No matter how many times I've listened to it, to this day, it still makes me smile, and brings back images of Doug and me clowning for each other with our Egyptian hieroglyphic moves. I lost touch with Doug a few years ago and haven't managed to reconnect, so I can't speak for him, but for myself, I still can slide my feet up the street, bend my back, shift my arm and so on, and it feels good to do it, even in the absence of my old friend. If you don't believe me, give it a try yourself, and I'll bet that you'll like it -- try to Walk Like an Egyptian for a few moments and see how good it feels.