Song 623: This week the playlist recognizes The Little Old Lady (From Pasadena) by Jan and Dean, written by Don Altfeld, Jan Berry and Roger Christian, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. A few months after the Fab Four rocked my world, this amusing spinner got moving all over the airwaves. The British invasion had captured my attention throughout the previous few months, but I knew that this joyride came from the West Coast, not from the eastern side of the Atlantic Ocean, and I liked how it took RnR in a different but still captivating direction. While I often didn't get to hear much of the Top Forty, due at least in part to my fundamentalist family's opposition to the devil's music, I DID get to hear this one because apparently it didn't bother them. I still recall the moment when it came on the car radio, and my grandfather, while driving the vehicle, smiled and let it play on rather than angrily turning it off, which I had seen him do several times before in reaction to songs that lit his fuse. Of course, around a decade went by before I learned the snarky back story behind the lyrics here, which got inspired by the Little Old Lady lie that car sellers often used in that era to unload a set of wheels after illegally lowering the odometer figure. Ironically, in 1983 I bought a 1967 Dodge that had only 40,000 miles on it, getting it from one of my guitar buddies, and I knew I could trust him, plus I also knew the Little Old Lady relative that had owned it. She did not drive real fast or drive real hard, and no guys would come to race her from all around because she could actually keep her foot off the accelerator.
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