Song 632: This week the playlist comes around to Under the Boardwalk by The Drifters, written by Kenny Young and Arthur Resnick, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. This marks the first appearance of The Drifters among this grouping. When their mover started jumping across the airwaves a few months after the Fab Four rocked my world, it didn't really get my attention very much. It did seem to grab other folks, though, with this rendition and other variants by The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys climbing the charts. At first I didn't understand the lyrical ramble and I thought it might contain some clever word-play reference to a certain Monopoly property. Later, as a young adult, I came to realize that the game card I had imagined when hearing this piece might very well have gotten inspired by the physical beach adornment pictured in the track's title and chorus line. As the 1970s unfolded and the Chicago area radio stations began a 1950s revival, they also featured this gem quite often, to the point that my female companion at the time remarked one day that she didn't care to hear it again because she had just heard it not long before, and I strongly agreed with her. However, a decade later, as I savored residing in the pleasant warmer climate of Berkeley, CA, I noticed that whenever this hit got played, I relished it much more than I previously had. Four weeks ago, we rode On a Carousel (Song 628), and when you hear the happy sound of a carousel, sometimes you can almost taste the hot dogs and french fries they sell. Whether in or out of the sun, we still have a couple more warm weeks in store, and we'll be havin' some fun.
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