I was recently getting a tooth filled, and was reminded of a childhood trauma. No, it's not dental-related. It's the song that came on the "lite" classic rock station: Abracadabra, by the Steve Miller Band. I actually liked this song as a kid, but for some reason…maybe the "I want to reach out and grab you" line, maybe the spooky electronic effects…it also really scared me. And that was before I saw the totally terrifying video.
Come to think of it, that STILL scares me…
A lot of Steve Miller Band fans HATE this song but I loved it and had the record single. I remember whenever I would play it my mother would tell me to turn it off cuz it spooked her. She said that when she was a young girl (back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth) there was a sing-song thing kids used to say to try to scare eachother about "reaching out to GRAB ya!" which – when she tryed to sing it – sounded sorta like a blue print for the "1 2 Freddys Coming For You" jump-rope dirge.
I think Steve Miller suffered from "VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR SYNDROME" as he wasnt particularly good looking and didnt like making videos (he's in very little of the Abracadabra one) and coincidentaly when MTV became big is when we stopped hearing and seeing Steve Miller.
I think I heard somewhere (POP UP VIDEO maybe?) that the chick in the video is the directors daughter! Anyone wanna confirm that?
I remember this video; it mostly just made me feel like I was listening to sort of naughty grown-up stuff.
However the backwards footage was unnerving. For some reason, the bird at :57 was bad.
I forgot all about the "naughty grown-up stuff"!
For YEARS I thought a lyric in the song was "black pennies with an angel's face" – which for some reason I thought was very cool – and still do – (I mean, doesnt that sound like a cool name for a band: BLACK PENNIES?) and then one day when I was in my early 20s working in an office it came on the AM Gold radio at work and a guy I worked with sang "Black PANTIES With An Angel's Face" and I was totally shocked to find out the song was about PANTIES not PENNIES!
"Black Pennies with an Angel's Face" is a cool image.
But the big one for me at age ten was "I feel magic in your cool breast." I remember deconstructing this: He feels magic? In her…breast? With his HAND (as opposed to some psychic sixth-sense thing).
And the relative temperature of said body part: Why, lower than that of Steve Miller's hand.
I hate to ruin this for you but I think he says "Caress" not "cool breast"