"MacArthur's Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet green icing flowing down
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
'Cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again, oh no "
To be honest, I've always hated the song. It's the kinda song I'd put on as I was laying in the bathtub ready to take the razorblade to my wrist, if ya catch my drift. Anyway, it always seemed 'dark' to me. Well, guess what - this is MacArthur Park now:
MacArthur Park has erupted into LA’s fentanyl ground zero - a collapsing, chaos-soaked war zone where overdoses hit by the hour, people die daily, crime crews corner the market - and what used to be a neighborhood park now teeters on the brink of total collapse.
The park, the largest green space in the district, now hosts an unknown number of unhoused people, though on most days it’s fair to estimate the population in the hundreds.
MacArthur’s unofficial “residents” are made comfortable by groups handing out food and even free crack pipes as part of “safe smoking” kits - with tens of millions of dollars coming from the city to support the park’s inhabitants. Unbelievable...
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I've been using up some vacation, Joe, but unfortunately too many commitments to get down to FL to dive off Key Largo.
ReplyDeleteI was listening to music and reading back story information on Songfacts. The Gogo's 'Our Lips are Sealed' played
Turns out it was cowritten and the other author recorded it also (Fun Boy Three)
That version will make you want to run the bath water
Mark in PA
Back in the day that song never irritated me; it still doesn't. Back then I just wrote it off as one of the many quirky things that were common in the 1960s, and that's how I still feel about it. When "MacArthur Park" was in the Top 10 the song that really came to grate on me nerves was Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson" because deejays played it just about once every half hour and played it to death: I'd switch from 77-WABC to 57-WMCA and find both stations playing "Mrs. Robinson" at the same time, and if I was down around New Brunswick and could pick up the Philly stations, they played it to death too.
ReplyDeleteMacArthur Park lyrics are certainly odd, but the musical score itself is (in my opinion) outstanding. Remove the vocals and it's perfect.
ReplyDeleteThe Los Angeles board of tourism is doing it wrong.
ReplyDeleteMacArthur Park - Strong candidate for "Worst Song Ever Recorded".
ReplyDelete