10/24/07: The Cyrkle “Camaro” (1966)

We saluted The Cyrkle at the start of the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love, and it was a decent recap of the band’s massive importance. We’ll always consider them to be one of the top three acts of the ’60s, alongside Love and The Monkees. Sadly, this past week saw the passing of Cyrkle founder Tom Dawes. All the band members wrote, but Dawes—that’s him in the middle—turned out more than his share of Cyrkle classics.

“Camaro” was a promotional 45 (backed by a Paul Revere & The Raiders tune) that Chevrolet dealers handed out to customers who’d test-drive the ’67 model. Nowadays, there’s something inherently conservative about the celebration of burning fossil fuels. “Camaro,” however, is bigger than that. The song is also an obvious forefather of the Canyonero theme* featured on that episode of The Simpsons where Krusty briefly became a hip comic before returning to being a corporate shill.

The Canyonero commercial has been embraced by lots of conservatives as a celebration of SUV superiority. Rightly so, too, although the song is played for laughs. In contrast, the lovely “Camaro” is great art. Check out a sample of the lyrics, which require minimal editing to become oil-burning haiku:

              On a mountain road
              Where very few can follow, see Camaro
              Climb up to the sky

         Down the endless highway
         Lonely winds are chasing the Camaro
         Racing to the sun

              From a bright marquee
              The neon lights are shining on Camaro
              When the day is done

         The answer to all
         The dreams of men and their machines
         Is Camaro

Tom Dawes didn’t write “Camaro,” but he could have. In fact, he’d outdo the “Camaro” composers by going on to write timeless jingles for 7-Up and Alka-Seltzer. Dawes returned to the world of rock in 2002 for a collaboration with pop historian and songwriter Andrew Sandoval— as reported by fellow pop historian Dawn Eden, who’s still a pop historian no matter how much she says that she’s now an ex-pop historian. It’s like being a Marine.

Make it your own: Our previous entry on The Cyrkle covered all your shopping needs. Just remember that “Camaro” is a bonus track on the Neon reissue. For an immediate fix, here’s a MySpace page where you can hear “Camaro” and three other fine Cyrkle tunes—although none of them are Dawes originals.

*That YouTube link doesn’t take you to the original Simpsons footage. 20th Century Fox has shut that down. Instead, it’s the Canyonero theme as done by…well, let’s not give it away if you haven’t gone there yet. Just know that it’s both gay and retarded—like Liberace with an extra chromosome. Watch to the very end for an important legal disclaimer.

 

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