Of the many songs you might expect to hear blaring from a car as it cruises down the High Street, Bobby Vee's Rubber Ball isn't one of them.
Yet despite the incongruity, that's exactly what I heard today. Winding down your windows to subject all and sundry to your music is obnoxious, but it's somehow less so when what you're listening to is so jaunty. Vee may have followed in Buddy Holly's footsteps and fronted The Crickets, but a rap star, he's not. I saw him at a gig at Shepherd's Bush Empire in the early-Nineties and he couldn't have been less ghetto if he tried.
The man behind the wheel had big (rubber) balls to pull it off, particularly while he was held at the lights. I'd struggle to rustle up the requisite facial expression for the situation if it were me; it's not a song to scowl to.
I understudied the part of Vee when I was in Bill Kenwright's touring production of 'The Roy Orbison Story', back in 2003. I only went on as him once, at the Sunderland Empire (the scene of Sid James' sad demise). I sang a medley of his songs whilst darting around the stage like an early-60s-pop-star possessed. I may have taken Rubber Ball's lyrics too literally.