Mark's 93/KHJ 1972 MixTape #42

The beginning of this series can be read here.

This is another song for which I had to rewrite/launder lyrics when it was performed in a talent show at my school. It's "Young Girl" by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, a group that for no visible reason often wore outfits that were a cross between "flower power" hippies and Union soldiers in the Civil War. I don't understand it and I don't think I need to.

Wikipedia says this about this very, very successful song…

The song is sung from the point of view of a man who has become distressed upon finding out that the girl he is with, contrary to the first impression she had made upon him, is actually younger than the legal age of consent. He is asking her to leave before things go any further: "Get out of here / before I have the time / to change my mind / 'cause I'm afraid we'll go too far."

So that's why I had to rewrite lyrics for it to be performed onstage at University High, even though at lunch hour every day, you could hear the original version blasting out from transistor radios all over campus.

What makes this record work, I think, is that Mr. Puckett had — and reportedly, still has as he's still performing in his seventies — one of the best voices singing this kind of music then. And lest you watch the video below and think he's lousy at lip-sync, I believe this is one of those cases where someone took the film of a live performance and laid the record over it. That's why they don't match very well…