Favorite Song No. 347: The Turtles – You Showed Me

The Turtles - You Showed Me

Song: You Showed Me
Artist: The Turtles
Year: 1968
Album: Present the Battle of the Bands
Genre: Rock
Style: Classic Rock / Psychedelic
Pictured: 7″ Single
Click Here to Play the Song

The Turtles are most famous for a song called “Happy Together,” which is a pretty good song, but not among the 1,014 songs I consider my favorites. Maybe it’s 1,015th? It is, after all, pretty good. “You Showed Me,” on the other hand is one of my favorites, as is another of their songs, which you can see, and hear, below. Actually, let me save you the trouble of scrolling and spoil the surprise for you by revealing that my second-most-favorite song by The Turtles is the lengthily-titled “I’m Chief Kamanawanalea (We’re the Royal Macadamia Nuts).” I’ve spoiled the surprise because it’s due to Chief Kamanawanalea that I found “You Showed Me,” or that I even know who The Turtles are.

In my high school days of breakbeat, wikky wikky wikky3, two-copy-action DJ’ing, I was forever on a quest for new and exciting break records, i.e. records containing a song with a drum solo that I could extend using two copies of the record. I had heard from someone that a band called The Turtles had such a song, with an uncouth pun as its title, the aforementioned “I’m Chief Kamanawanalea (We’re the Royal Macadamia Nuts),” so I set about finding two copies of the record. Find two I did, and began including the drums in sets for breakdancers and MCs, but I also listened to the rest of the record and found all kinds of good music there, good-est of them all being “You Showed Me,” with its slow, sultry tune and romantic lyrics.

The album is interesting in that it’s performed as if it were a battle of the bands (hence the title), and The Turtles adopt a new band name, and musical style, for each of the tracks. For “You Showed Me,” The Turtles play a harmonium, and become the hippie band Nature’s Children. The record is worth hunting down, not only for the music, but for the interior. It’s a gatefold album, and opens up to pictures of the band in costume as each of the 11 bands they invented for the album.

You no longer hear much music like “You Showed Me,” especially in this modern era of sarcasm and irony in pop music. I’ve never been a fan of that, preferring instead sincerity, and a willingness to write music that is unabashedly beautiful and honest. It seems that at some point in the ’90s that stopped being a thing, and pop music without layers or irony all got shoved into the corny category. Luckily, The Turtles recorded in the 1960s, when it was still okay to write beautifully romantic love songs without any ironic subtext. This is a love song, and it makes no bones about that fact. It’s ideal for inclusion on a mixtape for a crush, or for any courtship-related usage, and is the perfect first dance song for a wedding. Speaking of weddings and first dance songs, have I mentioned yet that I am a wedding DJ in Austin, Texas? Hire me!

Fun Fact I Learned from Google– The Turtles are from Westchester, a Los Angeles neighborhood that is next to my hometown of Hawthorne, California. They began life as a surf rock band, no doubt influenced by The Beach Boys, who were from Hawthorne proper. That was fun to learn.

Other Favorite Tracks by This Band
The Turtles - Present the Battle of the Bands

Song: I’m Chief Kamanawanalea (We’re the Royal Macadamia Nuts)
Artist: The Turtles
Year: 1968
Album: Present the Battle of the Bands
Genre: Rock
Style: Classic Rock
Pictured: LP
Click Here to Play the Song

3wikky wikky wikky/ˈwikē ˈwikē ˈwikē/noun 1. The noise a record makes when scratched by a hip hop DJ. 2. Scratching a record in the manner of a hip hop DJ.

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