“Some people call me Maurice,” the Milwaukee-born Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Steve Miller famously coos, followed by that “wah wah” wolf whistle.
Now imagine hearing that signature sound after every single line in the song!
Well a gallant YouTuber, Matthew McVickar, has taken one famous feature of the 1973 anthem The Joker and (totally unnecessarily) put it centre stage.
Can you listen all the way through? AND count the number of times it happens?
McVickar, a music fan and web developer in Portland, Oregon, posted his version of “The Joker” on his YouTube page Sunday and reveals for those that listened and lose count, there are 49 whistles in total.
https://youtu.be/I8JXHSb1LSQ
He’s asking all viewers who like the work to, “Please donate $4.90, $14.90, or $49.00 to either NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Advancement Project or bail funds for people protesting for racial equality.”
In an email to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, McVickar said he had the idea to make this version of “The Joker” a few years ago, but just now got around to posting it.
He said he was inspired in part by “absurdist song remixes that are popular in my corner of the internet,” including a version of Smash Mouth’s “All Star” where every lyric is replaced by the opening word, “Somebody.”
“There’s a ton of humor in a ridiculous thing repeating ad nauseam, not knowing when or how many times it’s going to happen again,” McVickar wrote. “The placement of the wolf-whistle in the original song seems so arbitrary (why after ‘Maurice?’), so I thought, well, why couldn’t it just go after every line in the song?”
“I’m really, really happy that this has made so many people laugh,” McVickar said.
No word yet if Miller himself finds it amusing.
