King of the swingers, oh!
On a Saturday evening, when time no longer mattered, we were gathered in The Library, in Dublin's Central Hotel. I was hitting the vodka and tonic, S. was downing the pints. T. stuck to Cola, SJ. warmed to the Bushmills and E. handed out chocolate delights from a large supermarket box.
I don't remember why, but we ended up talking about Jungle Book, the Disney animated movie. It's by far my favourite Disney film, and I believe it to be the last good one.
I saw it in what must have been 1968, in the Cineac theatre in Amsterdam, which is now a Planet Hollywood branch. I was five years old. My mum took me.
Later that year, we went to buy the soundtrack. It was either in 'De Bijenkorf' or at 'Vroom and Dreesman'. I clearly remember my mother asking the shop assistant for the LP. The girl said: 'But it's in English. Why don't you get the Dutch 45s instead (red vinyl in little gatefold sleeves), if it's for the little girl.'
The little girl grimaced. No way. And my mum was adamant. 'No, we want the English one.' My mum thought I should learn English as young as possible. (She even tried to get my primary school to teach us French, but she was the only parent in favour of that.) So we got the English one. It was my very first LP.
I played it to death and I sang along to all the songs. So did my dad. We'd quote Colonel Hathy ('Winnifred, old girl, that's an ENTIRELY different matter') endlessly.
My mum and dad explained to me that the vultures, with their 'friendly claw', were supposed to look and talk like The Beatles. I didn't know who The Beatles were, and for a long time I must have thought they were a barber quartet. My dad also told me what a Victorian Cross was, and translated whatever bits I didn't get.
To date, I can remember most of the songs by heart. I still have the LP, horribly scratched. I bought the CD a few years ago, but the sound always disappoints me. I miss the scratches and there's just too much... detail on the CD. The added score doesn't help. It kills the flow I remember.
So there we were, in The Library, and I was fairly inebriated, singing Louis Prima's 'I wan'na be like you', and 'The Bear Necessities', 33 years after I first heard them. A classic moment. Singing's good. Always lifts me up.
I guess you had to be there. But we were.
Disney's Jungle Book page is pathetic. This Dutch Jungle Book Collection site was enlightening, I didn't know there had been so many different LP releases with different covers.
Yes, I did read the novel, a few years after seeing the film. We owned 'the complete works of Rudyard Kipling' from some English Bookclub promotion. Here's a link to Rudyard Kipling's original text at Project Gutenberg.
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