Word to your moms I came to drop bombs
I got more rhymes than the Bible’s got Psalms
House of Pain
Don’t ask me what it is about this song. I just like it. I mean, c’mon—who doesn’t like an Irish-American rap band? Am I right? Who’s with me?
If you don’t like it, that’s cool. Just don’t mock me for digging it it.
The year was 1992. Baby Mama and I had been married less than a year when this song came out. Do you wanna know what I was doing when I first heard this song? Should I regale you with the tale of how this song “made me feel” the first time my ears heard it?
How the hell would I know where I was, what I was doing or how it made me feel? It was a damn song on the radio I probably heard as I was tooling around So. Cal. for one reason or another.
I mean, seriously, who knows that shit? Unless it’s some lame Air Supply song and your chick is sticking her tongue down your throat or she just dumped your ass, why would you know what you were doing the first time you heard a song.
I could see something like, “I remember the first time I heard All Out of Love. I was loading bullets into the gun and proofreading my suicide note.” But this? Jump Around? I can’t remember the first time. Sorry.
I’m the cream of the crop, I rise to the top
I never eat a pig cause a pig is a cop
Or better yet a terminator
Like Arnold Schwarzenegger…
For some reason when I hear this I picture cruising over a friend’s house to chillax*. Maybe it was Crystal and Bone, or maybe The Kings Fan and Hot Latin Mama. Once upon a time it could have been Duke.
The people aren’t as important as the thoughts that I have associated with the song. Don’t get me wrong—those five people along with Crystal’s sis, dad, bro, bro’s girlfriend plus my great friend J.B. have been close friends for anywhere between 13 and 22 years. I totally dig all of them.
Even though I now live 3,000 miles away and even though I don’t talk with all of them as much as I’d like to, they’re important to me and when I hear the song I remember the fun times we had.
Except for New years Eve 2008-9. That night sucked.
One week into January ‘09 I was moving out of the country, so Crystal, Bone, her dad and sis were all taking me to a party at a friend’s house. “Nothing but chicks” is how they advertised it. “Send you off in style”, was another thing they said to me.
We got to the party and it was cool. There was a keg. They had some Coke for my Jack Daniels. But there was one thing off. Something that was not quite right.
Oh yeah. I remember. It was a DAMN SAUSAGE FEST!!!!!!!! There were 5 chicks total! Two were married. One was with a guy and two were lesbians. WTF?
We did have fun playing beer pong and swapping stories. One of the married chicks was polite enough to flash us around midnight, so it wasn’t a complete bust. Her cans were nice. Not stupendous. But nice. That was definitely NOT a Jump Around kind of memory!!!
Feelin, funkin, amps in the trunk and I got more rhymes
than there’s cops at a Dunkin’ Donuts shop
Sho’ nuff, I got props
From the kids on the Hill plus my mom and my pops
The most vivid (and most recent) memories I have are of being in the KLBC studio doing Talking Sports with Wes & J.R. Occasionally when we would go to break, Wes and I would crank this song in the studio.
Wes was usually doing the casual “head nod to the beat”, but I was not so subtle. Oh no. I would bounce around the studio with my headphones still on. Typically I would do that whole “raise the roof” thing when Everlast shouted:
Jump around [3x]
Jump up Jump up and get down.
Jump [18x]
Wes liked to call it my “happy dance” but it was so much more than that. It was a celebration, if you will, of the good things I had in my life.
I had my two radio shows on KLBC, and I was expected to be funny on both of them. Typically I was. Other times—not so much. I was generally laughing, even if no one else was.
I was covering the Anaheim Ducks for various magazines and websites, I was the color analyst for the Long Beach Armada pro baseball team’s radio and TV broadcasts, as well as for Long Beach City College football and baseball. I didn’t have everything I wanted in life, but I was content.
I had some health problems to deal with, but during those Jump Around moments I forgot all about them. We never did record my antics around the studio. We should have. That would totally have made us a fortune on America’s Funniest Home Videos!
I still listen to the song several times a week. It does make me feel happy, and usually from time to time, you will see me bouncing around my car seat as the music cranks out the window:
I’m coming to get ya, I’m coming to get ya
Spitting out lyrics, homie I’ll wet ya
I came to get down, I came to get down
So get out your seat and jump around!
J.R.
*Chillax—the art of chilling and relaxing at the same time.
P.S. Watch this and I will guarantee that unless you’re dead, you will at the minimum have your head bobbing up and down a bit…