One person’s view: “Melodramatic, clunky, hokey, and not even catchy or fun. Worthy of all the mocking it gets.” – DonKarnage @ Rate Your Music
The public’s view: 1.79 / 5.00
Here’s a quick synopsis of “Run Joey Run”, a top ten hit that was more of a soap opera than a musical work. Joey and Julie were teen lovers and then Julie got pregnant. Her father went berserk because he did not want to be grandpa’d against his will. He grabbed his gun and went looking for Joey, and Julie called her fertile young friend to warn him. Joey thought he could outsmart his pursuer. The angry dad would never anticipate the young man being dumb enough to show his face at Julie’s home under these circumstances, so that is exactly where Joey decided to go. However, the expectant grandpappy actually did think Joey was an utter moron who would come right over to be shot. He was lying in wait when Joey arrived. Fortunately, the heroic Julie and her heroic unborn baby took the bullet for Joey and he survived to sing the tale. Finis. Tune in next time for another enthralling episode of The Young and the Stupid, in which Lance and Moira poke a wasp nest with a five-iron.
There is much to hate about this song, including the paradoxical details that we are given about the shooting. For example, Joey was somehow able to see his nemesis sneaking up behind him at Julie’s house. While this is an improbable feat, I suppose that it isn’t totally implausible. Perhaps Joey was wearing mirrored see-behind sunglasses that he ordered from an ad in a comic book, or maybe he spotted the assassin’s reflection on Julie’s polished silver spittoon. But I don’t get how Julie jumped in front of Joey and shielded him from this attack that was coming from the other direction, nor do I understand how Joey was able to cradle his dying girlfriend in his arms without the crazed dad finishing him off. Firearm technology in the 1970s was not as advanced as it is today, and the gun was probably not an AR-15 with a 30-round magazine, but I still think the guy could have fired a second shot without having to wait three minutes for the muzzle to cool down.
Julie insists that the pregnancy was not Joey’s fault, and this implies astounding ignorance of the basic principles of reproductive biology. Her pleading seems even more juvenile and naïve when it is juxtaposed against David Geddes’s mature portrayal of the title character. This combination of serious adult and annoying child reminds me of Clint Holmes’s “Playground in My Mind” and its waifish contribution from 7-year-old Philip Vance. It isn’t a coincidence. It turns out that Philip’s father Paul was the producer and co-writer of both “Playground” and “Joey”, and Philip’s teen sister Paula provided the vocals for Julie’s part in “Joey”. Paula also inspired “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini”, a 1960 song co-written by the elder Vance. Whatever we think of these three oft-vilified records, we must salute Paul Vance for not forgetting about his children when he went off to work in the Bad Top Ten Hits factory each day. It must have been big fun for young Paula to stand in front of a microphone and pretend that she had just been shot by her dad.
Geddes did not have the personality of a typical rock star. Consider, for example, his nerdy obsession with the transportation infrastructure of Michigan. He picked his stage name from a street in Ann Arbor, and his 1972 regional hit “House on Holly Road” was inspired by an interstate exit near Pontiac. That record failed to chart nationally, despite being far superior to his later records that did, so Geddes put his singing on hold and headed to law school in Detroit. While other musicians were snorting cocaine off of groupies’ butts, this guy was busy Shepardizing the decisions of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. It wasn’t all work and no play, however. I imagine he took occasional breaks from his legal studies to photograph the Davison Freeway and build models of the Mackinac Bridge.
His final semester of law school was derailed when Paul Vance convinced him to get back into the music business by singing on “Joey”. After the success of this single, Geddes followed up with another morbid story song called “The Last Game of the Season (A Blind Man in the Bleachers)”. It turned out to be the last game of his season in the spotlight, and he vanished shortly thereafter. Internet searches have yielded no interviews or career updates from him in the last 50 years. Geddes clearly values his privacy, so I dispatched a team of investigators to track him down and sift through his garbage. They found him living quietly in upstate New York as if “Joey” had never happened. Don’t expect him to perform at any oldies concerts, but if you ever bump into him at a map store in Schenectady please ask him whether he thinks U.S. Highway 127 through Lansing should be redesignated as Interstate 73. Let me know his reply, because I’d like to hear some educated opinions on this matter before I vote in the midterms.
Although David Geddes is certainly an exciting individual and a capable singer, I really can’t abide “Run Joey Run”. It is the kind of song that gives senseless gun violence a bad name. Now I need to listen to “Pumped Up Kicks”, “Straight Outta Compton”, and “Copacabana” to cleanse my auditory palate.
My rating: 2 / 10
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