Cherokee who?

Okay, so I've got a certain...superiority complex when it comes to music. Not playing, mind you - I've only got about five years under my belt of playing the guitar, and, although I can now hold my own (for the most part) playing as a part of the worship band for our junior high group at church, I don't pretend to have the sort of mastery that I assume to have of the minutiae of popular music, especially that of the past thirty years or so. Oh, so you think "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" is about LSD, do you? Well, John Lennon himself squashed that rumor - it really is about a drawing young Julian Lennon brought home from kindergarten of his classmate Lucy. The Simple Minds' greatest hit, "(Don't You) Forget About Me," from the soundtrack of The Breakfast Club, wasn't written by them, and they actually didn't want to record it for that fact. All the members of DEVO have attained at least Masters degrees. Dexter Holland, lead singer of the punk band the Offspring, holds a PhD in microbiology and has a pilot's license. None of the three guys named "Taylor" in Duran Duran are related. The Thompson Twins weren't twins, and they weren't named Thompson, either - they were named for characters from the Herge' "Tintin" comic, which is also where the singer Stephen "Tin Tin" Duffy got his name, who, incidentally, was the original lead singer for Duran Duran.

So, yeah. My guitar chops might just be coming along, but my musical knowledge chops - yeah, I know what's going on.


Or so I thought.


Some time in early 2000, before our wedding, Katrina and I were driving somewhere, listening to the Portland oldies station, 97.1. A song comes on that I've never, in almost 31 years of living, had ever heard before, nor even heard reference to. There was this native American drumbeat in the background, and the singer was talking about living on reservations and the plight of the Cherokee people. Katrina, my bride to be, sat in the passenger seat, singing along at the top of her lungs,

They took the whole Cherokee Nation
Put us on this reservation
Took away our ways of life
The tomahawk and the bow and knife
Took away our native tongue
And taught their English to our young
And all the beads we made by hand
Are nowadays made in Japan
Cherokee people, Cherokee tribe
So proud to live, so proud to die

Now, if y'all don't know, Kat was raised by a father (now estranged) who was a hardcore biker. Hardcore biker as in the answer to my question, "what kind of motorcycle did he ride?" was answered with a sniff and an upturning of her nose and the reply, "what kind? There's only one kind of motorcycle a biker rides - a Harley" ("you ignorant moron," she could have easily added, but, what with our upcoming nuptials, held back).

So, I assumed this was some sort of biker-themed local hit that never found its way down to southern California. I mean, come on, a song this distinctive? All the hours I logged in listening to K-Earth 101, and never hearing it?

Therefore, with all this impeccable logical thought behind me, I chose my most common course of action: mockery.

"No, but really!" she pleaded. "It really is a popular song! Do you think it's possible that you might not have heard it?"

"Um, no. I've never heard this Indian Reservation thing."

"Well." She crossed her arms. "I know I've heard it all my life. It is a popular song."

I held my ground, and, when we got home, did a little research. Turns out the song is by Paul Revere and the Raiders (famous, in my memory, anyway, for the song "Kicks" and dressing up in Revolutionary War garb onstage). The Raiders, it turns out, are from Portland. "A-ha!" I thought. "A local song, after all!" A tune written and recorded by a local act that had a single large hit, a tune that was embraced by the local (and at the time, very strong) biker culture, but not something to be taken seriously by the rest of the country (and by "the rest of the country," I mean southern California, because, in a native-born southern Californian's mind, that is all that matters, after all).

The first big hit came when Kat and her girlfriends were addressing invitations to our wedding. Katrina made a reference to the list of relatives that were all from Tennessee, calling them the "Tennessee people." To this, her best friend (and fellow local-born) Heidi responded by singing Tennessee people, Tennessee tribe to the tune of, well, you know.

The fatal blow came when I found out that our friend Dave Beatty, fellow southern Californian (and real musician) knew the song. Knew it well.

Knew all the words.

Had heard it a million times.

On the radio.

In California.

How did I miss it? Did I happen to turn the dial whenever those drumbeats were starting up? Whaaa?

Anyway, here's a link to a cool site that plays the whole song, and has the lyrics. Grr.