Share my Fruit

One music video every month throughout 2012. All original songs, all original production, all original video.

March Entry: The four hairy beasts that make up the band “A.P.E.” (Apes Playing Electronics) – Mungo, Gorgo, Konga, and Edgar – rock out with this song of love and longing. Yes, the A.P.E.s do try really hard, don’t they? But with such winning lyrics as “I Wanna Rub Myself on You” can stardom, world-wide success, and a children’s TV show be far behind?

I think of the guys in this band (all whom I happened to portray at various times against a green screen) as being a tight knit group from high school who are very earnest, but maybe not so good at what they do. I mean, think about it, their big gimmick is to dress in ape suits. And to write kind-of-love songs that emphasize the “ape” angle, exhorting the poor girl to whom they’ve directed this particular number to share fruit with them, possibly the highest act of kindness you can imagine in the life of an ape. This band does not get them laid. EVER.

But how different is their vision of love from ordinary human behavior? Maybe the apes know something I don’t. The content of most love songs pretty much hits you right in the midbrain; it’s not such lofty stuff. Sharing fruit and rubbing together pretty much sums it up for humans, only under different terms. We like to gussy it up a bit in our epic poetry, but not necessarily in pop song form. When the boys sing “Oh, yeah, baby, give me a kiss” is it that much different from the latest offerings on the Top 40? This one is popular this week:

I need your love
I need your love
I need your lovin’

That’s been on popular radio for quite some time now. In this form and in many forms, throughout the decades, again and again, expressed in these words and those slightly different, unchanging.

The fellows in A.P.E. might be clumsy, but they’re authentic.