Tuesday, December 3, 2024

"I'm Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down" by Paul Young

1985 / #13

Rate Your Music score: 3.18 out of 5!

This record was actually a remake. Ann Peebles released a version of it in 1973, but this version did not reach the Hot 100. I never got to hear of this song until Paul Young came along. And man, were the circumstances hilarious!

In our tiny back yard, we had a playhouse. It was just a wooden one-room structure that wasn't even tall enough to stand in. I remember standing on top of it and yelling something about Studio See, but I couldn't stand in it when I was older than about 6.

By the time I was about 12, the playhouse had rotted so much that we had to tear it down. It had an "attic" that was just a storage space a few inches high, and we found it filled with Rold Gold and Marlboro packages that had been surprisingly well-preserved. Some teenagers had apparently gathered at the playhouse and ate pretzels and smoked cigarettes back before my family moved there. We started tearing the playhouse down using a saw, but some neighborhood kids came along and knocked the rest of it over with just a few good kicks.

We thought we had it all set up, we thought we had the perfect plan, but those boys made quick work of that playhouse!

The best part is that the company hired by the city of Highland Heights to collect trash inexplicably would not take the remnants of the playhouse. So we had to wait until it was dark and drive around the area to dispose of pieces of it. We drove down Johns Hill Road and up Licking Pike and kept throwing big pieces of wood out the car window.

Finally, on Decoursey Pike, we found a little pull-off where we dumped the rest of the playhouse.

None of this was quite legal, of course. But the garbage collectors had forced our hand by refusing to pick up this waste. If anyone broke the law, it was the trash collecting firm, which broke the law by proxy.

The entire episode was uproarious but in a shocking sort of way.

Then came Paul Young.

Right after we tore the playhouse down, Paul released a new single. It was called..."I'm Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down"!

Now that was funny!

And, 5 years after the remnants of the playhouse were dumped at that pull-off, there were still pieces of it laying there!

Also, that was right by a church where they took us in high school where someone tried to flush a Mello Yello can down the toilet.

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