My Strangest Accordion Request: The “Juicy Fruit” Jingle

With the recent snowstorm, couple with the closing of several stations along the Bloor-Danforth subway line for maintenance, public transit was really crowded last night. As I rode on a packed bus towards Parkdale to meet my friends Katie and Ewan for drinks, a group of drunk guys noticed the accordion.

“Dude,” said one of them, “do you take requests?”

“Sure,” I replied. “If I know the song or can fake my way through it.”

“Juicy Fruit!” blurted out one of the guys at the back, to much laughter.

“The song in the commercial, with the skiing?” I asked.

“YEAH!” a bunch of them replied.

“Let me see,” I said, as I put on the accordion and unstrapped the bellows.

Not only did I manage to play the chords — not all that difficult; it’s essentially the same chords as The Who’s Can’t Explain — I even managed to remember most of the lyrics. In fact, so did a good number of people on the bus. Once they heard “Get your skis shined up”, something clicked in everyone’s heads.

In honour of that most strange request, I recorded a version in the rough-and-ready way I played it last night, and I’m sharing it with the world below. Enjoy!

The lyrics:
Get your skis shined up
Grab a stick of Juicy Fruit
The taste is gonna move ya
Move you up
Move you out
The taste is gonna move ya when you pop it in your mouth

Juicy Fruit – it’s gonna move ya
It’s got a taste that gets right through ya
Juicy Fruit – the taste is gonna move ya!