Monday, December 29, 2008

The Bumpkins

The Bumpkins are an Italian punk rock band and they have a great tune called SeaMonkey. Click here to hear the song on their myspace page.

Sea Monkey (lyrics)
I'm a Sea monkey
I Jump into the water
and I grow up quickly for you

I'm a Sea Monkey
I just need something to eat
the chaos can't kill me

I don't know why children play with me
I don't know why children love me

I'm a Sea Monkey
Children will forget me
and my life will change

If I'm a toy
I don't need to eat
even if I'm hungry and tired

I don't know why children play with me
I don't know why children love me
I don't know why children forget me
I don't know why I was born here

The bumpkins contacted the Sea Monkey Geek via my myspace page and I had a chance to ask them some questions:

Sea Monkey Geek: Can you tell me a little about what inspired you to write the song?
Also, I'd love to know, how popular and well known are Sea Monkeys in Italy?

The Bumpkins: "Well, sea monkeys were popular in the 70's and 80's thanks to advertisement on magazines. Now no one knows what sea monkeys are and finding a place which sells them is very difficult. However a friend of mine (that is older than me) talked to me about sea monkeys as a cult toy. He said that when he was a child (in the 80s) all the children wanted to have sea monkeys, in spite of the fact that they were considered trash.

The few that bought them usually forgot to feed them and let them die. So I wanted to write a song about something that was funny and serious at the same time. We are animal rights activist and this is our way to say it (you should know that in Italy every year a lot of pets are abandoned). Our friends find it funny and probably this song will be published on a punk compilation."

They also sent me this very cool Italian Sea Monkey ad. I laughed reading that "they were considered trash." When I was young my grandmother insisted that Sea Monkey were just little bits of paper that floated around in the water. Funny stuff.

2 comments:

AnnMaria said...

I believe I win for most random use of Sea Monkeys. I have a tank on my desk that I use for the purpose of collecting data to illustrate the use and misuse of statistical techniques:

http://www.thejuliagroup.com/blog/?p=152

Unknown said...

It's absolutely true!
In Italy Sea-Monkeys are nearly unknown.
I'm an Italian Sea Monkeys lover and I remeber well the weird ads from 80's.
I recently bought some Sea-Monkeys stuff to restart my passion but I was forced to order them in the US. In Italy there no way to buy SM!!!!
So I have big problems to find refills and the special packets like Sea Medic, Sea Diamonds, etc.
If I understood well, mail order to Trascience Corp can be placed only inside the US. In the English site of Sea-Monkeys I found a link to buy online (http://www.cornishcrispa.co.uk/) and I wrote to them to have infos but no one answered.
I want these special pouches!!! Can somone help me?
Thanks!!!