I had fun looking up all the references for this song about 10 years ago. Almost all of them are from
wikipedia, and I periodically update them.

On with the show:

I Do the Rock, Tim Curry, 1979

with links to Wikipedia

Edith Sitwell giving readings, 14 Moscow Road.
Osbert giving champagne parties, Sachi's got the cold.
Gertrude's hanging pictures, Alice making tea,
Me, I do the only thing that still makes sense to me.
I do the rock.
I do the rock rock.

Osbert and Sachi (Sacheverell) were Edith's brothers.
14 Moscow Road is now an Archie's food store, but here
it says Edith took a flat at "Pembridge Mansions on Moscow Road" and
the flats were described as run down then, so the building has no doubt been torn down.
In a German tv appearance Curry rubs his nose, so I'm going with "cold" unless there is a drug ref there I am missing.


 John and Yoko, farming beef, raising protein quota.
Sometimes they make love and art inside The Dakota.
Rodney's feeling sexy, Mick is really frightfully bold.
Me, I do the only thing that stops me growing old.
I do the rock.
I do the rock rock.
I do the rock rock rock.
Well, it's stimulating.

Lennon did "Beef Jerky" -- is that the farming beef ref? or "Meat City"? but
that one is about pig meat, though...
Rod Stewart is Roderick, not Rodney, but Stewart did "Do you think
I'm sexy"


Solzhenitsyn feels exposed, built a barbed wire prison.
Nietzsche's six feet under, but his baby's still got rhythm.
Einstein's celebrating ten decades,
But I'm afraid philosophy is just too much responsibility for me.
I do the rock. What do you do?
I do the rock.


Baby Ruth and Dizzy Dean, Best and Colin Cowdrey,
Little Mo, Virginia Wade, Pistol Pete, and OJ.
I've always liked Di Maggio, and Rockne's pretty Knute, you know.
I could never whack a ball with such velocity.
I do the rock.
I do the rock.
I do the rock, when I can get it.
It's stimulating, I'm a keen student.

Baby Ruth is a candy bar, but Babe Ruth was a ballplayer.
I do like the Knute Rockne joke.


Liz and Dick and Britt and Liza, Jaclyn, Kate, and Farrah.
Meg and Roddy, John Travolta, Gov. Brown, and Linda.
Interview and People Magazine, Miss Rona and the Queen.
It must be really frightful to attract publicity.
I do the rock, myself.
I do the rock.

Farrah Fawcett was unavoidable in the late 70s.
In Logan's Run, then Charlie's Angels...
Girls wanted Farrah hair, boys wanted Farrah, and both girls and boys had her poster.
Interview Magazine was started by Andy Warhol;
"dedicated to the cult of celebrity".
Rona Barrett is a gossip columnist who was called "Miss Rona".
The Queen was a British society magazine.



Carter, Begin, and Sadat, Brezhnev, Tung, and Castro
Every day negotiate us closer to disastro.
Idi Amin and the Shah, and Al Fatah is quite bizarre.
(alt lyric: "Ayatollah's quite bizarre.")
I could never get the hang of ideology.
I do the rock.
Do the rock.
Do the ro-
Do the ro-
Do the ro-
Do the ro-
Do the ro-
I do, I do, I do, I do, do the rock!

Sunshine! Sunshine! Sunshine! Sunshine!
Well, you can't get enough of it, man! Sunshine! Sunshine!
Oh, we got the top down now!
If you don't have the top down, pull the top down!
How often do you get a sunny day?
Come do the rock, the rock will cure your ills, man!
Stimulating, stimulating!
Sunshine! Sunshine! Sunshine!
Been a really hard winter, man, you deserve it, you know.
Everybody do it, everybody, everybody!
Sunshine! Sunshine!


Added verse from Curry's appearance on the Tracy Ullman Show::

Ronald Reagan's quite upset,
Ollie's been indicted.
Thatcher's lowered taxes,
But the poor can't get excited.
Gorbachev and Glasnost
Are the very latest thing.
But Afghans, Jews, and Artists
Find it less encouraging.


Update 17 Jan 2015: My thanks to Marc Edward Heuck who explained to me that the Queen was a popular gossip type magazine in the 60s and 70s and was a more likely candidate for the above reference than Hedda Hopper, the Queen of Hollywood.

All original content copyright C. Starfire 1996-2015

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