The Beat February 2003

I remember the first time I heard the Fucking USA song. The year was maybe 1977 and I would have been about six years old.

I was at Nana's (my grandmother's house), playing out front. There was a tree limb in the street that had fallen from a recent storm. It was big, and kids were climbing all over it. I thought the kids on Nana's street always had cool ideas, because they lived in the Bronx and I lived in the suburbs. One of the big kids was jumping up and down on the limb, singing "Fucking USAAAAA...Fucking USAAAAAA..."

He was having so much fun! I had heard the Beach Boys original before, and I thought his version was even better. Okay, so I had never heard that word before, and I had no idea what he was talking about, but it sounded so cool! And he was really enjoying it. I wanted to sing that song too! So I climbed onto the tree limb and started jumping and singing "Fucking USAAAAAAA!" Yeah, that was all right!

After jumping and singing for a while, I ran into the house. I have a big family, and there were always a lot of people sitting around Nana's Big Table. They would eat, talk, eat, argue, tell jokes, argue, and eat more. They're Italian.

There were about ten grown-ups there that day--aunts, uncles, Nana, Grandpa, Mom--and I wanted to sing my song for them. I ran to the table and announced, "I know a really cool song!"

Everybody stopped talking and looked at me. They wanted to hear my song. They were smiling. Maybe they were thinking, "How cute! Little Johnny's gonna sing a song!”

It was normally hard to get the spotlight at Nana's Big Table. I remember that my uncle Bill, who I thought was really cool, used to say, "Can I say something? Can I please say something??!!" and a lot of the time they wouldn't answer, even though he said please, so he'd talk over them and they didn't really listen, because it's hard to listen when you're talking. Or they'd let him talk for a minute, and Grandpa would say, "You're a goddamned socialist!" Man, I had done some bad stuff before, and I hoped I wasn't a socialist too. Uncle Bill didn't seem to have much of a chance at that table, and he was even older and bigger than I was.

But now I had the spotlight at the Big Table! I was on! I started jumping and singing my song. I thought I had recaptured it exactly, and I got really into it, jumping and bouncing and singing.

Everyone listened so seriously. They didn't laugh or sing or start jumping as I imagined they might. I was bombing terribly, blowing my big chance...so I doubled my intensity and really wailed it, "FUCKING USA! FUCKING USAAAAAAA!" Why isn't this blowing them away, I thought. I was feeling it. I was sweating.

Everybody was looking at my Mom. My Aunt Mary, who was a teenager then, looked kind of embarrassed. That was the worst. She was my favorite aunt because she was so pretty and had a lot of pretty friends. I was crushed.

Musicians, like my Uncle Bill, often say that when the crowd gets really into a song, the musicians can "feed off the energy" and "take it to another level". But I couldn't feel the energy. I couldn't take it to another level. It was hard to even keep singing in front of that crowd, so my song died. My Mom said,

"Don't ever let me hear you sing that song, or say that word again."

Man, she hated it! I was devastated. I had grabbed the spotlight at the Big Table--I had it--and what had I done with it? I completely bombed, that's what!

Later, in the car ride home, I wondered why it went so wrong went it felt so right. My Mom seemed to feel strongly about "that word". Why did she say that? What was wrong with that word?

I tested that word again, this time on my brother Dean, who was five years old, and was sitting next to me in the back seat. I whispered in his ear, "fucking usa".
I couldn't blame Dean for not knowing what it all meant, but his reaction was immediate and horrible. He squealed: "Maaaaa! He's saying it agaaaaaain!"

I was very disappointed in Dean's sense of loyalty. So I said it a few more times to piss him off.

That made my Mom really angry. She half turned around while driving on the Parkway and tried to smack me, which always made her look so funny! She would shout in a wavering high pitch and wave her hand around in the back seat trying to smack someone. She could never hit me! Maybe if I was really lucky, she would smack Dean!

She didn't smack Dean, or me, but I stopped saying it anyway, because it's also very scary when my Mom does that. The Bronx River Parkway is narrow and curvy, plus my Dad said Mom's not a super driver like he is.

Now I'm told that Koreans have discovered that song too. I don't why they like it, but I would recommend they sing it while jumping up and down on a tree limb. That's how they did it in the Bronx!