Wild Thing
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- October
- 28
This is great. Yonkers Mayor Phil Amicone announced that today is “Chip Taylor Day in the City of Yonkers.”
Taylor, grew up as James Wesley Voight in Yonkers and went to Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains. He is the brother of actor Jon Voight, wrote the classic garage-band hit, “Wild Thing” and other other songs. His other brother, Barry, is also an actor. 
The announcement fro Chip Taylor Day is being made, probably as I write this post, at City Hall in the Mayor’s Reception Room. (From left to right, the photo shows Barry, Jon and Chip Voight.)
Taylor and his friends and family and friends are there right now. According to the mayor’s office, the songwriter has a new album out that was inspired by Yonkers. But he’ll probably be always know for “Wild Thing.”
The British group, the Troggs, made a hit out of “Wild Thing” back in 1966. Click on video.
Check out the low production values with the Beatle-brow hairdos and striped, clown suits. And how about the half-dead onlookers on the train platform? This should’ve been a zombie movie, and I don’t mean, The Zombies, another group from the British Invasion years.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 3:44 pm by Phil Reisman.
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Phil Reisman is a veteran journalist and native of Westchester County. He began his career in 1977 as the head copy boy of a startup New York City newspaper that quickly went belly up. Reisman was not to blame for the newspaper's failure, or so he claims.
Who else is this Chip Taylor related to besides his Voight brothers? Elizabeth Taylor? Zachary Taylor? I do use Taylor Made golf clubs, if he’s that guy. Soon he’ll be know as “the artist formally known as Chip”. Where was Angelina Jolie, the niece? She isn’t a Voight either. All Jon’s grandchildren are presumably known as the Pitts, for which Pittsburgh should throw them a day. As soon as I conquer my lack of singing talent, I think I’ll rename myself Frank Sinatra and inform Yonkers that I once lived there. I never had a day.
Things must be set right.
I declare today, October what-ever-it-is, to be ED1 DAY IN YONKERS!
And where indeed was Angelina Jolie?
Gee, thanks, Phil, but I couldn’t have done it without all the little people I shoved out of the way and whose fingers I stepped on while climbing up that ladder. Actually, it was my step-ladder, in that I never knew my real ladder. I’m brushing up on ‘The Summer Wind,’ and ‘My Way’ even as I type. Where’s the dinner?
How about somewhere in Hoboken Ed.
I’m changing my name from Sinatra to Billy Joel so that we can all fit into a small Italian restaurant on the Island. Bottle of red?
No, a bottle of white.
“It all depends upon your appetite.”
Hmm…you know, you could really go nuts and change your name to Ed2
If I keep going like this, some principals might be inclined to call me Bored of Ed. Stop me before I raise school taxes as a result of ennui. Hmm, and that reminds me again of Sinatra: ‘When I’m out on a quiet spree, fighting vainly the old ennui…”