Lawrence Welk - The Jeweler
I remember back in 1994 a song was released by Warren G. (Harding) [<--obligatory] and Nate Dogg called, "Regulate" - it was on the Above the Rim soundtrack. Back in these days, around age 14-15 for me, I used to watch MTV a lot. Back then, it was the early days of this fancy invention the kids are calling, "teh internets" - and lots of things were not available online. Sure you could find out some things, but song lyrics were hard to come by, even using Alta-Vista (an early search engine similar to Yahoo, Google, etc). Back then, of course, Alta-Vista was my primary search engine. I used MSN back in those days as my ISP and my email address was "foundingfathers@msn.com" - some things never change, I suppose.
Anywho, for song lyrics I used the closed captioning feature on my television. It seemed to be 100% accurate because hey, even deaf people want accuracy (or so I thought). Anyway I used the closed captioning all the time, and I did so to catch the lyrics of this "Regulate" song by Warren G. and Nate Dogg. The closed captioning indicated that the following were the lyrics for a certain part of the song:
I'm getting jacked, I'm breaking myself. I can't believe they're taking Lawrence Welk. They took my rings, they took my rolex, I looked at the brother and said, 'Damn! What's next?'
Assume that's verbatim. Now I knew that Mr. G said "gettin" and not "getting" but I knew that the closed captioning people were just using the King's English...no worries there. It was this "Lawrence Welk" bit that bothered me, though. Well that's an overstatement...it didn't bother me.
But I did get in several arguments with friends about it. See (having no "teh internets"), no one could prove what the lyrics actually were, but my friends heard the lyrics as "Warren's Wealth" and not "Lawrence Welk." Being the deductive reasoner, though, i figured that since in the song the lyrics talked about taking "Lawrence Welk" and then listing jewelry, I assumed [insert somthing about asses, you and me] that "Lawrence Welk" was some sort of euphamism for jewelry, or that he was known for his jewelry, or that somehow there was a connection between Lawrence Welk and jewelry. Again, no wikipedier in these days to look up and see who Lawrence Welk was...I had heard the name, but I didn't know for what he was famous...
By the way, the wikipedier says the following about Lawrence Welk:
A musician, accordionist, bandleader, and television impresario, hosting "The Lawrence Welk Show" from 1951 to 1982.
Nothing about jewelry, though.
So anyway, I had no wikipedier back then (not that K Renee thinks that it is a reputable source), so I was reliant upon my parents for a testimony of who Lawrence Welk was, and what his connection was to jewelry. Well my parents said that he was a television guy, and a musician, but they didn't know anything about jewelry...I just figured they were "out to lunch" so to speak.
So being the fierce no-giver-upper-guy, I made my friends watch the video on MTV with the closed captioning to prove that Warren G. and Nate Dogg were talking about some white impresario from North Dakota, rather than "warren's wealth" - which would have certainly included rings, rolex and 'damn what's next' (whatever that third type of jewelry is). Needless to say, they weren't convinced, although they did think it was weird that the closed captioning said, "Lawrence Welk". They had no clue as to who Lawrence Welk was either, but I think I gave them my theory on him having some secret Knights Templar-esque link to jewelry (although certainly I wouldn't have called it a 'secret Knights Templar' deal...that's post DaVinci Code lingo).
Also, I know this is very long, but I couldn't help mention the "controversy" surrounding this single. When it was released there were rumors that Warren G. was Dr. Dre's brother, and shortly thereafter it surfaced that Nate Dogg was Snoop Dogg's relative...at least they both have the same last name, "Dogg".
Anywho, Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg were all the rage at this point in American History so I think that people wanted Warren & Nate to be relatives of Dre & Snoop...but much like people want Golf's origin want to be "Gentlemen Only Ladies Forbidden" (although it isn't) and other urban legend types, Warren Griffen (Warren G.) is not Andre Young's (Dr. Dre) brother. But in breaking news (14 years later) Nathaniel Hale (Nate Dogg) is actually a cousin of Cordozar Broadus (Snoop Dogg)...
One thing I did especially like about the song "Regulate" was that the opening three lines were from the movie Young Guns:
Regulators. We regulate any stealing of his property, and we're damn good too...But you cant be any geek off the street, you gotta be handy with the steel if you know what I mean, earn your keep!
REGULATORS! Mount up!
