Come On An' Join Our Convoy

Cause we gotta little ol' convoy, rockin' through the night
Yeah we gotta little ol' convoy, ain't she a beautiful sight?
Come on an' join our convoy, ain't nothin' gonna git in our way
We're gonna roll this truckin' convoy, cross the USA
Convoy... Convoy...

It’s odd, I know this song, but I can’t say I’ve ever listened to it. I know the lyrics, but I’ve never seen the movie based on it. Watching My Name is Earl this week, Joy, Randy and Earl broke into the chorus of Convoy and I realized I knew it from watching The Simpsons. Homer gave Bart a radio microphone and he sang Convoy to Marge in the kitchen to test it out.

What I realized was that it didn’t matter that I didn’t know the source material to get the joke. It’s a CB joke, I get it, and I’m sure that it happens a lot – people getting the reference without knowing the origin. I recall finally seeing Gone With the Wind and realizing how many references there were in The Simpsons to the film. The jokes were still funny, but were that much better when I had something to compare them to.

So many shows are built upon an understanding of the pop culture that came before it that you are bound to miss something along the way. Of course it’s also just as likely you’ll come across the reference somewhere else, so the next time you see it, it will be part of your references. It’s all very circular.

Yeah, we got a little ole convoy, ain't she a beautiful sight?