Yo Mama

My friend Rob Hedden, who I've occasionally mentioned here (often for his deep, abiding love of squirrels...) wrote and directed a movie called You May Not Kiss the Bride.  The movie had a nice cast, starring Dave Annable and Katherine McPhee, with a supporting cast of Kathy Bates, Tia Carrere, Rob Schneider, Mena Suvari, Vinnie Jones and Stephen Tobolowsky.  The story mostly takes place in Tahiti, and at one point in the film, Rob wanted to have a South Seas-type song to play.  There was a piece of music they wanted, but couldn’t get the rights.  They ended up getting an original song instead – and the story about how it came about is fascinating.  I’d never heard the story, but it came up the other day when Rob was telling me about a family trip he’s about to take to Tahiti, and mentioned the song they got, called “Te Mama Tahiti.”

It's a very good song, and it’s remarkable who wrote and recorded it (under a pseudonym), and how it came about.  I don’t want to give it away, but here’s a link to the song.  Listen to it (at least for a minute, so you can get a sense of it) before I tell you who did this for the movie, which I’ll explain below.  Though you might want to listen to the whole thing.  It's not that this was done for Rob's movie -- I honestly really like it, and I never would have guessed the artist who wrote and recorded it for them.
 

Okay, the person who wrote this song, arranged it, sang the lead, sang all the background vocals and also played the music for my friend Rob Hedden to use in his movie was --- Rob Hedden!

I knew that Rob wrote and sang music.  He had a fun, goofy band for a while, Quayton and the Maxiwhackers.  But when he sent me this song, I had no idea it was him.  About half-way through, I did begin to suspect it might be him singing the lead – but I didn’t think he was all the background vocals (especially since at a few points it sounded like a woman singing, and wasn’t completely sure that he wrote it, or arranged it.

The fun story to it is that after the production couldn’t get the rights to the song they wanted, Rob wrote, arranged and did this – but didn’t tell the producers it was all him.  He just said that he had a friend who did this and would give it to them for free.  (He said the producers really liked the song…but they especially loved that it was free!!) 
 
After the producers said that they liked it and agreed that it should be in the movie, only then did Rob tell them that it was all him.  And he said that they didn’t believe him!  He had to keep trying to convince them, until they did.
 
By the way, the words are all gibberish.  They’re real Tahitian words, but don’t mean anything.  Which Rob (who is incredibly self-effacing) said is perfect for him.

I honestly like the song, a lot.  I’ve listened to it at least a dozen times.  And I should append one thing I mention above – though it takes place in Tahiti, the movie was filmed in Hawaii.

And if you want to see the trailer (it does a reasonable job), here’s the link –
 

Okay, and just because we're honoring Rob today, what the heck, just for the pleasure of the good fellow, here's another squirrel video.
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