Catch Us If You Can

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"Catch Us If You Can" is a 1965 song from The Dave Clark Five (DC5), written by group's drummer Dave Clark and guitarist Lenny Davidson.^[1]

Background[]

Starting with guitar and finger snapping accompaniment, the hook was instantaneous:

Here they come again, mmmm-mm-mm

Catch us if you can, mmmm-mm-mm

Time to get a move on, mmmm-mm-mm

We will yell with all of our might!

[drums kick in]

Catch us if you can ...

It served as the title song to John Boorman's well-regarded 1965 DC5 vehicle and pop scene film Catch Us If You Can (retitled Having a Wild Weekend in the U.S.). The title phrase was seemingly a take-off on the 1959 crime film Catch Me If You Can and similar phrases, with "me" turned to the group's "us".

Chart performance[]

The song was one of DC5's top hits, reaching number 5 on the UK Singles Chart in the late summer of 1965,^[2] and number 4 on the U.S. pop singles chart,^[3] later that fall.

In the U.S., "Catch" remains one of the DC5's most played tunes on oldies radio stations. Billboard described the song as a "pulsating rocker."^[4]

Cover versions[]

Given the song's significance to Shrewsbury Town F.C. – the club's fans consider it Shrewsbury's theme song – a local Shropshire band, Hello Cleveland, and Shrewsbury fans released a cover version in 2011, with a percentage of the proceeds going to children's charity Hope House.^[5] The song was made available for purchase on Amazon and on the club's official shop webpage.

Popular culture[]

• On and off since the 1974-1975 season, "Catch Us If You Can" has been played near the start of Shrewsbury Town F.C. matches as the footballers run onto the pitch; the song is thus seen by home fans as Shrewsbury's de-facto theme tune.
• In Australia, the Candid Camera-style television show Catch Us If You Can was named after the song.
• Author Emlyn Williams used this song's lyric as an epigraph in Beyond Belief: A Chronicle of Murder and its Detection, his book about the serial killers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. "Catch Us If You Can" was a hit song on British radio during part of the time the Moors murders were being committed.
• The song, by then thirty years old, was also used in a 1995 Walkers advert, for their now-discontinued (but new at the time) crinkle-cut range, which featured three flavours: Cream Cheese & Chive, Cheese & Ham, and Roast Beef & Mustard; the song seemed appropriate as it was saying "catch us crinkle cut crisps if you can". (The off-screen voice-over, as in all of Walkers' crisps commercials then, was by Hugh Laurie.)
• The song was also featured in the opening sequence of the ESPN broadcast of the 1989 Winston 500 NASCAR race, held at Talladega Superspeedway.^[6]
• "Catch Us If You Can" was also used for video clips of baseball highlights on The George Michael Sports Machine.
• The song was also used in the opening sequence of the TBS broadcast of the 1987 NBA Playoffs, between the Los Angeles Lakers against the Seattle SuperSonics, in Game 2 of the Western Conference Finals.
• It is also used in the opening credits of the 1990 movie Look Who's Talking Too, when baby Julie is conceived.

References[]