Turn Me Loose

"Eeeee!! Fabian!!"

I was a teenager in the '80s, not the '50s, and since this song hasn't proven to have legs like some other '50s pop hits (it's pretty hokey), I had to encounter it in some way other than listening to oldies stations. In fact, the only way I'd ever heard this song, which has apparently stuck around in my head for the last, oh, 25 or so years, is because it appeared on an episode of Laverne & Shirley, which I probably saw in rerun a few years after its original airdate in 1977.

The premise of the episode is that the girls, huge Fabian fans, miss out on getting tickets to his concert and so sneak into his hotel room to snap his picture and get an autograph. What's fantastically absurd about this scenario is that the show takes place in the late '50s, but is produced, of course, in the late '70s, and so Fabian, guest-starring as himself, is in his mid-30s in the episode when really he should be a teen idol.



There are a few more songs that have stuck in my head over the years as a result of having been featured on Laverne & Shirley. And now that I've opened up the L&S neural pathway, I'm betting the other songs will make their way into my conscious mind at some point…

Artist: Fabian
Year: 1959
Rating: Lukewarm