Summer Breeze, Redux

Hard to believe this song was last in my head in 2009 but, then, I haven't been attending to the blog very well. Hoping to remedy that.

Artist: Seals & Crofts
Year: 1972
Rating: Hot!
Last in my head: February 13, 2009.

Every Day Is Like Sunday

And a strange dust lands on your hands
And on your face...

Artist: Morrissey
Year: 1988
Rating: Hot!

Do That To Me One More Time

This song is sadly underrepresented in nostalgic playback in my life. Its racy lyrics, masked as they are by the smooth pop melody, flowed into my late-70s/early 80s kid consciousness almost insidiously. "THAT'S what they're talking about??"

Artist: Captain and Tennille
Year: 1979
Rating: Warm

Note: Get ready for the Captain's recorder breakdown at about 1:35!

Breaking Us In Two

I alerted the tribes on twitter/soozzip last Sunday that this song had already been in my head for some time. Still it persists, and, though I love me some Joe Jackson, and I love this song, the compulsive repetition is wearing on me. I even tried a Mozart Reset, to only limited effect. Sometimes too much of a good thing is too much.

Artist: Joe Jackson
Year: 1982
Rating: Hot!

The Fear

This is the sound of someone losing the plot/
making out that they're okay when they're not.

I had a particularly disturbing dream last night: I was dying, and tortured by the realization that my consciousness would not cease upon death. I would be damned for eternity with my own burdened thoughts.

There couldn't be a more apt song in my head upon waking.

Artist: Pulp
Year: 1998
Rating: Hot!

I Go To Extremes

A song I'd pretty much forgotten existed. A compliment, compared with the the album's awful, earwormy first single that I only wish I could strike from memory. Ah, Billy Joel. His songwriting really does go to extremes. Quel human.

Artist: Billy Joel
Year: 1989 - album/1990 - single
Rating: Lukewarm

I'm Free (Heaven Helps the Man), Redux

Been in my head for an hour, with no signs of abating. Last in my head on May 19, 2011.

Artist: Kenny Loggins
Year: 1984
Rating: Lukewarm

You Never Can Tell

Woke up with this tune in my head after a late night out at a club, surrounded by twenty-somethings dancing to trap and bass music. It was a friend's bachelor party. I stood there in the club, sipping my Dickel rye, oldly.

It was a teenage wedding/and the old folks wished them well...
"C'est la vie", say the old folks/it goes to show you never can tell

The unconscious brain is really amazing. This is one of those songs that I didn't even realize I had stored in there. It's not like, say, Carry On Wayward Son, a song I am all too palpably aware of knowing. But somehow, my background neurons were connecting weddings, youngsters, and my growing sense of feeling over the hill.

Artist: Chuck Berry
Year: 1964
Rating: Warm

Can't Find My Way Home

This song often gets me to the point of tears.

Artist: Blind Faith
Year: 1969
Rating: Luke Hot

Hold Your Head Up

I think Aimee Mann and Ted Leo might get a kick out of the fact that this proggy 70's gem was the first song in my head this morning after seeing them perform at Bottom of the Hill SF last night. #notThinLizzybut...

Artist: Argent
Year: 1972
Rating: Warm

The Cattle Call

My mom's second husband, Don, loved Eddy Arnold. When I was seven, eight years old, we listened to his albums over and over on the "hi-fi" (as Don called it) in the living room. The yodeling in this song lingers in my consciousness more than thirty years later. If you've never heard it before, you're more likely to wring your hands at me now than thank me. But I have a soft spot for it. No right idea why it came to mind this morning.

Artist: Eddy Arnold
Year: 1944, re-recorded in 1955; written by Tex Owens in 1934.
Rating: Warm

Note: Check out a recording by Tex Owens himself!

Fall On Me

Ask the sky, and ask the sky...

Artist: REM
Year: 1986
Rating: Hot!

If I Needed Someone

Slept in fits and starts for a second night in a row. This song emerged in one of my waking moments in the wee hours of the night. It's a remarkably literal manifestation of something brewing in me. The operative word is "if."

Artist: Beatles
Year: 1965
Rating: Hot!

Note: By the way, this video amalgam of the 2009 remastered track with several live Beatles performances is totally worth watching! Hats off to YouTuber Geno Renazzle.

Major Tom (Coming Home)

Roller-waitresses in spaaaaace!

Artist: Peter Schilling
Year: 1983
Rating: Luke Hot

I Sing The Body Electric

I sing the body electric/I celebrate the me yet to come
I toast to my own reunion/When I become one with the sun

Indelibly in my head since I was about 14. An exultant anthem of youth, and yet another song reminiscent of my time in the Jewish teen scene, when everything was Dramatic and Intense And Amazing.

Artist: Michael Gore (writer); Performed in the movie Fame by Laura Dean, Irene Cara, Paul McCrane, Traci Parnell, and Eric Brockington
Year: 1980
Rating: Luke Hot

Night Shift

Came into my head the other day simply by talking to Scott about his schedule (he works graveyard). It's been circling in my mind for days. Watching the video made me tear up. RIP Marvin and Jackie.

Artist: The Commodores
Year: 1985
Rating: Luke Hot

Country Road

Great performance, with Ms. King on the keys!

Artist: James Taylor
Year: 1970
Rating: Hot!

I Can't Tell You Why

Timothy Schmidt's vocals on this song are so lovely and androgynous that it became a Linda Ronstadt tune in my mind.

I think the mental production of this song, which I probably haven't heard in 20 years or so, is a result of listening to a Steely Dan Pandora station this weekend with friends. N'est ce pas, Jess et Chris?

Artist: Eagles
Year: 1980
Rating: Warm

Turn to Stone

ELO always reminds me of my ex-girlfriend's parents. One of the rock bands they returned to loving after having banned all pop culture for several years to do right by Jesus. Interesting that this song evokes the story of Lot in Genesis. Hopefully none of us will turn to stone for enjoying ELO; we might rock out, though.

Artist: ELO
Year: 1977
Rating: Luke Hot

Apologies for bad puns.

Tom Sawyer

This song was hot in 1982 when I was in a fifth-sixth grade combination class at Daves Avenue School in Los Gatos, California. One of the sixth graders convinced Mrs. Ringsted to play it in class during the time we were reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The class also took a field trip to the Town & Country shopping center on Winchester and Stevens Creek Boulevard in San Jose to see a revival screening of the 1973 film Tom Sawyer, starring little Johnny Whitaker and everybody's favorite Surprise! Hollywood! Lesbian! Jodie Foster.

Post Script: The janky, underpopulated Town and Country Village is long-since defunct, and currently the site of upscale "Satan Row" as we call it in the San Jo vernacular. Where have all the old strip malls gone? Sigh.

And this is the string of memory I recall whenever I hear that opening Middle Earth-Meets Outerspace synth line and firm Neil Peart drum intro.

Artist: Rush
Year: 1981
Rating: Hot!

If You Leave Me Now

Cheesy or not, Cetera and Co. hit on the anticipatory anxiety of loss that is a nearly universal human emotion: leave me, and part of me, surely, will die. Am I feeling this epic about the anticipation of lost love today? Part of my mental tinkerings always go to this well-trodden topic.

Artist: Chicago
Year: 1976
Rating: Luke Hot

Another classic tune from the Bicentennial Year!

Note: This song has appeared in the blog before, as part of a Chicago retrospect entry.