Mystery Solved...and Stashed

That tune. That tune! That tune has been knocking around in my head for so many years. I blogged about it back in 2011. I thought it was from a really old movie, or a novelty riff from Camper Van Beethoven, or something vaguely Eastern European. People close to me have heard me whistle it spontaneously now and again for the better part of two decades, and any time I've inquired with anyone about that sequence of notes, I've gotten nothing but shrugs and blank stares.

I once thought I was hot on the trail, when I came across
this 1932 composition by Jerzy Petersburski. There are some segments in this Polish tango reminiscent of the tune, but I knew when I found it, I was still shooting in the dark. Bonus: a fragment of this tango also reminds me of the “When the dog bites, when the bee stings” portion of My Favorite Things from the Sound of Music.

So, after years of this nagging sensation as to the origins of this melody, last weekend, it happened. I ended up in a somewhat random conversation about the band Phish with my niece, niece-in-law, and my two nephews. My nephew Jon,* was recommending a podcast called Analyze Phish. In it, comedian Harris Wittels, Phish Phan, tries to convince comedian Scott Aukerman, Phish naysayer, why he should love Phish. In a parallel, I went through a Phish phase (college in Santa Cruz in the '90s, natch), while Jon is the non-fan.

So I decided to jump on Spotify and put together some Phish songs that I thought might appeal to Jon, just for the hell of it. I played snippets of songs from albums I used to own, to refamiliarize myself with the music. While scrolling through the tracks on the 1992 album A Picture of Nectar, I made a totally unexpected discovery at two minutes and two seconds into the song "Stash:"


And the motif repeats itself at the end of the song, at minute 6:49, accompanying the lyrics "Maybe so, and maybe not."

Oh my fucking god!! The thrill of finding the source of this tune was visceral. It was like unwrapping my new Darth Vader Collector’s Case on Chanukah, 1982.** Or the satisfaction of writing one’s thousandth tweet. It was gleeful! I still can’t explain the very definite six-note intro to the song snippet that I always whistle, which is clearly not anywhere to be found in the Phish song. I don't know if I composed it unconsciously, or if it's an amalgam of some other melody. It’s no matter. I can rest on this one.

Artist: Phish
Year: 1992
Rating: Luke Hot

* Jon guest blogged for us at The Songs in My Head a few years ago. You can read those posts right here.
** I just learned that Google only returns 1.5 million results for “Chanukah,” my preferred transliteration for the Jewish Festival of Lights, and returns 15.7 million for “Hanukkah.” Am I spelling it wrong? Maybe so, and maybe not.

If You Could Read My Mind

This is one of those songs that makes me so deeply grateful that I was a kid in the 70s and got to hear it on the radio in my mom's car, in my sisters' cars, over and over again. The words are so seemlessly embedded in my head and so beautifully constructed that the specific, sad beauty is easily glossed over.

Artist: Gordon Lightfoot
Year: 1970
Rating: Luke Hot

Superball

(You'll have to play this video once to be amused by the hamster, and once to actually hear the song! "Nibbler" is quite distracting, but cute.)

This song has been in my head for weeks, but today was the first time I woke with it. Unbelievably, this is the first Aimee Mann song hitting the blog, despite the fact that she's one of my faves, and that I've seen her at least three times live. This morning, the song was ushered in by a dream: I was having a conversation with Aimee (clearly, we were on a first-name basis in my dream), and with some 20-somethings who had never heard her stuff. I was recommending albums they should listen to. The dream, in turn, I'm sure, had been prompted by a false sense of intimacy I'm feeling with her and with another indie rock hero of mine, Ted Leo, who have been touring together and being all lovey on the Twitter. Damn, wish I'd seen them on stage together.

Artist: Aimee Mann
Year: 1995
Rating: Luke Hot

I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)

I love you and nobody else.

Since I'm not currently in a relationship, nor would I likely profess love to a One-and-Only, since I don't buy into that sort of thing, I have to assume that my unconscious is crooning for the love of coffee.

In and out my life/You come and you go
Leaving just your picture behind/And I've kissed it a thousand times

Oh, coffee.

Artist: The Four Tops
Year: 1965
Rating: Luke Hot

Disturbance at the Heron House

Came to me suddenly after having been awake for a couple hours already. I was brushing my hair.

Artist: REM
Year: 1987
Rating: Luke Hot

You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet

Perfect, if embarrassingly literal, refrain after a lusty full-moon weekend.

Artist: Bachman-Turner Overdrive
Year: 1974
Rating: Warm

I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song

I've been experiencing a significant amount of internal resistance to speaking my truths lately. I'm in a battle over what I need to defend versus what I need to surrender. At the end of the day, usually the communication should just be distilled down to this: I love you.

Artist: Jim Croce
Year: 1973
Rating: Warm

Fame, Redux

Last in my head on March 23, 2010. This time, I can't say that confidence is pouring from my pores in synch with this exuberant anthem. The song feels incongruous with my recent moods, indeed. Maybe my unconscious mind is trying to snap me out of these self-flagellating doldrums. Will it work?

Artist: Irene Cara
Year: 1980
Rating: Luke Hot

Who's Johnny

My housemate Scott just came into my room, incredulous that I could even know this song, given the unbelievable truth I just told him: I've never seen the movie Short Circuit. But I was alive and cognizant in 1986, my first year of high school, when this feel-good ditty dominated the pop charts for its split second.

Artist: El DeBarge
Year: 1986
Rating: Warm

Every Morning

The power of suggestion produced this earworm. Two nights ago, at trivia, I cluelessly suggested that the photo of Jason Mraz might've been Mark McGrath, but then remembered that Mark McGrath was the Sugar Ray dude who looks kinda like Ethan Hawke.

Now, I'm stuck with a four-post bed.

Artist: Sugar Ray
Year: 1998
Rating: Cold

Last Time in Love

I had a conversation with an old friend about love the other day. She had relayed a piece of advice her mom had given her, which went something like, "Finding people to fall in love with is easy; finding the person you can live with is much harder." This song has such a lovely, romantic quality to it that I can't deny, even as a poly person, that when you find "the one," you've fallen in love for the "last time." There is an undeniable beauty and a loss in that process, recognizing you'll never have those fireworks, that blissful limerent feeling, with anyone else again. I'm grateful, in my life, that I give myself permission to fall in love, in lust, when my animus moves me, and when it moves in my chosen partners. I don't have to sacrifice that newness. But the allure of exclusivity, of belonging to someone wholly, is indeed a powerful one. I also don't deny myself the opportunities, when they arise, of digging down deep and doing the work of intimacy. If love were just the easy fire of limerence, well, it wouldn't be love, now would it?

Artist: Sloan
Year: 2006
Rating: Luke Hot

Dreams of Merlin

I had a dream this morning in which my dear friend Marck and I were at an open mic. The performer on stage challenged audience members to stand up and sing if they thought they had a good command of the Eagles' oeuvre. Marck and I simultaneously and defiantly arose. The performer then presented us with the sheet music to a song about Merlin the magician, and proceeded to teach me chords on a banjo.

I woke up, flummoxed to try to find an Eagles song about Merlin; the song that then arose in my brain was "Tin Man" by America, evoking another Arthurian character, Sir Galahad.

In a seemingly unrelated occurrence, I learned via the Facebook this morning that Marck had just been listening to a mix I'd made years ago, entitled "My Fantasy K-Tel Album," on which I clustered an array of enticingly schmaltzy and wonderful 70s and 80s gems. This is surely a piece of evidence that Marck and I are tapped into the collective unconscious. I think today might be ripe for some trans-continental telekinesis experiments.



Artist: America
Year: 1974
Rating: Luke Hot

Heaven

I think this entered my consciousness this morning, because I had the occasion to quote the tag line to the film Grand Hotel a few days ago: "People come and go. Nothing ever happens."

Great song.

Artist: Talking Heads
Year: 1979
Rating: Luke Hot

Black Water

Been remiss at updating lately. Life is just too dense with the obligatory right now, including my ever-elusive battle to get to work on time every day. The other thing is that most of the songs I've been waking up with lately have been strictly due to recent exposure (hearing it on a playlist or at the grocery store, etc.) and I've, by and large, refrained from blogging about those particular songs, because, while recent exposure is clearly my number one source for earworms, that phenomenon is just less interesting to me than when a song seems spontaneously to generate from some unconscious depth or memory trigger or other more poetic means. Anyhow, the Doobs entered the neural paths a couple days ago, and I have a moment to share 'em now. These guys just hold so much nostalgic warmth for me. I love 'em. And they happen to be from my home town.

And I ain't got no worries
'Cause I ain't in no hurry at all

I'll throw a question out to you, the reader: where do your earworms come from?

Artist: The Doobie Brothers
Year: 1974
Rating: Hot!

Theme from Dynasty

Began whistling the Dynasty theme while making breakfast this morning. It flowed from my face like no time had elapsed between myself now, nearing 40 years old, and myself sitting in my living room in San Jose, a teenager, watching the show with my mom every night in reruns. It was one of the only crossover shows we had, that and M*A*S*H. (Mom liked mystery and procedural dramas; I near exclusively watched sitcoms, until "Dynasty.")

Happy Mother's Day, Roberta. I miss you. Tomorrow's gonna be hard.

Artist: Bill Conti
Year: 1981
Rating: Warm

Louie Lime Green

Yesterday at work, I was whistling to myself all afternoon. I do this a lot (it helps that my Friday bookkeeping gig is at an awesome local music school). Working down column upon column of credit card transactions, the mind can automatically conjure up tunes and still manage accurate data entry. I thought I'd share with you the sequence of songs I was whistling. The thematic progression: roots rock, prog rock, Elizabethan minstrel music. Somehow it flowed. It helps that Rush is like, totally, Ren Faire.





Louie, Louie
Artist: Richard Berry (writer); The Kingsmen; etc.
Year: 1957; 1963; various
Rating: Warm

Limelight (Redux; last in my head on July 13, 2010.)
Artist: Rush
Year: 1981
Rating: Warm

Greensleeves
Artist: various; unconfirmed origin.
Year: c. 1580
Rating: Warm

Come Sail Away

Starting to amass quite an arsenal of Styx music in the bloggic record of songs in my head. This one suits my emotional set of late, struggling with the obligatory logistics of life under considerable emotional stress over the last couple years:

I'll try, oh lord, I'll try (EPIC PIANO BREAK) to caaaaarrrrry on!

The similarity ends at the whole aliens/starship thing, though.

70s prog rock: Where Middle Earth meets Outerspace.*

Artist: Styx
Year: 1977
Rating: Luke Hot

*Tip o' the hat to Liz Bohm.

You and Me and the Moon

Joyous and sad. Certain Magnetic Fields songs will always remind me of Amber. She's moving into her new place this week. There are boxes of books stacked up in the hallway with labels like "Deutsche Literatur" and "Feminist Theory" written in Sharpie. Despite the complex circumstances of our break up,

The sound of your voice [still] sends shivers up my spine.

Artist: Magnetic Fields
Year: 1995
Rating: Hot!

Ufaratza!

Woke up with a spirited Jewish song in my head, "Ufaratza," a song we sang/shouted on a weekly basis at Camp Shalom every summer of my childhood. Above, some amazing footage of Chasidic rabbis singing the song in the 1970s.

The song is based on the Old Testament verse in Genesis (28:14) in which god tells Jacob that his people will spread out like the dust of the earth, to the west, east, north, and south, and that all people will be blessed by this spreading out. In the most Zionist/evangelical interpretation, this is a mandate for the Jewish people to populate the entirety of Israel. Thankfully, I grew up quite liberal/secular, and so my own meaning from the song is simply an affirmation of the Jewish diaspora, that our people and culture have spread out throughout the world, and that this sharing of culture is a benefit to all humans.

In looking up this song, I came across a great progressive Jewish blog, written by Rabbi Jared Saks. Here are some of his thoughts on the teaching in the song. His blog entry also includes a new interpretation of the song, reggae-style.

Artist/Year: unknown (Saks credits Avi Maslo with the original song, but I'm not sure that's correct. Anyone know?)
Rating: Warm

Waltz of the Flowers

Thanks to my friend Lisa for identifying this song for me. All I had was a vague rendition of the most famous portion of the composition, whistled through a cell phone exchange. She entertained my indulgent query, and nailed the tune, even though I interrupted her life at 10:00 pm on a school night. That's what friends are for. :)

Artist: Tchaikovsky
Year: 1892
Rating: Warm