Sour Times

Emerged in consciousness after a night traipsing through the rain in the Mission, content, curious, and just a shade of lonely.

Artist: Portishead
Year: 1994
Rating: Warm

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

Lullaby of Broadway

This song is so deeply embedded in the popular culture, and yet, I have no clear mental reproduction of the precise recording I'm summoning. The first appearance of the song was in the film Gold Diggers of 1935, a movie I've never seen. It's quite possible that the version I heard the most while growing up was by the Andrews Sisters, but I'm guessing I just know it from various homages in movies and TV.

Artist: Wini Shaw
Year: 1935
Rating: Warm

Turn the Beat Around

Bonus: Paul Williams intro. Totally unfunny.

Artist: Vicki Sue Robinson
Year: 1976
Rating: Luke Hot

Yet another song from the Bicentennial year!

Girl For All Seasons

Grease 2 now has its own tag. This is the fourth song from the movie that's been in my head since starting the blog in 2009. Shockingly, I still haven't woken up with a song from Grease, the original, in almost four years of blogging. I will say that Beauty School Dropout floats through my head with some regularity, but I haven't woken with it, and thus, it's been disqualified from the blog so far.

Artist: The Pink Ladies
Year: 1982
Rating: Luke Hot

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

Never

Not my favorite Heart song, but we can't choose the earworms visited upon us. That is the essential beauty and randomness of the phenomenon. One might prefer Barracuda, but one does not get served up Barracuda. Nevertheless, these ladies certainly do rock.

Artist: Heart
Year: 1985
Rating: Warm

Believe

Bound to infiltrate your mental jukebox, too. You're welcome.

Artist: Cher
Year: 1998
Rating: Cold

This Is It ("One Day at A Time" Theme)

One of the best TV themes, hands down. Love the show. Has anyone re-watched recently? Does it hold up?

Artist: Polly Cutter (written by Jeff Barry)
Year: 1975
Rating: Hot!

Don't Go Breaking My Heart

A song that really should be in everyone's head, all the time. I unabashedly, unironically, love it.

Enjoy the weekend!

Artist: Elton John and Kiki Dee
Year: 1976
Rating: Hawt!

Another great song from 1976!

Do You Want Crying? or Two (or Three)-Hit Wonders

As I was waking up yesterday, I heard a baby crying somewhere outside my window. I opened the blinds, and saw a man walking with a toddler on the other side of the street, and the kid was sobbing all the way down the block. This relatively obscure secondary hit song by 80s popsters Katrina and the Waves then emerged in my head and stayed with me all day.

It's sort of timely, because Scott and I were recently talking about making a playlist of lesser hits by artists that only had two or three charting songs. You probably recall Katrina's bigger hit a lot better than this one, right?

Or you know how this song immediately springs to mind when you think of Crowded House? Well, instead, we'd put "Something So Strong" on the mix.



I've always preferred it, actually, even though (or maybe because) it's gotten way less air play over the years.

Or, take the band Thin Lizzy. You probably quickly conjure up this 1976 hit, but if you perk up your mind's ears a moment, you might remember this one:



So, readers, what are some other second-rate songs you love by Two (or Three)-Hit Wonders?

Artist: Katrina & the Waves
Year: 1985
Rating: Luke Hot

Gotcha!

How's this for obscure? The movie theme song from a 1985 romantic espionage flick starring Anthony Edwards. Watch the trailer - it's classic 80's.

Artist: Thereza Bazar
Year: 1985
Rating: Lukewarm

Cornflake Girl

Dreamt about singing Tori Amos songs around a campfire last night. Woke with "Cornflake Girl." Above is her performance of the song on Letterman from 1994, which I viewed with friends in Santa Cruz on its original air date. It was the moment I realized how brilliant she is. I was a bit behind the curve; "Crucify" really annoyed me. But, fuck, can she rock a piano bench.

Artist: Tori Amos
Year: 1994
Rating: Hot!

Note: Tori's album Under the Pink, which featured "Cornflake Girl," was released exactly 18 years ago. Weird!

Interplanet Janet, Redux

Upbeat, silly, geeky. Perfect mood music to whistle to on my walk with Dorrie this morning.

Last in my head on April 10, 2009.

Music/Lyrics: Lynn Ahrens/School House Rock
Year: 1978
Rating: Hot!

We Live For Love

I saw new wave band Missing Persons last month at the Red Devil Lounge. I think I woke recently with Ms. Benatar in my head in an associative groove of badass women of the '80s. I listened to this song over and over at one point in my younger years when my dear friend Barry put it on a mixed tape for me. You know, tapes.

Blogging about this song makes me reflect on the tremendous influence of Barry's mixed tapes in my mental musical repertoire. He's always had his finger on the pulse of pop music, often deeply appreciating the mainstream chart-toppers in genres I was too much of a hippy-throwback to enjoy. He was the first person I knew, for instance, to LOVE Kylie Minogue back in the '80s, while I was listening to the Beatles and Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young.

Barry's mixed tapes were carefully curated to blend the objectively good with the god-awfully cheesy in perfect measures. His tapes often introduced me to songs I'd never heard before, and just as often helped to reify the emotional importance of songs that I'd loved as a kid or in my teenage years. He was way ahead of the curve on '80s nostalgia, filling play lists with new wave and 80s dancey tunes before the decade was even over.

This flight of nostalgia propelled me to look back through the blog and discover how many entries I've written so far featuring songs that had appeared on Barry's mixes over the years. I even devised a new tag for these songs: the "Barry-Mix" tag, or simply Bmix. This post makes 19 entries, and counting!

By the way, today is Barry's birthday. Happiest, my love.

Artist: Pat Benatar
Year: 1979
Rating: Hot!

Untouchable Face

I presume that Ms. DiFranco came to mind because I was discussing her music with Scott the other day. This particular song seems suited to some mental tangents of late as well. The song is not analogous to what has happened between me and my recent ex-girlfriend, but certainly I've had some of that "Fuck you, and your untouchable face" feeling lately.

Also, I was at a post-Thanksgiving feast with a bunch of poly friends last night, and finding the company worthy of stirring several mild but burgeoning crushes. This song exemplifies the conflict in monogamy, in which someone is "taken" and therefore, "untouchable." This is not the case in my scene of choice. However, the combined factors of 1. a close-knit circle of friends wanting to maintain good boundaries with each other and 2. most folks in the circle seeming to have fairly full dance cards right now, leads me to assume that any number of those faces may very well continue to be untouchable. For now.

Artist: Ani DiFranco
Year: 1996
Rating: Luke Hot

Note: The main guitar line leads me right into The Who's Baba O'Riley. Funnily enough this is the second entry in which a song has strongly mingled in my mind with Baba O. The last time this happened was with REM's Supernatural Superserious. I guess this happens when your band is palpably influential over the course of decades.

Yesterday Once More (Once More)

The third time I've woken with this song since starting the blog. Here's a better video for it this time. I think this was prompted because I was singing this tune with my family on Thanksgiving. It came up in the context of songs we remembered singing a lot as kids.



Last in my head on January 13, 2011.

Artist: The Carpenters
Year: 1973
Rating: Luke Hot

Three's Company Theme

Three's Company
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I think this song is in my head due to my unconventional living arrangements of late. I live in a two bedroom apartment with my very recent ex-girlfriend and her ex-boyfriend. Hilarity ensues. And, y'know, awkwardness.

Artist: Joe Raposo (Composer), Ray Charles (not *that* Ray Charles) & Julia Rinker
Year: 1977
Rating: Luke Hot

Vogue

I had a dream that Madonna was my "lady-friend" and that I was buying her a pair of heels as a gift. It was all very butch-femme. Only, in the dream, I realized I couldn't possibly afford shoes that Madonna would actually deign to wear.

I woke up with "Vogue" in my head.

Artist: Madonna
Year: 1990
Rating: Warm

Note: Unbelievably, this is the first Madge song that's made it into the blog. I've had other songs of hers in my head over the span of the project, but none upon waking til now.

Never Knew Love Like This Before

Whistled this song on my walk to work this morning. The purest of idealized love songs have the power to make me extremely melancholy lately.

Artist: Stephanie Mills
Year: 1979
Rating: Warm

Note: Mash-up melodies with Ronnie Milsap's I Wouldn't Have Missed It For the World, which mingled with this song on the early-80s airwaves.