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