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