Brenda Kahn "Eggs on Drugs" Community 3

I only heard this song once. Once! Can you believe that?! I heard it played on the radio, and though I looked for Brenda Kahn's album in the record store, she was hard to find with only one record in the miscellaneous "K" section. This video certainly matches the intensity of the song. The Dandy Warhols also used a fake game show gimmick in their video for "Not If You Were The Last Heroin Junkie On Earth". Enjoy!

Sugar cubes "Regina"

This is a song that I've had a thirst for. It has a great groove and it's so repetitive that you get into it before you know it. I remember that this song was playing on the clock/radio right as the girl who was about to give it to me pulled the plug out of the wall. Hey, free clock radio. That clock radio would last another two years until one day when too much rain flooded the radio part of it, since I had it next to the head of my bed resting on a windowsill. It was summer, and I didn't have a lot of furniture, so I made do with that was there. No, as I remember it now, it was the radio and clock worked fine, but the on/off switch wouldn't work. So I would turn the volume all the way down if I didn't want to hear the radio. I don't think I was able to set an alarm using it.

Looking at this video now, and actually listening to this song for the first time since that day in May, 1994, the song is actually kinda monotonous. Either that, or my attention span is a lot shorter. Still, check out the a series of bootleg videos of songs they performed in their "en vivo" concert. Even with bad video equipment, tons of glare, and songs that consist of majestic randomness, Bjork sounds magnificent, and looks delectable - and I think she knew it! She makes me want to want her in spite of my normal tastes. Without her, this band would have just looked like a half-assed stunt.

Getting REAL High - THAT'S "What's Goin' On"!

"What's Up" by the 4 Non Blondes. This is not one of my all-time favorite hard-to-find songs!  I went looking for as bad a rendition of this stupid song as I could find (as if the original screecher wasn't bad enough) to try to ruin it for you the same way my sister ruined "Blowing Kisses In The Wind" by Paula Abdul for me (by singing it in a mocking falsetto that immediately made me think of the heavyset bookstore manager I worked for).  But that is another post.

If you ever liked "What's Up", and really didn't mind that much hearing it whenever you were on line at the bank, I'm hoping to put an end to your complacency.  Truth be told, I did eventually hear a single from lead singer Linda Perry's solo record that made me reconsider her.  She actually does have a capable voice, with lots of power and range (when she stays within it).  But the absolutely crummy lyrics and her tendency to slip in and out of falsetto took a couple years for me to get over.  A college friend of mine told me she said "Oh my God" in that same staccato fashion during sex.

The only reason this song could possibly have such a long shelf life is because of the line "AND I GET REAL HIGH".  Seriously! But for that one line, this song would have gone nowhere.  Whether or not she was talking about getting stoned first thing in the morning or not, I can hear the big roar of approval from the teenybopper college-rock alt-punk kids who filled their women's music festival audiences whenever she belted it out.  Finally, pot-smoking hippie chicks everywhere had their anthem!

It seems like old fogies are getting a lot hipper these days.  Or else I'm witnessing the Starbuxification of every service business establishment. Today, I've been inside two banks, and one coffee shop that isn't Starbuck's, and not a sign of local land-based radio.  No announcers, no commercials, no music so overplayed that it screams mainstream radio format.  Seems like the tellers, account managers, or baristas increasingly get to decide what gets played over the in-store music system, and not just in those "independent" businesses.  Still, it was downright weird to hear Carl Perkins singing "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" instead of Jerry Lee Lewis - in a Dunkin Donuts!  As cool as it was, it was somehow - not right for the orange and pink and wood and fluorescent coffee joint.  Watching them upgrade their stores, replace pink counters and grey walls with orange and wood to compete, I wonder: "who are they trying to be?" Today, with the transformation complete, I wondered, "where the hell am I?!"  What am I gonna say to the millenial immigrant who works behind the counter? "Hey! This ain't no Starbucks! Put on Oldies 103!"  That would make me an old fogie, wouldn't it?

This ukelele-based rendition may not be as awful as I would have hoped.  It's quite good, and they have a sense of humor about the whole thing.  This is what it might be like if Kirstie Alley did the song at karaoke. 

Enjoy your memories, ladies!

Dr John--right place,wrong time.----ORIGINAL

My friend Tom Despres (also known as Captain Easychord) had this clip on his Facebook wall yesterday, and I've been jamming to it ever since!

This is one that I've never really tuned in and listened closely to before, even though I knew it was a great song. This was a hit before I started listening to songs on the radio. Besides the theme sont to"Blossom", this is what he's best known for. It's such an anomaly too, since Dr. John mainly does traditional New Orleans-flavored R&B. Last time I heard this was in 2000, when I visited the Experience Music Project in Seattle. They have a standing exhibit on funk music, complete with a Motion Odyssey Movie ride, where the seating is on a platform that allows it to pitch and yaw in time to the music. "Right Place, Wrong Time" was just one of the songs featured in the movie, along with "We Want The Funk" by George Clinton, and some other rap tunes.

That said, this song is one I often go to for comedy even if I don't know all the words to it. Dr. John is one of those performers whose sound is so crazy and funky that it can't be straightened. Here's a guy who could not sing a straight-ahead Christmas song without making it sound like his other stuff. Take "Walkin' In A Winter Wonderland":

"In the meadow we can build a snowman...."
"Ooooh!"
"And pre-teeeend he is Pa'son Brown
"He'll say are ya married we'll say no man"
"Ooooh!"
"But you can do the jawwwb - when you in town -- I was inna right plaaayce!"

Bill Barilko 50 Mission Cap

I bought The Tragically Hip’s “Fully Completely” album (on casette!) in 1993, the spring of my junior year of college. We were playing the single “Courage” on WQRI-FM, the Roger Williams University college radio station, and I bought the album on the strength of my liking for that one song. I played the tape over and over until I had every song and every note committed to memory. That’s why this song "50 Mission Cap" came to mind today in that insidious way. It was easy to diagnose why. I never got the spelling of the hockey player’s name straight, and I was cooking a dish to bring to a potluck dinner at my friend Jason’s place. He had thrown it together to introduce his new girlfriend, whose name is Marilka. Easy diagnosis, eh?

I remember a radio interview with the band where they explained how they come up with their songs; The band jams, and Gordon Downie, the lead singer, “stands in a corner” and just comes up with stuff. I don’t know what a “50 Mission Cap” is. The comment in this YouTube video is a better guess than mine. I thought it was a sports thing, not an aviation thing. I wonder how he introduces it in concerts.

Here again, through numerous YouTube postings of the song (an apparently very popular one) si an example of how you get more insight into a song, and get the rest of the story that didn’t fit into the song format. Most of the comments on this page were again about the Maple Leafs.

“The Intro And The Outro” by The Bonzo Dog (Doodah) Band

"Hi there! Nice to be with you! Happy you could stick around..."

“The Intro And The Outro” by The Bonzo Dog (Doodah) Band

I thought of this at random last night (New Year's Eve) in a pause between songs that my friend in the band was getting ready to play. I wanted to throw up some fictitious band members just like in this song.

So begins my new journal project. With YouTube, I’ve been able to easily find and listen again to songs I vividly remember from my past. I misremember hearing them, or they’re just songs and sometimes comedy routines that I never forgot – as they wre so hard to find in the first place. I’d look for them in public library record collections, record libraries at the community radio station I volunteered at for three years, the college station I DJed at following that, and then the things I heard subsequently after I had decided I was too old to follow popular music anymore. Things I saw on MTV in high school or in videos on the knockoff video jukebox shows on local stations.

I’ve been able to find a lot of cool things. Music from the Jackson Five, The Go-Gos, Loretta Lynn, comedy routines from Shelley Berman, Stan Freberg, and Nichols and May. Journal entries may cover what I remember about hearing each bit for the first time, what I misheard, how it figured in my life then and now, and how people are reacting to it on YouTube. So check back and please comment. Maybe I will turn you onto something new or remind you of some forgotten favorites.

BONZO DOG (DOO-DAH) BAND - 'The Intro And The Outro' - 45rpm 1967