Boy is this morning's earworm a tough one to figure out.  I haven't been up on pop music for awhile, especially pop music featuring boy bands.  (And I'm pretty sure that's a good thing.)  Fortunately this earworm didn't feature a boy band, but it was most assuredly pop.  All I have, running around and around in my head, is a distinctly filtered young woman saying/singing "if ya wanna."  

If ya wanna?  What the…. Seriously, how fair is it that my friggin' earworm fills my head with "if ya wanna" sung/said by a female pop star.  And exactly how many female pop stars are there anyway?  Lots, I know.  Or at least I believe.  I know two: Christine Aguilera and Britney.  Wait!  Taylor Swift.  I know her too.  (And let's face it, despite all the CMA awards, Taylor's as much a country singer as Maria Carey is.)  Which now means I also know Mariah Carey, too.  (Much to my chagrin.  I can't stand the multi-octave thing.)

(While I don't know much current pop,
 I'm relieved to find that the artists are relying on their talents.)   

(See previous caption.  Are you even reading the captions?  Get your eyes off their talents!) 

    

Okay, so I know more than a few female pop singers, but, with the exception of Madonna (Madonna!  I also know Madonna), if I were challenged to match a voice with a name, I'd simply embarrass myself.  

There was a time, and it doesn't seem as long ago as it actually is, where I was quite up to date on the happenings of the music scene.  (In other words, I was "hip, man").  Coming of age in the seventies, art wise (meaning film and music) was pretty great.  Radio, both AM and FM,  had pretty open formats in regards to the tunes they played.  It was not unheard of, indeed it was the norm to hear some funk--let's say, The Theme From Shaft ("shut your mouth!")--followed by pop--how 'bout Love Will Keep Us Together--rock--let's jam to some Foghat with Slow Ride… Sinatra (Sinatra gets his own music genre) New York, New York; disco--Love to Love You Baby (I was twelve-years old when it was released.  Talk about perfect timing); and even whatever category you would put the instrumental Popcorn in… You get my point.   Back then, before radio stations collapsed into genre and even sub-genre formats, we were exposed to all kinds of music.

Including pop.  (I'm trying to steer this back to the darn earworm.  I may explore my diatribe on music/radio formats a bit further in later posts.  "If ya wanna.")   

Okay, it's starting to drive me nuts.  Where is that from?  And more importantly, how do I know it?  ("If ya wanna.")

Off the bat, I know the Paul McCartney song If You Wanna (off his terrific Flaming Pie LP, er, CD) and The Ozark Mountain Daredevils tune If You Wanna Get To Heaven, but I'm 100% positive that neither of those songs has a filtered young woman's voice singing/saying "if ya wanna."

A quick Google search (how did we possibly live without Google?) tells me there is a song If You Wanna by a band called The Vaccines; there's a song called The Girl Next Door Salsoul Nugget (If U Wanna) by M&S; and any number of tunes that include "if you wanna" as part of the song's title, but none of them, sampled on Amazon, is the song driving me absolutely BONKERS!  ("If ya wanna").

No sense in going on and wasting your time.  I'll keep searching.  (You better believe I will.  Tinnitus is abysmal; earworms are horrible; not knowing what the damn song the earworm comes from, unacceptable.) I'll keep you posted.  (Hey, a blogging joke.  Get it?  This is a post, and when I post the results of my search, it will literally be posted!  [See?  it's driving me N-U-T-S crazy!])

"If ya wanna," here's a great tune which includes that line.

It's a Long Way to the Top ("If You Wanna" Rock 'n Roll)

I'm responsible for this morning's earworm.  It's one that visited me a couple of times a year even before I had my hearing problem.

Years ago, while in college, I got a summer job as a dishwasher at a 4-star restaurant called The Casa Di Luce.  As luck would have it, I was able to get two of my friends dishwashing jobs, too.  Two of us worked every evening, one manning the dishwasher, cleaning all of the plates and tableware that came in from the floor, while the other worked in the other room, keeping the chefs' pots and pans cleaned and ready for the next dish to be cooked.  On busy days, we'd barely see each other, both of us being cleaning demons.  But on most days, like an average Tuesday, we'd get to hang some.

While officially we were allowed to eat "anything that was left on the plates" (AKA the garbage), the Chefs, most of them from Eastern Europe, wound up really liking us and would make us all kinds of fabulous meals.  While eating, David, a young chef from Czechoslovakia, who always had a cigarette dangling on lip (even while cooking) and who spoke in broken English, would keep asking me to introduce him to my big sister, and ended up nick-naming me "Brudder-in-Law."

The actual Casa schedule.  (Yea, I keep everything.)

As one might imagine, working with your friends, and being fed like kings (and I didn't even mention the bar tender, who also liked us, and would hand over a six pack of Molson Golden at the start of every shift) it was the most fun job I ever had.  So much fun that it deserved a song.

This is where the earworm comes in.

I'm not exactly sure how it happened.  My best guess is that way back when, when my earworms occurred with the frequency of most "normal" people, that this was an earworm that I couldn't shake and brought with me to the Casa one night.  I do seem to remember humming the chorus, over and over again; sometimes even breaking out into song:

 "At the Copa, Copacabana
  The hottest spot north of Havana
  At the Copa, Copacabana
  Music and passion are always in fashion
  At the Copa…. Don't fall in love…"

Now, I'm one hundred percent confident that Barry Manilow's Copacabana rates pretty high on the list of earworm infestations for folks in my generation.  How could it not?

But my current earworm is not Copacabana.  At least not exactly.  While singing away while loading and unloading the dishwasher at work, I improvised some lyrics.  And in no time, I had a brand new chorus, one that will likely haunt me for the rest of my days.

(Sung as the chorus above.)

"At the Casa, Casa Di Luce
Scrubbing pots and pans, getting dish-panned hands.
At the Casa, Casa Di Luce
Phil, Kev and Todd, loafing on the job
At the Casa… Casa Di Luce…."

After coming up with the chorus, I seem to remember enlisting Phil and Todd to help fill out the rest of the song.  We may have had a verse or two, but those have been lost to history.  (Unless the guys' remember them.)  Alas, however, the chorus remains.  And, as I mentioned, it has returned many-a-time in the past twenty-odd years.

Of course with it comes many (many) great memories of the evenings working there.  As I'm sure this particular earworm will return again (and again), I'll be able to introduce you to some of the staff, which included Dee, the red-headed, lascivious waitress and Richie, the hyperactive, coke-snorting head waiter, as well as others.  Stay tuned.

Until then, enjoy:

I'm not sure there was ever a better TV schedule than the early 70s Friday night one-two punch of The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family.  Yea I know they weren't considered to be "hits" or anything, but that's just because of the demographics that that goofy Nielsen guy counted as "viewers."  I assure you, all of my friends, and no doubt all of their friends, too, watched The Bradys' and right after them, the family Partridge.  

While Eve Plumb has little really to do with this post,
I had such a crush on "Jan" that I was even jealous of George Glass.

 



While both shows were (and are) undeniably great, The Partridge's did tinker with their greatness, almost detrimentally so, after the first season.

While there were many an episode where the Brady kids would break into song, the Partridge Family, by virtue of being a pop band, broke into song at least once an episode.  Despite never really being featured, it was clear that young drummer Chris was pretty awesome at keeping that backbeat going, allowing the rest of the family to shine.  Because he was so solid, it came as a complete shock on that September night, the second season's opener, when the opening credits rolled, and there was no Chris.  Well that's not fair.   There was a Chris.  But a different Chris.  And it was obvious, even after only seeing the opening credits, that this new, surrogate Chris, was not only not the Chris; this Chris was nowhere near as good a drummer as the real Chris was either.   Don't believe me?  Check out the quality of the songs before and after the real Chris left:

Before:                                                               After:
I Think I Love You                                            Whale Song
I Can Feel Your Heartbeat
I'll Meet You Halfway

Case closed.

(Okay, so after there's Echo Valley 2-6809 and I Woke Up In Love This Morning and maybe a few other classics, but still…)



All these roads point to this morning's earworm, which also happens to be one of the Partridge's greatest. (Naturally. It features the real Chris.)

The real Chris on the skins.

Let the earworms sing!

"Point me in the direction of Albuquerque.  I need to go ho-ome. Help me get ho-oh-ome.  (Gimme dat, gimme dat gimme dat, gimme dat)"

Over the Memorial Day weekend, I made my annual trek to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway along with my father, brother and wife, and we watched the Indy 500.  Now, the 500 is many things.  Many things--with loud ranking very high on that list.  (An opportunity to see Jim "Gomer Pyle" Neigbors and Florence "Mrs. Brady" Henderson ranks pretty high, too.)

We always have ear plugs at the ready for the whoosh of sound following those famous words, "Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines."  While impactful, that initial sound is nothing compared to the noise created when the green flag is dropped.  That roar is one you feel as well as hear, and even with ear plugs, it's L-O-U-D.

But this year I barely noticed the sound of the Indy cars racing by.  With all the ado of the big race, my tinnitus decided it wanted to compete, too.  And with nary a pitt stop to give it a well-deserved rest, in regards to cacophonous volume, my tinnitus took the checkered flag and drank the milk.

Basically what I'm trying to say (and kids, this would be the time to check out the latest kitten video on youtube, as I'm about to use a bad word), sometimes, and it's happening more and more frequently, my tinnitus drives me f--ing crazy. 

Phew.  Getting that off my chest (at least for now), some "crazy" tunes to enjoy.  (Note:  None of these were earworms.  But they are great songs.)

"Oh man that music's gone, gone"

Can never go wrong with Squeeze.