A few weeks back there was a Doonsbury comic strip where the punch line included the fun of having tinnitus. (There's a link in one of my blog entries somewhere.)
Well this week, the great comic ZITS (one of the best drawn strips, too) is doing a series on ear worms. Check it out:
Made me laugh out loud. And I particularly like that's it's a single panel, and rather than spelling out what song is stuck in Dad's head, instead one has to be familiar with the Beatles' Yellow Submarine cartoon to get the gag.
The next strip encourages Dad to sing the song that is stuck, and naturally he bellows the all too familiar "We all live in a yellow submarine..." chorus, much to the chagrin of his son Jeremy, who is afraid the ear worm could be infectious.
C'mon everyone! "We all live..."
The rest of the series is equally amusing and rings true to what is generally true for folks suffering from earworms.
And Yellow Submarine is an inspired, yet perfect choice for the earworm. Who hasn't had that chorus spinning around in their noggin' at one point or another?
(From memory) No Reply. Side One. First Song. Time: 2:19
Given my almost fanatical devotion to the lads from Liverpool, it's probably no surprise that their tunes often wind up being my earworm-de jour. Although, at least since my hearing loss and the daily visit from ol' Maestro Earworm, Yellow Submarine itself hasn't been infused in my skull; though I have no doubt it will be at some point. Why Don't We Do It in the Road and No Reply have each made at least a few appearances. And at least twice the lines "block that kick, block that kick" and "you, you become naked" from Revolution 9 played some havoc with me.
But generally, when it's the Fabs' inhabiting my earworm-hole, I almost don't hear them at all. I just know the songs so well, I guess, that even when the earworm needle wants to stick on Lennon's singing "…but it's my pride. Yes it is, yes it is, oh yes it is, yea", as it did this morning, something inside of my brain bumps the needle, allowing the three-point-harmony of the lads' to continue singing, "Please don't wear red to-night…" and I essentially get the full tune.
Of course the song is set on repeat, it is an earworm after all, but, as I said, I hardly notice it.
At least in comparison to my usual regime. "And what's more, it's true. Yes it is."
For several nights, the earworm-at-night DJ has been spinning phrases and snippets from various songs from the classic Squeeze album, Argybargy. One night it was the repetition of the line "Two fat ladies window shop, something for the mantel piece" from their song Pulling Muscles From a Shell; another featured the single-note guitar solo from If I Didn't Love You (a solo I not only love, but can almost play); while another was the bass vocalizations of Chris Difford singing "Liquor stores and rodeos, PIX and Rock and Roll" from I Think I'm Go-Go.
Great album, great tunes and not particularly surprising that they visited as I have recently listened to the great Argybargy, an album that instantly takes me to the Jersey shore (what the rest of the country erroneously refers to as the beach).
(The beach my friends and I would go to when we went "down the shore.")
(This was known as a "cassette tape" back in the day.)
My friends and I worked many hours putting together the absolutely perfect mix-tape to be blared at the shore. Designed specifically to lure non-suspecting, bathing suit clad young ladies, who normally wouldn't give us the time of day. But, because of the seducing guitar work by Dave Edmunds and the romantic lyrics from The Specials, these young ladies would not be able to control themselves and would, with the crooning of Graham Parker, become putty in our (oh so) sweaty hands.
Devious, I know.
Didn't work.
But, and this is crucial, when, emanating from our portable stereo cassette/radio boom box was Squeeze's Another Nail
in My Heart, not one, but two (2!) pretty young ladies said, "I like that song," as they walked past.
(Sigh.)
While Squeeze had been the earworm-of-the-night band for several nights, last night I was instead visited by the opening riff from a Yes song. While I like Yes, few of their songs work as beach music. (Maybe Gates of Delirium from Relayer-- A joke for Yes fans), I'm sure learning what tunes-of-old proved irresistible to women of the opposite sex was more interesting reading than whatever I'd have to say about Yes. I will say that last night I had to compel myself to "hear" what came after that riff in order to remember what the devil song it came from. All that work actually tired me out and I was soon back in la-la land.
But never fear, the riff was there, front and center, when I woke this morning.
For awhile now, I've been pondering the fact that we are in an age where purchasing an entire album from any given artist is becoming unusual, and the norm is simply downloading the "hit" single. First of all, how does one even know what the "hit" single is, especially with radio becoming more and more insignificant? I assume that the Billboard rankings are determined by the number of downloads a song has (I assume they are just counting legal downloads), but when artist X releases their album, without a DJ, VJ or whoever spinning a certain track, how does the single-buying public know which is the good tune? And, for we fans of the LP (or CD for the middle-agers out there), what becomes of all the other songs that make up the album? Since only the single is downloaded, why even put out an album at all?
Back in the day, when one actually purchased a single--an actual 45 rpm disc, for your money you got not only the "hit" song, the A-side, but you also got a bonus song, the B-side. Often it was another cut from the album in which the A-side came from. If so, the B-side could give insight to what one could expected from the rest of the album, allowing one to see if the album is worth buying. But sometimes the song on the B-side was unique to the single. Often considered "throwaways," these one-shot B-Side tunes were what the obsessive collector lived for. Including yours truly.
(Come On was the flip-side of Joe Jackson's It's Different For Girls.
A live track, Jackson's cover of Come On rocked and was in heavy rotation for my friends and me.)
In the beginning of the CD transition, many of the reissues of back catalogues consisted solely of the tracks contained on the original LP release. It wasn't until the reissue of the CD (which, remember, was itself a reissue of the LP) where, in an effort to entice the record/CD buying public to purchase said album yet again, the "new" CD would come with "bonus tracks," which, often, were those "throwaway" B-sides we obsessive collectors salivated over. Some artists continued to release CD singles, which included an extra song or two, the CD version of the B-side. Pearl Jam, Oasis, U2, to name a few, kept the avid collector gene alive.
(Dylan's Biograph was among the first Box Sets and had a handful of unreleased tracks making it a must have.)
But generally the reissue CD, and to an even greater extent, the advent of the Box Set [which often not only includes B-sides but also the holy grail of holy grails to fanatic music collectors…unreleased tracks(!)] turns out to be something of a double-edged sword.Yes, it makes collecting a particular artist's entire catalog amazingly easy; but there in lies the rub.The thrill of the chase is gone.
Used to be, when one was in a new area, vacationing or business perhaps, checking out the local record stores, (independent if possible, but if Sam Goody was the only place in town, that would do, too) was high on the list of important things to do. Heck, the opportunity to visit a new independent record store made the trip to finally visit Aunt Millie (warm powdered lemonade, wet kisses and all) something to look forward to. Why? Because you never knew what you were going to find! Who knows, maybe they have that illusive 45 of Zeppelin's Immigrant Song, the single with their only non-album track, Hey Hey, What Can I Do on the flip side. (Which now, of course, can be downloaded from iTunes with a single click.)
Hey, hey what could I do?
Sure, true collectors still want the actual physical 45, but the reason for the search to begin with, owning and listening to the rare Led Zeppelin song, is now nothing special. Back in the day, your cachet in High School would be raised exponentially, even with the girls(!), if you had the 45 of Immigrant Song, which I did not, alas. (That cachet inflation, particularly from the girls, didn't apply to having a copy of The Beatles' Lady Madonna, which had the illusive The Inner Light as it's B-side. That one I did have.)
But now, if one so desires, B-sides and "rarities" can be had with a click. With the download generation, B-sides and "rarities" pretty much become things of the past. And with the pattern being the downloading of specific songs rather than entire albums, maybe the album itself is becoming a thing of the past.
But who knows?
Growing up, my friends and I spent countless hours listening to music together, albums and singles. When one of us scored one of those elusive B-sides, that would be a cause for celebration 'and much rejoicing' ("yea" -- A Monty Python and the Holy Grail reference we also shared).
One such flip side, which we listened to quite a bit, was from the band The Police. Guitarist Andy Summers often had his--shall we say, unusual--songs relegated to the B-side, and that was the case with his song Friends, the flip side of Don't Stand So Close Yo Me.
It's from Friends that today's earworm comes. While the song has been driving me a bit batty, it also has me thinking back to the good ol' days, goofing around with my pals, talking about girls (postulating ways to raise our cache with them, even just an iota), and listening to tunes. As Yoda might say, "Miss that, I do."
What can I say, "I love to eat my friends and make no bones about it…"
