Squeeze play at the shore

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.

Long Distance Runaround indeed: