Five Song Friday: Earworm Souvenirs
This Week: Natural Love, Explosive Nostalgia and Financial Acronyms
Road trip music is a sacred thing.
Carefully crafted playlists can make short work of hours and miles.
But sometimes the traveling tunes that you have no control over are the sounds you remember most.
My wife and I hit the road this week.
We were not on a musical mission from God.
There were no concerts on the agenda. No bands to catch. No festivals in the forecast.
But there were a few memorable musical (and non-musical) moments that stuck with me. These were songs and snippets and sounds that found their way into my hearing holes, whether I wanted them in there or not.
They were my Earworm Souvenirs.
Dueling Banjos
After setting up our campsite in Delaware, I heard twangy music and applause.
I panicked, because I’m terrified by spontaneous gatherings of smiling strangers who are un-ironically enthusiastic about banjos.
And because I’m also suspicious of over-friendly campground folk, I sent my wife to investigate.
It turns out that a trailer festooned with lights had become an impromptu center stage for a campground hoedown bluegrass jam situation that couldn’t have been more wholesome and welcoming.
But I abstained because I am NOT a fan of close-up music.
I prefer distance and anonymity between myself and the artist. I don’t like standing around and looking them directly in the face. It feels way too personal.
If I were to imagine a nightmare, worst-case scenario, slow-torture death, like something from one of those Saw movies?
It would start and end with someone leaving a cabaret stage with a handheld mike, making a b-line to my table and singing directly to my face.
Nope.
I’d rather be forced to hacksaw my own leg, thank you very much.
Brothers Gonna Work It Out
Our site neighbor at a woodsy park in Quebec was strumming a guitar and surrounded by family when we pulled in. I got excited for a moment that we might be treated to obscure French folk songs by campfire.
But that excitement fizzled when I heard them speak English.
Then the guitar plucking was replaced by the incessant, pitchy whining of a boy moaning that “Jacob’s tent looks more comfy than mine” and “Where is my flashlight? JACOB!” and “Somebody took the GOOD PILLOW!”
The last I heard was the boy yelling, “SIRI, find me a scary camping story! SIRI, find me a scary story!” And then silence.
I like to imagine that Siri served him up a Korean nightmare tale of a wet-haired girl ghoul who lives in the Canadian woods and lives to feast on the still-beating hearts of pre-pubescent boys who can’t shut their mouths after sundown.
Eternal Flame
I need to acknowledge the bonafide rock-and-roll inferno I built one night with my own bare hands. It happened inside my campsite’s aptly named METAL FIRE PIT.
How can a pile of burning wood sound like a gnarly, heavy metal face-melter?
I don’t know, but this campfire went to eleven.
It was slapping, popping, cracking and hissing harder than the 3-story speaker stack at a late 80s Iron Maiden show.
As the flames danced and spit and sparked, I could picture our primitive longhaired ancestors standing in the firelight, banging their heads and wishing that somebody would hurry up and invent the air guitar.
Cover Me
In Montreal, we heard a man on stage at The Grand PoutineFest do a sloppy French version of “Achy-Breaky Heart.”
It was hilarious and we laughed really hard because we are horrible cultural snobs.
I should probably feel bad because people genuinely love that song and the artist was likely doing his best.
But I don’t feel bad, because that song is legitimately awful and the guy on stage is probably (hopefully) really good at lots of other stuff besides singing.
The next day on the same stage, a guitarist backed an older woman with pink hair and bright blue pants as she belted out Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” followed with a medley of hits from Grease that included “Summer Nights,” “You’re the One That I Want” and “Greased Lightning.”
Before I stood to give them a genuine slow clap for having an insanely eclectic (and also just plain insane) set list, I realized that these might be the only songs they know and have been playing at every gig since 1979.
That made me sad.
So I just held my applause, set my cardboard boat of wet gravy cheese fries on my chair and retreated silently into the night.
Thankfully, most of these audio memories will fade.
Unlike my photos from the past week, these sounds and songs were not captured for posterity. For now, they only live on a temporary loop in my mind, dropping in and out like AM radio stations on long treks through nowhere.
I will forget and fill those spaces with fresh noise from new places.
In the meantime, even though you just read all about them, I have been assured that these earworms are not contagious.
Sincerely,
DJ CrankyPete
Five Song Friday 074
“Natural One” - Folk Implosion
I remember hearing this song for the first time in 1995 and wanting it to keep going roughly forever. So I bought the soundtrack CD from the movie Kids and I hit repeat on this track for three weeks straight until someone begged me to stop. I gave in. I lost the CD years ago and the song has been a no-show on streaming services. But this summer, after 28 years, “Natural One” is finally available to stream and, at long last, I can finish what I started.
“Butch Things” - Warm Drag
In the current climate, I don’t feel confident enough to humorously discuss a topic like “Butch Things” from a band called Warm Drag. I know myself and I’m liable to accidentally say something that will make somebody mad and I’m NOT the kind of guy who likes to have people angry with him. I must be liked at all times by all people. YOU like me right? Please say yes.
“Modern Man Intermission” - Chill Bump
There’s a soft spot in my musical heart for sample-heavy silliness, especially when those samples come from Mr. George Carlin who, as it turns out, has a wonderfully mellifluous voice for these sorts of songs. It makes me wish there was such a thing as a “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” extended dance mix.
“I Feel Like Dynamite” - King Floyd
King Floyd is laying down some essential seventies soul sugar here. It helps that it includes the word “dynamite” which enjoyed peak popularity in the 1970s thanks to Jimmie “Dy-No-Mite” Walker, the must-have children’s magazine and Saturday morning Roadrunner cartoons.
“So Wat Cha Sayin’” - EPMD
EPMD is an acronym that initially stood for the names of the two members, E for Erick Sermon and PMD for Parrish Smith “the Microphone Doctor.” It is more popularly short for “Erick and Parrish Making Dollars.” Which made me wonder if in different countries they change their name so it makes sense to the locals. EPML for lire? EPMR for rubles and rupees? EPMS for shekels and shillings? Don’t even get me started thinking about crypto.
“Three films a day, three books a week and records of great music would be enough to make me happy to the day I die.” ― François Truffaut