April 18, 2008 Earworm

"The Breakup Song (They Don't Write 'Em)" brought him a top twenty hit and endless airplay in his hometown of Baltimore in 1981 and "Jeopardy" made him world famous in 1983, but the Greg Khin song that I really love is little remembered "Happy Man" from 1982. Power pop of the finest and poppiest, it's simple message of all you need is the right woman is the testosterone version of the basic girl group theme of "boys boys boys!"

Greg knew the way to San Jose and is now a morning DJ there as well as an author/editor. By all accounts, he is a happy man.

Have a happy weekend.

April 17, 2008 Earworm

Oy! What a day. I've run out of time and I'm still running. So, see what happens when Greg Dulli and the rest of the Afghan Whigs wash the jaunty Jean Nate off of The Supremes' "Come See About Me" and rub it into the decay of someone's basement.

Back to back, this will take less than seven minutes. Enjoy.

Kmatt - sorry I didn't call you back. Toonces - we'll catch up, I swear.

April 16, 2008 Earworm

Okay, it's Wednesday. Hump day. Everyone is looking to get through it so we're that much closer to the weekend. With that in mind, today's earworm is The Grass Roots' "Let's Live For Today". We never know how many Wednesdays we have left so I think we should stop treating Wednesday like it's just a pit stop between, "Fuck! It's Monday again" and "Thank God It's Friday!"

I'm going to go to work and try to enjoy it as the soap opera it has become and then, thanks to learning last night that a can of spray paint called "watermelon" will provide "bubblegum pink" results when applied to clay pots, I'll stop by Home Depot for a less vivid choice. Nothing too exciting, perhaps, but it beats the alternative.

Oh, and The Grass Roots are under appreciated, just like Wednesdays.

April 15, 2008 Earworm

The dancefloor fillers are released as singles but it's songs like "Touch Too Much" that put Hot Chip's "Made In The Dark" album in heavy rotation at Earworm Central. Although they manage to combine the best bits of Vince Clarke, early OMD, and the fuzzy era of Love And Rockets and make it all sound brand spanking new, "Touch Too Much" isn't far from Monaco.

Beat that.

April 14, 2008 Earworm

What's good for a Friday should be a grand goose on the bottom of Monday and since Friday was spent getting ready for the arrival of a great - and often grand - friend and his brand new puppy and not blathering on about earworms, the opening track of the latest Magnetic Fields album should get us a jump on the working week.

Yes, Monday is a perfect day for "Three-Way". Video content is up to you.

April 10, 2008 Earworm

Yes, it is a total chick flick, but I love "Bridget Jones's Diary". I also love Gabrielle's "Out Of Reach" and it's perfectly placed within the movie. I don't know why Gabrielle never caught on in the U.S. - the near miss of "Dreams" aside - but if this song couldn't do it, I don't know what would. Forget all the "to da left" histrionics, Gabby's picking up and moving on with dignity and she's not even waiting for anyone else to collect their stuff before she gets on with it.

Maybe she'll let me catch a ride on that string line.

See the cheap video and Gabrielle's rather mannish hands here:

April 09, 2008 Earworm

Flush with Led Zeppelin cash and the pay-offs from other wise shopping in the wake of the summer of love, Ahmet Ertegan and Jerry Wexler began signing up the female vocalists who's voices he'd grown to love during the sixties. Starting with Dusty in 68, Lulu and Cher in 69 - the latter having already been recording for them as a duo with Sonny. In the wake of Carole King's tapestrophic success, they pulled in their own singer/songwriter, Jackie DeShannon, in 1972. Dusty and Lulu would pay off with hit singles and critical appreciation but the albums would be considered flops. Cher and Jackie, both coming from the Liberty family of labels, would end up little more than tax write-offs at the time. The L.A. polish of Jackie's Liberty/Imperial records is wiped raw as the Muscle Shoals gang brought her closer to her Kentucky roots where, by age six, she was singing country standards on local radio shows. Ending up closer to Aretha than to Carole King, the "What The World Needs Now" girl was barely recognizable and the "Jackie" album sank without a trace

But some grown up in my world bought "Jackie" and I think that I've known it as well as I've known the alphabet for as long as I've known the alphabet. As a kid, a line from "Brand New Start" made me laugh as it conjured up Looney Tune images: "...and here I am, at your front door - just knocking with my heart...". Now, having the painful pleasure of knowing that feeling, I can't hear it without a sharp intake of breath, and admiring its perfection even as I wince at the memories. The rest of the song is just as good and Jackie's vocal is perfection; getting rawer and rougher the more she bares her soul. That rawness may be why she lost the singer/songwriter race with "Tapestry", an album that, for all it's beauty, was crafted as meticulously as any of Carole King penned forty-fives for Bobbie Vee or Steve Lawrence.

Fortunately, the good folks at Rhino Handmade also believe in a brand new start and pulled this one-time lost masterpiece of its genre from the dust bin and gave it a fresh mastering and new lease on life back in 2003 with a numbered limited edition. A quick glance over at Amazon shows that it's still in print which could mean that the world is catching on or is still missing a still fresh spin on the singer/songwriter genre.