Jeff Keen

This was surprisingly fascinating. This song’s roots are… Eleanor Rigby??

You’ve never got it down. It’s this fluid thing, music. I kind of like that. I wouldn’t like to be blasé or think, ‘Oh you know I know how to do this.’ In fact I teach a class at a the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys — I do a little songwriting class with the students — and nearly always the first thing I go in and say [is], ‘I don’t know how to do this. You would think I do, but it’s not one of these things you ever know how to do.

What a comfort. Nobody knows what they’re doing—they just do.

Further evidence that even idols are imperfect, self-doubting humans. Paul McCartney questioning one of the greatest albums of all time.

SWEET JESUS, where has this album been all my life? The answer is it’s been there—waiting—the whole time, because this album came out in 1963.

Discovering new old albums might just be my favorite feeling. This is an instant favorite. I’d only heard Little Red Rooster before, but the entire album is awesome. Give this a spin for a night time chill time. The last half is best.

My parents kept a notebook I had for piano lessons when I was 5, and there’s this revealing apology written by my dear mother to my teacher.

So different from Roger.

SORRY

Story of my life as the youngest child, disappointing teachers year after year when they expected a rule follower and got a smartass.

SORRY

Prince being Prince and just nailing this guitar solo at George Harrison’s tribute concert.

Also worth watching: Prince’s amazing superbowl half-time show. Playing Purple Rain in the pouring rain? C’mon.

There was a great exchange on Facebook between two of my friends when Prince died:

Mark: I’ve never been so sad that a musician has died. I’m even sadder today than yesterday. I can’t put my finger on the reason why–I’m not even a ‪#‎prince‬ superfan.

Tony: I think there’s so much bullshit in the world, and then you have a guy like Prince. Gifted, creative…an icon. A guy who always did things the way he wanted to do them. It seemed like he was all about giving his music and his vibes to the world… It sucks that a guy like that suddenly disappears

Mark: Beautifully said. Prince was 100% Prince and 0% bullshit¹.

In the Spring of ‘93 I was in sixth grade, and I vividly remember riding my black Raleigh 21 speed mountain bike across my hometown of Mankato, Minnesota to meet a girl I just started seeing. It was a beautiful crisp spring Saturday, and I was looking sharp in my black windbreaker pants, and matching black, white and bright blue windbreaker jacket. Most importantly though, I had my walkman strapped to me and my headphones on with Prince’s “7” blasting on repeat while I made the 2.5 mile ride.

Those harmonies got me then, and they still get me today.

There was a pretty cool reddit story the other day about an internet stranger casually solving a huge song mystery for another redditor. After a year of the mystery lingering, one day a stranger sent a link to the song, and it blew the original searcher’s mind.

Oh my god. Oh my fucking god. I’m actually freaking out.
Who are you? How did you know? WHAT IS GOING ON?
Thank you so much. But also, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON

And the kind stranger just responded with:

Shh bby is ok

And, just like that, a meme is born. The internet is amazing, sometimes.

But I can totally relate to the poster’s original excitement. Sometimes a song just gets under your skin, and you’ll do anything to find it. Before the modern internet, finally locating a song felt just as satisfying, and I remember distinctly trying to hunt down the following songs in the following ways, and feeling just as excited once each of them was in my possession.

1989

“Girl I’m Gonna Miss You”, by Milli Vanilli. I’d hear this on the radio, and the melody line in the chorus (1m 24s) rocked my little 8 year old heart so much I just had to find the geniuses who created it.

I called up the local radio station and hummed the melody on the phone in order to figure out what it was. I was gifted the tape by a family friend shortly afterwards.

(And listen, I realized the error in my ways regarding Milli Vanilli not much later. We all did. We all did.)

1997

“Incense and Peppermints” by The Strawberry Alarm Clock. I heard this song in Austin Powers, and it blew my teenaged mind. I wanted more. More Strawberry Alarm Clock.

I searched far and wide for a recording of this song during Christmas break of ‘97, and had to go up to the Sam Goody in The Mall Of America in order to finally find the truth: that there was no available back catalog of Strawberry Alarm Clock, that they were basically a one hit wonder, and I’d have to settle for the Austin Power’s soundtrack. Which I did.

1998

I heard this song every so often on the radio for months and months and months, and it would haunt me. I wanted it. But every time, the DJ would say nothing about it. I delayed plans and waited patiently in my Mom’s 1995 Dodge Neon for a song set to end, hoping to get a clue about the song that had been captivating me.

I tried to savor every second the song was playing, knowing it might be weeks before hearing it again. At night after getting back on the 1998 internet in my parent’s basement, I’d Altavista the shit out of the lyrics that I scribbled down earlier in my pocket-sized memo pad.

I don’t even remember exactly how I ended up finding the song, but I do remember that when I finally did locate the MP3, it was named incorrectly. I went around for years afterwards thinking the song was called something else, but I was also thrilled to have it.

2015

Yesterday, I held up my phone up for a few seconds and it identified a Barbara Lynn song from 1963 that was playing on the radio.

I was satisfied.

Along the same lines as my last post, some amazing human saved K-Mart store music tapes between 1989 and 1993, and recently put them on the internet. Put this in your ears, and remember the time when K-Mart was peaking.

Mark Davis, the aforementioned amazing human, writes:

I worked for Kmart behind the service desk and the store played specific pre-recorded cassettes issued by corporate. This was background music, or perhaps you could call it elevator music. Anyways, I saved these tapes from the trash during this period and this video shows you my extensive, odd collection.

Until around 1992, the cassettes were rotated monthly. Then, they were replaced weekly. Finally sometime around 1993, satellite programming was intoduced which eliminated the need for these tapes altogether.

BUT NOW WE HAVE THEM, INTERNET

There are some gems in here. The one I linked above, even. If you wait long enough, you’ll hear an in-store ad, which might be my favorite part of the deal. ATTENTION, KMART SHOPPERS!

https://archive.org/details/attentionkmartshoppers

These guys are pretty awesome. Makes me want a looping setup. Looks like fun. And those harmonies the two of them do are preeettty killer.

I found this where I find everything: Reddit. They were really into the part at 4:25 where it sounds like he’s making random sounds, but with the looping pedal it all comes together in awesome way. These guys are great.

I think I made this in 2001. It was around the time prank calls using Arnold soundboards were really popular (I’ve got some of those, too), and I can’t remember if I made this at my parents place, or at the house I lived at for that one year in college.

Because, yes, in college, I mostly lived with my parents. Or as I liked to say at the time, “with an elderly couple”.

Read the rest of this

I’m not usually one to lament about how technology has changed our lives, and what life was like before [something] changed everything. “We used to have to get up and change the channel on the TV, and we liked it!”. I don’t miss that.

But what I do miss, in some ways, is how I used to enjoy my music. I used to like browsing used music stores, and if I happened to stumble upon something I’d been looking for, I’d buy it, take it home, put it in the CD player, and enjoy it while admiring the cover of the album and reading the liner notes.

When just casually wanting to put on some music I used to open up my CD cabinet and scan my collection until something caught my eye. If I filled my 5 disc CD player I’d get around 5 or 6 hours of music without any repeated songs.

Read the rest of this