I had a dream last night and in it I was trying to figure out what band Don Van Viiet was in. Just like in real life, when something like this eludes me, it drives me crazy. So, in my dream, I googled it and came up with the answer. Captain Beefheart of course! After I woke up I wondered why I had to google it in my dream. Clearly, it was in my head so why did I have to go through the process of finding a computer typing it in, etc. I wonder if this tells me something about how my brain is organized…
Woke up this morning with “See America Right” going through my head. It’s a charming tale of co-dependancy (“Your love is like a cyclone in a swamp” “My love is like a dark cloud of rain right there above you”), drunk driving, DTs, and general consternation. It’s rather well done, although I can think of better songs to wake up to.
I have an enormous amount of music in my iTune library. Between eMusic, free Amazon tracks, stuff I buy, and stuff people give me, I keep adding more and there is a lot I haven’t heard yet. These days, I mostly use genius to pick the music to put on my iPod, so I don’t know what’s on there until I hear it. The other day, I heard not one, but two bizarre covers of songs. The first one was Melanie singing “Ruby Tuesday.” You remember her, right? Her biggest hit was the irritating “Brand New key” and her best song was “Lay Down (Candles in the Wind)” and even that can be hard to take at times. Her version of “Ruby Tuesday” was… odd. Couldn’t listen to the whole thing. Where the hell did I pick that up?
The other song that caught my attention was Nena’s nuclear armageddon song 99 Red Balloons sung by Goldfinger. The original is a favorite among 80’s pop lovers, but I’ve never liked it much. Goldfinger is (was?) a rock/ska group. And while their version had a faster tempo, it didn’t change my view of the song. Still, it was another oddity I hadn’t expected. At least my drives to work aren’t dull…