Skip to main content

Musical Deja-Vu

During his encore, Thomas Dolby said he was going to sing a song that he said he'd been asked to sing at his uncle's wedding. It turned out to be the old standard, "Sway With Me." He sang it with great silliness, waving one of those little gourd/bead percussion things around and dancing. Now, the funny thing is that I had heard "Sway With Me" on Sunday afternoon. (Sidenote: Despite my knowledge of old standards, the first time I can remember hearing "Sway With Me" was in the movie Dark City when Jennifer Connolly sang it.)

Last week I heard Billy Joel's "Longest Time" twice in one day, once in a restaurant and once in my car. Now, I could understand hearing something current twice or even more times in one day, but "Longest Time"? From 1983? How many rock songs are there out there? What are the odds? (Sidenote: My secret Hyde fantasy number 14 involves him doing karaoke of Billy Joel since he says his first album was a Billy Joel--it just seems incongruous and funny to imagine. Hey, it's my fantasy).

I never learned probability or statistics in math (we never seemed to reach the end of the text book). I do know that the odds of rolling a six on a die are 1 in 6 and the odds the next time you roll are again one in six, but I don't know how to add those thing together and determine the probability of rolling two sixes in a row. Or, Mr. Spock like, to determine the odds of hearing a old song twice in one day or a really old song twice in two days.

Another strange moment last week came when I turned off my car radio in the morning on Oasis' Wonderwall, got in the car at the end of the day and turned on the radio to the other Oasis..."Where were you when we were getting high..." (shows the extent of my Oasis knowledge--Oh, yeah, Champagne Supernova). It was such a surreal moment--for a moment before I realized it was a different song, same singer, it seemed as if the whole day had not happened and only a moment had passed.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Adapting a book--The Prestige

I was completely blown away by the movie of The Prestige , and I thought then about reading the novel, but it seemed too soon. So I carried the author's name around with me for over a year (Christopher Priest) and then, finally remembered to buy it through an odd sequence of events. We watched The Painted Veil based on the novel by Maugham starring Edward Norton, and while I decided I didn't want to read The Painted Veil because of it's differences from the film (which was more romantic and tragic) it reminded me that I had wanted to read Fight Club (the movie version of which starred Edward Norton) and that reminded me that I had wanted to read The Prestige (which did not star Edward Norton, but was up against The Illusionist which did). Whew...so it's all Edward Norton's fault. The Prestige is a very good novel, and yet, the movie differs from it considerably. And I am still trying to figure out what exactly that means. The central premise is the same, AND HE...

Putting my money (read time) where my mouth is

Some Duran Duran with some songs that I believe prove their musical merit. eSnips gives me the power and I'm going to use it. ( Bwahaha ) Get this widget Share Track details This is one of my all time favorite songs. I have it on a B-Side Collection, although I can't find any mention of what it was B-Side of, just that it came out in 1988. The words are quite haunting, as is the melody. But, I can hear you say, this is not at all a standard D2 song. Well, no, but what is a standard song by any band? How do you average that? Thomas Dolby's singles were always abnormal compared to the rest of their respective albums. Same with Barenaked Ladies. I think the B-Sides are often truer to what the band wants to be without the pressure of the labels for commercial success. Get this widget Share Track details This is probably more like Duran Duran you're thinking of, right? It's from Pop Trash , released 2000. The words are based on the true story of a boy who was building ...

The end of Cloud Atlas

Feel I must write this--promised it to myself, can I finish before midnight (when I said I would go to bed at 11)? Where was I? Oh, yes, section 5, where it gets interesting--because it's the future, at least 25 years, hopefully more. I say hopefully, because I don't want to be living in this future. The section is called "An Orison of Sonmi-451." An Orison (I had to look it up, proving I don't remember my Shakespeare) is a prayer, but in this future world where language has taken as many turns as in Orwell's 1984, it is more a confession or final statement. Sonmi-451 is a clone (as the name might suggest). The section is not entirely original. It owes much to Brave New World and Phillip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (made into the film Bladerunner ). I find it interesting that 40 or so years ago--when Dick wrote his book he believed that future slaves would be Androids, replicants. Now we are much more likely to presume they will be clo...