Sometimes it happens and you don’t know it’s happening, other times you knowingly do it and know you shouldn’t (kinda like how Pippin chastises Merry for talking to Treebeard), and feel guilty when caught. That is right, you guessed it…the sing-a-long. Most of the time I don’t even realise that I am doing it until the song changes or I’m humming too loudly and somebody else looks at you strange. Blush or a big wide grin and an apology follows quickly enough. It’s not quite as dreadful as getting a song stuck in your head that you can’t get out quick enough, like “Funky Cold Medina” by Tone-Loc. This happened to me today as I was walking in one of our adjoining buildings at my job. I was walking thru the tunnel and wasn’t really paying attention to what was coming over the house speakers until I was literally singing “would you know my name, if I saw you in heaven”. There were not words in the music being played nor was it the original artist in any way shape or form. It was a muzak version of Slowhand. As I was walking I listened more intently to the musicianship. It wasn’t bad, but it sure wasn’t great. This was followed up with a version of “Mrs. Robinson” by the Napoleonic Egomaniac and his Hand Clapping Hanger-on.

BTW…did you see these guys on the Grammy’s this year? It was cool they played, and if I was a mark for these guys I prolly woulda done handsprings in the living room, but it certainly lacked passion. They could not have been more than a foot apart in distance, but worlds apart in spirit. Napoleon looked more pissed off than usual. And speaking of pissed, how drunk was Dustin Hoffman? Drunk or medicated. How do you mess up the Boss’s surname with teleprompters that big?

Back to the point…my workplace plays knock-offs of well-known radio hits and I found myself singing them. Department stores and malls are notorious for doing this. If it’s a small mall you’ll get this quite often, a bigger mall may actually play the real song itself. If you actually want to hear “real” music (and I put real in quotes for a reason) then you often have to go into a Wall/FYE/Virgin/Tower store. The quotes were used to point out that in most of the stores just listed the music is generally not good anyway, just some sampler of whatever product they want you to buy. Unless you go into one of those Spencer gifts or places that sells whips and chains for the middle class white kids to buy to show that they are so oppressed and misunderstood…just like everyone of their little punk friends that is into whatever happens to be hip at the moment, you hear top 40 tripe. And I’ve noticed that Spencer Gifts now has some sort of preprogrammed music to play (you figure these things out when you are looking for Simpsons and Ren & Stimpy and debating whether to get the refrigerator magnet or the iron on t-shirt patch).

So work threw me for a loop today with the muzak they were playing. Not that alone was strange enough, but as I was leaving to punch out. Where I happened to be working today, strange thing can occur daily (you will get this is a pre-dementia/pre-Alzheimer floor) and are really not noticed most of the time. Yesterday this guy whose job is a “singer/dj” was booked for a program. He’s been in before and I have seen him setting up before. When he comes to the Vil, most of the time he does sing-a-longs with residents of old songs like “Bye Bye Blackbird” “Roll out the Barrel” and other standards of popular music (and by popular music, I refer to music from 30’s to the 50’s that you would listen to on an old radio in your living room before Amos and Andy between The Shadow and the Adventures of Sam Spade and after Burns and Allen.) Often when this guy comes around he mixes in holiday songs (so this month would include “My Wild Irish Rose” and “Danny Boy”) for the residents.

So, on my way to the punch clock, I hear a very familiar acoustic guitar riff and as quickly as I hear it I dismiss it. There is no way that song is on the overhead system. It wasn’t. I couldn’t be sure, but maybe someone was playing it live. I walk down the hall 25 feet and see the residents gathered for a programme and two chicks crooning. I swear if I had a lighter I would have held it up and swayed. The one chick was doing her best impression of Nuno Bettencourt the other doing her Gary Cherone. The song goes something like this:

Saying I love you
Is not the words I want to hear from you
It's not that I want you
Not to say, but if you only knew
How easy it would be to show me how you feel
More than words is all you have to do to make it real
Then you wouldn't have to say that you love me
Cos I'd already know

I must have missed the memo, but when did early power ballads from the 90’s make into music to be played and sung for residents in a nursing/assisted living facility. That seems a bit Extreme to me. Can Nelson’s “Love and Affection” be intertwined with Firehouse’s “Love of a Lifetime”? Next thing they will move onto the next genre of popular music for residents “hits from the grunge era” featuring Nirvana’s Come as you are, Pearl Jam’s Jeremy and a special rendition of Alice in Chains’ Rooster for all the veterans in the house. A truly surreal thought of residents singing a refrain:

Here They Come To Snuff The Rooster
Yeah Here Come The Rooster
You Know He Ain't Gonna Die

All they’d need is a gun and a good smack habit to boot. Actually I’m thinking of the appropriateness of the song that the two chick were singing… then again…if I only had my lighter…

On a side note or two:

HHJ: I do remember that night, and no you aren’t a loser. A better tribute to a man than I could have ever come up with.

Don’t Hurry: I am almost embarrassed you linked me…. almost

NP: Soggy Bottom Boys - I Am A Man of Constant Sorrow

- posted by TundraBoy @ 7:46 PM