Monday, June 16, 2014

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack: A Guilty Pleasure

That would be Hall and Oates...


You must be thinkin' something
But you ain't sayin' nothing
You remember me?
I used to be your boyfriend
There ain't no point in reason
It only gets defensive
Why should we ruin the purity of the moment?
It's a laugh, what a laugh
It's so stupid I gotta laugh
And the funny thing is everyone thought
We were forever
[...]

She cried when he left her
Her eyes went black with the blue
The infrequent letters
The sooner the better
The cold distant phone calls
Will have to do
Ah... let's not go THERE, but substitute "he" for "she" (and vice-versa) and you got it (aside: "her eyes went black with the blue" is as masterful a turn of a phrase as I've ever heard in pop music).   But we digress.  I heard an H&O tune on Pandora's Al Green station today... not these two, but another tune that brought this Philly-soul duo to mind.  I own almost all of Hall and Oates' albums but it's hard to think about 'em... and impossible to listen to 'em... since all of their albums I own are on vinyl*, save for their "Greatest Hits" offering, which I have on CD.  Hall and Oates are pretty special to me, seein' as how they were a big part of our soundtrack when The Second Mrs. Pennington and I were in our courtship phase.  I'd post "She's Gone" as an adjunct to this post but that song STILL elicits painful... oh-so-very painful... memories.  Best to leave well enough alone.

* Long-time readers know my vinyl is in SN2's custody.

5 comments:

  1. Music to live by, in more than one way... Memories dredged up by song fragments caught on the radio or the odd waft of song from a record store... except those don't exist anymore...

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  2. I'm sorry, Buck, I realize the reasons for YOUR attachments to Hall & Oats, but they were NEVER a favorite of mine..no how, no way, unh, unh..

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  3. That "black with the blue" phrase is a good one and I think I understand what this group means to you. But, like Virgil, I never counted them among my favorites.

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  4. @ Old NFO: Record stores don't exist anymore? Say it ain't so! I know there aren't any in P-Ville or Clovis, but I'm sure places like Berserkeley still have 'em. When I lived there (Berkeley) in 2000 I used to hang out in those places, coz they were MY kinda stores. I never bought anything except magazines and such (all my vinyl being clear across the country, turntable, too) but I still browsed. As far as the rest of your comment... yes. Most definitely. Music fires off some synapses that are better off dormant.

    @ Virgil: Your loss, Mah Man. They really do have some fine tunes.

    @ Dan: You, too, Dan. ;-) Mebbe this is why I called H&O a "guilty pleasure."

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  5. PS: Record Stores? Baton Rouge, New Orleans and L.A. all have "Mucho beaucoup" --a veritable collectors paradise..

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Just be polite... that's all I ask.