Three Songs

I've been on break. What if I wrote one post per day, no matter how short or no matter how lousy? What if I did that?

I tend to break down in mid-post-write, just as I might break down in writing any old thing. The other day, for instance, I decided to write down my "Top 5 songs at this moment in time", Tumblr-style, but I could only think of three.

1. Green Tambourine - The Lemon Pipers
My newfound appreciation for the 60s music scene got me into this fix. Now whenever I turn around, this odd little hippie song is playing in the back of my head, as if I've got some switch under the nape of my neck that sets it going. It probably helps that it reminds me so much of my own story, Gua Gua, and of my character Donovan Din, who's very much the "music-for-money" sort. And though I don't even know the name of the lead singer of The Lemon Pipers (now there's a Jeopardy answer if ever there was one), I've kind of fallen in love with his voice. He doesn't sound like all the other singers of the era, he doesn't really sound like anyone. He sounds like a sort of decent singer with a voice somewhere in the middle ranges who's experimenting with an echo machine and maybe even trying to imitate Woody Woodpecker.
Drop some silver in my tambour-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ine.

2. You Probably Get That A Lot - They Might Be Giants
I'm actually going to see TMBG in March, cementing my geek status once and for all. But even though they're esteemed as such, I'm actually tired of thinking of them as mere geeks. They're actually two freakishly innovative guys who allow themselves to casually do things with lyrics that no one else would be caught dead doing. As a random instance, this song here is a love song to a headless girl who's not like all the other headless girls ("Although millions of cephalophores are walking past my door / They're invisible to be except for one cephalophore"). The singer is charmed by her quirks--"the way [she] swing[s] her head"--as she carries it in her hands, naturally--and her habit of "melting down some army guys to make green tea". It may not carry quite the extreme level of charm as "Birdhouse In Your Soul"--which, in case you weren't aware, is about a nightlight serenading its young owner--but it comes close enough.

3. Love Me Do - The Beatles
I find this song hilarious. It was The Beatles' first single, and it's amazing to think that they debuted on the music scene with something so utterly innocuous, instead of the crazed foot-stomping sound of "I Saw Her Standing There" or the Ed Sullivan show-stopper "I Wanna Hold Your Hand", or...well, almost anything else they ever wrote. It's got these dorky, repetitive lyrics ("Love, love me do / You know I love you / I'll always be true / So pleeeeeeease...love me do-oo") and no Ringo drumming on the album version (you can tell it from the single because they give the poor schlep a tambourine to keep him from feeling too bad) and John Lennon wailing into a harmonica, and pretty much everyone except their producer thought that it was a terrible song. If it had come out a couple years ago, we'd Rickroll each other with it.
But here's the thing--it's got, as the Beatles themselves would say, that something. Maybe it's the harmony, maybe it's the singability, maybe it's even the harmonica. It's appealing. I keep returning to it. It's actually the perfect thing to release on a record, because a single is something that you have to keep revolving all day long because you don't have a record or a playlist or anything, and I could see myself spinning the single to death. If my dad ever gets iTunes working again so I can finally spend that $15 gift card I got from my theater company (thanks, Blackfriars!), the Please Please Me album will be mine, and I expect this song to be the top of my "Most Played" list.