Pass it on
I must exorcise myself of the demons that have possessed me. I must. Please forgive me for what I am about to do to you.
- Billy Joel, “An Innocent Man”
- Foreigner, “Double Vision”
These are the two abysmal excuses for songs that have been stuck in my head for the past 72 hours or so. To make matters worse, as far as I can tell, they’ve appeared there completely of their own accord. There were no wayward encounters courtesy of the grocery store PA system. No drive-by musical shootings from a passing car radio tuned to some classic rock station. No forthcoming “blast from the past” concert announcements that might have reminded me that such dinosaurs still roamed the earth.
No, the ultimate unfairness in all this is that these Elvis-forsaken bits of dreck have apparently come to besiege me from deep inside the recesses of my own brain.
There are only two ways known to humanity to rid oneself of earworms such as these:
- Finding a good “head cleaner”: i.e., a tune with enough oomph to drive the offending ditties away, and with enough staying power to keep the demons from coming back. The downside, of course, is that you’re simply replacing one earworm with another — but, done well, the new demon is much better to live with for a few days.
- Passing the infection on to new hosts. Which, my dear friends (or former dear friends, as the case may be), is what I’ve just done to you.
8 comments Monday 30 Apr 2007 | Gil | Music
Dear Gil,
I want you to know that this act is doubly cruel.
When a “(1)” popped up in Safari’s RSS list for your blog, I was hoping for the exciting conclusion to your intellectual property saga.
But instead, I merely read the works “Billy Joel Innocent Man” and that awful, warbly falsetto began echoing around my skull.
I’m going to have to go turn on the CBC or something.
The exciting conclusion to the intellectual property saga is probably coming soon. It would be prudent for me to wait until the last chips have, in fact, fallen before I tell the tale.
“China Grove” by the Doobie Brothers is my sure-fire worm remover. Try it, you’ll like it!
as an alternative sound may I suggest an old punk ditty:
MDC’s John Wayne was a nazi or perhaps the Suicidal Tendencies song, institutionalized…. yes I am old
all I wanted was a pepsi….
In the end(?), the head cleaner that helped me out most yesterday was Neko Case’s “Timber.” Nothing like the glorious keen of Neko-voice and a healthy dose of driving alt-country-swing rhythms to push musical abominations away.
Oh, thanks. Innocent Man is playing in my head right now. I hope it’s for less than 72 hours because I’ve got things to do.
You have my sympathies. I’ve had Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn” in my head for the last two days. Usually the earworms are more the Bob the Builder Theme Song variety around here or songs from Thomas the Tank Engine which I find myself humming at odd moments.
Ye basterd.
You know what always works for me? Always? Fugazi. It’s like roto-rooter for the brain. Give it a go, and choose the path of righteousness, rather than SPREAD YOUR SICKNESS.