Mind Games

Remember a few months ago when I was being plagued by “the song in my head”? Well, it’s still going on. It’s still a daily occurrence. To recap for those who don’t remember or who have not long been reading this drivel the essence of the situation was that every morning I wake up to the dulcet tones of Radio 5 Live, a speech based rolling News and Sport station. It doesn’t play music which is why I choose to wake up to it. I have reached an age where I wish to be talked to in the mornings, not sung at, or have someone else’s idea of what constitutes appropriate music to start the day thrown at me. I’ve also reached or gone past the age where I want to be amused as I prise open my eyelids and drag this increasingly worn out body from the uterine warmth and comfort of my lovely king size bed. I certainly don’t want the inane and moronic mantra of the early morning DJ’s of the “local radio” music stations pushing their extremely safe bland housewife humour or the extreme moronic “zoo” radio bollocks so heavily relied on by “nationals” such as Virgin, XFM, or the totally shambolic shite from Radio 1 with FatBoy Cretin and his gang. This is doubly so during the dark, depressing winter months where the days consist of waking up in the dark, which has to be truly unnatural for humans, and then travelling to and from work in the dark having sat in an office lit mainly by unnatural lighting all day. I have a feeling Koala bears are slow moving sluggish creatures for good reasons if my winter days energy levels are anything to go by. Anyway having avoided all music for the first hour of the day I still don’t understand how these songs invade my head every day. Yet somehow every morning a tune will invade the neural pathways of my brain, jumping from neuron to neuron like some hideous organic computer virus, ensuring that for the rest of the day I will be tortured by some cretinous rubbish song from my past. Never does the “song in my head” ever seem to be a tune I really like, with only very rare exceptions. And no matter how I try I can’t understand the source of this chronic brain infection. I don’t listen to music in the mornings, and if I do, for example when driving in alone, then I only listen to CD’s containing stuff I REALLY like! Just what are the triggers for this? Should I see a shrink?

Despite listening to a extraordinarily loud ear drum damaging mixture of Green Day, Coldplay and Franz Ferdinand on my drive in this morning today’s tune, unbelievably, is………

Jeans On by David Dundas, a “hit” from the 70’s triggered by if memory serves me correctly by one of the first Levi ads to associate the marketing power of catchy tunes to increased sales. Just look at the recent list of the “songs in my head” and tell me that I’m not being punished in some way by a higher authority…….

Build me up Buttercup (can’t remember who sings this)

Mississippi (I think the group were The Pussycats or something similar)

Angelo (Brotherhood of Man)

Puppy Love (Donny bastard Osmond)

Pump up the Volume (Marrs)

Power of Love (Huey Lewis and The News)

Copacabana (Barry Manilow)

Gaye (Clifford T Ward…I mean how do I even remember such shite?)

The War Song (Culture Club at their very worst, I mean why couldn’t it have been just “War” by Edwin Starr?)

Shite aren’t they? How long before James Cunt’s Blunt’s awful, bland, insipid dirge “You’re Beautiful” features…..oh shit I may have just done it myself.

And here are some notable but rare exceptions where I have actually liked the song and the higher authority inflicting this plague on me has misjudged my taste completely.

Hey Girl, Don’t Bother Me (The Tams, also the first ever song I heard on the now defunct Dial-a-Disc phone service)

Papa Was A Rolling Stone (The Temptations)

Teenage Rampage (The Sweet)

This Town Ain’t Big Enough (Sparks)

Brilliant Mind (Furniture)

Later, GrocerJack.