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Jan 15, 2020
4:32:54pm
Brisco All-American
Have you ever had a hard time remembering a song you were trying to think of?
Most of us have. But one particular song eluded me for 37 years. I don't expect anybody here to care about this song, but it was fun for me to rediscover it.

Back in the 1980s there was a somewhat unusual song on the radio that I liked. I never new who performed it, and I didn't learn any of the lyrics, but I'd sing the notes as sounds ("da, da, da," etc.). Near the end of the song there was a "shoo be doo be doo" part, but I didn't know what was being said. It just sounded like unintelligible syllables to me. Nevertheless, I sung them how they sounded to me, but I got them wrong. I also remembered a saxophone at the very end of the tune. The singer sang some parts very high (falsetto). It sort of sounded like the Bee Gees, but so far as I knew, the Bee Gees never used any saxophone in their songs. So for over 35 years I had a small part of this song (just the music) in my head that I'd sing, hoping I would remember a few words so that I could look it up on the internet. My wife would tell me, "After all these years you've probably messed up the music so bad in your head that you won't know the song even if you hear it." I didn't believe her.

I regularly listen to oldies rock, but I never heard this particular song after the year it was "popular." Oldies stations usually circulate through "top 50" songs of various years, but I knew my song probably wasn't even top 100. I had gone through all the Billboard Top 100 songs from the early to mid-80s and never found it (I even tried Billboard Top 200 songs for some years, and it was there, but somehow I missed it).

So this song, which I liked, but wasn't a favorite, became a little bit of an obsession. It was a mystery as to who performed it and how the whole song sounded. I had no useful clues that allowed me to track it down. In the last 10 years I just decided I'd never solve its mystery.

Then, about two weeks ago I was listening to the radio and there was a story about the band, Supertramp. As snippets from a few Supertramp songs were played I thought, "Oh, yeah, Supertramp sang their songs in high notes." The station then played an old hit song that had saxophone in it. I was confident that Supertramp must have performed my mystery song. I just had to go home and listen to all the songs on their 80s albums (of which there was only one before their lead singer left the group). That night I listened to a few songs, but none of them were right. They all sounded quintessential Supertramp, and the song I was looking for felt and sounded different. It had a 50s quality to it. But a few nights ago I tried again and, Voila!

I ecstatically went to my wife and daughter, raised my arms in the air and shouted, "I found my long lost song!" My wife was stunned. I had her wife listen to it and she said, "That doesn't sound familiar to me at all." I didn't expect it to. But I'm still super excited because the song's identity had confounded me for over 35 years. It peaked in popularity at #16 in the weekly music charts in 1983. That was apparently good enough to land it in the 170s of Billboards Top 200 for the year. It's a nice song, but certainly not a big hit. If it had been, I'd have known what it was decades ago.

Here's the video of it--I have to say the girl in the record dress near the end cracks me up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0FXu6bv_8k
Brisco
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Otara
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Brisco
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