Happy Nostalgic Holidays

December 27, 2008 | Leave a Comment

santacmartiansNo matter what particular holiday you may celebrate (Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Celtic Yule, etc.) ’tis the season to relax with a little rum and a lot of warm memories. I’ve settled into a nice big chair by the fire (okay, so I don’t have a fire) and have spent most of today watching the snow fall and reminiscing about past Christmas specials like the Box Of Delights, the Raccoon’s Christmas, Christmas Comes To Pac-Land, and of course Santa Claus Conquers The Martians. Cheers to the New Year, and have a drink on me !

Posted by Nostalgiaholic | Filed Under Quickies 

Searching For That Lost Song

December 11, 2008 | 4 Comments

Everybody’s got a lost song…. You, me, everybody.

You heard it during a commercial, you listened to it on the radio during some stunningly bright afternoon drive when you were young and buzzing, or maybe your favourite live band played a cover of it at that concert you only kind-of remember. Whatever the circumstances of you’re first brief love-affair with the song, one thing that unites us in the love of these lost pieces of music is the simple fact that even though we all remember how amazing they are… We’ll probably never hear ‘em again.

Maybe it was a remix, a one hit wonder, or worse, a radio demo designed to be difficult to research. You never caught the name of the song, hell you never even caught the name of the band, the style of music is hard to define, and everybody else on earth seems to have blotted the time period it was released from their memories. Every time you try to explain the song to someone by humming, or blushingly singing the words you only half-remember, they just nod and flash you that coddling smile reserved only for the drunk or mentally unstable… So it’s just you, all alone, with this damn catchy song stuck in your head.

This was me for eight years.

It’s been so long I don’t even remember when I first heard the song. I knew it was on the radio in the early 90s, I knew it wasn’t on for very long, and I knew it was by a band with a really obscure “arthouse” name. It had some dude half-mumbling quirky lyrics, and a sample of a blues singer howling: “I’ve been down… I’ve been down… something, something“. It was a breezy song like Bran Van 3000’s Drinking In LA, but a little more intimate. That’s all I had to go on… That and love.

The miracle of the internet is of course the best option for us starstruck lunatics to finally re-unite with our lost eardrum epiphanies. There are a couple different avenues I tried, and would suggest trying for anyone else out there hopelessly searching with nothing but a melody and a prayer:

Option 1 - Yahoo Answers

Yahoo may not be the reigning search engine anymore, but their Question and Answer forums are indispensable for finding lost songs. With bazillions of threads sorted by topic, you could very well end your search early with a little patience and a lot of scrolling.

Option 2 - Lyric Sites

Okay Yahoo was a no-go, never fear! Type the words “Lyrics” into your search engine bar and then spew what few words you remember from the song along with it. There are tons of Lyric Sites that contain databases full of albums and singles and they’re lyrics. My fav Lyric sites are Adtunes (for commercials), and Songme.com (For everything else). It doesn’t matter if the words are right or not, if they’re close enough to the real deal, they might catch the edge of a couple songs by the same artist, or even a Lyric Q&A forum.

Option 3 - Read This FAQ sheet from AllButForgottenOldies.net

You’re starting to get desperate now eh ? Try this brilliant shotgun phrase technique and you may just hit your target this time.

Option 4 - Tap the song ? Wtf ?

I can’t actually endorse this option ’cause I never used it for my own lost song search, I just ran across it while putting together this post. Apparently SongTapper works rather well, and it correctly identified Black Sabbath’s Iron Man for me (although now that I think about it, that’s a really freakin easy one). Just tap your song’s beat onto the keyboard and the magical song leprechauns will save the day… or not.

Option 5 - Last resort

Night after night of searching and still nothing but carpal tunnel and burnt eyeballs, okay then, last resort. If you follow these instructions to the letter there’s an astronomically slim chance you may yet find your song. Step one, get very drunk. Step two, start singing what little of the song you remember to yourself. Step three, type everything your singing AND thinking into Google at the same time.  The resulting gibberish may in fact lead you to some forgotten forum on the edge of the universe that contains a description or title of the song.

For Example, I Typed: “This 90s song with a mummbly guy singin and another blues guy singing maybe some kinda sample of another song in the a chorus - I been down I been down - an it’s killing me cause I’ll never find it and… etc”

On and on I typed, everything making complete sense in my alcohol-soaked mind, although in reality Google probably alerted psychiatric authorities in my area to my need for medication.

Sure enough, after eight years of fruitless searching, one drunken spew-fest and a tap of my mouse button and up popped salvation. I happened upon the same phrase used by people in This Forum, which just happened to be about… you guessed it, my lost song. Alcohol truly is the answer to all life’s problems.

So yeah, all this time, I didn’t have the correct lyrics (which is why Lyric Searches failed), plus the band name (Primitive Radio Gods), and the track title (get this: “Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand“) is so freakin obscure I never would have nailed it without help. Check out the Video for this forgotten 90s masterpiece HERE. It really is a beautifully, nostalgically chill song.

What the morel of this tale is, I don’t know. What I do know is that IT IS POSSIBLE for each of us to find our lost songs, all you need is a little bit of patience, faith, and maybe a little hooch.

Much love.

Posted by Nostalgiaholic | Filed Under Music 

The Vintage Soda

December 6, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Packaging Of The World has a boss gallery of Vintage Sodas courtesy of the enigmatic Allen.

“I’m very old fashioned and have never liked change. I should have been born in 1936, but wasn’t. I collect old cans, bottles, radios and alot of other stuff.” - Allen

Be sure to nibble on their 1950s Packaging Design set while you’re there.

Posted by Nostalgiaholic | Filed Under Quickies