Sad Eyes” by Robert John (oh shut up, I KNOW it’s one of your little guilty pleasures too, don’t deny it! I know you also sing all high-pitched and screechy to it when no one else is around, but that’ll be our little secret), and I recalled that last week when the spud and I had lunch at Applebee’s, I’d heard a song that I really liked. “Spud,” I said, as she is my link to all that is youthful and cool these days. “Who sings this song?” She listened, shrugged and suggested “Michelle Branch?” When we got home, I hypothetically opened Kaza@ and downloaded a bunch of Michelle Branch songs, hoping to find the song I’d heard, all to no avail. A few days later, I heard the song again on the radio, and learned that the woman singing the song was not only not Michelle Branch, but was not even close to Michelle Branch. And now, on Sunday, I wanted to hear the song again. But do you suppose I could remember the name of the woman who sang it? Do you? Because there was all kinds of crap floating around in my brain (including a little ditty that goes “Stanley-bean, Stanley-bean, he’s a Stanley-Stanley-bean!”) and none of it was the singer’s name, OR the name of the song. I sat in front of the computer, smoke coming out of my ears as I thought very hard, searching my mind desperately for the elusive name. It refused to come, and I tried to figure out how to track down her name. I thought about calling the radio station, but didn’t think I’d get very far with “Can you tell me the name of the song that that chick sings?” The most frustrating part was that I could SEE her face in my mind. I could come up with her face, but not her name and not the name of any song she’s ever sung. But I was pretty sure that Erin had recently written about her, so I went over and did a quick scan of her last several entries. No luck. I sat and thought some more. The kitten, attracted by the smoke coming out of my ears jumped from the chair to the scanner to the top of my desk, knocking papers everywhere. He chirped, gave me a wary look, and hopped off the side of the desk to get away from my Look O’ Evil. The gears in my brain turned ever-so-slowly and I remembered that she was filed in my brain in the same basic section as the alternative explosion – Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Mother Love Bone, and other alternative bands whom I cannot name at the moment. It’s got to be early-onset Alzheimer’s, y’all. Further, I managed to remember that her first album was a song-by-song response to that… album… by that group… and the lead singer has big lips. ARGH. It took me ten minutes of sitting and forcing myself to not think about it before the name of the band, where the singer has big lips (NO, not Aerosmith), popped into my mind. The Rolling Stones. And it took another few minutes for me to do a search on Amazon to bring up all the Stones’ albums before I remembered the album in question was “Exile on Main Street”, and another search on “Exile” in “Popular Music” brought up “Exile in Guyville”, which finally – FINALLY – led me to the name of the singer in question. Liz Phair. The song is “Why Can’t I?” (How many of you figured out her name before I got this far?) It’s a good song, but I don’t know that it was worth 20 minutes of trying to get my brain to spit out the name of the song. I was right, by the way. Erin DID write about Liz Phair. I apparently just didn’t go back that far in her archives. And you thought YOUR Sunday morning was exciting!
Miz Poo stares intently out the window at…
.. that damn squirrel!
Stanley hanging out in the sun.