Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Why did Dr. Oz lose? well, according to the exit polls, it’s because Fetterman won.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

John Fetterman: Too Manly for Pennsylvania.  Paid for by the Oz for Senator campaign.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

A Senator Walker would be an insult to the state and the nation.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

In my day, never was longer.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

People are complicated. Love is not.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

A dilettante blog from the great progressive state of West Virginia.

You are here: Home / Music / The Audiovisual History of an Ear Worm

The Audiovisual History of an Ear Worm

by | 103 Comments

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Normally, this sort of thing would be a late evening or night time musical interlude to distract us all. But since I’m now on nightly war update duty, I figured I’d wedge it in here right now before I get going on finishing this tasker for my boss. And then spending about three to five hours preparing your nightly update.

Several months ago, last November or December, YouTube recommended this video.

Not surprising at all given some of the music videos I watch on YouTube. The algorithm then served up this as an option and it autoplayed before I could click away:

Not an actual bad few minutes. These young ladies are quite good and the music, which is Celtic rock, is clearly why the algorithm fed it my way. And since my girlfriend when I lived in Scotland was a competitive Highland country dancer – the Scottish equivalent to the Irish variant made popularly famous as a result of the Riverdance craze – I appreciate the dancing too.

I thought nothing more about this until Tuesday. While lifting weights I suddenly got an ear worm: the melody and drum beats from the song these young ladies are dancing to. This was weird as I had one of my workout playlists going during the workout, but the melody or drums in one of the songs on the playlist must have nudged a synapse or something. Anyhow, for the next 12 hours or so I couldn’t place the melody and drums and it was driving me nuts. I finally figured out it had to be something Celtic music wise I’d listened to via YouTube video and went looking. Found the pipes and drums, which led me right back to the dance recital. But that then left me wanting to figure out the actual song. Fortunately, as you can see it’s listed in the video title. I pumped that into YouTube’s search and came up with the official video:

Now we’re making progress. But… The tempo of the song is so fast I can’t make out half the lyrics. So now I’m looking for a video that’s been posted with the lyrics. And that dear friends, led me here:

Now I’m up to speed. I’ve found the song, I like the song, I’ve found the lyrics so I actually understand the song, I’ve even gone and bought it at iTunes and added it to my library.

The algorithm, of course, is not done. It feeds me this:

I wish everyone a good night’s sleep and pleasant dreams!

More seriously, it is actually an excellent cover and Broken Peach is an excellent professional cover band from Spain. Their other Halloween covers, also including face paint and costumes, as well as their Christmas themed ones, and their non-holiday themed covers are all interesting and enjoyable listening.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

103Comments

  3. 3.

    jl

    As one with substantial Irish heritage, with some Scots mixed in, I was going to ask why Adam hates the Irish (and the Scots). But I clicked and that stuff was weird.

    The tragic condition of Mr. Silverman should be a salutary lesson for all of us to go light on internet searches for mail order haggis.

  4. 4.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    Heard the Dubliners sing this live years ago on St. Patty’s Day.  She is handsome, she is pretty, she is the belle of Belfast City!

  11. 11.

    PJ

    @Old School:  That’s where I first heard it, though I also have it on a Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem album. Apparently it’s a children’s song from the 19th century.

  14. 14.

    bluegirlfromwyo

    @Cheryl from Maryland: She’s a-courtin’, one, two, three…

    Now for a shameless plug for spouse’s band, who also does this song. Look up Flying Cows Of Ventry on Apple Music or Spotify. Happy listening!

  15. 15.

    NotMax

    Couple of unusual music sites.

    If you happen to dig older (or more obscure) music, Radio Dismuke. Ya never know what might be coming up.

    For a selection of choices more moderne, SomaFM.

  21. 21.

    TheOtherHank

    Years ago my wife’s family got in their heads that we should stay overnight on the Queen Mary in Long Beach harbor, and play one of those murder mystery games dressed in period costumes. I played along. But that weekend the Queen Mary was also hosting a bagpipers convention. Hundreds of people wandering around in kilts and puffing away on their pipes. I loved it; the rest of the group was not so entertained.

  22. 22.

    Nutmeg again

    So, speaking of earworms. I have the Dropkick Murphy’s Shipping up to Boston in my head. There used to be a video of a bunch of young kids, casually dressed, North of Boston somewhere who broke a lot of barriers by dancing to that song. A bunch of Googling later..I can’t find it!

  42. 42.

    mawado

    The Chieftens w/ Van Morrison did a version a decade or three ago YouTube 

    For cover bands, I’m partial to those Kings of Kantrie music: The Twang

     

    Is anyone else afraid to click some of the links in this thread?

  43. 43.

    J R in WV

    LOL!  Ok, Adam… NOW you’ve gone TOO FAR!!

    .

    . .    .        .            .                 .              ;~)

    Is there a Highland Hebrew Dance competition tradition??   just wondering. There’s quite a bit of highland stuff in the Appalachian Mountains, esp in Western North Carolina. But clogging and such is common around here. Old Tyme Fiddlin’ contests, Banjo contests, etc.

    Next door, in fact, lives a blue ribbon fiddler and banjo picker…

    Anatomy of an Ear Wyrm, indeed~!!

  44. 44.

    prostratedragon

    @Yarrow: Never heard of her, but looking her up on ytube I see that it’s not because she hasn’t been around much —from a noted musical family, apparently. There are even some recent streams. The one in that twitter link was from a concert at the Central Park bandshell.

  45. 45.

    Adam L Silverman

    @BC in Illinois: Click on the first suggested video below the video you linked to. It’s a trio featuring an Indian woman bagpiper who goes by the nym “the snake charmer”. She’s very good as are the two women she’s playing with.

  46. 46.

    trollhattan

    Enjoy this sports headline: “Crawley hits ton as England dominates Windies on day four.”

  50. 50.

    BC in Illinois

    This is the time of the year for bagpipes. Or, if you can, Uilleann Pipes.

    Seven of the BC g’kids have, at one time or another, been a part of the St. Louis Irish Arts. (Grandson number eight is only nine months old.) Four of them are still at it. Zero Irish heritage. The eldest got pretty good at the Uilleann Pipes before she dropped out. The four who are still at it do a cluster of performances this month, for obvious reasons. Dancing, tin-whistle, harmonica, Irish harp. Jigs, reels, hornpipes. I could listen to it all day.

    Tomorrow is the day for the freezing-cold St. Louis St. Patrick Day Parade. Once — last century — I was on the SLIA float between the fiddle and the concertina, playing guitar in the lightly blowing snow.

  51. 51.

    prostratedragon

    @Kalakal: There are multi-instrumentalists out there, by which I mostly mean people who play a variety of instruments separately, but how on earth do you form embochure on three trumpets simultaneously?

  52. 52.

    Kalakal

    @prostratedragon: I know, I cannot imagine how it’s possible. Or for that matter how anyone can have the lung capacity to play them, I used to play several brass instruments, one at a time was plenty

  58. 58.

    sab

    @laura: That’s a shame. They have them in Lorain County Ohio where it is absolutely flat geography for as far as the eye can see. Ohio has hills, but not near there. It’s very weird.

  60. 60.

    debbie

    Better late than never:

    JUST IN: Disney CEO Bob Chapek just said the company is pausing and “reviewing” all political donations after massive backlash for their silence on Florida’s Don’t Say Gay bill. Since 2020, 80%+ of Disney’s donations have gone to Republicans, including every sponsor of the bill.
    — No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) March 11, 2022

  61. 61.

    prostratedragon

    Ms. Carling’s style of showmanship reminds me of a popular entertainer from the 30s and 40s, Valaida Snow. She sang and played a bunch of instruments (all separately), but especially trumpet. Louis Armstrong said that she was the second-best trumpeter he knew;<)

    “Patience and Fortitude,” Valaida Snow and the Ali Baba Trio

    Unfortunately, she was taken by the Nazis while on a European tour and sent to a concentration camp. She survived, but apparently was never able to get back to her old level of performing. Another current performer influenced by her is Cecile McLorin Salvant.

  63. 63.

    Layer8Problem

    @NotMax:
    @Jess:

    I’m a big fan and supporter of SomaFM–great station!

    Listener and supporter here as well. The Drone Zone and Suburbs of Goa channels on headphones took a lot of the pain of an open-plan office away.

  65. 65.

    prostratedragon

    @prostratedragon:  Attempted edit timed out. The clip is dated 1946, post-war, but everything I’ve seen on her suggests that she never was really interested in performing after that, though she did try a couple of times. Before the war, she had been a huge star, command performances in England and elsewhere, the whole nine yards.

  66. 66.

    Kalakal

    @prostratedragon: Thank you for introducing me to Vaiaida Snow! :) I liked those and then listened to her doing Lady be good. She was superb. What an awful, tragic story. I shall have to give a listen to Cecile Salvant as well

  67. 67.

    Layer8Problem

    @debbie:

    Since 2020, 80%+ of Disney’s donations have gone to Republicans, including every sponsor of the [Don’t Say Gay] bill.

    Gee whiz, that’s unfortunate. Perhaps if they ask nicely Disney can get their money back. Assholes.

  71. 71.

    trollhattan

    Florida kindly holds Missouri’s beer.

    March 11, 2022 at 6:20 pm EST By Taegan Goddard

    “Missouri lawmakers are reviewing a Republican-backed bill that would ban abortions after 10 weeks, and make it a crime to terminate deadly ectopic pregnancies, punishable with many years in prison,” Insider reports.

    Ectopic pregnancies occur when a fertilized egg implants and grows outside the uterus, most often in the fallopian tube, and can be life-threatening for the mother if left untreated. The fetus can’t survive to be carried to term.

  72. 72.

    scav

    @debbie: Jeeebus the mouse is nasty.  I don’t think a quick round of greenwashed absolution will dent the accumulated karma. Well, hope rather, true justice is rather more of a theoretical construct anymore.

  76. 76.

    Suzanne

    TFW you are on a train and a fellow passenger falls asleep and snores so loudly that she wakes herself up.

  78. 78.

    trollhattan

    Sliver of positivity from Ukraine.

    A pregnant woman photographed escaping from the wreckage of a hospital bombed by Russia has given birth to a daughter, reports say.
    The image of heavily-pregnant Mariana Vishegirskaya, her face bloodied as she descended rubble-strewn steps, was widely shared amid outrage at the attack, which killed three people.
    She gave birth the following day, her niece in Turkey told local media. Ukraine’s ambassador to the UN said the baby had been named Veronika. Mariana became the subject of a Russian disinformation campaign after the bombing.
    The Russian embassy in the UK tweeted a conspiracy theory that Mariana was an actress and the aftermath of the attack had been staged.
    -BBC

  84. 84.

    Spanky

    Breaking news! Be on the lookout!

    (CNN)A camel escaped from a petting zoo and killed two people in Tennessee Thursday, authorities said.

    Deputies received a call of a camel attacking people near Shirley Farms in Obion, the Obion County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement. They arrived and found two unconscious people and the camel still on the loose.
    The men, Bobby Matheny, 42, and Tommy Gunn, 67, were pronounced dead at the scene.

    It’s not clear whether they worked at the petting zoo or what type of camel was involved in the attack.

    The worst type, obviously.

  86. 86.

    Spanky

    @Spanky:

    The men, Bobby Matheny, 42, and Tommy Gunn, 67

    Tell me you’re from the South without telling me you’re from the south.

  87. 87.

    Spanky

    @Spanky: Oh, wait a minute! There’s a denoument:

    The camel attacked a sheriff’s office vehicle as authorities tried to render aid to the victims. For the safety of all on the scene, officers had to euthanize the camel.

    Alan Shirley, who owns Shirley Farms, asked CNN for time to grieve and said they were not making any statements at this time.

    No indication in the story exactly who Mr. Shirley was grieving over.

  88. 88.

    Danielx

    Worst earworm ever, refuse to search or link: Oscar Meyer Wiener Song,

    Now I’ve done it ::::diving for cover:::::

  89. 89.

    Brachiator

    @trollhattan:

    The Russian embassy in the UK tweeted a conspiracy theory that Mariana was an actress and the aftermath of the attack had been staged.

    This also underscores how Fox News, other media sources and various bad actors seek to undermine the Democrats and democracy itself with conspiracies, accusations of fake news, the “Deep State” and other kinds of misinformation. And then Fox News tries to justify its sedition with cries of freedom of expression or freedom of the press.

    How this all finally plays out here will be very interesting.

  90. 90.

    Brachiator

    @Spanky:

    It’s not clear whether they worked at the petting zoo or what type of camel was involved in the attack.

    One hump or two?

  94. 94.

    lurker

    so my initial thought was that after seeing the still  of that last youtube video, there was no way I was going to sleep peacefully … then I scrolled through comments and determined I did not need to engage … then I saw this comment

    @Danielx:

    Worst earworm ever, refuse to search or link: Oscar Meyer Wiener Song,

    So, in the words of a young relative responsive to one of my puns:

    Dude, you’re the worst … That’s terrible … I hate you

     

    Note – he was laughing by the end of this, and I am chuckling a little, but furious that I have a song about hot dogs going through my head now…

     

    Hope everyone can enjoy the weekend…

  95. 95.

    lurker

    Also, I looked at the post, and I believe this is a legitimate Adam post – one of his main hallmarks, along with not using the read more tag is this:

    At the end, he demurely shouts “Open thread!”

  98. 98.

    Rokka

    I’m opposed to bagpipes with rock bands unless it happens at at Celtic rock festival where you know it’s going to happen. Yes, there used to be one in Grass Valley, California. The first and best time this was done was back in 1980 by M for the track “Keep It To Yourself” from their second album “The Official Secrets Act” This is still one of the best mixed tracks of all time (use headphones) with an uilliann pipe solo from Bill Whelan who later created Riverdance. The other musicians are Wally Badarou, Phillip Gould and Mark King who eventually became Level 42.
    I have a connection to this due by buying every copy I could find of their third album “Famous Last Words” This album included Jamie West-Oram, the guitarist for the Fixx. I met him at a meet and greet twenty years ago and he had never heard it so the next time they were in town, I gave him the album.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsECk5-r_fs

  99. 99.

    prostratedragon

    @Brachiator: I remember an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show where the crew tried, and failed miserably, to maintain proper demeanor at a funeral for the tv station’s clown entertainer, who, while wearing a costume as a giant peanut, was killed by a circus elephant.

  100. 100.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @prostratedragon: Chuckles the Clown!

    My family was pretty much lone bunch of heathens in extended clans (both sides) of hard core Catholics. We used to get the church giggles something fierce when we had to attend Mass for our grandmothers’ benefit and pretend to know all the moves and words.

  101. 101.

    raven

    @BruceFromOhio: Yea, he’s interesting. He was part of a cooking show at my neighborhood eatery and he was something.  His name is Michael Geier but “he also refers to Puddles as a completely separate entity from himself. Likewise, “Puddles” also won’t acknowledge himself as Geier”.

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