Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

Everybody saw this coming.

In my day, never was longer.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

Find someone who loves you the way trump and maga love traitors.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

No one could have predicted…

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Cancel the cowardly Times and Post and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

Reality always gets a vote in the end.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Friday Night Open Thread – How About a Little Music?

Reader Interactions

141Comments

  1. 1.

    Craig

    For some reason I’ve been humming Your Song all day. I’m always fascinated by Elton and Bernie’s writing arrangement.

  2. 2.

    hitchhiker

    Watching old fave Disney songs with the 4 yr old grand-twins yesterday — all day long I’m singing Under the Sea and that silly Cinderella song where the mice and bluebirds make her a dress for the ball. (We can do it, we can do it!)

    It’s so much fun to show them things like that, my god.

  3. 3.

    Splitting Image

    I’ve had “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda” stuck in my head for the last few days. I think that my brain is trying to get me to listen to the Pogues more often.

  4. 4.

    randy khan

    I have no current earworm.  When I have them, they tend to be Sondheim or 70s non-disco songs.

  7. 7.

    SuzieC

    Love the Pogues’ version of that anti-war song.

    FWIW, my son is still close to a couple of his Navy buddies.  They both voted for Trump.  They both texted him this morning about Epstein.  They were disgusted and said this is bullshit.  As Rachel Bitecofer has said, we don’t need these guys to vote Democrat.  We just need them to not show up to vote.

  9. 9.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @hitchhiker: I’m at Disneyland with my grandkids. Just heard “Under the Sea” played live on piano in the hotel. There was a very appreciative audience.

  10. 10.

    Rob

    As for earworms, I tend to have individual songs in my head for a day or so before they are displaced by other songs.

  11. 11.

    Comrade Scrutinizer

    Saw The Warning in concert in Raleigh Tuesday night.  Incredible show (still looping in my head), and bonus! An incredible support band, Speed of Light. Two amazing sets of sibling rockers.

  13. 13.

    JetsamPool

    I tend to earworm the last song I listened to, but I know enough earwormy (or whatever the adjective form is) songs to change if I want to.  Last song I listened to was Enchanté by Dirt Poor Robins.

  15. 15.

    H.E.Wolf

     I always use Springsteen’s blue jeans behind for the music featured image.

    Thank you.

    Denim is a symbol of the working class, which connects the audience not just to Springsteen’s music, but to a lot of the labor-movement singer-songwriters who were the anteriors to his posterior.

  16. 16.

    mrmoshpotato

    @hitchhiker: Under The Sea my bones!

    Since life is sweet here

    We got the beat here naturally (Naturally-y-y-y)

    Even the sturgeon an’ the ray

    They get the urge ‘n’ start to play

    We got the spirit, you got to hear it

    Under the sea

    Oh yes!

  17. 17.

    Marc

    I periodically get infected by what must have been one of the first American earworm songs The Band Played On, which 70 years later was a popular school and camp fire song, with the requirement that you scream out at the top of your lungs “The Band Played On” every time that came around.  Just a mention of the word earworm is enough to trigger it, I often have to employ defensive earworms to get rid of it, like now. Here’s the Guy Lombardo cover if you want to risk it.

  18. 18.

    Ramalama

    I watched an old live performance with Olivia Newton John, Andy Gibb, and ABBA on some Australian tv special, via YouTube. Well, I watched the rehearsal which was shot in one take. Earworm came from Olivia singing Hopelessly Devoted to You. Pretty great all around EVEN didn’t mind Andy. But that song has followed around for maybe three days.

  21. 21.

    frosty

    My earworms (one word) tend to be the last one I was trying to learn how to play. I am SO sick of Margaritaville!​

    It’s been Nadine by Chuck Berry this week.

  25. 25.

    Craig

    @Ramalama: thanks. I think I’m gonna have that for a few days. Decades ago I was tripping on a beach in Ensenada MX with best friends and we were all belting out the whole Grease soundtrack. God, that must have sounded horrifying.

  26. 26.

    Nettoyeur

    @Splitting Image:  I heard that poignant song sung by its author, Eric Bogle, a few weeks after moving to Australia in 1997 (our family became US-Aussie dual citizens) and it sticks with me still. Aussies have never forgiven Churchill for Gallipoli. Similarly I first heard Gordon Light foot sing The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald in 1976 right after moving to Wisconsin. Both songs are part of my bond to those places.

  32. 32.

    kalakal

    @WaterGirl: Yes it was, in the scene where Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner try to snatch a brief escape from end of the world at the hotel

    I think I’m earworm free right now which is nice

  34. 34.

    Comrade Scrutinizer

    @SpaceUnit: I was surprised by how young they are. Like DPA, they seem like really nice people…although you wouldn’t think so when Riley starts moshing with Cameron on stage.

  35. 35.

    WTFGhost

    I found it amazing that the only artist I had more albums from, than the Indigo Girls, was Bruce Springsteen, who, let’s face it, is OLD. No offense – it’s just, wow, the Indigo Girls have to be great to be peers of Springsteen, for an old Philly boy.

    Ghost, and Prince of Darkness, are amazing songs, though there are far more songs that are, I’m sure, equally awesome. I just can’t hold too much info in my head at one time.

  36. 36.

    Trivia Man

    @laura: saw them last year, it was GROOVY!

    Speaking of ear worms,  almost 50 years now I periodically get the opening riff from Squib Cakes in my head. Not even my favorite from the album but in HS band the sax players did it A Lot. Back To Oakland is a hell of an album.

  37. 37.

    SpaceUnit

    @Comrade Scrutinizer:

    I love the moshing onstage!  But yeah, they seem like really nice kids, and I’m so glad The Warning decided to pay it forward by bringing along a young unsigned band to open for them.  So cool.

    And I’m jealous that you to to see The Warning live.  I’m in Denver and sadly they didn’t put us on this tour.  Maybe I’ll just suck it up and get on a plane.

  38. 38.

    Craig

    Last week I had Argentine hip-hop/soul duo Ca7riel and Paco Amoroso’s song El Unico stuck in my noggin. I don’t even speak Spanish, but sick song. Their Tiny Desk is dope, big ass band. I watched their kind of amazing Coachella set early in the week on YouTube. They’re super talented and catchy

  39. 39.

    Portly Neighbor

    @mvr: Cool, now it’s my current earworm! (I listened to “Repeat,’ “Twangin,’ and DE 7th a lot (and the rest of that era Rockpile- related music)).

  40. 40.

    Trivia Man

    @frosty: couple years back i was in Nashville walking down 4th street past the Margaritaville bar. The live band was playing The Song and i wondered how often they play it. Hourly? Every 15 minutes? The visitors want to hear THAT SONG!

  42. 42.

    WTFGhost

    @mrmoshpotato: Escape always bugs the heck out of me.

    Seriously: you’re ready to leave someone, ready to bolt without warning, and you haven’t even learned if they’re into pina coladas, and walks in the rain. How the eff does that make any sense?

    And, worse, they both realize the other was about to bolt, but, they’re both all “oh, it’s you.”

    Again, how does that make any sense whatsoever? These people are far more bored with their relationships than I’ve ever been!

  43. 43.

    Kayla Rudbek

    Beyoncé’s Texas Hold’Em has been my earworm for most of the week (I am normally not a big fan of country music, but she, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, and Shaboozey could convince me otherwise).  Now to go through the rest of everyone’s comments and get more music recommendations out of them, before I start the reread of the newest Penric and Desdemona novella from Lois McMaster Bujold.

    and no knitting decisions as it’s at least a hour too late for that (and I need real daylight to look at my recent yarn purchases and make decisions about patterns and color combinations)

  44. 44.

    Rocks

    “Don’t you wish your woman was hot like me,

    Don’t you wish your woman was a freak like me”

  46. 46.

    mvr

    @Portly Neighbor: Yes, those are good records all.  I at one point 40 years ago made a mix tape of sort of mournful songs on which I had this and/or “Living Again” but I lost it.  It started with a bootleg of Springsteen’s “Fever” when that was the only way you could get it.  (It has since come out.) I was once able to write down the song order for one side of the tape, but lost track of the other completely.  And now of course I don’t know where what I wrote down is at.

    But the sequence that starts off Twangin is wonderful!

  47. 47.

    moonbat

    I’ve had Sting’s ‘Desert Rose’ stuck in my head for the last week. A quarter century after it was released and that song still gives me chills.

  48. 48.

    Marc

    The kid was home this evening after 3 weeks of dog/house sitting for friends.  We got to geek out after dinner (my infamous fried catfish) watching a SpaceX (yes, we know, but it’s still cool) launch out of Vandenberg SFB (heh).  Here in Oakland we could pick up bright red flames (heavily refracted by being close to the horizon) about 30 seconds after launch, and could easily see the exhaust plume when the second stage took over. Not the most spectacular view, a bit too long after sunset.  Same kid used to sit on my shoulders while we’d watched ISS go by (and once a shuttle just behind). Or, like my Dad pointing out Echo 1 to me for the first time while we listening a Boston Pops concert at the Esplanade.

  50. 50.

    Bupalos

    I somehow got hooked into reading about the cheating high-dollar public-officer corporate people caught on the kiss cam at the Coldplay concert. Kind of sounds like everyone involved is a parasite. Of the “good guys” (the spouses being cheated on) one is the CEO of a rum company and the other is the admissions officer for a $35,000/yr elite grade school in Boston who lives in New York. Initially she was described as a “respected educator” but I don’t really get how a respected educator is basically in sales, and commutes to a different city. I really wanted some tabloid trash with good guys and bad guys, but it turned out to be the kind of story that just makes me feel terrible about America generally. With that maudlin Coldplay song as the soundtrack.

  54. 54.

    BigJimSlade

    I’ve got an earworm now, but you’re not going to like it. At least I don’t. My wife referenced this, and since I didn’t know this one (a Schoolhouse Rock sort of thing), she had to play it. Um, I don’t like this one, Lolly get your adverbs here: youtube.com/watch?v=dDwXHTcodNg

  59. 59.

    Hilbertsubspace

    I have a weird item to offer.

    In Alfred Bester’s novel The Demolished Man, the main character uses an earworm to block out telepaths so he can get away with a murder.  I read that book once over 40 years ago and I still remember the repeating earworm.

    “Tension, apprehension, and dissention have begun. (musical riff)”

    If anyone else also read this and remembers, congratulations.  You’re weird.

  60. 60.

    Leto

    We saw Sinners last week and the music was amazing. That’s been on repeat ever since.

  63. 63.

    NotMax

    Couple of weeks ago Everybody Ought to Have a Maid wouldn’t quit repeating inside the brainpan.

  69. 69.

    MikeInOly

    So hard to avoid earworms. I am happy when one I like gets stuck. The Indigo Girls are always welcome.

  71. 71.

    NobodySpecial

    My current earworm is “Wake Up” by Kowloon. I’ve been really trying to get into chill spaces with the way things are, some trip-hop, some Gorillaz, some Tame Impala, and let the randomizer roam.

  73. 73.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @NotMax: I watched the original The Producers movie a couple of weeks ago on TCM and was knocked out by Zero Mostel – I had seen the movie before but a long time ago. So when A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum  came on TV the next week, I had to watch, in tribute to Zero. The maid tune is catchy, but Comedy Tonight  wins it for me.

  79. 79.

    anitamargarita

    Am dreading even typing the words “Elton John” because he gives me persistent earworms.

  81. 81.

    Splitting Image

    @A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):

    I watched the original The Producers movie a couple of weeks ago on TCM and was knocked out by Zero Mostel – I had seen the movie before but a long time ago. So when A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum came on TV the next week, I had to watch, in tribute to Zero. The maid tune is catchy, but Comedy Tonight wins it for me.

    I frequently find myself humming “Springtime for Hitler”.

    I try to hum quietly if I am in public, so there is no confusion, but damn that tune is catchy.

  82. 82.

    Salt Water

    I looked up a couple songs from the 70s a few days ago and have been getting lots of them served to me since then. Junior’s Farm by Wings came up and I listened to it. Hadn’t heard it since it came out I’m sure. It’s been following me ever since.
    m.youtube.com/watch?v=pEil2e_bUvg

  83. 83.

    Ksmiami

    Pavement: harness your hopes.

    and the freaks have stormed the whitehouse, I moved into a lighthouse

  85. 85.

    David_C

    For some reason, my recent ear worm is the “Agnus Dei” from Fauré’s Requiem. As a Tenor I, it has some powerful lines. First, the main melody is sung by the tenors, with some tension provided by the rest of the choir and orchestra in between the repeated melody line. And then the tenors provide a bridge to a section that starts with the soprano/altos singing “Lux aeterna…” or “Everlasting light…” Then there’s a huge buildup to one of the only fortissimo parts of the whole piece, and since we tenors are in the high part of our range, we kind of soar above the other voices. Genius. Orchestra, and then silence, followed by a quiet recapitulation of the first movement theme, “Requiem aeternam…”

    Besides hitting the higher notes, the greatest challenge is not bursting into tears when singing this—it’s that moving. All bets are off during the “In Paradisum,” especially the time when our youth choir sang the soprano line, but all we have to do is come in on the right note and sing “Jerusalem,” and then finish with a few quiet notes.

    youtu.be/S7yh0ulM1qA?si=MmXLvrgl1w0DLzjJ

  87. 87.

    Ramalama

    @Craig: I was in the 7th grade when Grease came out. What a movie. I wasn’t crazy about the ending when Sandy … anyway I loved the movie. But wasn’t planning to know every freaking song by heart..every slumber party I attended that year all the girls played the record and acted out the movie. My reaction was…”really? This is it for the whole night?” Yes. For every party that whole year. I can sing every song in that movie.

    @eclare: Olivia nailed that song.

  90. 90.

    lowtechcyclist

    Don’t have an earworm right at the moment, but for me, they come and go pretty rapidly. Yesterday afternoon, it was “One Week” by Barenaked Ladies, and then in the evening, for no apparent reason, “This Diamond Ring” by Gary Lewis and the Playboys took over.

    There has to be some hook, in current events either in the world or in my own life, for me to have a persistent earworm.

  91. 91.

    Suzanne

    Yesterday and this morning, my earworm is “Grace is Gone” by Dave Matthews Band.

  93. 93.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    Haven’t had any real earworms in the past few weeks, but oftentimes, my earworms come from movie scores, so no words to sing. Recently, it was Randy Edelman’s score to Ghostbusters II, one of those movies that leave me thinking “This music deserved a better movie.”

  94. 94.

    Gloria DryGarden

    Work with little kids. Those catchy tunes we sing with the children stick in your mind.
    If I so much as name titles, the song will cue up and be stuck in your brain for hours. Once I had ____ playing in my head for a whole weekend. I don’t dare say the name..

  95. 95.

    u

    @SuzieC: My half-assed analysis … This Epstein thing is hurting Trump with his base because it’s easy for people to understand on an emotional level (forcing underage teenage girls into prostitution).  Depriving millions of people of medical care, crippling cancer research, destroying weather forecasting — those things are abstract.  Epstein is emotionally loathsome.  (And, yeah.  I think that Epstein was murdered to keep his mouth shut.)

  96. 96.

    u

    For me, anything by The Who from 1968 to 1973.  But that’s every day for the past 50 years.

  97. 97.

    u

    @u: It’s kind of the same way the killing one person with a knife is an abomination, while killing a million people with a nuclear weapon is an abstraction.

  98. 98.

    Suzanne

    O/T…… it’s apparently confirmed that Andry Hernandez Romero was one of the prisoners swapped out of CECOT and is now in Venezuela. He should be in the U.S., of course, but at least he’s now out of CECOT.

  99. 99.

    u

    @u: It’s kind of the same way the killing one person with a knife is an abomination, while killing a million people with a nuclear weapon is an abstraction. xx

  104. 104.

    lowtechcyclist

    @raven: ​

    @lowtechcyclist: Leon Russell was a session player along with the other Wrecking Crew players.

    The Wrecking Crew players were a very talented group of musicians. But let’s be honest, they were there to provide backing music to whatever the record companies needed backing music for at a given moment, and that included a lot of filler and outright dreck. “This Diamond Ring” was there to be listened to by teens for a moment in time, and then forgotten. That’s its level.

    But I was one of those teens (pre-teen, actually), so there it is, popping into my brain for no apparent reason sixty years later.

  105. 105.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Booger: ​

    You know ‘Escape’ was written by the man whose first big hit was the song about the cannibal coal miners, right?

    Yer evil.

  108. 108.

    Geminid

    @Gloria DryGarden: That was interesting stuff about the February, 2023 earthquake. That quake killed more than 50,000 people in Turkiye and at least 10,000 in northern Syria. Ragip Soylu wrote a good article for Middle East Eye a few months afterwards about the factors behind the excessive death toll. I’ll link to it sometime.

    I ran into a a wild internet conspiracy theory  about this earthquake. The U.S. destroyer Nitze had made a port call at Istanbul a few days before the quake, and the ship was cruising in the eastern Mediterranean when the quake occurred. Some people asserted that the Nitze triggered the quake by means of a secret electrical pulse weapon. This seems farfetched but I think some Turks believed it on the principle of, that’s the kind of thing those dam’ Yankees would do.

    I saw some news about Syria last night that might turn out to be good. Multiple Middle East news sites reported on a ceasefire agreement berween Israel and Syria that could end the terrible outbreak of fighting in the southwestern city and governate of Suweida.

    The ceasfire was announced by Tom Barrack, who is the U.S. Ambassador to Turkiye and Special Envoy to Syria. It’s been day there for a few hours now and I think we’ll know in a few more if the ceasefire is effective. I’ll try to post more on this later on.

    This fighting has not gotten much attention here, but it has dominated the Middle East news cycle all week. The outbreak of violence was triggered two Fridays ago by the hijacking of a vegetable truck, and has cost several hundred lives since. That includes people killed when Israel bombed a several locations in Damascus on Wednesday.

  110. 110.

    Bill Hicks

    Balloon Juice Front Pagers Detained by ICE at Alligator Alley

    Betty Cracker Right at Home

  111. 111.

    Spanky

    Ten hours between posts, and I’m surprised you kids haven’t wrecked the place without adult supervision.

  112. 112.

    Geminid

    @Spanky: It seems like people here get fought out during the day and are still recovering in the late night/early morning hours. But we’ll be back to a snarling, vitriolic pack of jackals soon enough.

  113. 113.

    Shakti

    I get earworms all the time. And they often get remixes — which can be very annoying because they’re usually like a DJ that isn’t quite on beat.

    My last earworms were these

    but not at the same time.

    @Comrade Scrutinizer: Is this same band? They have an amazing cover of Enter Sandman

  115. 115.

    u

    @lowtechcyclist: Supposedly Jimmy Page played (uncredited) on hundreds of songs in that era.   Later he formed the Flying Zeppelin Brothers, or whatever they were called.

  116. 116.

    Professor Bigfoot

    I’m out of town, visiting family in Tennessee so y’all won’t be seeing a lot of me for a bit… but that protest sign, “YOUR MAGA HUSBAND IS ON GRINDR” just made me spitlaugh. Bwahahahahahaaa!

  118. 118.

    TerryC

    Someone above mentioned “defensive earworms.” I have two intense, constant tinnitus sounds, one in high register like a screech and one in low register like a rumble. I started using earworms to distract me from the tinnitus sounds. It is a quite successful technique; many days I never notice the tinnitus unless I listen for it. (But it is always there. Thanks, Navy.)

  122. 122.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Geminid: ps. That was on blue sky in the recent scroll of environment science. I spelled turkiye correctly but autocorrect changed it back. I had fixed it once, thought it took.

    retyping everything auto correct objects to, more than once, yikes.

  123. 123.

    Geminid

    @Gloria DryGarden: A lot of people still call it Turkey. Ragip Soylu does because he follows the stylebook of his employer, Middle East Eye. They’re London-based, I think a spinoff of the BBC.

  124. 124.

    prostratedragon

    @NotMax:  Tralala to you, too! Now I’ll have them on rotation. Notice that conductor Marin Alsop was singing along.

  125. 125.

    Geminid

    @Gloria DryGarden: Here’s the link to Ragip Soylu’s article on the Turkish earthquake. Middle East Eye punlblished it March 6, 2023– month after the magnitude 7.7 quake:

    https:/www.middleeasteye.net/big-story-turkey-earthquake-what-went-wrong

    Welp, thelink does not work. The article is easy enough to look up under tge title “What went wrong with Turkey’s earthquake response.”

    The article mainly focuses on flaws in Turkiye’s disaster response and their origins, but Soylu also discusses the factors behind the collapse of numerous recently constructed apartment buildings. One big culprit: zoning amnesties that allowed permitting of buildings constructed on unstable ground.

  126. 126.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @Professor Bigfoot: have fun with your family, I hope the white people in Tennessee don’t hassle you (the only time I have been in Tennessee was for the 2017 solar eclipse so we weren’t that far from Oak Ridge).

  129. 129.

    Geminid

    @Kayla Rudbek: I was in eastern Tennessee for the 2017 eclipse. My Atlanta friend and I drove up from his house. We passed through Dayton, Tennessee on our way. That was the site of the sensational Scopes “Monkey Trial.” in 1926

    We had to move around dome to get out from under some cloud cover. We  stopped at a good spot just outside a small time. I remember how when the eclipse hit, streelights came on ond the night-time insects started whirring and buzzing.

  132. 132.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Geminid: I remember that quake. It was on my birthday.

    it’s nice to call a country what they want to be called. I thought they had a good reason

    @bellycat, your game, gravity, made it into another poem. I just read it at an open mic a few nights ago.

  133. 133.

    Geminid

    @Gloria DryGarden: I always figured they wanted to get away from the “Turkey” label because R.T. Erdogan, their president, resembles a turkey. Diplomats would snicker at conferences when Erdogan delivered remarks behind a name plate that said, “Turkey.”

    But this is just a theory.

  135. 135.

    Cliosfanboy

    I ALWAYS have earworms. All the time, every waking hour, unless I am listening to music or watching TV.  Apparently, some people have this as a form of OCD.  It doesn’t bother me, especially as I have learned to change the song if I want.

  136. 136.

    Geminid

    @No One of Consequence: Ramsey Lewis’s group played Washngton D.C. a lot, and the Washington Post had an article about them last year. The reporter said they worked up “I’m in With the In Crowd” at the suggestion of a DC waitress. She heard them discussing possible tunes to add to their repertoire and said, “Why don’t you try that Dobie Gray song? You know, the one thst goes, “I’m In With the In Crowd.”

  137. 137.

    zombie rotten mcdonald

    I have been re-visiting the sprawling oeuvre of Runt, Todd Rundgren.

    Saw him a few years back with Joe Jackson and Ethel.  When they all came out to play Black Maria at the end, it was glorious.  Not to mention when they played While My Guitar Gently Weeps.

  138. 138.

    No One of Consequence

    @Geminid: That’s awesome and jelly of anyone who caught them live. Live is where it’s at. No do-overs, no net.

    Right

    Now.

    Except for the drummer, who always has to be a little anticipatory, lest they come off as behind the beat.

    -NOoC

  139. 139.

    WaterGirl

    @frosty: Well, I thought it was one word but spell check was yelling at me so I added the space and then asked the question.

  140. 140.

    WaterGirl

    @WTFGhost: My favorites are lyrics that feel like poetry set to music that fits the word perfectly.

    The Indigo Girls do that in a number of their songs.

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