When I say “recoveries” I mean a song(s) that you heard when you were a kid (usually on the radio) that you heard only once, and then not again until decades later.
You did standing back flips of 100 proof joy over the song(s), but never found out its name, or performer/band, and over the years, you’d frustratedly try to hum it to someone - anyone! in the vain, fruitless hope that you’d (at the very least) FINALLY get it identified.
After a while, you just sort of resign to fact that you’ll never come across it again, when boom, all of a sudden (quite often courtesy youtube surfing) you come across it, making it more like a recovery than a discovery, if that makes any sense.
Two examples that I came across within only the last eight or so years, after a 30-year hiatus:
(and still fuckin’ eh as ever!)
Over the decades, just the (increasingly vague:() recollection of the chorus in this next puppy would give me goosebumps:
I Walk Alone by Oleander. I heard it on a lunchtime radio segment where they played older songs. It was simultaneously new and very familiar. One of my more Proustian moments.
I had a similar experience many times over when a station in my city switched to the classic hip hop format.
I saw him in 1982. He opened for Loverboy; what I remember most about the show was that his set was excellent but Loverboy’s, not so much. My friends and I did, however, have so much fun at that show, it really didn’t matter.
Injured in the Game of Love
Donnie never struck me as a serious, badass rocker. He kind of had a joker, goofball persona, something that comes through in some of his live performances and in ALL of his cheeseball videos.
Let’s see. I think the last song that was lost in obscurity, only for me to rediscover it during a trip to Lake Erie, was this: Long Tall Glasses
This was a #13 hit in 1978, when I was 7 years old. It was never the kind of song you’d hear on the radio after that. In fact, I believe I had not heard it in about 37 years! But they happened to play it on the Sirius XM 70s radio station. I was quite surprised, as it came right back to me. I had never thought about the song once in the interim.
Longest gap: when I was in freaking nursery school, maybe 4 years old, there was a song they played (among many others) while we were supposedly napping on our cots. I remembered it as having the words “These are the things I get for loving you, these are the things I get for being true”. Pissed off my very literal-minded self at the time (what things? he doesn’t list the things he gets!). Found it in my 40s. Eddy Arnold, “These are the THANKS I get”.
First major “recovery”: Bloodrock’s DOA. Remembered it from 5th grade (and so would anyone else who has ever heard it, it sticks in your head) but it had long since disappeared from the airwaves by the time I was 19 and chased it down by calling a radio DJ. “Sirens, you say? Two possibilities, ‘The Night Chicago Died’… no? Then it was Bloodrock, ‘DOA’”
Recoveries that the SDMB helped with: Foreigner’s “Tramontaine”, Jon Secada’s “Just Another Day”, Tom Petty’s “Learning to Fly”
This one was a song I had not heard before starting my quest.
My parents’ 25th wedding anniversary was approaching. I made a joke about having a party in a club or disco, “with lots of dancing”. Dad deadpanned “only if you can find la casita en Canadá”. “Uh?” “Worst song ever, or almost.”
Turns out that the two sets of parents (that is, my grandparents) got introduced at a dance, which was the only time my future-parents actually did any dancing lasting longer than a minute. Mom has never been much of a dancer and Dad had multiple left feet; we’re not sure of the number, but enough to trip on himself. And that song was a big hit that summer, so it got played time and again.
I called a radio station, part of Radio Nacional* and asked for it, and man, it turned to be beyond bad. What’s worse: the version my parents had danced to was by a woman named Elder Barber (and talk about a wtf artistic name), but there are covers! And, according to Ms Barbero’s (her real lastname) wikipedia entry, that song is itself a cover of an Italian one.
During the celebratory banquet, and as the cart with the desserts and presents was being brought out, I stood and told the story. Then I produced a cassette and said “now, I am certainly not going to force my father to dance, because as we all know it is very important to know one’s limits and this happens to be one of his, but! Let it be known that I did get the song!” and I played it, to general laughter.
Spanish Public Radio. If they didn’t have it, nobody would have.
I took 3 months in kindergarten in a school which was French immersion. The teacher was a total bitch, but one thing I did like was learning a new song every month. The third one, whose lyrics I never learned completely, was called Chevaliers de la Table Ronde. I searched for its lyrics a few years ago and it turns out to be a drinking song. I suspect Sister Bitch may have taught us a sanitized version, but who knows. She may have been too stupid to realize what it was about.
I first heard this, played a few times, in elementary school (1970-71) and didn’t hear it again until it showed up in a Simpsons episode in 2002 (32 years?). I wasn’t salivating for it, just moderately surprised when it surfaced.
In the 1980s, I liked a song with the lyrics “And nobody don’t dance on the edge of the dock, we’ve got the radio on.” But I didn’t know the name of the song or the band.
A few years ago, I heard it playing in a convenience store. I finally found it - Heartbreak Beat by the Psychedelic Furs. It’s become one of my favorite songs.
I heard a song at about 10:30, March 26th, 2006 on the radio. Damn cool song. No idea what it was, even called the station and they didn’t know! (Lazy Bastards, not keeping track of shit like that!)
I had heard it somewhere in my teens and it stuck lingering me. Over the years I tried to describe it and find it unsuccessfully, only 20 years later to have a guitar teacher randomly suggest it as a cool riff song. I jumped up and shouted “That’s it! That’s the song!”
Being part of the ‘forgotten’ (by radio at least) Peter Green era of Mac, the title not matching the lyrics, and no internet of the day, I thought it was lost forever.
I have a couple: both of these songs are among my very favorites, and it was most vexing to not know who recorded them.
The longest unknown one was “My Little Town” by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. I must’ve heard it in the year or two after its release in 1975 (I was six), and the melody of the chorus stuck with me for 35 years without having any clue who sang it or what any of the words were. One evening several years ago, I was flipping TV channels and the 1970s satellite music channel was playing it. It was such a relief to find out who it was (and I don’t know what I would’ve done if the channel didn’t have the artist identified in the top right corner). I’d gotten to the point that I thought I’d made the melody up.
It hit #9 on Billboard’s Hot 100 in 1975, but I never heard it again between the mid-70s and 2012 or so. I think part of its relative rarity is that it’s not really a “Simon & Garfunkel” song, since it was recorded and released after they broke up.
I had another song identified for me in college – I can’t remember when I first heard Gerry Rafferty’s “Right Down the Line,” but I went at least five or six years not knowing who sang it until I was DJing at a college radio station (this would’ve been around 1988 or so) and someone called and requested it. I had no idea who Gerry Rafferty was at the time (I grew up in a rural area with very limited options for radio and was vaguely familiar with “Stuck in the Middle with You,” but couldn’t have told you much about it), but imagine my surprise when I cued up the song to get it ready to play on air and discovered it was my long-lost record!
Those of you who grew up with the Internet always being available: the ability to search for lyrics and browse YouTube is one of the benefits of the Internet that shouldn’t be taken for granted.
This thread inspired me to find a song I’d been thinking about and haven’t heard in years: The Authentic British Blues by Wilderness Road. It’s as funny as I remembered.
