OK, so maybe 50 years ago, as a teen in Northern Virginia, I went with some friends to see a band. This band played a song called “This One’s For You, Carla.” They were kinda like the Mothers, only not really. The venue was some kind of a dark, psychedelic-type joint. Perhaps in Georgetown in DC.
For the past 50 years I’ve had “This One’s For You, Carla” swirling around in my brain. (sort of). I can find ZERO information on the song or the band on the internet!
Remember the story of Lost Lake? A couple was driving thru Georgia, somewhere in the country. There was a sign, “This way to Lost Lake.” They were intrigued but didn’t have time for the detour. Later, one said to the other, hey let’s Google Lost Lake and see what it’s all about. But the other said, nah, let’s leave it lost.
Is it better to never know about Lost Lake? Or This One’s For You, Carla? “Let the mystery be,” as some folkie-type person once sang??..
I researched and found a couple of bands from that time. One was an email I sent to the lead guy, and he only saw it two years later! He was nice and answered some questions. Try some inquiries on FB maybe, on a local history page.
There are a couple of gas stations around the Sacramento area called “Orbit”. Their stations all have the same very 1960s space age Googie design. They totally look like something out of The Jetsons. There are only two that I know of that are still operational gas stations, plus one other surviving building that has been re-purposed as a used car dealership, but I gather there used to be a lot more of them. I have always been curious about the history of this chain, what they were like in their heyday, and that sort of thing, but I’ve never been able to find any information like that from Google, only modern day photographs taken by fans of that style of architecture. Although Googling them just now I did find this site which makes a reference to the design being created in 1963 by someone named Ed Ward, which is more than I’ve ever been able to find about them before.
Well, if you had the mystery solved, then you would know if you were happier or not. This happened to me recently.
Back in the late '70s or early '80s there was an Elvis Costello bootleg going around with a tune called “I Wrote This Song” on it (at least that was what was scribbled on the cassette case - remember those?). Never could find any information about it.
A couple of months ago, for no good reason, I decided to work my way through some very early Ian Dury. And there - stone me - is the song, “The Roadette Song” on the first Kilburns album. Very disorienting - the young Elvis was covering the unknown (ish, at the time) Dury. Mystery solved.
Has this made me happier? The world (MY world) lost a little mystery, but gained a little knowledge. On the whole I think I’m happier.
I lived in Oklahoma for a short while back in the late 1990s. There was a song that got a lot of airplay (country station) and the chorus went something like
“Blah blah blah something something something, you don’t even care anymore. Blah blah blah something something something,______________ as I was walking out the door.
Major station, major market and I can’t find a hint of it on google.
There is a subreddit for that purpose. It’s /r/NameThatSong. I participate there and it’s a ton of fun when I can help someone I.D. some nagging earworm, or scrap of a memory.
Musical melodies are quite challenging to search, in my experience, even though they shouldn’t be–if this kind of searching were given Google-level resources, it would work just fine.
Sure, a popular recorded song can be found instantly using Shazam, but what about when you have a random recording of the song being performed in a club or something?
There are search engines out there that let you tap rhythms, key in Parsons code (combinations of Up/Down/Repeat) and search by notes, but they are frustratingly poor search engines compared to what we are used to from Google.
I tend to leave the Seeburg 1000 background music stream going on, well, in the background. That service tended to record bouncy upbeat instrumental versions of jazz standards, show tunes, and popular songs of the day (e.g. an instrumental version of “Something” by the Beatles). Because it was recoded by their studio orchestra, none of this music is fingerprinted by Shazam, and won’t be found that way.
So, every few days I hear a tune that I like, particularly when it has a snappy bass line, but all I find in Musipedia is 10,000 hits on arcane classical music and popular music that looks nothing like the tune I had in mind.
Then I resort to posting a clip on Watzatsong, and once in while someone will recognize it.
Last year for hiking season I finally found a snack bar I liked, something that was mostly nuts and fruit. It was called Naked or Naked Juice or something like that.
Couldn’t find it in the store this year, so I thought about searching for it on the web to see if they still made them. Then I thought about what sort of results I’d get if I typed in “naked bar”. I… I think I’ll pass.
My high school journalism teacher. I was trying out something about her a day or two ago. A lot of people with her name, but nothing that I can correlate with her career to know she’s she.
She was tech savvy, had a daughter my age who would presumably be tech savvy, and touched the lives of lots and lots of people. She should be easy to find.
Our favorite Brit-Com is “As Time Goes By” With Geoffrey Palmer and Dame Judy Dench.
In one episode they were talking about their first weddings, and Jean (Dench) said she wore flick-ups. From the context, it didn’t sound like she was talking about her hair.
I have tried many different terms and related ideas (1950’s fashions), and got nothing.