Monday, Jul. 12, 2004
Dear Diary:

Stunned. I am stunned. Well, more stunned than usual, anyhow.

I'm delighted and overwhelmed by the response of my three loyal readers to my plea for musical suggestions to power my aged carcass through my cardio workouts. I'm inching my way through them, auditioning lots of new (to me) stuff and I can see that the next visit into Montreal will leave my VISA card a small pool of melted plastic.

Bless you all for widening my musical horizons.

Most of you are zygotes and I thought it would be fun to share with you my favourite songs from when I was a zygote, which would be the 1960's. A mere 40 years ago.

Ignore the loud, inconsolable sobbing.

That would be me mourning my lost youth.

So, without further ado, Marn's Six from the Sixties.

Oh, and don't be looking for anything that wasn't Top 100. I was a plain, vanilla teenager from southwestern Ontario and I wouldn't discover the wonderful world of alternative music until the 1970's, when I headed off to university.

I have provided links to sites on the web where you can find the songs I'm about to mention. Obviously, this link is just for evaluation purposes and I will expect each and every one of you to immediately run out afterwards and buy each of these songs. The links will disappear about 18 hours after I post this entry to preserve the bandwidth of the people involved.

Uh, where to start? Well, I guess it should be the very first 45 I ever bought. At the time the only money I made was from babysitting, for which I was paid the enormous sum of $0.25 cents an hour. I spent the equivalent of four hours labour to buy the 45 of She Loves You by the Beatles. Was it worth it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, man, how to explain this next song � Okay, let's be honest with each other. Each and every one of us has a very frothy and alarmingly silly piece of pop music that we utterly love. Said love fills us with a deep and burning shame because intellectually we know this song is stupid and yet � and yet we cannot help ourselves, we love it.

My song is a schizophrenically upbeat song sung by a bitter man who has been dumped. Wait, it gets worse. It features an organ masquerading as a circus calliope. Yes, an upbeat song by a bitter man who has been dumped, a song that has calliope sounds.

Now we come to the point where it all gets so very, very sad.

At 53 I can no longer go grocery shopping without a list. No list and there is no hope at all of me actually remembering what I need to buy. And yet � and yet � I still remember each and every word to The Cyrkle's Red Rubber Ball.

Feel free to point and snicker.

I would.

Growing up just 60 miles north of Detroit, my top 100 was full of soul music, especially Motown. I know you've heard a lot of the Motown, but how about that amazing music from Atlantic records, the stuff that was resurrected by the blue-eyed soul wave of the 1980's�The Blues Brothers, Hall and Oates, Paul Young?

Well, here's one of the originals. He's better known for Land of 1,000 Dances, but my favourite tune by the wicked Wilson Pickett has always been Mustang Sally.

There are two songs that I can absolutely, positively say will always make me want to dance, or as the spousal unit has described my move busting "flail spasmodically". The hilarious part of this is that neither song is very danceable, and yet I feel compelled to move whenever I hear them. It is all too tragic. One, of course, is Good Lovin' by The Young Rascals.

It pains me to send you this second link, but it is the only one I could find for a song that I adore, one that holds the Number Two place in my Top Six Songs of My Zygote Years. The mix is muddy, and you lose the amazing sense of urgency that propelled the original. If you ever get a chance to hear a good version of Gimme Some Lovin' by the Spencer Davis Group, grab it.

It's very, very hard to pick a favourite song. I mean, the 1960's had some incredible stuff. But there's one song that I still play almost 40 years later, one that delights me with its complexity and beauty. This version was only encoded at 128 bits, so quite a lot of the detail is lost, but at least you get a sense of Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys.

Yeah, the Beach Boys. I've always felt that the later Beach Boys stuff never got the props it deserved, and that shelving them under "Surf Bands, Stupid" is unfair. But that's me. And I am the woman who just confessed that she loves The Cyrkle's Red Rubber Ball.

Uh oh. There goes whatever tiny shreds of cred I might have had, eh?

--Marn

Mileage on the Marnometer: 552.19 miles. Ten percent there rubber duck.Ten percent there rubber duck. 25 per cent thereTen percent there rubber duck.Ten percent there rubber duck.
Oh man. This is going to be hard
Goal for 2004: 1,000 miles - 1609 kilometers

Going Nowhere Collaboration

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Want to delve into my sordid past?
She's mellllllllllllllting - Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2012 - Back off, Buble - Monday, Dec. 19, 2011 - Dispersed - Monday, Nov. 28, 2011 - Nothing comes for free - Monday, Nov. 21, 2011 - None of her business - Friday, Nov. 04, 2011 -


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