Obscure Singles Heard at CVS

I like Afterburner but yeah outside of "why am I hearing Sleeping Bag at CVS?" insanity I don't know why anything from it would make regular rotation on rock radio now

― da croupier, Thursday, October 11, 2012 2:32 PM

I tweeted this a few days ago. Recently:

Duran Duran - Do You Believe in Shame
Michael Penn - This and That

Semisonic: All About Chemistry

Grocery store, not CVS, but "Echo Beach" by Martha and the Muffins.

Not a CVS but I recently heard "I Am The Slime" by Zappa when I was getting my hair cut

once heard the entirety of they might be giants' flood on the walmart radio station.

jesus buddy were you waiting for an oil change or something?

ie it wasn't some worker blasting flood thru the store pa, it was the corporate radio station piped into walmarts coast to coast for some reason doing a 'showcase' on flood.

haha i think (dear god i hope) it started soon after i arrived and i may have indeed lingered to take it in, hear 'twisting' for the first time in however many years, take half an hour to decide whether or not i want poptarts, etc. something very fucked about hearing this blasting at walmart though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zNoxjUUyec

hahaha that's better than what I was guessing, which was "Your Racist Friend"

I heard Cracker's cover of "Shake Some Action" in CVS just two nights ago.

Others:

Boz Scaggs - Miss Sun
a-ha - The Sun Always Shines on TV
Tyler Collins - Girls Night Out
Toni Childs - Don't Walk Away

Huh I heard echo beach at Barnes & noble last week.

weirdest one i remember was "change your mind" by neil young while i was standing in line to get painkillers a few years ago. must've been a radio edit. felt appropriate.

Michael Penn - This and That
also, this song is so classic

Heard "Let's Hang On" which was a minor Top 40 for Barry Manilow at a Rite Aid once.

Sunrise by Duran Duran at Papa Ginos a month or so ago.
Why would THAT happen?

lite rock cover of Catch the Sun by Doves @ my bank

"Heaven's on Fire" by KISS was playing on at least two separate occasions at the CVS by my college

not an obscure single really but jarring in the soft-rock context, heard "More Bounce to the Ounce" at the local grocery store a few months ago

REM - "All The Way To Reno"

ie it wasn't some worker blasting flood thru the store pa, it was the corporate radio station piped into walmarts coast to coast for some reason doing a 'showcase' on flood.

― balls, Thursday, October 11, 2012 5:25 PM (6 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That is exceptionally weird and now I want to listen to that album which I haven't done in years.

It's not obscure but I was euphoric when I heard Amy Grant's "I Will Remember You" yesterday.

was picking up prescription for antidepressant at walgreens and they were playing "i wanna be sedated." no lie.

heard velvet underground - oh! sweet nuthin' at walgreens last week

Sugar Ray's "Chasin You Around" at Met Foods. The second single off In Pursuit Of Leisure, the album after the last one anyone cared about

not obscure but heard like a 10-minute Tool deep cut in a 24 hour kroger once. it was weird because there was usually just soft rock & r&b playing there

a couple visits to shop rite ago i heard the 12-inch edit of "she's always in my hair"

I'm just gonna use this thread for obscure songs heard in any retail setting:

Roxy Music - 2HB in Noodles and Company yesterday.

The other week in Morrisons they were playing 'If I Could Talk I'd Tell You' by the Lemonheads (a #39 smash in 1996).

Heard the Kinks' "Juke Box Music" in a grocery store a couple of years ago. Barely a hit in the US in 1977, never played on "classic rock" radio.

lol i heard donna lewis's flop second single "without love" in a cvs once

Heard "For What It's Worth" by The Cardigans in the grocery store the other day.

not that obscure really but heard dennis deyoung's "desert moon" followed by madonna's "this used to be my playground" on KRGR kroger radio last night, the algorithm was feeling some super intense nostalgia apparently

Thought this was a revival of this thread: albert hammond, "it never rains in southern california"

Not obscure, but I really enjoyed hearing Scritti Politti at CVS yesterday.

I heard the song 'On the Beach' by Neil Young at the grocery store once.

Heard "Couple Days Off" by Huey Lewis & The News last night at Whataburger.

Heard "Emerge" Fischerspooner at a Florida water-park

https://soundcloud.com/hennessyyoungman/cvsbangers

haha thank you, a classic

Jack In The Box is good for these. Today it was "Wild Wild Life" by Talking Heads, and last time a couple weeks ago I heard "Canary In A Coalmine" by The Police.

It's not obscure but I was euphoric when I heard Amy Grant's "I Will Remember You" yesterday.

alfred i'd start straight up bawling

I heard that really sterile, generic, terrible ballad by "Sergio Mendes" from the 80s...."Never Gonna Let You Go"...in a Zaxby's.

whenever i'm in cvs i hear "shattered dreams"

I heard Jack Wagner's "All I Need" and Richard Marx's "Hazard" once in an Albertsons during a 4 hour shift. I remain convinced that they had not changed their Muzak since my childhood.

and whenever I hit the "from this empty heart" falsetto several mothers in the cold medicine section scowl

hahaha. I can't help not singing along to that tune either. that or "All I Need is a Miracle".

haha otm

Shopping for pencils and invisible tape at CVS this morning I heard "Soul Drifter" by Lindsey Buckingham!

^^^^ I've heard it at CVS too

Manu Dibango - "Soul Makossa," in H.E.B. yesterday (though for some reason, in that store, the only place you can usually hear the music without straining your ears is in the restroom)

When you’re getting dinner in Portland and a song you used to goth out to at the legendary City Nightclub comes on thirty-six years down the line pic.twitter.com/HwptOybvB1

— The Mountain Goats (@mountain_goats) May 10, 2022

This barely fits the thread - but I was pumping gas a few weeks ago, and a promotional interview with "up & coming" singer Maeta (whom you may know from the rolling r&b threads) came on the pump's screen. I've never encountered her anywhere but my own little listening world, so it was pleasantly jarring.

Whoa -- Caron Wheeler's "Livin' in the Light."

xp

It's not so strange to hear Siouxsie in a restaurant in Portland. If he were shopping at the Hawthorne Fred's, that might be a different story. It's still a possibility though.

Doing an errand this morning at CVS/Target, they played 00s-style club bangers by Daft Punk, Justice, Boys Noize, Deadmaus etc. Two upset women walked by me, one of them saying “I’m tired of this car-commercial shit music.”

— Steady State Sounds (@StateSounds) May 14, 2022

Just heard Portishead’s “Glory Box” in Trader Joe’s (I haven’t heard that song in over 20 years).

Dinosaur jr start choppin at westin dia public restroom

Heard "I'm in love with the Other Woman" on a classic rock station out of Beaumont Texas driving home today. Knew the tune was stumped for an hour or so until I got to the next place I stopped and could pull out my phone to look it up that it was Ray Parker Jr. Cool tune. Awesome playlist on that funky station, they also literally went back to back from Sabbath's "Iron Man" to Olivia Newton John's "Magic", which I also had not heard in a couple decades. It's a cool tune too.

If he were shopping at the Hawthorne Fred's, that might be a different story.

Heard "See No Evil" by Television there once!

"Don't Cry out Loud," a live version by Joe Longthorne (!), blasted out of flat window I happened to be walking past, with the entire room singing along.

I don't know the song, or Joe Longthorne beyond his cheesy reputation, but I found it to be a strangely affecting piece of bombastic kitsch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0yvXmSmZxQ

went back to back from Sabbath's "Iron Man" to Olivia Newton John's "Magic"

What in the ...

“Don’t Cry Out Loud” is a great song and I appreciate that strange man for trying it. Melissa Manchester’s version is obviously definitive

"Longthorne was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2012 Birthday Honours for services to charity."

and he just keeps giving

Music best heard in a charity shop

Animals: "Boom Boom" at Freebirds

Cool

Not obscure, really, by my local Trader Joe's recently did something I've never heard in a supermarket before - back-to-back songs by the same artist.

"Time After Time" --> "The Goonies 'R' Good Enough."

Dave Mason ft. Michael Jackson "Save Me" at Rexall's

Stephen Bishop "Save it for a Rainy Day" at Giant Food

Nick Drake's "Northern Sky" at Lidl

Head East's "Love Me Tonight"* at a Sonoco convenience store.

(note: "Love me Tonight" was a bigger hit than "Never Been Any Reason")

I didn't know there were still Rexall's in the US (apparently there's an unrelated Canadian Rexall's)

I don't think there's any more real parent company, but older Rexall franchises are allowed to keep the name and several (including the one I was at in Virginia) still do for the name recognition. Alot like the Howard Johnson's restaurants whose last store finally closed last week, although the HoJo support system was long gone before that and the food tasted nothing like the old chain restauarants did.

Puns I had missed: "Rexall" is a contraction of "RX-all" - as in, we have all your prescriptions.

I was about to be gobsmacked, but the internet has differing opinions:

The "Rex" in the name was derived from the name of Ellen M. Regis, who developed "Rexall remedies" and from whom the company purchased the mark.

The name Rexall (meaning “king of all”) was chosen for the group of products for what later became the United Drug Company.

"Tell Me Something Good" by Rufus at Vons. It sounded amazing.

Tweeter and the Monkey Man at a pseudo Parisian bistro in New York

Bony M: "Rivers of Babylon" and Kinks: "Picture Book" at Chuy's

digging in the dirt and celebrity skin back-to-back at kroger. also love will tear us apart, sometime in the last year.

again, not really obscure except the terrestrial radio stations here in sw ohio that feature retro musics don't even get close to this. not really forgotten, not big enough to be in whatever they think the canon is.

I stood in line at the federal credit union yesterday, listening to all seven minutes of "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" by Led Zeppelin.

Not gonna lie, kinda miss Muzak at times.

does muzak-qua-musak still exist?

erstwhile (billy bob fargo ref), is there any chance radio will take the hint from the hipster-curated-in-store-playlist algorithm or paradigm or whatnot or are the economics too much to oppose? my local 80s station will play i want to know what love is or waiting for a girl like every other hour but never that was yesterday or midnight blue or heart turns to stone, which is awesome beyond belief. i can't believe i forgot that song exists. stop with the your love and play all the love in the world or say it isn't so or since you've been gone or everytime you cry. i know every outfield song is essentially the same song but how is that any more redundant than playing the literal same song over and over? i can't fucking hang out in kroger or meiijer all day hoping to hear don't talk to strangers or change by john waite or show me by the cover girls. or going back to cali. never existed, says my local 80s station. wishing well, gone. you can call me al, gone. i don't think i've ever heard them play things can only get better, or all cried out.

i got so emotional when i watched that killers video of their electric blue cover, because everything happens so much, and that's what i'm talkin' about. why does this slay me so hard and make me so lachrymose? at the time i thought it were a middling song but now as oblivion approaches it's the middling that hits the hardest.

i can play anything ever on youtube but i don't want that; i want radio to recover that middle ground, like what if i'd been the one or the freaks come out at night or alphabet street or running with the night or it's a sin. or oh yeah or lessons in love. can dan and ned and alfred do a tedtalk on this?

i mean, NOW my local 80s station plays running up that hill now that it's a hit of sorts when they didn't before, but honestly you don't get to do that without playing yourself.

like , i know why in between days or once in a lifetime or don't change or even i got you loom so large in my psyche, but why do the honeythief or pop goes the world or stay with me by shakesphear's sister or perfect way or digging your scene or ah, fuck it, i quit.

i just can't explain to 80s me why there is and has been for 25 years or so 80s radio that doesn't play lovergirl or sign of the times or glamorous life or poison arrow.

The other day I was in my local CVS and heard a song I’d never heard before. This is not as regular an occurrence as one would think, because even if it’s not. song I like or have heard many times, I can usually pinpoint what’s playing to a certain degree.

Except the other day— I’d never heard Howard Jones’ “Everlasting Love,” apparently!

My memory of that song is riding in the backseat from the revival to the pizza place with a burned-out acid casualty lipsynching to it on the radio.

"Ever notice how you can see some of the notes float out of the speakers?"

The dub breakdown in the middle is the sound of puppies bludgeoned to death.

Yesterday at Publix I heard back to back Little River Band's "The Night Owls," Luther's "Stop to Love," and 10,000 Maniacs' "Candy Everybody Wants." Whew.

pplains, that's something. if that line was in some iconic scene of some iconic movie made/set in the Sixties, it would be an iconic "acid trip" quote.

I haven't been to a revival since.

Londonbeat's "I've Been Thinking About You" really dialed up the horniness at Trader Joe's tonight.

In CVS earlier, heard Chris Cornell (RIP) doing a godawful rendition of GNR‘s “Patience.”

while i was waiting for my vaccine at walgreens they played Eddie Rabbit’s “I Love a Rainy Night” which i hadn’t heard for…decades?

NKOTB's 'I'll Be Loving You Forever' iright now in Walgreens. Love this deeply stupid thing. 'The things you do is forever' indeed.

not too "crazy", but i heard that seal song at a microcenter this weekend. that has to be one of the greatest songs of all time

just heard In the Morning by Junior Boys playing over a Sunday Night Football segment about Deebo Samuel

sonic youth, "within you without you", last night in my local asian supermarket

Supermarket this morning was playing Bjork's "Venus as a Boy."

Al Green & Annie Lennox: "Put A Little Love In Your Heart" at El pollo loco

scritti politti "perfect way" at sprouts

Sparks: "This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both of Us"
Indeep: "Last Night A DJ Saved My Life"
Aliotta Haynes Jeremiah: "Lake Shore Drive "

At Chuy's

Bob Dylan’s “From a Buick 6,” over the loudspeakers at Radiator Springs in Disney’s California Adventure.

Madonna: "Beautiful Stranger" at IHOP (not obscure, but kinda forgotten)

I've paid for you with tears
And swallowed all my fries

Da-da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da, dum
Philly Cheese Steak Stacker