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)

Not a chain store, so maybe not within this thread's purview, but the new locally-owned ice cream shop was playing Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight by Spinal Tap yesterday.

not obscure, not a cvs, but they played Velvet Underground's "I'm Waiting for the Man" at my physical therapist's this morning

"Fade Into You" was playing as I got a tooth drilled into this morning, and then the JJ Cale version of "Cocaine." It was a little weird, but then again, I remember when "Blackwater" by the Doobies played when I was getting a radiation treatment.

wow the latter is extra nightmarish

It's an odd gambit— doctors and dentists have always told me that a lot of people bring their favorite music to these appointments and just put on their earphones, but I've never wanted to associate music I like with dire medical procedures, so I always deal with what they're playing over the speakers. I think once in radiation, I asked them to turn off "American Pie" for personal reasons.

Back in my oncology days, I'd listen to Blonde Redhead or Steely Dan on the iPod. Nice n' sterile.

Last time I had a crown put in at the dentist, he was playing some Black Crowes channel. I felt filthy afterwards.

The Southern Harmony & Dental Companion

lol.

More like Hotel Drillness.

Well-played, sir.

this is 100% true. When my partner was going on for heart surgery, in the waiting room the radio was playing some song that kept saying "I will fix your heart" (or maybe "i can fix your heart"). I never figured out of it was intentional or not but it seemed like "live" radio iirc

"Shake Your Hips" (Rolling Stones) at a San Diego Zoo snack bar.

Shake Your Hippos

Neko Case: "Bad Luck" in the lobby of a Sleep Inn.

Paramore: "Hard Times" and Sheryl Crow: "Hole In My Pocket" at Dairy Queen.

Ben Kweller: "Magic" at Walmart.

Which reminds me that one of the Pop Conference presentations is about retail soundscapes, specifically those at Walmart. Hopefully this thread is in the citations.

my friend just heard the sundays “here’s where the story ends” in cvs

it made her day. would make mine too

https://www.npr.org/2022/05/05/1096564202/gap-store-playlist-music-collection?

I've heard "Here's Where the Story Ends" quite a lot in the wild, still catches me offguard.

xp That’s cool… I had a side job at the Gap for a few years in the early 2000s, I was definitely interested in the playlists.

Martha & The Vandellas: "You've Been In Love Too Long" at Cheddar's.

Going Back Where I Belong by Sugar Pie De Santo at the non-Starbucks coffee chain I went to a couple days ago (but I cant recall name of it).

Everything from "Mama I'm Coming Home" by Ozzy Osbourne to "The Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes" at my blue-collar, mixed-culture Kroger.

Speaking of retail playlists, the monthly ones from The Row can be pretty great. Obscurities and album cuts.

Hib-tone version of "Radio Free Europe" at Dairy Queen

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.