Obscure Singles Heard at CVS

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.

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.