Obscure Singles Heard at CVS

does anyone have a slide rule

I know where you can buy one.

The Traveling Wilburys: "Last Night" on a Pandora Oldies channel at a burger place.

Same place, today got "Heading For The Light" and whatever that Jim Croce song is about him walking to Georgia.

"Walking Back To Georgia", surprisingly.

His third biggest Spotify track for some reason.

wow. maybe on some Georgia playlists or something.

Ok well blancmange “don’t tell me” into ultravox “reap the wild wind” was a strain of 84 LIR heaven. at torchy’s centennial CO.

holy crap into gogos cant stop the world. tho i figger thw gogos to be more kroq than lir.

Ok now it’s fantastic day h100 they just know i’m here nm

Bowie “Suffragette City” in a dead small-town shopping mall.

Oh wait, now it’s “Shake and Finger Pop” by Junior Walker.

Translator “Everywhere That I’m Not” in a Goodwill in Venice, Florida

Nirvana ft Cris & Curt Kirkwood - "Lake Of Fire"

When the suction came off at the dentist... pretty deep cut for a dentist office (or nah?)

So are we okay again with using this as more of an all-purpose thread for music heard in public spaces? That seemed to be a topic of concern a few days ago.

yeah i'm pretty ok with that now thanks to the therapy here. i'm still a little iffy on defining obscure, but i've moved v significantly toward "if the hearer blees it obscure, it's obscure, hunt3r."

i mean, my lived experiences and those of millions now dying are not like some young pup's lived experience.

Reminded by the LZ II thread that they were playing Billy Squier - The Stroke at the grocery yesterday. I know it was a fairly popular song, but it's still pretty weird and embarrassing to hear it blasted while you're out food shopping.

it was even weirder when it was on like 2 AM and 6 FM channels, which was the entire universe of mobil music, riding in the car with yr parents, and everyone was pretending it wasn’t billy squire, singing the stroke. it was pretty great.

ha mobile

https://www.kxan.com/news/texas/h-e-b-employees-say-this-song-is-played-too-much-at-their-stores/

“I swear to God when I used to open for the produce department at 5 a.m., the playlist would be exactly the same every time… ‘Mambo No. 5’ would play at like exactly 5:10 a.m. [The song] legit gives me PTSD flashbacks.”

^^Reminds me about how most of the YT comments section for the music video to John Anderson's "Somebody Slap Me" is made up of Kroger employees talking about constantly hearing it at work.

My post about The Stroke was from HEB, I wish it had been Mambo #5 instead.

Smithereens: "A Girl Like You" at Five Guys

― a full playlist of presidential apocalypse jams (C. Grisso/McCain), Friday, November 11, 2016 4:54 PM (seven years ago)

Many customers and workers at Trader Joe's in Chicago were rockin' pretty hard to this on Friday afternoon.

Not obscure, but let me tell you that a Trader Joe’s in Downtown Philadelphia at 5 pm jamming out to “Hot Stuff” is truly a lovely thing

grocery/drugstore playlists are legitimately better and more varied than actual radio now

a long time ago i spent a summer stocking shelves overnight at a grocery store. there was no playlist, but the foreman (the store was closed, thank god) played a certain radio station featuring 'the hits of the 60's, 70's, 80's and today!'

it was pretty much the same songs in a different order each night, but we placed bets on when exactly 'suspicious minds' would be played

a few years later i helped open a large bookstore and somehow the only CD that no one objected to was van morrison's greatest hits. so for three weeks we heard that entire album at *least* once a day. it took me 20 years to even listen to van morrison again, and i will never be fully over it

i fucking love 'suspicious minds' tho

we had a work ipod at a retail job i worked once upon a time, and corporate had put about 250 songs on it that were “approved.” some of it was fine— Grace Jones, Nick Cave’s soundtrack work, Solange— but there were a few tracks that i still absolutely loathe that I didn’t loathe before, like “Thinkin Bout You.” thanks Frank, i would rather fuckin not.

that was better than the organic grocer where i worked a few years later that only played the ‘stomp clap hey’ genre. was overjoyed when i got moved to the back and could play my own music.

By the way when did CVS’ start selling g sex toys. The travel section even in my non-bougie neighborhood has travel sized vibrators.

Putting the 'V' in CVS...

i don’t wanna see the sights - charlatans at torchy’s centennial CO

In view of my adherence tho not loyalty to my prev comments in thread, i verified via discogs that idwsts was a single (US) for charlatans.

torchys is def not a drug store, tho it is possible i’m just doing it wrong.

Fleetwood Mac: "Seven Wonders" (which I never hear on the radio or anything) at HEB

Great radio jam

i don’t wanna see the sights - charlatans at torchy’s centennial CO

― a single gunshot and polite applause (Hunt3r), Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Great song, man I love those first four, five , six Charlatans albums...

Beatles "Nowhere Man" in a Harris Teeter, which is obviously far from obscure, but it did make me think about how rarely I hear the Beatles in stores or eateries despite being hugely popular across generations. Is it too expensive to license or something?

Probably just too old? If I'm hearing them in the wild, it's almost always alongside other '60s/'70s music.

...and if it's not, then it's one of the big hits mixed in with other Pop hits through the ages.

Lee Dorsey: "Do-Ri-Mi"
Gary US Bonds: "Dear Lady Twist"
The Cadillacs: "Nag"
Bob & Earl: "The Harlem Shuffle"
The Toys: "May My Heart Be Cast Into Stone"

All at Dairy Queen

Wow, love that last one… I only know it from the One Kiss box

good dq

The Cadillacs and the Toys are so associated with one song each for me, impressed you'd hear something different in a public setting.

Was The Cadillacs song “Naggy Nag”(?) i’m listening to it now… It sounds like a rip-off of “Yakety Yak”?

(Looks like The Cadillacs also did “Buzz Buzz Buzz,” but I guess the Hollywood Flames version must be the most well-known…)

(to be clear, the main Cadillacs song I knew was “Speedoo”)

Looking harder, I think this was the Halos' original version of "Nag". I googled it at the time and came up with the Cadillacs.

Ah, looks like that’s a different song (interestingly, this fellow J.R. Bailey was in both the Halos and the Cadillacs)

Huh, looks like the Halos were also the guys backing up Curtis Lee on “Pretty Little Angel Eyes.”

..."Who Put The Bomp..."!

Bass Singer Arthur Crier's grandson is Keith Sweat!

"Who Put The Bomp..." too!, I meant.