What You Need: 9 Lost Songs from the 1980s

They were hits.  They were available on vinyl.  But you can’t buy them now.  They’re unavailable on CD or in digital form.  Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes (Special Mix),” Opus’s “Live Is Life,” the English version of Nena’s “99 Luftballoons” (“99 Red Balloons”), the English version of Peter Schilling’s “Major Tom (Coming Home),” the American

Summertime: The Box Set

Happy First Day of Summer!  Here’s a “Summertime” box set.  I will now take your questions. Q: Are there good “summer” songs omitted from these four mixes? A: Yes, of course there are.  I came up with an additional 133 songs that I did not use. Q: Will you assemble more mixes including those songs?

Powerhouse

The hectic pace of this time of year (grading finals! grading papers! etc!) always makes me think of the music of Raymond Scott (1908-1994), but especially his “Powerhouse” (1937).  If you’ve ever watched any Warner Bros. cartoons, you’ll recognize this as the machinery-out-of-control theme.  Carl Stalling (1891-1972), who created the scores for those cartoons, made

Friday. Camp?

In naïve, or pure, Camp, the essential element is seriousness, a seriousness that fails. Of course, not all seriousness that fails can be redeemed as Camp. Only that which has the proper mixture of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naïve. – Susan Sontag, “Notes on Camp” (1964) – Rebecca Black, “Friday” (2011)