Shout, the original Tears for Fears song, was the reason for one of the few times I heard a song in a store and bought the album immediately.

This cover of Shout, by Child Seat, a group I only learned existed tonight, is amazing.

Share a song that tells a great story.

Well, I'm a Minnesotan and I was listening to radio stations when this song was released in 1976. As a very young man at the time, this story hit me hard.

It is a sad song about a wreck on the Great Lake they call Gitchi-gami

IYKYK

I just reread the Wikipedia article about the song and I learned some facts, including that the melody was taken from an Irish dirge. It occurs to me that the famous guitar sound would also work on traditional acoustic instruments. Forgive me if there are covers of the song done just that way.

Perhaps surprisingly to folks who know me well, I have a playlist called “Happy.”

It started with It’s Alright, by Pet Shop Boys, specifically the version from the Introspective compilation.

The rhythm is pretty straight disco, but the synth baseline is kinda funky and staccato. The version from the Introspective comp begins with a choir singing the eponymous phrase.

And for me, another selling point are the various harmonies that come and go, various break downs, and points at which it becomes almost orchestral in its vastness.

It’s a mood.

I hope you can pick up what it lays down.

What was the first album you ever bought? Pick your favorite song off that album.

Well, I honestly do not remember the first album I bought. I had some supervised purchases with my parents over several years, which included some good and bad choices, mostly from the Columbia Record and Tape club.

But the first time I bought music of my own volition with money I had in my pocket, I could not have been more than about 12 or 13 years old. I was in the local Ben Franklin drugstore and found a 7" 45 RPM single of Gary Numan's Cars from The Pleasure Principle LP. The flip side was I Die: You Die, which was not released on an album. Atlantic had reissued it as an Oldie, so I bought it because I liked and remembered Cars from Top 40 radio.

At the time, I didn't have my own turntable or cassette player. My brother and I shared a portable record player in a rec room space, and I think that is how I listened to it when it was new.

Doing research while writing, I learned that I Die: You Die itself was only released as a single. Then I spent even more time confirming that my memory was correct. I did find the single as I remembered it on Discogs and eBay.

The actual full album of The Pleasure Principle did not come into my possession until the 1990s, when a colleague at the record store told me that he, too, was a Gary Numan fan. He shared his copy with me, which I immediately dubbed to cassette. Subsequently, it was the first Gary Numan album I purchased digitally.

I saw Gary live much later at the Fine Line Music Cafe in Minneapolis. It is still one of my favorite concerts.

Now, after all of that, my favorite track from The Pleasure Principle is Films. We know Gary Numan for synth-pop, but we forget that he used human musicians. Films has the synth you expect, but the bass line and drums drive the song, and it has been one of my personal favorite tracks for many years.

Share a song that got you through a difficult time.

Ah, limerance.

Stellar, by Incubus, was a favorite song for several years, that I used to sing loudly, awfully, while cleaning my house and wearing big, over-the-ear headphones jacked into a portable CD player (or my pocket PC with the flash card).

This song was less about getting me through trouble as much as it was referencing the trouble. I have admitted having trouble, pieces to different people at different times, but never precisely what trouble.

That’s for me.

I rolled tonight.

I'm a terrible bowler. Out of three games, I scored just above 70 in each the first two games. Lots of gutterballs. Like ridiculous. But then in the third game, things settled down and technique improved enough that I got strikes in four frames and finished with a score of 156.

I haven't bowled in at least two years, maybe longer.

But, bowling makes me think of my favorite movie: The Big Lebowski. There are dozens of tracks in the movie but one of my favorite scenes includes the song Oye Como Va, by Santana.

Tito Puente's version of the song is also awesome!

Just an ear worm, today.

But it’s loaded.

This dates from my days working for a former retail chain called Spec’s Music and Movies in the 1990s. It was a family-owned chain, based in Miami, Florida, USA. I worked in a regionally successful location on NW 13th Street in Gainesville, Florida. The manager of the store was fond of playing the Happy Monday’s album Pills ‘n’ Thrills and Bellyaches in store when it was au current. We got new promotional cassettes and CDs from the record labels weekly, and some would last on the play stack for a while.

The first song on the album, Kinky Afro has been stuck in ear-worm mode in my brain for the last several days.

Another song from the same album that I liked more at the time was Step On, but Kinky Afro hits better today and that’s my CrucialTrack.

I have some import vinyl that man gave me before he took his own life. So I have been thinking about him a little bit, too.

Boom.

Share a song that changed your perspective on music.

I never saw them with Jerry Garcia. I did see "The Dead" play at an outdoor concert in a very uptight community that put a significant damper on fan activities. I have also seen Rat Dog play at First Avenue.

My first exposure to the music of The Grateful Dead was via a group called Dark Star Orchestra. They're a tribute band that picks a known set list from one of the Grateful Dead's shows, and they play it straight through. They probably play less loosely than the real band themselves might have played, if you can imagine.

Up to a certain point in my life, I had been a tee-totaler. I had only recently begun to drink beer at social events. My spouse at the time was not at all convinced this was a good idea.

So.

I was invited by an excellent friend to a place called Harmony Park, in Southern Minnesota. Dark Star Orchestra was headlining a night at the venue, which is also a camp ground. I met my friend's family and some others there for an overnight event.

I went by myself, armed with a sleeping bag and a very small tent I borrowed from another friend. I probably brought along some Guiness.

I was encouraged to do it the right way. This was the music of The 'Dead, after all. It was really interesting to watch other campers around the park in the hour before Dark Star Orchestra took the stage. Costumes changed. Treats were distributed. Lights were hung from poles and from the trees.

I, too, had some tea and a hit from the bat.

As the evening wore on, perhaps an hour into the show, I was asked about how I was feeling. There was a lot of discussion about what I should notice. As a complete neophyte, I could only shrug and shake my head. I didn't think I felt different. I was given some additional pieces and folks were going to check in on me later.

It wasn't long after that that I began to notice that it felt really good to look at the stage lights as they moved across the crowd. I also noticed how all of the notes of music fit together into this great cosmic scheme.

Later, I became terrified I was broken. There was no way I should be feeling this good and that certainly there was no way back from the sky. I began to mourn for my life as it had been.

After the show I walked around and around the grounds. I watched the fire spinners and listened to the drum circles. I was transfixed by the gently pulsing lights some more experienced campers had hung at their camp sites. I listened to the laughter of campers and the music they had playing. I couldn't believe smoke from a camp fire could smell so good. I didn't know that pine forests could small so amazing. I didn't know there were kaleidoscopes behind my eyelids.

And I started to understand popular music and how and why it sounds the way it does just a little bit more.

I love Eyes of the World by The Grateful Dead. I've heard several live versions from the Dick's Picks collections I've picked up since then. I'm partial to one version that's about 15 minutes long. No one would ever call me a Dead Head, but I have knowledge from an experience that resonates to this day.

Hopefully I don't stay stuck in 80s references! I got to see Psychedelic Furs live once at the University of Florida Bandshell, back in the early 1990s. My first exposure to them was on a local radio show in the Minneapolis radio market circa 1982, and I borrowed the Mirror Moves vinyl from an acquaintance and taped it. My favorite song of theirs is still probably High Wire Days, which is another track that energizes me when I hear it.

What was your favorite song in high school? Why did it resonate?

There are way too many songs from this period of my life to pick just one. As a result of this prompt, my brain decided to latch onto Simple Minds’ song Don’t You (Forget About Me). The song was written for the movie The Breakfast Club, which was released in February of 1985, when I would have been a Junior in high school. I was working part-time and for the first time in my life I was feeling connected with my same age peers and feeling seen in my culture. Still today I don’t mind hearing this song even though it was everywhere and relentless on the radio at the time.