Tuesday, February 19, 2008

My darkest hour


Usually, I sleep like the dead. It's the sleep of the righteous, of course. On occasion, however, if I'm having trouble dropping off it's not my demons keeping me awake, but more than likely a song.

It's infuriating when you get a tune buzzing round your head in the dead of night. They've varied from things like Shine On by the House of Love ('shi-shi-shi-shine ooooooooonnn'), to the brief Chopsticks excerpt heard in the 'Daddy or chips' advert some years back - it kept me awake for about three months until I was almost in tears - to the opening bars of Doin' The Do by Betty Boo.

Other refrains:

'Horace Wimp!/This is your life/Go out and find/Yourself a wife!', then 'Horace/Horace/Horace/Horace/Horace, Horace, Horace, Horace, Horace', etc., plus the squeaky violins, until the alarm went off.

'Everybody have fun tonight/Everybody Wang Chung tonight'.

The picky guitar intro intro to Goodbye by Mary Hopkin.

The middle eight from 10538 Overture. What is it about ELO?

The theme from Bergerac, with an image of that spinning Jersey. That could be a deep-rooted anxiety.

Karen Carpenters low bits from various songs. Mum and Dad's parties.

There are more, but if I dwell, I may not sleep tonight.

5 comments:

Clair said...

I once got 14% in a Maths O-level mock exam, due to a)being shit and b) The jingle of 'It's the fish John West reject/That make John West salmon the best' running round and round my tiny mind.

ELO are as contagious as the plague. Jeff Lynne must have made a pact with the devil.

Mondo said...

In my teens I was haunted by a few lines from a song I could never place..

"You touch my fingertips and my heart is aglow/You bend to kiss my lips and I can't let you go"/"Come closer, come closer, my darling, come closer"

I was dropped on the spot when
I heard them singing it on the BBC1 show 'Sing Something Simple' turns out it was 'My Resistance Is Low' (Robin Sarstedt version)

Adverts are the most invasive though - I still get " I was just a sad old sausage, I was just a dry pork chop/missing this bit putting on new Gravy Pot" on randomize in my head

office pest said...

A laughing Gert Frobe shouting "No, Mr Bond, I expect you to DIE!" on 'repeat' sometimes haunts me.
Years ago I once nearly said it during a tense presentation to a couple of hundred people about a huge reorg I was involved in putting through. God.

I blame my sheer terror and zero sleep for that one though. I was feeling defensive, drying up faster than the Aral Sea and so nearly blurted out the only thing that my gasping brain was offering up. A waking nightmare. It's making me tense just writing about it.

Kolley Kibber said...

TV themes will do this too. I had trouble getting rid of the trumpety bit for the theme tune to 'The Magician' ("Starring Bill Bixby") for years. And now it's back. Great.

And certain jingles hang on for ever..."one of those afters, you get now and then, you don't know just where and you don't know just when, it's Mousse it's by Bird's Eye, and you love it so.."

I can count on being awake at 3am now. Just dandy.

Jon Peake said...

Ah, the Supermousse ad:

"That was nice, love. Plain, but nice."

Then she jumps on the table and burst into that song. I'd be happy to have this keeping me awake.

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