Post by KittyKat - RIP Luciano on Jul 19, 2004 18:17:23 GMT -5
I was inspired to post this after Ed related a story about how it took him some time to find any information on the song "Hazard" by Richard Marx.
I've had a couple of similar experiences that I'll share - sorry for being so long-winded.
Back in 1986 when the movie 16 Candles came out there were few movies that were putting soundtracks out. In this movie there were several songs that I fell in love with and desperately wanted on cassette or vinyl but weren’t for whatever reason on the soundtrack sold.
It took me months to track down most of the songs but one eluded me for YEARS. It was the song that plays when the character Samantha is in the coatroom at the school dance.
First I scoured the credits to see the list of all of the music that was featured but not on the released soundtrack. There were tons of names/songs and not necessarily both together; so for example the song title “Young Guns” is listed but not the band name (Wham in this case) or a band is listed like The Crests but not the fact that they sing “Sixteen Candles”. Anyway, next I eliminated all of the artists that I knew it wasn’t and that left me with a narrowed field of 5 artists.
Most were bands from Europe that I wasn’t really familiar with. One of the bands was The Divinyls who back then were still several years away from having their US hit “Touch Myself” released and who I was only a little familiar with at the time for their songs “Boys In Town” and “Take A Chance”.
I dismissed the Divinyls because Christina Amphlett’s voice is so distinctive and the song I wanted didn’t sound like her or a woman at all for that matter. My further research proved to be a waste and I gave up.
Fast forward 15 years – my best friend was turning 30 and desperately wanted the first Divinyls album Desperate on cd because he loved the song “I’ll Make You Happy” which isn’t on any comp or greatest hits albums. This album is out of print in the US and Europe. So I do a bunch of research on the internet and find a distributor in Australia that still sells copies to individual customers. To make the shipping worth it, I went ahead and ordered 2 copies of the cd so that I can have one too.
Lo and behold when I played the cd I found that track #7, a little song called “Ring Me Up” is in fact the song that I searched for all those years ago from 16 Candles. The first part of the song which is the only part that I’d heard does not sound like Amphlett’s usual sultry rasp but the rest of the song does. I almost cried when I heard the first few bars of the music.
My other story is much shorter (thank GOD!). I heard a beautifully haunting song on a tv show about 6 years ago. It was another case where there was no information about the song in the credits but they played almost the entire thing so I was able to write down most of the lyrics. I did internet searches for years using various lyric sections but to no avail.
Finally, last year I randomly did another search for the lyrics and this time one hit came up on Google. It was a link to this girl’s online journal that she had kept while she was living in Spain. She had a journal entry that she had started with some of the lyrics to the song and explained that it had been in her head all day as she had walked through the streets of Madrid. Thankfully she listed the name of the song – “Gorecki” by the group Lamb. Without this fortuitous online journal I would never have been able to find this song because the title isn’t mentioned at all in the song. I ended up sending a little note of thanks to the girl explaining my story. Isn’t the internet wonderful?
I've had a couple of similar experiences that I'll share - sorry for being so long-winded.
Back in 1986 when the movie 16 Candles came out there were few movies that were putting soundtracks out. In this movie there were several songs that I fell in love with and desperately wanted on cassette or vinyl but weren’t for whatever reason on the soundtrack sold.
It took me months to track down most of the songs but one eluded me for YEARS. It was the song that plays when the character Samantha is in the coatroom at the school dance.
First I scoured the credits to see the list of all of the music that was featured but not on the released soundtrack. There were tons of names/songs and not necessarily both together; so for example the song title “Young Guns” is listed but not the band name (Wham in this case) or a band is listed like The Crests but not the fact that they sing “Sixteen Candles”. Anyway, next I eliminated all of the artists that I knew it wasn’t and that left me with a narrowed field of 5 artists.
Most were bands from Europe that I wasn’t really familiar with. One of the bands was The Divinyls who back then were still several years away from having their US hit “Touch Myself” released and who I was only a little familiar with at the time for their songs “Boys In Town” and “Take A Chance”.
I dismissed the Divinyls because Christina Amphlett’s voice is so distinctive and the song I wanted didn’t sound like her or a woman at all for that matter. My further research proved to be a waste and I gave up.
Fast forward 15 years – my best friend was turning 30 and desperately wanted the first Divinyls album Desperate on cd because he loved the song “I’ll Make You Happy” which isn’t on any comp or greatest hits albums. This album is out of print in the US and Europe. So I do a bunch of research on the internet and find a distributor in Australia that still sells copies to individual customers. To make the shipping worth it, I went ahead and ordered 2 copies of the cd so that I can have one too.
Lo and behold when I played the cd I found that track #7, a little song called “Ring Me Up” is in fact the song that I searched for all those years ago from 16 Candles. The first part of the song which is the only part that I’d heard does not sound like Amphlett’s usual sultry rasp but the rest of the song does. I almost cried when I heard the first few bars of the music.
My other story is much shorter (thank GOD!). I heard a beautifully haunting song on a tv show about 6 years ago. It was another case where there was no information about the song in the credits but they played almost the entire thing so I was able to write down most of the lyrics. I did internet searches for years using various lyric sections but to no avail.
Finally, last year I randomly did another search for the lyrics and this time one hit came up on Google. It was a link to this girl’s online journal that she had kept while she was living in Spain. She had a journal entry that she had started with some of the lyrics to the song and explained that it had been in her head all day as she had walked through the streets of Madrid. Thankfully she listed the name of the song – “Gorecki” by the group Lamb. Without this fortuitous online journal I would never have been able to find this song because the title isn’t mentioned at all in the song. I ended up sending a little note of thanks to the girl explaining my story. Isn’t the internet wonderful?
Dawn, If I could I would fly to where you are and give you a big big kiss! 
Dawn, If I could I would fly to where you are and give you a big big kiss! 