Unwanted flashbacks

They warned me that listening to Top 40 radio would produce unwanted flashbacks years later, but did I listen? No, not me. So, there have been two or three undesired musical intrusions into my consciousness in the past two days. Tonight, it was a one-two punch from the complete set of “Sports Night,” Aaron Sorkin’s brilliant sitcom that he gave up in order to devote himself to preachy idealism on “West Wing.” To my way of thinking, “Sports Night” — tightly written, sexy, almost balletic — is one of the best TV shows ever. But he closed out two episodes in a row with truly terrible songs — one, the Beach Boys’ “Sloop John B,” and I don’t care where you come down on the Beach Boys, that’s a song the world could have done without. It was perhaps the least of Brian Wilson’s songs. The second was “Eli’s Coming,” by Three Dog Night, a song I would never have remembered if it hadn’t first been quoted in the script and then played at the closing. I mean, to even reference a Three Dog Night song — it’s just unnecessary. Yes, Laura Nyro wrote it, but here’s the point: I don’t need to ever again hear anything sung by the band that brought us “Joy to the World,” that brought us “Easy to Be Hard,” that brought us “An Old Fashioned Love Song.” Do I have to go on? (God, do you remember how HUGE Three Dog Night were? It boggles the mind).

And starting off this festival of musical suckage, yesterday at the pool I heard perhaps the most unexpected oldie I could even imagine: “Blinded By the Light” by Manfred Mann’s Earth Band. Perhaps there are some of you who listen to oldies radio who could tell me that this is in fact tops in the rotation these days — I simply wouldn’t know. I only had to hear the first half bar to know I was going to be sucked right back to 1977, when in fact I owned the album. I’m pretty sure I got it free for doing something down at the radio station. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it. As ridiculous as Springsteen’s lyrics can be when he’s singing them (and for my previous snit about Bruuuuuuce, click here and check out 7/6), they’re much more ridiculous when sung by a former rhythm ‘n’ blues band that has morphed into a pretentious art-rock outfit. I owned that album for years (in fact, it’s one of the few I’ve ever gotten rid of), but until I looked at the songlist tonight, couldn’t have remembered a single other song on it. Now that I’ve seen the list, some of them are coming back to me, zombie-like, and feeding on my delicious brrraaaaaaaiiinnnnssssss. How did the same team — Manfred Mann and Mike Hugg — that wrote “Mister You’re A Better Man Than I” (an angry-young-man hit for the Yardbirds that still sounds good nearly 40 years later) move from thumping, organ-based covers of “Smokestack Lightnin'” to “Singing the Dolphin Through” and “Waiter There’s a Yawn in My Ear”? I can’t explain it. Perhaps the website can.

There’s just so much suck when rock loses its way.