Songs you heard once, then searched FOREVER to find!

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by bagofsoup, Aug 15, 2015.

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  1. bagofsoup

    bagofsoup Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    New York
    Ever hear a song just once, but not catch the artist or name? You waited for the DJ to tell you, but it never happened. You keep trying to remember the lyric, or how the melody went. You explain it to all your music-loving friends hoping for a lead, but come up short until one day....BLAM!!! YOU FIND IT!!!!

    One of my favorite things about the SHMF is the community that rallies to the rescue when such a dilemma arises. That's just the BEST!!!

    I heard this song when I was about 10 or 11 years old on WNEW-FM in NY (1980/81). I barely knew enough about music to describe the rhythm of song, except that I thought the chorus was "PREVOYS!" (which of course, makes no sense at all!) I used to go to Sam Goody's or Nobody Beats The Wiz to look through the Phonolog directory (the only pre-Internet reference we us at the time) hoping to find it. When I was in my late teens, I heard Joe Jackson's Look Sharp! album for the first time and immediately identified with the voice I had been missing, and the the ska-type rhythm that I had yet to put a word to. I immediately went back to the record store and perused the entire Joe Jackson discography until I came up with the logical solution: on the Beat Crazy album - "PREVOYS!" = "Pretty Boys!" I bought the cassette without listening first and was delighted to find that my research paid off!

     
  2. bosskeenneat

    bosskeenneat Forum Resident

    I still remember a Kindergarten classmate bringing in the Hondells' "You Meet the Nicest People on a Honda" and our teacher let him spin it. Mind blown then & there. I bugged & bugged the guy to at least let me borrow it, but nothing doing on his part. Argh! I eventually found the two Mercury albums, but no YMTNP. I had to dig years through collector shops for the too briefly available 1965 single, which was the only format that song was offered on. It was also a successful ad campaign for Honda that year, of course. It finally came to reissue thanks to--what else?--the CD revolution.
     
  3. John54

    John54 Senior Member

    Location:
    Burlington, ON
    I can think of a few that I heard and identified later, but not necessarily a whole lot later. I heard Badfinger's Carry On Till Tomorrow on the radio and didn't figure out what it was until a year or two later when I bought the Magic Christian LP, mostly for Maybe Tomorrow, but I got a very nice bonus! In 1987 I heard a song one night without ID on CFNY, but shortly thereafter I bought the first Clan of Xymox LP and decided the song sounded like their style, and I knew they had a new LP, so I bought that, and sure enough the song (Back Door) was on it. It also took me a long time to fully identify No Salt on Her Tail by the Mamas and Papas, which I first heard in 1968 and didn't hear again until I bought it on CD, some time in the '90s I think (or maybe even in the '00s). But at least in that case I knew who the band was.

    I'm trying to think of a long-term example that only got sorted out after decades, and I'm drawing a blank. But I still have a number of cases that have yet to work out.
     
    bagofsoup likes this.
  4. amonjamesduul

    amonjamesduul Forum Resident

    Location:
    florida
    When I saw Deep Purple in 85 waiting for the show to start ,whatever tape that was on repeat on the PA played a few songs that stuck with me and I spent years finding all but 1 of them.A few were Jethro Tull and I just found one of them last year on You tube by a single line of the lyrics.One song I have a melody in my head and that's all,it's probably been so distorted in my head over 3 decades that i woulnd't know it if i heard it.
     
  5. mkolesa

    mkolesa Forum Resident

    I remember hearing Badfinger's 'Day After Day' on the radio once or maybe twice. I didn't even know the band name, just the lyric 'Day after day', but the song stuck with me for years and years and I always wondered what it was... It was probably the only Badfinger I actually heard on the radio, growing up in a smaller city where they tended to play the usual suspects. It was only when I started to listen to classic rock stations decades later that I was able to put it into context.
     
    jammincrowe likes this.
  6. rene smalldridge

    rene smalldridge Senior Member

    Location:
    manhattan,kansas
    Pre-internet , yeah plenty.
    Post-internet , naaaah.
     
  7. folkfreak

    folkfreak The cold blooded penguin

    Location:
    Germany
    ca 1985, I was about 13 and heard a song on the radio that i LOVED.
    I never forgot the instrumental intro with flute and piano.
    3 yeas ago I recorded that peace with my piano and uploaded it to a forum and it was "Run with the fox"

    That was a very, very long time, but I finally found it.
     
    BwanaBob and bagofsoup like this.
  8. bagofsoup

    bagofsoup Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    New York
    Oh, tell me about it! Plus, we have Shazam! I go nuts scrambling to catch key lyrics if it turns up no results!
     
    Om and Shak Cohen like this.
  9. Jayseph

    Jayseph Somewhere Between Penny Lane & Alphabet St.

    Location:
    Philadelphia
    When I was young, I had a Sony radio Walkman (without a cassette player!). I would listen to it when going to bed. Every Sunday night, my local radio station would play an hour of The Beatles, which planted the seeds for obsessing over the Fab Four. I would fall asleep with the Walkman on and wake up in the middle of the night with random songs playing. There were two songs that woke me up and they almost seemed like a dream. It took me forever to find these songs as I had no idea who the artists were when I first heard them. Yea, these songs are the height of cheese, but for some reason they hold a very special place in my musical history:

    'Think of Laura' - Christopher Cross
    'Lonely Boy' - Andrew Gold

    Even though I heard these songs in the early 80's when I was maybe around 10, I didn't get copies of these songs until the late 90's as neither of these songs were by artists that I followed.
     
    WMTC, Rufus McDufus and bagofsoup like this.
  10. RickH

    RickH Connoisseur of deep album cuts

    Location:
    Raleigh, NC
    The Spirit Door - Shadowfax
    This was a case of hearing a song on a cassette a friend had made and not knowing who/what it was for several years until the technology of Soundhound came along.
     
    hi_watt and bagofsoup like this.
  11. AppleCorp3

    AppleCorp3 Forum Resident

    I heard "Your Wildest Dreams" on the radio when I was younger...didn't know who the Moody Blues were (but I'm sure I knew Nights in White Satin). That became a mission. What a great song. Led me to the Moodies, which I'm grateful.
     
    Monsieur Gadbois and bagofsoup like this.
  12. GonnaGetcha

    GonnaGetcha Forum Resident

    Took me about 15 years and the internet to find this-

     
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  13. daveidmarx

    daveidmarx Forem Residunt

    Location:
    Astoria, NY USA
    Funny you mention this in conjunction with the Beatles. In 1979, for my 9th birthday, my mom got me tickets to Beatlemania at the Wintergarden Theater in NYC. This was back before tribute bands were a dime a dozen of course. I was so excited about going to the show, I stayed up all night the night before. I was listening to the radio all night long (this was in August, so no school), recording any songs I liked onto my mono tape recorder. One of the songs I recorded was (you guessed it), Lonely Boy by Andrew Gold. I also rememebr recording Stumblin' In by Suzy Quatro and I'm A Loser by The Beatles, which was the first time I'd ever heard that song. Right after the show the next day, we went to a record store (Sam Goody???) and my mom bought me the French 45 of Eight Days A Week, which had I'm A Loser on the flip. Nice memories...

    Cut to 1994. That December, Pearl Jam was going to air what turned out to be a six-hour radio special where Eddie Vedder was going to play guest DJ. The show kicked off with PJ playing live in the studio for five songs and then it cut to this lo-fi recording of what sounded like a kid singing while playing a cheesy air-organ that was popular in suburban homes in the 1960's-70's. The song was mesmerizing in its innocence and beauty. The only thing I could remember about the lyrics was something about walking a cow. It wasn't until about fifteen years later when I finally discovered Daniel Johnston and suddenly it all made sense. I was very happy to be re-acquainted with that song as well as discovering many others that I loved as well.

     
    Last edited: Aug 16, 2015
  14. Nice Marmot

    Nice Marmot Nothin’ feels right but doin’ wrong anymore

    Location:
    Tryon NC
    I heard a song in the late 80s, kind of folksy rock, about a "River Side Deceiver" doing misdeeds along a river bed. I think I heard it twice but never figured out who it was.
     
  15. folkfreak

    folkfreak The cold blooded penguin

    Location:
    Germany
    I only know Riverside drive, but tht is sung in german....
     
  16. I have ONE haunting pet tune like that. Heard it on progressive FM (though it was more of a "classic rock" song) and was moved by it in the very early 70s, then never heard it once EVER, and never knew what it was nor what the lyrics were about!

    The only clue I'm left with to chew on is a twiddly, midrangey guitar melody - seperate from the sung part - going one bar up then one down, almost C&W in tone but based on the chord progression of, say, the main riff from Eric Clapton's "Mainline Florida"... Something in the Blind Faith neck of the woods...

    ...Slim enough for you?

    It's also possible that with time I had transformed in my memory/imagination one of those great guitar tune-melodies from The Moody Blues. But it would be great for me to realize that my ear was sharper than that (I love the Moodies)...

    I could sing it or whistle it. I wish I could write it down but I am not skilled enough. I tried looking it up once or twice with one of those software sites with keyboard input, and it failed...
     
    Last edited: Aug 16, 2015
  17. moonshiner

    moonshiner Forum Resident

    Location:
    Italy
    Considering it was 2010 when I first heard this song, I spent a quite a lot of time looking for it
     
  18. EddieMann

    EddieMann I used to be a king...

    Location:
    Geneva, IL. USA.
    Drunk out of my gourd at a Loyola college frat party in 1974 I heard this song. It rattled around in my brain for 25 years until I heard in on the radio one day. Talk about an "Ah ha!" moment. Great tune to have an earworm of though. :agree:
     
    Om likes this.
  19. petercl

    petercl Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seekonk, MA, USA
    2 songs
    1st was Jack Arel "Strange Galaxy" which took about 10 years because I always thought it was the James Taylor Quartet.
    2nd was Jet Set Six "James Bondage" which I still don't have and can't find ANYWHERE!!! A member here once sent me a link but the song got taken down :(
     
  20. Cheepnik

    Cheepnik Overfed long-haired leaping gnome

    I once walked around with an unknown song in my head for more than 20 years. I heard it once on the radio in the mid-70s and never forgot it, and hummed it to countless friends, record store clerks, and fellow music buffs, none of whom could identify it. I even recorded a version of it (as much as I could remember) on my four-track and tried playing that for people. No luck.

    Then one day I was record shopping and happened upon The Best of Crow, on the Amaret label. Who knows why (I didn't even like the one title I recognized, "Evil Woman (Don't Play Your Games With Me)"), but I decided I wanted to get that album. So I took a $3 chance, and sure enough, at the start of Side Two, there was my mystery song, their follow-up single, "Cottage Cheese." The funny thing is, it's not even that great a song, but at least I no longer had the torment of not knowing what it was.

     
    troggy, segue, Suncola and 1 other person like this.
  21. JohnBeas

    JohnBeas Forum Resident

    In the early 80's I heard a song called "With A Boy Like You" by Theater (at least thats what I think the DJ said). I think they may have been a local (Michigan) group. I've never been able to find out anything about the song or the group despite going to a lot of record stores and shows.
     
  22. Roger Thornhill

    Roger Thornhill Senior Member

    Location:
    Ilford, Essex, UK
    This.

    All I had was a line "What am I supposed to..." and I wasn't sure what the next bit was. Sounded early 70s-ish. And then someone on here posted it and I thought...Yes! that's it!

     
    Machiventa likes this.
  23. Django

    Django Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dublin, Ireland
    This was used in a TV advert a few years ago. Took me a while to find out who it was.

     
    Machiventa likes this.
  24. Ignatius

    Ignatius Forum Resident

    There's a song we used to sing in family singalongs when I was brat, which I knew how to sing but didn't know the title. Turned out to be this:

    Then my dad would hump his acoustic, smash it and set fire to it. Always a trailblazer my dad.
     
    GerryO and Michael P like this.
  25. Prophetzong

    Prophetzong Forum Resident

    Location:
    NE WISC
    Tried to figure out for years who did this power pop tune from the 80's . Finally found it via the internet.
     
    Aluko likes this.
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