I was at our Fry\u2019s grocery a few days ago, and while looking for a decent tray of organic radishes (I\u2019m fussy about my radishes) the normally ignorable pop music they play above the low-level grocery store hubbub caught my attention. It was one or maybe two people whistling a repetitive theme. There were vocals between the whistles, but I couldn\u2019t make them out, and was in truth way more interested in the radishes than than the music.<\/p>\n
On the (short) drive home, I realized that the damn whistles were still playing, this time strictly in my head. I\u2019m prone to this mental peculiarity, generally called \u201cearworms.\u201d I\u2019ve evolved a mechanism to kill my earworms: I start creating parody lyrics for them. Oddly, this makes them go away. I don\u2019t know why. As many of my long-time readers know, I\u2019m good<\/em> at parody lyrics. Here\u2019s a sample of what I fired at the whistling earworm:<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m just a dope, just a typical mope, and that is all that I\u2019ll ever be.\u201d<\/p>\n That said, I sometimes hear store\/restaurant music that appeals to me. Years ago I heard a piece in a restaurant in Colorado Springs that got stuck in my head, mostly for the guitar work. The lyrics were fuzzy and I heard them wrong, so having failed to identify the song on Google by its lyrics, it was years later that I heard it again on the radio of a rental car. It was \u201cFound Out About You\u201d by the Gin Blossoms.<\/p>\n But we now have better weapons: Google search on my phone listens, and you can tap a button to tell it to identify whatever music is playing. It worked beautifully for \u201cBecause the Night\u201d by Cascada. Ten seconds and bam!<\/em> I had the title, the artist, and a link to buying it. \u201cBecause the night belongs to muggers, \/ Because the night belongs to blood\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Ditto last year, when they were playing an appealing item while I was standing in the line at the UPS Store. Pulled out my phone, and a coupla taps (and a few seconds) later, I had \u201cShut Up and Dance\u201d by Walk the Moon. I enjoyed it enough that I didn\u2019t try to filk it.<\/p>\n Back to the whistles. Now, I struggled for decades to identify an energetic instrumental for brass that I first heard at a grade school show in 1964 or \u201865. I tried to whistle it into my cell phone, but it didn\u2019t work. (I figured it out by sleuthing<\/a>, but at least I figured it out.) I\u2019ve since found that Google can only identify recorded music. Whistling doesn\u2019t work\u2026<\/p>\n \u2026unless the recorded music is made of whistling.<\/p>\n