By Dave Cusick (CIVL Director of Programming) – Email
Print Edition: June 3, 2015
Editor’s note: The SUB may be a vacuum zone when it comes to cell service, but luckily CIVL is in the SUB, and they have music, which is just as good! Maybe. Back to you, Dave.
Damien Jurado — “Letters & Drawings”
The Seattle two-decade music veteran’s 1999 sophomore release, Rehearsals for Departures, is full of upbeat laments. This includes the one where he’s been waiting for letters and drawings from a faraway love that never came.” “I’ve been waiting by the phone,” he sings, “to hear it ring.”
Unknown Mortal Orchestra — “Can’t Keep Checking My Phone”
This three-piece from Portland has created what, to me, is the official summer jam of 2015. (Imagine Michael Jackson and DJ Jazzy Jeff on a rooftop as the July sun sets.) The band explains the song as being “about missing somebody and that point where you refuse to accept online ‘connectivity’ as a substitute for being with someone IRL.”
Blondie — “Hanging on the Telephone”
The short-lived band the Nerves originally wrote and recorded this song in 1976, but it wasn’t until the ageless Debbie Harry recorded the song two years later that it became popular and a classic staple of college radio for years to come. Blondie’s plea, “Don’t leave me hanging on the telephone,” pairs nicely with her 1980 single, “Call Me.”
Milli Vanilli — “Baby, Don’t Forget My Number”
This one time in 1992 (I’m old, by the way) my best friend and I were at a diner late on a Friday night. As we left, we put a dollar into the jukebox, which bought 11 songs. For our first, we chose “With or Without You” by U2, but for the other ten, we put “Baby, Don’t Forget My Number” on repeat, and left the scene quickly. By this time, Milli Vanilli had been outed and disgraced as lip-syncing frauds, radio had long before played their songs into the ground, and they were considered to have even less critical acclaim than Nickelback does now.
I like to think everyone in the restaurant had a night to remember.
They Might Be Giants — “The Guitar (The Lion Sleeps Tonight)”
In the pre-internet era, They Might Be Giants created the first on-demand music service, an answering machine with a weekly song called “Dial-A-Song.” It’s no wonder they altered the lyrics of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” to “In the spaceship, the silver spaceship … the lion’s on the phone.”
