Current Earworm

Oscar the Grouch, B Sandwich

Laura and I were working on adding fairy lights to a part of her outfit for Mardi Gras when this song from my childhood came unbidden into my brain. I was a little old for Sesame Street, but my brother was the right age, so we had a bunch of albums, including Oscar the Grouch's "Let A Frown Be Your Umbrella", which included this brief classic.

Timmy Thomas, Why Can't We Live Together

No matter, no matter what color, you are still my brother. An admirable sentiment from 1972, and one we would do well to adopt today.

Johnny Cash, Folsom Prison Blues

The writer Sarah Kendzior got suspended from Bluesky for quoting the lyrics from Folsom Prison Blues in response to a bad take by the Wall Street Journal on Johnny Cash, and now I can't get this song out of my mind.

Robyn Hitchcock, Devil's Radio

I saw something go whizzing by on social media about Ross Douthat, the village idiot at the New York Times, claiming that liberals were to blame for the groypers, the online storm troopers of the neo neo Nazi movement that has taken over America. Um, yeah, no. I think decades of a constant onslaught of hatred on media might have more to do with that. Which made me think of this song by Robyn Hitchcock, which has the immortal couplet "Kate said, the flowers of intolerance and hatred are blooming kind of early this year. Someone's been watering them...." And that someone is the Devil's Radio. Rush Limbaugh gets a callout in the song because it was written like 20 years ago and he wasn't dead yet, but there's a lot more than him out there filling the public airwaves with the message to hate your fellow man.

This is the version from Jonathan Demme's lesser-known concert film, Storefront Hitchcock.

Sleaford Mods, Tweet Tweet Tweet

Spent the evening reading Mark Bray's history of Antifa. I kept thinking of the line from Tweet Tweet Tweet "UKIP and your disgrace", so my earworm tonight is just that, Sleaford Mods with Tweet Tweet Tweet. I think these guys are amazing.