Obscure Singles Heard at CVS

My post about The Stroke was from HEB, I wish it had been Mambo #5 instead.

Smithereens: "A Girl Like You" at Five Guys

― a full playlist of presidential apocalypse jams (C. Grisso/McCain), Friday, November 11, 2016 4:54 PM (seven years ago)

Many customers and workers at Trader Joe's in Chicago were rockin' pretty hard to this on Friday afternoon.

Not obscure, but let me tell you that a Trader Joe’s in Downtown Philadelphia at 5 pm jamming out to “Hot Stuff” is truly a lovely thing

grocery/drugstore playlists are legitimately better and more varied than actual radio now

a long time ago i spent a summer stocking shelves overnight at a grocery store. there was no playlist, but the foreman (the store was closed, thank god) played a certain radio station featuring 'the hits of the 60's, 70's, 80's and today!'

it was pretty much the same songs in a different order each night, but we placed bets on when exactly 'suspicious minds' would be played

a few years later i helped open a large bookstore and somehow the only CD that no one objected to was van morrison's greatest hits. so for three weeks we heard that entire album at *least* once a day. it took me 20 years to even listen to van morrison again, and i will never be fully over it

i fucking love 'suspicious minds' tho

we had a work ipod at a retail job i worked once upon a time, and corporate had put about 250 songs on it that were “approved.” some of it was fine— Grace Jones, Nick Cave’s soundtrack work, Solange— but there were a few tracks that i still absolutely loathe that I didn’t loathe before, like “Thinkin Bout You.” thanks Frank, i would rather fuckin not.

that was better than the organic grocer where i worked a few years later that only played the ‘stomp clap hey’ genre. was overjoyed when i got moved to the back and could play my own music.

By the way when did CVS’ start selling g sex toys. The travel section even in my non-bougie neighborhood has travel sized vibrators.

Putting the 'V' in CVS...

i don’t wanna see the sights - charlatans at torchy’s centennial CO

In view of my adherence tho not loyalty to my prev comments in thread, i verified via discogs that idwsts was a single (US) for charlatans.

torchys is def not a drug store, tho it is possible i’m just doing it wrong.

Fleetwood Mac: "Seven Wonders" (which I never hear on the radio or anything) at HEB

Great radio jam

i don’t wanna see the sights - charlatans at torchy’s centennial CO

― a single gunshot and polite applause (Hunt3r), Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Great song, man I love those first four, five , six Charlatans albums...

Beatles "Nowhere Man" in a Harris Teeter, which is obviously far from obscure, but it did make me think about how rarely I hear the Beatles in stores or eateries despite being hugely popular across generations. Is it too expensive to license or something?

Probably just too old? If I'm hearing them in the wild, it's almost always alongside other '60s/'70s music.

...and if it's not, then it's one of the big hits mixed in with other Pop hits through the ages.

Lee Dorsey: "Do-Ri-Mi"
Gary US Bonds: "Dear Lady Twist"
The Cadillacs: "Nag"
Bob & Earl: "The Harlem Shuffle"
The Toys: "May My Heart Be Cast Into Stone"

All at Dairy Queen

Wow, love that last one… I only know it from the One Kiss box

good dq

The Cadillacs and the Toys are so associated with one song each for me, impressed you'd hear something different in a public setting.

Was The Cadillacs song “Naggy Nag”(?) i’m listening to it now… It sounds like a rip-off of “Yakety Yak”?

(Looks like The Cadillacs also did “Buzz Buzz Buzz,” but I guess the Hollywood Flames version must be the most well-known…)

(to be clear, the main Cadillacs song I knew was “Speedoo”)

Looking harder, I think this was the Halos' original version of "Nag". I googled it at the time and came up with the Cadillacs.

Ah, looks like that’s a different song (interestingly, this fellow J.R. Bailey was in both the Halos and the Cadillacs)

Huh, looks like the Halos were also the guys backing up Curtis Lee on “Pretty Little Angel Eyes.”

..."Who Put The Bomp..."!

Bass Singer Arthur Crier's grandson is Keith Sweat!

"Who Put The Bomp..." too!, I meant.

The employees in the costco tire department were cranking the shit out of "break my stride" the other day

soemthing about those synths and that driving beat made it a popular one on the 80s nights at the local club here, like people would yell during it

have always felt that somewhere in 1983 electric avenue was supposed to choke out break my stride for fucking EVER, but somehow bms survived and here we are.

Wilder ended up producing No Doubt.

If you gotta blame somebody.

“the sound” by the 1975, at rite aid

The right aid imo

Dionne Warwick - “you’re gonna need me” in Home Depot

need her in home depot right now, been sitting in aisle 6 for ten minutes

Favourite coffee shop, right now: "Radio Free Europe." (LZ's "Rock and Roll" before that, but I hear that a lot.)

I hear "Losing My Religion" constantly out in the world, making me dislike a song I've always disliked even more. I never hear "Radio Free Europe."

Sting: "Love Is The Seventh Wave" at HEB

I heard "Field of Gold" at Home Depot recently.

Sent me back to those months working at Liquor Depot in 1994. How that one, Billy Joel's "The River of Dreams" and Elton John's "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" just rotated with each other, over and over and over and over again. Certain songs that when I play them back in my head, I only hear them through shitty retail P.A. speakers.

"Stuck On You" by Lionel Ritchie another one. That played all summer long at the waterslide, interrupted occasionally by "PURPLE MATS, ALL PURPLE MATS MUST BE RETURNED AT THE FRONT."

purple mats is a good band name at least, forgetting the trauma. altho i guess it sounds like a replacements trib act, which would be very risky to perform properly

Purple Mats: A Tribute To Prince *And* The Replacements

Updated The Playlist (after 3 1/2 years):

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2Qvc8uzVk4bDpMeW6p2lc6?si=WeLFdjwOTFSSK8QLAcyn2A&pi=u-DHyTVDxlRsiB

Is there a count ceiling? That’s almost 1000! Well done.

Just hears Right Place Wrong Time Dr John at King Soopers. I dont know if obscure. But it was backed up by v v not obscure Horse w No Name, then v v v v v not obscure Mr Bluesky (extended mix). I think the ELO lasted 15 mins.

Hmm now Joan Jett. HMfLY

stars are stars- eatb at torchys

fuck i dont care if it was a single anywhere and i dont care if it’s on torchy’s spotify clone targeting my demo— this owned, i regret nothing

Oldies Dairy Queen again:

Impalas: "I'm Sorry (I Ran The Whole Way Home)"
Stompers: "Quarter To Four Stomp"
Buddy Holly: "Well…All Right"

Never heard of that middle one; "Well...All Right" one of Holly's best.

I hadn't either. According to the shot of the 45 label in this YouTube, they were an act from the stable of writer/producer Gary S. Paxton of "Ally Oop" and Skip & Flip fame.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n95hdb7RKkI

According to the trivia buffs in the YT comments, a pre-"Monster Mash" Bobby "Boris" Pickett was a Stomper.