Sunday, March 28, 2010

somewhere in the world . . .

Somewhere in the world, they're still playing The Archies on the radio.

And as of this weekend, I know where that is: a little Italian restaurant/pizza joint off Hemlock Street*. The radio was set to an oldies station that so far as I cd tell didn't venture past 1968 or before 1963 or so (the earliest song I heard was "From Me to You", the latest "Sugar Sugar"). This was all the more amusing because I think you cd add the combined ages of any two employees working there and not equal the age of the newest song playing on their sound system.

As it so happens, I actually have the album THE ARCHIES GREATEST HITS -- one of my v. oldest surviving albums, along with THE BEATLES AGAIN (the only Beatles album I have that we bought when it was new), TARKUS (which I bought from my cousin Sam when he decided to buy a new copy), and perhaps one or two others. I hadn't listened to it in ages, but I got it out last night after we returned home and gave it a listen. A few of the songs I had almost entirely forgotten, though a single re-listening brought them back; others I remembered v. well. Of them all I think "Sunshine" is the only one that still holds up as a nice light little pop song (I remember I put it on a tape I took with me when I moved to Milwaukee); pity it never made it into classics status or its own spot on the oldies stations. But the album's still a fun listen, and v. much a period piece; somewhere between the Monkees and the Partridge Family.

--JDR





*apparently named after the tree, not the poison. Though what we cd observe of Cannon Bay's street naming (a presidential series, not entirely sequential), who knows?


2 comments:

David Bratman said...

Hemlock is a north-south streets, and the others in town in that series include Elm, Spruce, and Laurel, so, no, it doesn't sound like a list of Famous Poisons.

N.E. Brigand said...

Even if this "Hemlock" weren't named for the coniferous tree (though DB's note suggests that it very probably was), wouldn't it be more likely to be named for the plant that Tolkien memorialized, not the poison derived from that plant (or from members of that botanical family)?