Feelin Groovy...

So some new (at least to me, which should indicate that it is fairly new, I dont miss many commercials with the amount of TV I watch) commercial uses this song, which for some reason makes me think of Reading Rainbow. Feelin groovy... Its a solid solid song.

Benjamin talks about this concept in Baudelaire called memoire involuntaire. He refers to the experience of eating a cookie and all of a sudden recalling some vivid childhood memory. The idea is simply that sometimes random shit reminds you of other totally random shit (Benjamin would be so happy with that simplification...) for no reason that you can identify, while to your unconscious it seems entirely normal. I'm not the first person to connect this type of memory to Freud/psychoanalysis in general, but its very similar to the way dreams operate. Nothing in a dream is without some sort of latent meaning, its not as simple as The Interpretation of Dreams may make it out to be, in fact for the most part it is the formal aspect of dreaming and the connections between dream elements (the fact that the kangaroo follows you being naked at Shopko) rather than the individual elements themselves (the fact that there is a kangaroo).

Long rambling way to say that for some reason, Feelin Groovy brings me back to a song that I havent heard in about 2 years I would guess, but which I probably listened to 300 times in the two years previous. That wonderful song: King of Wishful Thinking by the immortal Go West. You may not remember this song from the name, but trust me, you fucking remember it. Its such an incredible tune. One night, I think I was a college sophomore, but I may have been a first year. Steve and I, as usual, were cruising around randomly in his car, probably rolled to the Perk. We were listening to some weird ass album, as we always did, and somehow started discussing how much the King of Wishful thinking was an incredible song. For some reason we had to have that song that night. Shit, I remember now.

I worked at Toys R Us for about a year and a half. The muzak at Toys R Us seemed to have an obsession with Go West. They played that song at least twice a day. At one point I think we heard it three times in a 6 hour shift. The really fucked up part was that there are like 9 fucking versions of it. There is even (I shit you not) a Christmas version with fucking bells in the background. The lyrics and shit are the same, just a different backbeat and bells. If you search on Kazaa you can find a couple different versions, just more or less synth music to the same lyrics and rhythm I think.

So Steve and I hit Wal-Mart, at like midnight, as it was the only thing that was open where we could buy CDs. We searched for quite a while, no one even knew who the song was by, though they could all remember it. Steve and myself dug through all these different CD bins for like a half an hour with no result. Finally we just resorted to the compilation section, having no idea even what year the song was made. We looked at every Hits of 19-- they had in the store and ended up finding it, I think under 90. The album also included the Candyman's "Knockin da Boots" quite a bonus.

We cruised around for another 2 hours that night listening to that song. Back at Toys R Us we had constructed a little dance that followed some of the lyrics of that song. Steve and I did our best to remember it, I had the chorus down pat, but the rest took some inventive shit. The long rambling point is how much fun we had that night. For some reason hearing "Feelin Groovy" made me remember that evening and those incredible times. I havent seen Steve in, damn, close to 2 years. I have to work harder at getting in touch with that kid.

Regardless, that was my diatribe for now.

Peace,

MB-K