Bad Taste in Music

Andrew Olson

Have you ever listened to some old song and you had to go out and buy the album regardless of how embarrassing it would be to approach the checkout clerk with said band?

If you haven’t then you will skip my article anyway, but if you have then you know that feeling of an earworm tune digging its way into your mind, and having a secret bad taste in music.

One song that stands out is when I was watching the movie Crank on DVD. As the main character is falling to the Earth there was a soft tune that ended out the movie nicely. It was Jefferson Starships, “Miracle.”

So after hearing the song in my head I broke down and bought Jefferson Starship’s Greatest Hits. The sad thing was that the album wasn’t very good, but that song stuck out. I did see Jefferson Airplane/Starship a few years ago at the Taste Of Minnesota and probably heard the song then, but the movie made it stick. (At the concert the song “Hearts” by Marty Balin from during his solo years almost made me buy that album, but there are limits..)

Another sad story in albums that turned out to be decent was an actual vynol album of The Bee Gees Gold Volume One from the Big Lake Bookstore on

Superior Street.

When I first was learning to play the guitar there was a copy of the Bee Gees song, “To Love Somebody” that I happened upon. At the time I didn’t even know that the Bee Gees went back that far, after listening to their Gold Volume One album I was surprised at how many of the songs on the album were big before the whole disco craze.

The other thing I noticed was that the song “Lonely Days” needs to be remade. It sounded like a Bowie rip off with some Lennon-esque vocals. It made me picture the time during the mid-1970s when John Lennon had his lost weekend and when he recorded with Bowie.

Sure the main verses of “Lonely Days” suck, but some rapper could lay it down over that part like they are doing with every other 70s crappy song. The chorus when The Bee Gees sing, “Lonely Days, Lonely Nights… Where would I be without my woman” is like shooting great music directly into your veins. They also hit the beat so hard that it is reminiscent of “Waiting For My Man” by The Velvet Underground when they banged phone books on their laps.