Soundtrack of Your Life: Down by the Border

An occasional feature in which we mark the songs of our relative youth as played over public muzak systems. 

Date: 9 October 2014, 11:43 a.m., EDT
Place: Ciro's Mexican Restaurant, Las Cruces, New Mexico
Song: "Runaround Sue"
Artist: Dion and the Belmonts
Irony Matrix: 0.75 out of 10
Comment: OK, so they were playing oldies during lunchtime at a strip-mall diner. No big deal. But it's an excuse to riff. It brought back the memory of my night of salvation. In that sweaty Mercury Lounge in New York in June 2009, alone in the middle of the crowd of strangers, while waiting for Dex and Sara Romweber to come out for a round of garage thrash. The club was playing a wide variety of songs as the crowd packed in. "Runaround Sue" came on. People started singing along, reflexively, with the soaring background vocals: "Whoa-oa-OA-oa-oa-oa ..."  I looked around. There were 20-somethings singing, joining in with the geezers. Who taught them that song? Some geezer? Is that song just a cultural meme? Is it a vocal part that people just pick up on the spot? Part of our collective DNA? Just a big coincidence? "Runaround Sue" is before my time. Kids? In the aughts? At that moment of harmonizing (and harmony) I discovered the elusive reason for everything, a global communal connection.

On the way home from Las Cruces I saw an anti-Obama billboard that asked: "Freedom or Collectivism?"



BONUS TRACKS
Or did I mean "Runaround Shoe?"On that three-hour drive to and from Las Cruces, I rifled through the archives for my Del Fuegos best-of CD. I was reminded that of all the fantasy jobs out there, drummer for that '80s roots band (and their two perfect albums) would be near the top. I plucked out two examples of sublime pop philosophy on the subject of love:

First:
"Love is like a shoe.
You run around a lot
And then it falls apart."



Second:
"I love you baby
I love your cat.
I love the way you look
In my fireman's hat."