Longstanding musical mysteries to be solved by the hive mind
February 11, 2023 9:21 PM Subscribe
There are a couple of songs I've been idly trying to identify / find on & off for years; figuring it's time to put you folks to the test. More info below the fold.
In the early / mid 2000s I got most of my pointers on new music from a local (Madison WI) weekly radio show. The DJs were generally good about back-naming everything that was played, but there were a couple I've remembered but haven't been able to track down. Hoping someone here can help.
* The first one was referenced as being by Paramore -- but it was on the order of 2004-2006 so long before they broke big. The closest thing I remember to a chorus prominently used the word "basement" -- to such an extent that I expected the song to have that in its title. No such title on any Paramore song I've been able to find.
* The second is a spare, upbeat but almost spoken/whispery song whose memorable quality is that it namechecks Queens of the Stone Age in the lyrics. I think the narrator hears a song by them at a bar or club and mentions it almost as an aside. I remember this one as being attributed to the Weakerthans, and the voice is more or less right; the vibe I remember is very much that of Psalm for the Elks Lodge Last Call, but with a bit more urgency. I have probably listened to the whole Weakerthans catalog by now and haven't found this song; by now I'm thinking that I may have mixed up "Elks Lodge" and this one in my memory. Searching lyrics sites for "Queens of the Stone Age", natch, just returns lots of QOTSA lyrics.
Any thoughts? If not I suppose I'll conclude that these are nonexistent songs that I 'heard' fragments of during a dream. (That has happened in the past with songs 'by' REM and Fire Town among others, so I probably have the subconscious musical imagination to invent these too....)
In the early / mid 2000s I got most of my pointers on new music from a local (Madison WI) weekly radio show. The DJs were generally good about back-naming everything that was played, but there were a couple I've remembered but haven't been able to track down. Hoping someone here can help.
* The first one was referenced as being by Paramore -- but it was on the order of 2004-2006 so long before they broke big. The closest thing I remember to a chorus prominently used the word "basement" -- to such an extent that I expected the song to have that in its title. No such title on any Paramore song I've been able to find.
* The second is a spare, upbeat but almost spoken/whispery song whose memorable quality is that it namechecks Queens of the Stone Age in the lyrics. I think the narrator hears a song by them at a bar or club and mentions it almost as an aside. I remember this one as being attributed to the Weakerthans, and the voice is more or less right; the vibe I remember is very much that of Psalm for the Elks Lodge Last Call, but with a bit more urgency. I have probably listened to the whole Weakerthans catalog by now and haven't found this song; by now I'm thinking that I may have mixed up "Elks Lodge" and this one in my memory. Searching lyrics sites for "Queens of the Stone Age", natch, just returns lots of QOTSA lyrics.
Any thoughts? If not I suppose I'll conclude that these are nonexistent songs that I 'heard' fragments of during a dream. (That has happened in the past with songs 'by' REM and Fire Town among others, so I probably have the subconscious musical imagination to invent these too....)
Best answer: Maybe it's not the well-known Paramore? Looking at Musicbrainz, there's another band called Paramore from Portland whose 2001 album What You Don't Know includes the track Basement June. They had a website until 2003 but no lyrics for that song, unfortunately.
posted by offog at 7:07 AM on February 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by offog at 7:07 AM on February 12, 2023 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: One mystery semi-solved! offog, that’s definitely the track as far as I can tell by title… but it’s not playable on MusicBrainz, and searching for it elsewhere by album or title (or label) doesn’t bring anything relevant up. Even Allmusic doesn’t seem to have a record of it.
The closest I can find is a dead listing for the CD on Amazon (presumably because someone posted a review of it almost twenty years ago). So probably not likely I’ll hear it again, but good to know what it was.
Just like the band name, the tiny label it was on (Ammonite) has apparently itself been superseded by something newer and unrelated with the same name — in this case an Eastern European label with a Bandcamp presence, a fairly gothic sensibility, and a lot of song titles in Serbian. An intriguing rabbit hole to jump down some other time.
posted by sesquipedalia at 8:16 AM on February 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
The closest I can find is a dead listing for the CD on Amazon (presumably because someone posted a review of it almost twenty years ago). So probably not likely I’ll hear it again, but good to know what it was.
Just like the band name, the tiny label it was on (Ammonite) has apparently itself been superseded by something newer and unrelated with the same name — in this case an Eastern European label with a Bandcamp presence, a fairly gothic sensibility, and a lot of song titles in Serbian. An intriguing rabbit hole to jump down some other time.
posted by sesquipedalia at 8:16 AM on February 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
Stuart Valentine was the main guy behind (this) Paramore. His website (last updated in August 2022) includes a contact button which will launch his email. Why not ask for a copy?
posted by mykescipark at 12:57 PM on February 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by mykescipark at 12:57 PM on February 13, 2023 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
You could try searching on lyrics.com, which gives an option to search keywords within lyrics (scroll down to "lyrics" section, past the "bands" and "albums"--though I just gave a quick attempt for "queens" "stone age" and didn't see anything promising...). Could also fiddle with the decade or genre settings and see what comes up?
> Any thoughts?
Ok, this is very much a shot in the dark: Any chance your second song was a live performance? I ask because Elks/Weakerthans reminded me of some Tragically Hip tracks; TH and QOTSA once performed at the same show, and TH often incorporates adlibs and references to other bands...(I feel like there's a much more obvious answer that I'm missing, but then if you haven't come across it again in 20 years maybe it is on the obscure side...)
posted by Sockin'inthefreeworld at 4:26 AM on February 12, 2023