Words for My Enjoyment

I Could Be Your Name-That-Tune Guy

March 28th, 2005

As you read this, it’s already happening to you.

You’ve got that song stuck in your head but you can’t quite communicate to anyone around you exactly what song it is.  "It’s that song that starts out da da dum, de de, boom crash…then the drums kick in like duga-duga-diggita-dug and then there’s that wooooaaaaaa.  I think it’s about falling in love."  And the people around you, hanging on every word that comes out of your mouth are dying inside.  Literally, they are about to explode.  Because the song you’re trying to sing, doesn’t sound like a song at all.

But I, oh yes, I could be your name-that-tune guy.

The key to being your name-that-tune guy involves a few factors — the most important of which involves being able to hold a tune.  If I need to communicate to you that the song we’re thinking about is 50 Cent’s "In da club," you’d better believe I’ve got to be able to sing 50 Cent in the same lyrical and musical mastery as our gangsta did when he was in the recording studio.  Tune and tone is key.

But more important that being able to hold a tune or actually know the words of a song (which most people lose sight of) — the key most important element in becoming you name-that-tune guy comes down to one thing and one thing only…  my eyes.

I am the king of bulging, wide-eyed, excitement.  And when you’re trying to get the other people excited around you…  When you’re trying to get them to bop along with you as you make an utter fool of yourself…  When you’re trying to get people to sway their head in order to "feel the music" — it’s all about the almost inhuman eye-bulging.

My eyes bulge, if you must know.

But like some afflicted with an alien-like eye bulging disease, my eye bulging only appears when I am being your name-that-tune guy.  This, of course, comes in extremely handy when I am on job interviews or making speeches as funerals, because if I could not control such eye bulging then people would think I was trying to add overstated points to somber and serious conversations — which would never have been the case.

So let’s take a moment out here to feel bad for true eye bulgers who have no control over such eye bulging and let’s feel extremely bad for that woman whose eyes bulge so huge that it looks like her eyes are coming out of her eye socket.

Ok.  Done.

But for me, being your name-that-tune guy — my eye bulging is the key.  For while I’m jamming through a fifteen minute drum solo and singing the chorus of Led Zeppelin’s "Stairway to Heaven" you’d better believe that you’re going to guess which song it is that’s stuck in my head. 

When you’re dying inside because Bonnie Tyler’s "Total Eclipse of the Heart" sounds like the latest Hilary Duff song in your head, and you want to download it but you can’t remember it and you’re about to pull out your hair — I’ll arrive, with my bulging eyes, saying almost nothing but communicating everything with my eyes.

For when you are about to collapse onto the ground, because the name of some artist and some song that you heard on American Idol is causing you to writhe in pain because no one around you is able to sing successfully the Aretha Franklin/George Michael number-1 Billboard hit that was so skillfully performed on the aforementioned television show from hell — the bulging eye goodness of yours truly will free you from your virtual, musical prison.

Yes, I could be your name-that-tune guy.  As long as you pay for my Visine, my eyes are all yours.

Posted under I Could Be, Music. |