Note: This is an older post, so please excuse the datedness of some of my comments. (I thought about revising the whole thing, but I like how it reads, even if some of it no longer applies, if that makes any sense. Hope so.)
So, it has come to my attention (mainly because I was bored and trying to delete older, no-longer-needed files so my laptop would quit advising me that my storage capacity was at Defcon-4) that it has been nearly a year since I did one of these Clam Bakes.
This is clearly wretched malfeasance on my part. My apologies to all who have ever vainly hoped that I would maintain any type of consistency. (Let me alleviate you of that pain: I don’t.)
Still, I do occasionally experience wisps of nostalgia and/or yearnings to follow through with at least something in my life, so, at this particular moment, I feel compelled to resurrect the Clam Bakes. (Admittedly an odd compulsion.)
Now, before any type of celebratory processions commence, led by the three people who not only recall the Clam Bakes but have digested every one of them with near-fetishistic glee, I should point out a few things. One, at least for this post, I am dispensing with the wildly erratic short stories that were the hallmark of the later Bakes. Two, I am returning to the foundation of the initial Bakes, which were simply about music and the love we have for songs from our mutually jaded pasts.
Your mission, should you accept (and no one will look askance at you if you don’t, because we’re all about acceptance and harmony here at Bonnywood), is to peruse the following lyric snippets and see how many of them jog a memory of a different time and place.
Caveats: One, some of these are obvious, but most of them are not necessarily the most famous lines in the song. But if you know the song, they should ring a bell. Two, most of these songs are from the 60s and 70s, with a sprinkle from other decades. Three, with one exception, all of these songs were radio hits at one time, and several of them were subsequent hits by other bands. Four, if you happen to get all 40, we should have a commitment ceremony of some kind. Five, enjoy.
Here we go…
1. “No dark sarcasm in the classroom…”
2. “Misty taste of moonshine…”
3. “Where DO they all come from…”
4. “In numbers too big to ignore…”
5. “The calliope crashed to the ground…”
6. “And you give yourself away…”
7. “Won’t you stay… just a little bit longer…”
8. “At first I was afraid, I was petrified..”
9. “Man, what are you doin’ here…”
10. “Sing for the laughter, sing for the tear…”
11. “Tonight the light of love is in your eyes…”
12. “Time goes by, so slowly…”
13. “I travel the world and the seven seas…”
14. “You know you got it, child, if it makes you feel good…”
15. “Let me get over you, the way you’ve gotten over me…”
16. “So hurry up and bring your jukebox money…”
17. “I thought that I heard you laughing…”
18. “Bein’ good isn’t always easy, no matter how hard I try…”
19. “Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone…”
20. “Scaramouch, Scaramouch, will you do the fandango…”
21. “Hello darkness, my old friend…”
22. “Everything that I got, is just what I got on…”
23. “You can keep the dime…”
24. “We all play the game, and when we dare… we cheat ourselves, at solitaire…”
25. “When the feeling’s gone and you can’t go on…”
26. “I know it may sound selfish, but let me breathe the air…”
27. “Oh, you know we’ve got to find a way, to bring some understanding here today…”
28. “And I need you more than want you, and I want you all the time…”
29. “Blowing through the jasmine in my mind…”
30. “Well it goes like this: the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall and the major lift…”
31. “Please allow me to introduce myself…”
32. “Lay me down in sheets of linen…”
33. “I guess I should have known, by the way you parked your car sideways…”
34. “And I bought you that ring ‘cause I never was cool…”
35. “Left a good job in the city…”
36. “And your arms felt nice wrapped around my shoulders…”
37. “It’s late September and I really should be back at school…”
38. “You can call it, another lonely day…”
39. “We’re caught in a trap…”
40. “We’d sing and dance, forever and a day…”
Note: Do NOT scroll past the giant duck if you are not yet ready to see the answers.
1. “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)”
2. “Country Roads”
3. “Eleanor Rigby”
4. “I am Woman”
5. “Blinded by the Light”
6. “With or Without You”
7. “The Load-Out / Stay”
8. “I Will Survive”
9. “Piano Man”
10. “Dream On”
11. “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”
12. “Unchained Melody”
13. “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)”
14. “Piece of My Heart”
15. “You Keep Me Hangin’ On”
16. “Love Shack”
17. “Losing My Religion”
18. “Son of a Preacher Man”
19. “Fire and Rain”
20. “Bohemian Rhapsody”
21. “The Sounds of Silence”
22. “Amarillo by Morning”
23. “Operator”
24. “At Seventeen”
25. “Tragedy”
26. “Cool Change”
27. “What’s Going On?”
28. “Wichita Lineman”
29. “Summer Breeze”
30. “Hallelujah”
31. “Sympathy for the Devil”
32. “Tiny Dancer”
33. “Little Red Corvette”
34. “Least Complicated”
35. “Proud Mary”
36. “Fast Car”
37. “Maggie May”
38. “Go Your Own Way”
39. “Suspicious Minds”
40. “Those Were the Days”
Please feel free to share any memories you might associate with any of these songs. I’m very curious to see which of these resonate and in what way…
P.S. The opening shot is yet another snap from Malaga. It has nothing to do with music, but it does hint at traveling back in time…
Categories: Music
Bonnywood Manor 
18 songs jogged memories but I cannot honestly say I remembered all the titles.
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And that’s to be expected. All of these songs have very specific memories for me, so, naturally, not all of them are going to resonate with everyone else to the same degree. Thanks for the comment!
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23 for sure a couple more so frustratingly close, but no cigar. I can but hang my head in shame for not getting- son of a bitch!- ‘Son Of A Preacher Man.’ Those was the days, my friend.
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To be honest, as I was prepping this for a re-share, I stumbled a bit with a few of them at first, even I originally wrote the damn thing. They all came back to me before I confirmed the answers, but there was an abyss there for a bit… 😉
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Ah, the ol’ Total Eclipse Of The Synapses?
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I was singing each song in my head as I went down the list. Memory is a funny thing. I missed 5, but seeing a giant duck on your coffee table made up for that.
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Ah, the Giant Duck. We’ve had some good times. He’s been a good friend, always there for me in many trying times. On the flip side, I really don’t know where he is right now, so I guess I haven’t been such a good friend to HIM, but I know he’s somewhere around here and that gives me comfort…. 😉
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The memories are piecemeal. The songs would pop into my head complete with the proper inflictions but the most of the artists and song titles needed prompting in the form of your answers. Funny I really don’t feel that old…
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The inflections are tricky with this quiz, as I purposely didn’t write the lyrics like the artists sang them, so the somewhat-monotone aspect of mere words on a screen can leave the reader cold even though they DO know the song. Maybe I should record little audio snippets for the next round, with me giving the words the proper enunciation? On second thought, that sounds like a lot of work, so, no.
But we’re not old. We just happen to listen to oldies stations and THAT’S how we learned things, right? 😉
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Yes our generation was so much deeper making for better music.
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Wonderful…I think I got close to 5, but then if only I’d had more time, You were timing me, right?
Sigh. No?
Oh well, maybe I should have taken the quiz 20 years ago.
Still fun!
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I wish I had done a LOT of things twenty years ago, but life is often bumpy and unfocused.
Yes, I was timing you, but in a loving and supportive way, of course.
And as long as it’s fun in the end, it’s a good day…
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🎶 I said do you speak-a my language…🎶
And you gave me all these wonderful song snippits instead of a vegemite sammich🥰
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I certainly had a good time compiling this list, getting lost in memories and reinforcing my opinion that the songwriters of decades ago truly knew what they were doing. (Well, most of them. There was some crap as well, but nowhere near the level that we have today.) Such poetry, set to music…
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🎶 “Memories, light the corners of my mind.” 🎶 I must say, all of these, well the 36 that I knew (and sang vs read) immediately brought me back to a specific place in time.
The one that stands out the most is #39. It was August 1977 and the death of my mother’s idol (and “hall pass” if there was such a thing back then) had her trippin’ (that’s “shooketh” for you Millennials or GenZ kids). She then proceeded to pay tribute to Elvis by playing his albums over and over and over for what felt like a lifetime. I never fully appreciated how she felt until one dark day in April 2016, that day I truly understood what it sounded like “when doves cry.”
Ah, “those were the days!” Which, ironically, is one of the lyrics I got wrong. I instantly pictured my brother & I sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the TV singing, with great anticipation, “Boy the way Glenn Miller played, songs that made the hit parade, guys like me we had it made . . . “
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Ah, the Passing of the King. My own mother reacted the same way, sobbing uncontrollably and then proceeding to play his songs until the vinyl of the albums melted. (To be fair, I had NO idea, up until that point, that he meant anything to her in any way. Sure, there were some Elvis albums in our family stockpile, though not an alarming amount. But we also had Shaun Cassidy and Charlie Rich, so I didn’t really detect a theme.) Love the way you paid it forward and brought it into context with Prince…
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Shaun Cassidy was the one thing my mother & I had in common at the time 😍
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For the ones I remember, I have strong memories. Wichita Lineman became an anthem for the six years I lived there.
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You lived in Wichita? Huh. I grew up in Tulsa, which is essentially the same thing, just with a different zip code and slightly different accent… 😉
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I recognised most of these, and with them, long lost times and places; some best forgotten, others poignant. Great post, Brian.
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Thanks, Lynette. I certainly understand “some best forgotten”, as some of the songs were etched into my brain during not so good times. But they’re still great songs, especially since they mystically captured, just right, what I was going through at the time…
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