Golden Earring – "Radar Love" (1973)

The radio is playing some forgotten song

Brenda Lee's “Coming on Strong”

Golden Earring is a Dutch band that was formed in 1961 by 13-year-old George Kooymans and his 15-year-old neighbor, Rinus Gerritsen.

They’ve released 25 studio albums – the first in 1965, the most recent in 2012 – and have had 30 singles make the Dutch top ten.  (Five of those singles made it to #1.)  In other words, THEY WERE A BIG DEAL IN THE NETHERLANDS!

Golden Earring (circa 1973)

But in the U.S.?  Not so much. 

I always thought they were a one-hit wonder.  But they had a second U.S. hit with “Twilight Zone,” which peaked at #10 on the Billboard “Hot 100” in 1982 – almost a decade after “Radar Love” made it to #13.

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The band’s frontman, Barry Hay, explains on the Golden Earring website how he got the idea for the “Radar Love”:

One evening I had a few friends over, one of whom was American, and I was brainstorming with them about the form and contents of the story.  It had to be something very simple, to which every average person could relate, such as someone in the bathtub.

(“Someone in the bathtub”?)

Everyone started to put in ideas, and when it got too chaotic, I kicked them out of the house and sent them to some nightclub so that I could work in peace.  The idea of an ordinary guy in his car became to take shape, and when my American house guest got home in the early hours and read the lyrics, he went wild: “This is it; brilliant!  The ultimate American car song!”

I’ve heard Golden Earring’s “Radar Love” about a thousand times on the radio, but I never realized that it includes a shout-out to Brenda Lee’s 1966 hit single, “Coming on Strong,” until this week.

Why is there a reference to that song in “Radar Love”?  According to entertainment writer Deanna Darr,

Golden Earring lead singer and lyricist, Barry Hay, was a fan of “Little Miss Dynamite,” as Lee was known.  During the writing of “Radar Love,” Hay recalled hearing a song by Lee on the juke box in the bar where his mother worked.  The song reportedly was “I’m Sorry,” but Hay decided that the title did not fit and chose instead to reference Lee’s song, “Coming on Strong.”

(“I’m Sorry” was a #1 hit single for Lee in 1960.  It’s a much more familiar song.)

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“Radar Love” is one of the 35 songs that’s in the soundtrack of the brand-new action movie, Baby Driver.  Since Baby Driver is full of spectacular car chases, “Radar Love” was an inspired choice for the movie – and for the trailer:

“Radar Love” is also the perfect song to come on the radio when it’s late at night, and you’ve had wayyyyy too much 3.2% beer to drink, and you’re driving like a bat out of hell.

Here’s “Radar Love”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Simon & Garfunkel – "Baby Driver" (1970)

I was born one dark gray morn

With music coming in my ears

They call me Baby Driver

The new movie Baby Driver currently scores 97% on Rotten Tomatoes – 202 of 209 critics who have reviewed the movie to date have liked it.  

Even the snooty New York Times gave it a positive review:

“Baby Driver” [is] a pop pastiche par excellence, crammed with cubistic action; glowering and golly-gee types . . . and an encyclopedia of cinematic allusions, all basted in wall-to-wall tuneage.  At times, the whole thing spins like a tribute album, a collection of covers of varying quality: diner yaks à la Quentin Tarantino, Godardian splashes of color.  When it works, the allusions give you a contact high, like when a friend turns you on to a favorite movie. 

Tout le monde is talking about the fabulous car chase sequences in Baby Driver – which are real stunts, not CGI fakery.  

But the best thing about the movie is its eclectic soundtrack, which consists of some 30 songs that represent just about every pop music genre of the last fifty years.

The New Yorker wasn’t crazy about Baby Driver, but tipped its critical hat to director Edgar Wright’s  use of music:

[A]lthough “Baby Driver” is not much of a movie, it is an excellent music video—a club sandwich for the senses, lavishly layered with more than thirty songs.  These include the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, T. Rex, Queen, Golden Earring, Barry White, the Damned, the Commodores, and, for funk’s sake, the Incredible Bongo Band.  Sometimes, as on an album, one track simply fades out and makes way for the next, with events onscreen bustling to keep up; most telling of all is the sequence in which Baby, listening intently to a tune of his choice, advises his comrades, poised to jump out of the car and to start robbing, to wait until the beat kicks in.  There are nights when that kind of rush is all you require from a film . . . .

Trust me, Baby Driver delivers just such a rush, as this video demonstrates:

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“Baby Driver” was released in 1970 on Bridge Over Troubled Water, which was Simon & Garfunkel’s fifth and final studio album.  It’s not one of the stronger songs on that album.  

And it’s not of one the stronger songs on the Baby Driver soundtrack.  But given the title and the driving references in the song’s lyrics, how could the director of that movie not include it?

Here’s “Baby Driver”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

deadmau5 (ft. Greta Svabo Bech) – "Raise Your Weapon" (2011)

Rippin' my heart was so easy

So easy

Today was a red-letter day for 2 or 3 lines . . . and for its loyal readers.

(Yes, I am talking about little ol' you!)

This morning, I showed my commitment to making my wildly popular little blog the best it can be by investing in a brand new iMac, which represents a major technological upgrade over my old (circa 2011) iMac.

The new 21.5" iMac

Before I can start cranking out posts on my new computer, I will have to migrate all my documents, photos, and music (23,240 songs at last count) from the old iMac to it.

But my hipster “specialist” (which is what Apple calls the salespeople at its stores) assured me that the migration process would be a piece of cake.  We’ll see about that.

To celebrate, I went to see the new action film, Baby Driver.  We’ll be featuring songs from its soundtrack in the next few 2 or 3 lines posts.

Here's the Baby Driver trailer:

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The oxymoron, “Damn with faint praise,” first appeared in Alexander Pope’s 1734 poem, “Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot.”

Greta Svabo Bech

Is it damning with faint praise to say that Greta Svabo Bech is one of the best singers to ever come out of the Faroe Islands?

After all, the population of the Faroe Islands – an archipelago located in the North Atlantic between Norway, Iceland, and Scotland – is only about 50,000.

The Faroe Islands

Bech is the singer on today’s featured song, which is not included on the Baby Driver soundtrack.  It’s the featured song because it popped up on my iPod while I was walking around a lake near the movie theatre where I saw Baby Driver.  (Baby, the hero of the movie, owns a number of old-school iPods.  I think he and I may be the only two people left who use iPods rather than smartphones to listen to our music.)    

“Raise Your Weapon,” which was released in 2011, was the first deadmau5 single to crack the Billboard “Hot 100.”  It was nominated for the “Best Dance Recording” Grammy the next year, but lost out to Skrillex’s “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites.”

Here’s “Raise Your Weapon,” which is kind of breathtaking:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: