Open the door.

As a child, I thought that Paul was referring to "Phil and Dawn," some of the pairs of neighbors that he was asking to be allowed to come into the house. For some lemonade or something. I saw them all lined up in my mind's eye, as this bleated out of the car radio.

Heard In The Car: It's magic.

If you have to be driving around in the spitty rain at night (even when it oughta be snow), then this should be what you hear amid the radio commercials (allllllll the radio commercials) after you've  pushed, held, and then jabbed the AUX button on the radio console so that you might (unsuccessfully) listen to your 'pod instead of radio commercials.

I gave up--just in time to be given a four-minute, slightly electric, delectable plea built on gauzy, over-the-shoulder looks and fun-in-Fair-Isle-sweaters. I didn't realize how much I had loved this song until recently, since, you know, ABBA is the great unsung, underrated everything. Who writes pop songs like this now?

...My brain is too fried from driving in the rain to think of anybody.

But, as long as we're together...

Heard In the Car: The chosen are few

I'm brimming with new features, but I've not had the focus to post them. While I was zipping to the grocery in a jet black car in the six o'clock darkness, a quiet storm broke in that musty Civic. I had to wait it out in the Whole Foods parking lot:



(I'm pretty sure I was the only person in that lot listening to this jam.)

Since I don't have a fancypants phone that I can simply wave aloft for it to name that tune, I had to, gawd, use Google to find it, listening til I found a unique-enough snippet of lyric to punch in.

The Isleys! In 2003! With R. Kelly! Shoulda know that bouncing bass groove was his (not to mention the tiny "hoos" throughout). That's what drew me into the song, actually. My head began to nod reflexively (another sole instance in the Whole Foods parking lot).

I'm gratified, actually, to learn that the Isleys continue to make contemporary music and that it's on commercial terrestrial radio. You can trace a line from "This Old Heart of Mine" (1966 -- and also prominent in a season two episode of Moonlighting in which David reunites with an old flame [nooooooo! Maddie!] played by Dana Delaney who [while the song is still playing waaaaay past its actual conclusion] confronts her pushy new boyfriend and happens to shoot and kill him [it was a detective show, remember?]) to "That Lady" (1972 -- one of my favorite funk songs ever, even when it was used to shill shampoo in the 90s) to "Between the Sheets" (1983 -- oh damn, that ding-dah-ding ding-ding transition is ...wow [and sampled everywhere now]).

I said I was not focused, didn't I?

All of these make me just want to simply drive at night, maybe give a tiny "hoo."