Top 10 Hits

Of All [My] Time

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Inspired by the radio stations that offer the Top 100 songs of all time around the new year, I'm going to list my top 10; they made it to the top 10 only if they were not only wonderful melody-, beat-, and/or lyrics-wise in my opinion, but also made me feel vivid emotions:

#10

Anxiety management:"Pippin" was the second musical I'd ever seen ("Gigi" was the first), when I was 10. My oldest sister had the soundtrack and I memorized this tune from it and try to remember to sing it to myself for comfort whenever I feel anxious about my future.

#9

Pure pleasure: Again, Deb had the record and this song, "Yo Ya", just makes me feel joyous. When I was in 3rd grade, I'd dance around the living room while it played -- one of my recent blog-posts referred to it.

#8

Faith and Hope: A few years ago, I read an NYT article about Tonéx and was especially touched by this tune, where he reaffirms that God (well, he refers to Jesus, but I translate it in my head, since I'm Jewish) will not fail me, and that there is no failure -- essential messages to encourage my bravery -- another of my recent blog-posts referred to this tune.

#7

Exhilirating Escape: Beep, beep, whistle -- those are my favorite parts of this perfect song for rollerskating. Growing up, I never saw any of these singers sing their songs; they were pure radio hits, or roller-rink DJ spins. Felt cool and not nerdy when I was skating, though I probably still looked nerdy.

#6

'80s Lesbian Anthem: I always heard this song as "I just wanna be your lover, Girl," rather than "...lover-girl". Sure enough, it was among the first songs I heard in the first lesbian bar I ever entered, in Ann Arbor, Michigan when I was 19, so perhaps the DJ also heard it that way. I love so many of her songs and enjoyed posting "My Life as Teena Marie Song-titles" a few years ago.

#5

The Balm: I think of Pat and the miracle of our finding each other when I hear this song. We were such unlikely lovers based on my upbringing, which pushed for my finding a man, and also unlikely due to our age-difference (she's 15 years my senior) and so much else, except for our values, which are practically identical. The song reminds me of how sad I was in the love-arena prior to Pat, and how lucky I am to have her.

#4

Nerd Transportation: Another favorite rollerskating tune, and another opportunity to pretend I was glamorous and not nerdy. Used to imagine myself as a better skater than I was while I skated to this tune (and others).

#3

Romantic Loneliness: First heard this in 1985 while living in Jerusalem for my Junior year abroad and studying at Hebrew University. That year, I was my loneliest ever at times. This song made the loneliness almost sweet. I became a huge Simply Red fan.

#2

Romantic Awakening: Heard this on my transistor radio before or after the Dr. Demento show when I was 10 and had my first serious sense of romantic longing. The birds and the wordless ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah of her voice made me forget to breathe for a moment.

#1

Imagination Capture: I need to acknowledge how Deb, my oldest sister, substantially informed my music taste. Interesting how three of my top 10 were from her record collection. This song immersed me in its plot. Ironic, my listening to the singer as though she were singing to me, since I was a 14-year-old suburban kid in Connecticut, listening to it in my family's warm living room.

250 Words - Day 2

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Time-traveling from the U.S. to Israel to the U.K. and Back

What a great world that I can have on cross-country skiing, white-on-black, silver reflective gloves, a gray and raspberry wool hat, tortoise-shell sunglasses, a raspberry down ski jacket, and be mounting the foothills of the Watchung Mountains in Montclair, New Jersey while listening to Israeli music from the '70s that I used to play in our living room in Stamford, Connecticut from my older sister Deb's records...and it's coming to me from Cambridge University on a podcast of a show called Kol Cambridge!

"Yo Ya" by Poogy began as I reached Pat's and my garage door. I entered the code, tossed my sunglasses onto the front seat of my car and felt like an eight-year-old dancing around the house again. Never really knew what they were singing, but felt cool just by listening, and dancing to it. No one had coined the term "air guitar" yet, but they were the right group to pretend to play with had I been at all inclined.

The album was "Sipurey Poogy"/"Tales of Poogy" and I've just looked up the group on YouTube. I'm listening to "Hamakolet"/"The Grocery Store" now. When I was a kid, and now, I thought they might be singing "Kita Gimel"/"Third Grade" at one point in that song, and Kita Gimel was the grade I was in then. I loved the rest of how the tune sounded. The lead singer had a deep, sexy voice -- and for much of the song simply told a mesmerizing story. It was rap of a sort.

"Yo Ya", though, really transported me. I have tears in my throat as I listen to it again. I had no idea how life would be nearly 40 years hence when I first heard the song. The only really sad part is that my dad (z"l) is gone. Otherwise, I'm happier altogether than I was then, if a little bit less uninhibited. Then, my dad was unemployed and we nearly moved to Tehran, so that my dad could build a toy factory, but fortunately, that didn't work out. I felt unsettled during that period in any case, other than escaping into great music of the day, including Poogy.

During my hike, today, in 2012, Kol Cambridge played another song by a group that was popular when I lived in Jersualem in 1985 and '86, at 20, Mashina. The song differed from the hit I knew, which was "Rakevet Laila Le-Kahir"/"Night Train to Cairo". When I hear "Rakevet...", I think of the on-campus club, Bar Aton, where we danced on Friday nights; it was all that was open on Shabbat, and I've written here before that Arab townies routinely asked us to let them come in to the club with us, which we did, since anyone without a Hebrew University student ID had to enter as a guest. It was pure fun every Friday.

During the last blocks of my walk this evening, I was thinking that love and power are complicated, that is, my love of Israel is complicated, and power is a potential corrupter in anyone's hands, including in some bored Israeli soldiers' at checkpoints and a number of rich Palestinians who live in Ramallah; an author I met on a plane back from Dallas confirmed so in her book, which I read after meeting her, *Fast Times in Palestine*. I never knew how unconcerned a number of upper-class Palestinians were about their less fortunate comrades, according to the author. Her name is Pamela Olson and she may still be in her '20s. She's a Stanford Physics grad who happened to land in Palestine after a jaunt in Jordan during a post-college trip to see the world. And we agreed that whatever one's politics, that part of the planet is somehow addictive. It just is.