Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Soundtrack to Carlo's One Night Stand

One of the (many) places I work is a costume and vintage clothing store called Carlo's One Night Stand. That's right. Leaving messages cracks me up. "Hi, this message is for Sam. This is Shannon from Carlo's One Night Stand reminding you the props you rented from us are passed due and need to be returned..." Also, imagine going to the doctor because you got yourself a kidney infection or a good old fashioned UTI and when the nurse filling out your paper work asks where you work and, doubled over in pain, you say, "Carlo's One Night Stand." Hilarity ensues.


But, aside from the cheap thrills of message leaving and the thought of making nurses uncomfortable I love picking the soundtrack for the day. Some days I'm in a weepy mood and the music playing has just a hint of melancholy (Not too much, though. We don't want the customers feeling slitty.). Other days, I'm really excited about movie and television soundtracks (Sherlock Holmes, How To Train Your Dragon, Battlestar Galactica, The Neverending Story, Harry Potter, Star Wars and Jaws, Oh Yeah!). Pandora(dot)com is a great place to get music for the store because I may want to kind of listen to this band, but not really. But I kind of do... but not really. Grooveshark(dot)com is really great when I want to hear a specific band or artist and want to overdose on their entire discography.


I also like to make soundtracks. My favorite type of soundtrack to make is full of happy-fly-day-pump-you-up  music. Lately I've been really excited about Tiesto's song "I Feel It In My Bones" featuring Tegan and Sara, the song "Kill Everybody" by Skrillex, "Solid Ground" by Maps and Atlases, "Not About Love" by Fiona Apple, and pretty much any song by Harry and the Potters. Also, close to closing time I love to blare Bruce Springstein, Led Zepplin and Fleetwood Mac. My happy-fly-day-pump-you-up songs change weekly and are as varied as ... well as music in general.


My favorite part about making the soundtrack for Carlo's ONS is getting a reaction from a customer. "Oh, who is this? I'm loving this song!" or "OHMAGOD! this is so totally Harry and the Potters!" or "Yes! Great song choice." When I hear something like that I just get all squeaky inside. Maybe that's what makes these songs happy-fly-day-pump-you-up songs? Maybe It's my ego.

For this post I asked a handful of my favorite people (Sorry, I couldn't get to all my favorites) what their happy song is. That song that, every time they hear it, they can not resist the urge to dance, or bounce, or sing, or it gets them riled up and ready to do anything.

  • Hayden: "We're At the Top Of The World" by The Juliana Theory
  • Cassie: "Summertime" by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong (or the Janis Joplin cover)
  • David: "Towering Flesh" by Pig Destroyer
  • Mom: "Sitting on the Dock Of The Bay," "American Pie," anything by Carol King, Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor and "Round About" by Yes!
  • Max (The owner of Carlo's): is really digging Arcade Fire and always loves the Mac

You can see the songs are as different as the people and makes me want to ask you, Fantastic Spatulans, What is your favorite "I feel like I can do anything" song?


1 comment:

  1. This has actually been sitting and simmering on my brain meat all week and I keep coming back to two songs: "Tiny Light" by Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, and "Someone Else's Dream" by Faith Hill. The former I just discovered a few days ago and has been on repeat on my ipod ever since. The latter I've known about for... a decade? And only just rediscovered it not too long ago. One line in that song in particular really stands out to me: "She's got 27 candles on her cake, and she means to make her life her own before she's 28."

    Long winded answer. :) Ten points to me!

    Thanks for sharing your soundtracks too! Lovely article! :D

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