Published: October 01, 2009 10:46 pm      

KENNETH HART: Mind music can be ‘hell’ 100409

The other day, during a somewhat slack period in The Independent newsroom, myself and two of my esteemed colleagues, Mike James and Tim Preston, had a rather interesting conservation.

Well, interesting to us, anyway.

The topic? What Tim referred to as “hell songs.”

Those would be the ones that, seemingly from out of nowhere, burrow into your brain like a carnivorous earwig and remain lodged there for hours, and sometimes days and weeks, at a stretch.

They’re the songs you find yourself singing over and over, in your car, in the shower or wherever, even though you really don’t want to.

Generally, hell songs are ones you hate to begin with, although even good songs can become quite hellish after they’ve been playing on a tape loop inside one’s cranium for a stretch.

I firmly believe there are folks who have been driven to madness by their inability to banish certain songs from their brains. The likes C.W. McCall’s “Convoy,” or Paper Lace’s “The Night Chicago Died,” would challenge the sanity of the strongest individual.

It was Tim who brought up the subject of hell songs. He mentioned that he’d had a conversation with someone earlier that day that had somehow started Wham!’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” playing in his noggin.

Oh, man. That had to be pretty brutal. Especially if his mind was also conjuring up images from the video to accompany the music.

Tim asked me what my all-time worst hell song was. Without hesitation, I replied that it had to be “Good Morning Starshine.”

The number from the 1967 musical “Hair,” which singularly named singer Oliver took to No. 3 on the Billboard charts in 1969, was a pretty horrid song to begin, and its hippie-dippy sentiments haven’t aged well at all.

The real clincher, though, is the song’s gibberish chorus.

In the interest of 100 percent accuracy, I did a Google search for, and located, the lyrics to “Good Morning Starshine.” What follows is an unedited transcription of the chorus:

“Gliddy glub gloopy, nibby nabby noopy, La la la lo lo. Sabba sibby sabba, nooby abba nabba, le le lo lo.”

Wow! I think my spell check just threw up.

Seriously, though, tell me you wouldn’t be ready for the rubber room after hearing that nonsense repeated in your head for awhile.

Of course, I never can remember the actual lyrics, so I usually wind up singing, “Blippy bloop bloopy, blibby bloppy bloopy, blah blah blu blo.” Or words to that effect.

Not that that really alters the meaning of the song much, mind you.

Oh, well. There are worse hell songs a (straight) guy could have, I suppose.

“My Boyfriend’s Back,” for one.

Or, “It’s Raining Men.”