Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Name That Tune

One thing I’m really good at is naming that tune.

For example, when I was in college, a friend of mine told me there was a song in his head and he didn’t know what it was. I told him to sing it for me and he refused, for some reason. But later in the evening, I caught him humming, “Check it out now…” And I said, "The Funk Soul Brother..." And he stared at me, and I said, "Rockafeller Skank. Fatboy Slim." And he was SO HAPPY.

Another time, I was in a restaurant with a large group of friends, and there was a song playing on the radio. Two frowning waiters came over to our table and said, “Hey, do any of you have any idea what this song is?”

A bunch of my friends started hypothesizing (incorrectly) what song it was, and I spoke up very loudly: “It’s All For You by Sister Hazel. I’m 100% sure!”

One of the waiters looked at me and said, “YES! That’s it! You’re getting a free dessert.”

And I got a free dessert.

This ability somehow served me well in medical school too. I was in a surgery once with an OB/GYN, and he kept humming, “Just listen to the rhythm of the heart…” Finally, he looked up at me, and said, “Do you know what song that is?”

“It’s I Believe in a Thing Called Love by The Darkness,” I said.

And he had a scrub nurse write it down for him. I was the hero of the OR!

On a neurology rotation, I was working with an attending who kept randomly singing, “Pardon me while I burst into flames...”

I smiled at him because I thought his singing was amusing. He asked me, “Do you know that song?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Who sings it?”

“Incubus.”

“No, it can’t be. Incubus is too loud.”

“I’m 100% sure.”

We finally had to go back to his office to settle this argument, and he loaded up something called Launch Music. He played the video for the Incubus song Drive and then finally agreed with me that it was the same group. I had never seen the video for Drive before and it was basically the band singing topless. “I guess they don't believe in shirts,” the attending said.

We ended up spending the next half hour watching videos and the attending lent me an acoustic Sublime CD.

15 comments:

  1. wth is "all i want" by sister hazel?

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    1. Whoops, it's actually All For You. I think I'm mixing it up with All I Want by Toad the Wet Sprocket, which I was into at exactly the same time.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MMcLEdkY68

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  2. And that song was Pardon me, not Drive.

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    1. I know. But he couldn't get Pardon Me on the computer, only Drive, so we had to use that for a comparison.

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  3. Pardon me while I burn... and rise above the flames... pardon me... pardon me...

    That song will be stuck in my head for the next two weeks until I learn how to play it on guitar and immediately forget that it exists... because if I don't immediately forget that it exists, I'd run the risk of actually learning something new that's not directly related to medicine (i.e. how to play a particular song on guitar).

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    1. oops, I double-posted this. Sorry, my Internet connection is sketchy...

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  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  5. Pardon me while I burn and rise above the flames... pardon me... pardon me... I'll never be the saa aaa aaame...

    I'll have that song stuck in my head for the next two weeks, at which point I'll learn to play it on guitar and immediately forget that it exists. Because if I don't immediately forget that it exists, then my I'd run the risk of learning something new (the guitar tab for that song) that's not directly related to medicine.

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  6. Some random pre-medAugust 8, 2012 at 9:35 AM

    Fizzy, you and I may just be musical soul mates haha

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  7. I'm jealous!! That's a skill which I don't have, yet have always longed for!

    However, I do now own Shazam, and it's the next closest thing to having your godly powers!

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  8. I can do the same thing with movies but how awesome is The Darkness?? Thanks for putting that song in my head, I'll be singing it all day at work now :)
    .
    ....there's a chance we can make it now, we'll be rockin' til the sun goes down.....

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    1. I only knew that The Darkness song from the movie commercial it was in... the one about the girl who was a former porn star. I liked it and downloaded it. No clue how the attending knew it.

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  9. I just did this exact thing tonight with my 13 year old, and it was with Santeria by Sublime. He had "..and I spent it all" stuck in his head and didn't know what song it was from.

    I also have the ability to come up with a song or a bad joke for almost any occasion.

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    1. Wow, I'm amazed today's 13 year olds know of Sublime.. awesome.

      Btw, I don't know if you caught the argument I'm having on MiM on the last guest post. I just found it insulting that a person would say that not one person on MiM is capable of giving advice about going to med school as a single mom when you took the time to do so.

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  10. If you haven't, you might watch "Never Mind the Buzzcocks", a UK panel show all about music. Part of the game is "The Intros Round", where two of the panelists have to perform the intro to a song to the 3rd, and the 3rd has to figure out what it is.

    You can find episodes on YouTube. Some of the humor is very British, but most of it is completely hilarious.

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