Haunted by a Melody

I am haunted by a refrain.

In the late 1990s, living in K-zoo, I cooked at Ruggers' Up'n'Under, which is still there. Often we would listen to Western Michigan University's college radio station, back in the kitchen.

For a good piece of 1998-early 2000, the station was routinely playing a twangy, bluesy, alt-country song with a guitar-lick hook that has resonated in my brain for 20+ years. It's kind of in the neo-honky tonk genre that had a moment around then. The guitar-lick hook starts as a major blues and then switches gloriously to a minor blues at the end, which is unexpected the first time you hear it, and absolutely essential from there on out.

Anyway, I have no memory of who made the song. I only kinda/sorta half-remember some scrap of the lyrics, along the lines of: 'Mama she's too hot to ride, mama she's too hot to ride." (then catchy guitar riff). It's a catchy enough song that 20 years later, someone like me is still talking about an alt-country honky tonk song about whose details I basically know nothing.

I have searched for it over the years, this song. I literally contacted WMU's radio station years back, via email, seeking old playlists. I spent hours sifting through random people's alt-country / twang / honky tonk playlists on Spotify. The student radio station worker reading my inquiry sent a bemused reply, but no luck.

Probably the song was regional, not national, by a group who never made it huge. Likely the band broke up and did not have a long existence. Otherwise my MANY searches for this song would have turned up something. I would pay more money than is reasonable, just to find this song on the internet. I would feel spiritually fulfilled as a human being, which is difficult to say coming from someone who is not that spiritual, if I could find this song, and play it whenever I wanted. I have been trying for decades. I have not yet found this song.

The internet was just a child in '98, and children lose many memories as they get older. So this song will remain an enigma - lost in the dingy fog of my memory-place, in a way, known only to me.

Maybe I should search MySpace.

FOUND ART

In one of the dusky, dusty corners of our unheated, "nearly outside" mud/laundry room/mop bucket/back stairwell area, a small white gift bag had been growing dust bunnies since well before we moved into the house, if the layers of dust are believable. I think they are.

Thinking of nothing but tossing it finally, after noticing it for the umpteenth time, I grabbed the little Aveda cosmetics bag from its perch. Therein were mostly old ball-bearings; well, those, and this: a dusty-af, paint-stained cassette. It's Public Enemy's Apocalypse 91. . . The Enemy Strikes Black.

Am I the sort of person that has a cassette tape player in 2021? My friends, you know I am. Couldn't resist the urge to give the tape a light cleaning and try it out. The paint stains won't come off and I was worried it might not play. But it did! The quality was definitely of a 30-year-old dusty-af cassette tape level, but I'm pleased to report I now finally have this album. It was meant to be.

ADDENDUM:

Ha ha. Oh man. As I've listened through this I have come to understand that this is the clean version with all the sw**r words b**ped out. Ha ha safe for mom and dad. Well sorta.