Last Saturday, I was inflicted by an earworm, a song I hadn't heard in years, the title and artist unknown to me. I had a lyric to go by, a somewhat generic 'I want to tell you today'. Poking around the t00bz, I found the song, a dance number from 1983 called Tell You (Today) by a band named Loose Joints, which was musician Arthur Russell and a revolving cast of collaborators. It's a jaunty tune, with just a hint of wistfulness For the record, I found the concert I posted last Saturday by Googling vocalist Joyce Bowden and discovering that she had collaborated with Joey Ramone in The Resistance. Ever since Saturday, I've been binge listening to various versions of the song, remixes, even a cover by Robyn (but not the one you're thinking of). This evening, when I stopped at the H Mart in Yonkers, I heard a by-now once-again familiar song on the store's sound system:
It was weird to hear this song completely randomly so soon after I had rediscovered it... the universe is a pretty bizarre place, to be sure. As a sad coda to this post, I have to note that Arthur Russell, a multi-instrumentalist who worked in musical genres ranging from minimalism to disco, a perfectionist who often didn't finish projects, succumbed, like all-too-many artists in late 20th Century New York City, succumbed to AIDS in 1992. As a kid, I never found out his name, now that I am a fan, I lament that fact.
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