Interactive Poll XIII - Surprise, surprise

PS in case anybody stumbled across an earlier version of this poll... I had some issues and needed three attempts to get this how I wanted it. But this one is hopefully fine.

Thank you, Lewian, for this definitely surprising category!  

Thank you dear Nickie. I'll have enough megabytes to see what you're all doing, perhaps also post plain text messages, I guess.

I might even lurk and wait for the opportunity to attack Pedro.  J/K

Have fun, y'all. 

@Lewian: Clever! The surprise was a surprise. I'll have to take some time think of something appropirate.

Nice to have your contribution here Pedro! Well, I can kind of guess what's going to happen if I tell you that technically this poll is about songs and not whole albums, so I won't. We'll happily live with this (although I cannot promise that everyone will listen to this in its entirety). 

Note: Air - "Radian" is my nomination, see bottom of post.

- Ozgur, I'm sorry you won't be participating this round, but I might not feel too bad for your for having a summerhouse to go to. That is if it is just a little vacation, and not some need to go to the area (repairs, family situation etc.). It's always a hassle and work when making such trips, and taking care of a property can be a major headache.

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I thought of a few surprises. My biggest surprise involved an Australian band. My brother was friends with band members in Cairns, I moved there for a year when I was 19. They had their own bar, and I was a bartender (but not there, that would be too much coincidence). ;). The night before I came back to Canada, my brother and I went see that band, Johno's Blues band live at their bar. In fact, the band's "Don't Knock the Croc" was the first thing my brother played on a jukebox on my first day in Cairns. When I got back home to Vancouver I put on the radio and "Don't Knock the Croc" was playing. Hey, don;t knock the coincidence even if it sounds like a crock of kaka. While that was a hit in Australia, I don't remember it ever playing here before or after. My other big coincidence surprise was at about the same time. I had just bought the CD of Kate Bush's The Kick Inside and was listening to it for the first time. At the same time I was reading (I liked to multi-task) a wonderful book about Paul Theroux's travels around China called Riding the Iron Rooster. Kate Bush has a song called "Strange Phenomena" on it and I was hearing it for the first time which is about strange coincidences. At the exact same time that the book mentioned the Buddhist chant "Om Mani Padme Hum", Kate Bush started singing the chant. If I had been the superstitious type, I might have seen this as some sort of revelation. I've heard less compelling to me coincidences put forward by superstitious types as evidence for the supernatural. I did have some interest in the paranormal for sure.

I'm going for what seems a lesser coincidence as my surprising choice even if it's not amazing in any way. I had just got into a dark BBC comedy radio series from writer Chris Morris called Blue Jam from the 90s (this wasn't very long ago and I found it on archive.org and an rss podcast feed -- I never heard it on the radio), and each episode combined rather surreal, psychological and sometimes grotesque sketches with songs (very dark comedy). One of the songs in one of the Blue Jam episodes was Pulp's "Dishes".

Pulp's Dishes has been a quite popular song that I had heard before, but I, being a pattern seeking animal, have thought before that quite a lot of that could refer to me, and yes, of course this is quite absurd, but still, and none of it is that surprising: The song starts with "I am not Jesus though I have the same initials. I am the man who stays home and does the dishes". I too am not Jesus, and while I do not have the same initials, I too am the man who stays home and does the dishes. Oh, and I would like to make that water wine even if it's impossible, and get those dishes clean, anything is possible.

Anyway, I very rarely listen to music on the radio now, but in the car I put on the radio (the night before I had listened to the Blue Jam episode that played the Pulp song), unusually tuned it to a music radio station (normally I just listen to the news or use bluetooth), and what was on? If you guessed Pulp's Dishes then you are correct. Having recently fallen for Blue Jam as much as I did, it did feel fairly significant.

I guess plenty will know it already, but here is the song:

Pulp - "Dishes"



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EDIT: Oh wait I had a bigger and freakier,or not necessarily freaky but beautiful, experience with another song from around the same time, the Eels "Beautiful Freak". After listening to this this past year this has also came up in a seeingly coincidental manner, and also in a more I could have expected it expected manner. I did a topic on 90s poppy and alt/ indie music, and this got mentioned when I was planning to list it next. The song also featured in Blue Jam. With Eel's Beautiful Freak I am coincidentally both beautiful and a freak, the beautiful part might be the most surprising of all. Or freakishly beautiful one might say even if conventionally very attractive and desirable.




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This was the choice that first came to me. I was really surprised to like Air's 10 000 Hz Legend album as much as I did. It became my favourite by Air despite having having dismissed it before as inferior to both the Moon Safari and Talk Talk albums (which I loved). I had read many bad reviews of it and internalised those before hearing it (biased me). When I first heard it (but I guess I wasn't really listening properly --maybe distractions) I had it in my head that it was bad, and in a topic at PA I was hypercritical of the album. Years later I did decide to buy the album and I loved it immediately and said to myself, "What was wrong with me?". It;s also because I do very obsessed with certain albums sometimes, and so anything different will not appeal, and I was so into other Air at the time. I still feel embarrassed about having been do dismissive of it in an Air topic that I created. I was careless and judgmental and had clearly not listened properly nor was I perhaps in the right "headspace" at the time. Hey, we all get things wrong sometimes, but it was my air of arrogance and dismissiveness that bothers me. I like to say that we all have biases, but try to keep an open mind and open ears (Doctor, heal thyself!)

"Radian" is one I loved best from it.

This is my current nomination (its alternated between all three of these choices):



That and "Sex Born Poison". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGDb7Ce8mrg

Edited by Logan - July 22 2020 at 13:35

Thanks Greg.

Ah, by the way. It actually will not be a vacation, hahah. We stay in our summerhouse in winter too. I'll be working very hard, till September. Perhaps I'll take a short vacation, after that. In summer our summer place is a goddamn crowded place, but in winter, like a ghost town. Sometimes I go out, and see literally nobody during hours of walk. (Which is great, if not all the time) Also, we seemed to have to stay in Ankara (the capital of Turkey) till recently, so this is why I dreamt of all the stuff of being a poll creator and all. Haha.

Snicolette wrote: Logan wrote: The song starts with "I am not Jesus though I have the same initials. I am the man who stays home and does the dishes". I too am not Jesus, and while I do not have the same initials, I too am the man who stays home and does the dishes." Oh and I would like to make that water wine even if it's impossible.  Shhhhhhhhh I have a secret to tell you Shhhhhhhhhhh I call this my nightly miracle.  I turn water to wine every night.  Switch your water glass to a wine glass and .......voila! Shhhhhhhhh Also I think we have spoken of coincidences in other places (no coincidence there!).  Paranormal?  Angels?  Some other kinds of signs? Complete accidents?  Who knows.  All I know is, they happen.

One might say that such coincidences are bound to happen, and, say for the conspiracy theorists, the more one looks for certain patterns the more one will be prone to confirmation bias. Last night I watched a program on Donald Trump and conspiracy theories on CNN. I used to be convinced that I had ESP, and I remember our talks about coincidences and other strange things.

"There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy" (Hamlet). And by a not coincidence, I played Hamlet in a play called Haunted House Hamlet.   I liked to fancifully tell the story that I wore a codpiece made of real cod when playing Hamlet, but it died and fell off as I failed to water it, and I should have gone with, say, a blowfishpiece or a suckerfishpiece.

Edited by Logan - July 21 2020 at 10:44

Haha, that's good humour.