Unknown Song Lyrics Search

This past weekend, I went to see several newer movies out in theaters, a luxury I normally don't get to do, since babysitting is involved. As I was waiting for I Love You, Man (2009) to get started, one of the pre-show ads (before the trailers started) was for Rachel Getting Married (2008), starring Anne Hathaway. Rachel is coming out on DVD and Blu-Ray* disc very soon. The previous night, when I saw Liam Neeson in Taken (2009), they showed an ad for the Daniel Craig Casino Royale (2008) for the same reason.

* And don't you think that Sony is thrilled to finally win a format war, all these years after losing the VHS - Betamax battle? Sadly, Sony wins right at the moment when consumers are pulling back from buying a lot of discretionary purchases (AKA, 'stuff'), including DVDs and other entertainment. Rather than buying a lot of discs that take up space and need to be stored at home (we have a whole trunk sitting in our living room full of old DVDs gathering dust; it never gets opened except in extreme circumstances), many people would rather rent a movie online, either through Netflix or iTunes, or simply catch whatever free content exists on websites like Hulu.com or YouTube.

Ah, but I digress. During the ad for Rachel Getting Married, they played a cover of a song I used to know fairly well. The song had been slowed way down, and I couldn't pick out the melody, but I recognized the lyrics as being familiar. The question then arises: how do I find a song that I barely remember, when I can't even remember all the lyrics?

I should note that the only words I could remember from the ad by the time I returned home were the keywords "faster roller coaster." I couldn't search with those three words in quotes, because they were not an exact phrase from the song. I was a little stuck, thanks to my lousy memory!

The first step was to find a song lyrics search website that is worth something. Since I don't search for song lyrics very often, I don't have a good source site bookmarked the way I have IMDB for movie searches. When I googled for "lyrics search website," it returned 77,500,000 hits. The first one (and it doesn't appear to be a paid ad, although it sits at the very top of the search results, a spot usually reserved for paid ads on Google) promised to search for lyrics by keyword. However, it's a terrible website, and not recommended. In fact, most of the sites found on the first page of the Google results didn't search for individual song lyrics as much as they searched for song titles (one notable result that kept getting returned: "Roller Coaster" by the Partridge Family -- that's not it!) and/or band names. Songs and bands were not what I was searching for.

Fortunately, about halfway down the list of hits was the Yahoo! Music lyrics search website. On Yahoo! Music, the first few hits for my keyword search were the songs "Roller Coaster" by Blood, Sweat & Tears (say, did the Partridges just cover the B,S&T song?) and "Get Off" by Republica. I clearly knew that the song I was thinking of was neither of those two hits.

However, the next few hits were for a song called "Everyday." The first version offered up by Yahoo! was done by James Taylor, and I knew that wasn't right, either. But the very next version was performed by Buddy Holly and the Crickets. A-HA!!! That's it!!! That is the song I knew I remembered from hearing the song lyrics being used in the movie ad. I'm including an MP3 link for the song at the top right of this blog; you should be able to hear the song simply by clicking on the play button. I'm also including the html for an MP3 of the song here:

Everyday - Buddy Holly

Mojo and George

Truth be told, I wasn't quite sure whether I should post this entry, either here or on another blog. It's not that I am not interested in the topic; rather, I don't know too many others who would be.

See, a coworker of mine recently asked me a question. He heard a song playing from my iPod, and he asked simply, "Is that George Thorogood?" No, my friend. Not George. Mojo!

Mojo, as in Mojo Nixon. I've been a huge fan of his work ever since I first saw the video for "Elvis is Everywhere," which still ranks as his biggest hit. For the uninitiated, Mojo's sound is actually not all that dissimilar to the musical sounds of George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers, once you control for lyrics and the odd Skid Roper melody. The two singers even look somewhat similar, as evidenced by the pics below:



So, I thought it would be interesting to post a blog entry with the two singers side-by-side, just to show how they do look like each other. When searching for images, of course, Google offers the fantastic ability to enter a search query and then switch between 'web,' 'images,' 'news,' 'maps,' and 'video.' To get the pics of the two singers, I simply searched on the names in any Google search window, then selected 'images,' and then picked two pictures that would look as much alike as possible.

Normally, when I enter a search on a specific person's name, I like to put that name in quotation marks. That means I get results that only return what is inside the quotation marks, a neat trick that would keep me (in this case) from getting any hits related to our nation's 37th President.

One thing I learned right away that I didn't know about Mojo before I did this search was his real name. Thank you, Wikipedia! I also had no idea people could categorize Mojo's music in any one genre, but they did. Somehow, I feel like much less of a Mojo fan for simply not knowing either of those details. And I absolutely LOVE the Johnny Cash song from which the punkers in The Cramps lifted the term 'psychobilly!' Johnny Cash did a ton of great music, but "One Piece at a Time" has to be one of my all-time favorite songs of his. It always brings a smile when I hear it!

In the end, I knew I had to post this entry if for no other reason than to spread the word on Psychobilly music. Long live Mojo! I do have to say that my brother, sister, and I went to see Mojo perform live one Christmas break at some dive in Dayton, OH. We almost wound up not going to the show, as it was late and we were all somewhat past our youthful clubbing days. Having seen Mojo perform live, I can say there is nothing else quite like it! My favorite performers are all ones who pour every last ounce of their passion and energy into a live performance, and Mojo did that in spades! He must have lost about 20 lbs in sweat that night. But boy, did he put on a show!

Telephone Etiquette

While I have been working on research for a paper or journal article for work recently, there is not much I'd like to disclose about the searches I've done in that regard.

There have not been many other searches of interest lately, which is why I haven't posted any of them to this blog. One of my more recent searches involved the search terms "difference java script" as I looked for a clear explanation of the difference between the Java and JavaScript* web programming languages. That search yielded 722,000,000 results, but the very first one gave me my answer. I do take exception with Joe Burns' characterization of Object Oriented Programming (OOP) as "a relatively new concept." Unless this article was written in 1993, and I don't think it was, OOP has been around for quite a while.

* Keep in mind that Google automatically filters out words repeated in a search, so there was no need to repeat the word Java in the search term.

Another recent search was inspired by today's comic for Zits (pictured below):

I had never heard of travertine before, so I searched for just that one word. The good news is that the word is specific enough to return quality results right away, despite the search returning 2,420,000 hits. Bypassing the two sponsored ads at the top (highlighted by Google in a faint pink) and the Wikipedia page on travertine (seems like Wikipedia is always right near the top of most Google searches, doesn't it?), the second hit was this one. Everything you ever wanted to know about travertine, all in one website.

However, I have been wondering something recently, based on personal experience. I want to know if there is a term or even a euphemism for people who always have to get the last word in a telephone conversation. Perhaps you know some people who fit that bill. My mother actually made me notice this first, and I don't mean anything negative by the observation. This isn't anything I'd noticed until recently, so it doesn't bother me terribly much. I just suddenly realized that, no matter what we were saying at the end of our phone conversations (all the niceties, like "good talking with you," "I love you," "talk with you again soon," or "bye"), my mother always had to say the last word. Which is fine, really. And then I noticed other people doing it, too. It's not gender-specific, but I seem to notice women doing it more frequently than men. It's really just a way to be polite.

So, here's what I want to know: has someone concocted a term for those people who always have to get the last word in a conversation, and if so, what is that term? How would I search for it?

I tried the search phrase "term person last word conversation," which yielded a very large number of hits: 222,000,000. Even worse, the results on the first page jumped all around the lexicon of English words, from fatal last words to long-term care options for seniors to long-term adaptation for people with aphasia. Clearly, that search was not going to work.

I modified the search term by just one word, but one that is much more specific: "lexicon person last word conversation." That search yielded a much more manageable 113,000 hits. The first hit on that list seemed to have some promise, since the clipping promised a discussion on "...who just HAS to have the last word in any conversation about music." Sadly, these comments were directed just at music snobs, so no real help there.

One drawback of the Google search engine is that they often substitute a word that is very similar in the search results for one of the search terms. I kept getting results that included the word 'conversion' rather than 'conversation.' That was not helpful at all.

It could be that the word 'lexicon' was too restrictive for everyday use. Many of those 113,000 hits mentioned above included very specific language-to-language conversions, even when it returned a result with the word conversation, not conversion. I modified the search term again to use "person has to have the last word telephone conversation," which returned 6,360,000 hits. Hey, when in doubt, throw the kitchen sink at it, right? One of the hits seemed to have some promise, and I include that link here because it is interesting in its own right. That blog post breaks down the pros and cons of using either the telephone or e-mail to interview a subject. Needless to say, that's not what I'm searching for.

This result was also interesting, but it focused on the beginning of a telephone conversation, not the ending. This hit did mention the ending of a phone conversation, but because it was focused on a telephone interview for a job, it recommends the interviewee "let the employer have the last word." Again, not what I'm searching for. There was this admonishment posted on none other than the Lance Armstrong Foundation website, in which Busymom.net recommends allowing the other person on the phone to respond after saying your closing. Getting warmer...

Once more, I changed the search term to be "person compelled last word telephone conversation," which yielded a mere 56,400 hits. One of those described the activity of always having the last word in a conversation under the category of "know it all." That matches some of the results found above, but it's still not what I'm searching for. The people I've noticed who have to have the last word on the telephone are not doing it to prove how much they know, they're just being nice. I tried putting the word 'nice' into the same search term above, but had no better results. The total hits returned actually went up, in fact, to 57,000.

This link seemed to be similar to what I was searching for in the first place, but not exactly. The same author also posted about ways to cut off phone or e-mail conversations when no reply is needed. These still aren't the results I wanted, but they were fairly close. Perhaps we just don't have a word in the English language that describes a person who has to have the last word in a polite conversation.

In a last-ditch attempt to find an answer, I went to Ask.com, which formerly was known as Ask Jeeves (as in the name of an English butler, who was the site mascot). I remember Ask as being able to parse an actual plain language question into a credible search, so I thought I would give it a try. When I typed in my query as, "is there a word for a person who has to say the last word in a telephone conversation?", this site was one of the first non-sponsored* results. This post got to the heart of the matter, and I know there are etiquette issues at the heart of my original question. From an English perspective, Jonathan addressed how people are used to a somewhat lengthy process for saying goodbye and ending a telephone conversation. His Chinese friend, on the other hand, was not. That was pretty interesting.

* Ask, by the way, offers up more sponsored links (five), which were inserted into the list of search results without any offset and a barely there light blue background that is hard to notice, and ads that simply don't apply to the search. Did I need ads for the Global Executive Database, computer training in how to use MS Word, or how to download MS Office (including Word) for $11.95? No, I did not. Ask also puts ads at the bottom of each page, so you have to be careful when looking at the search results. All of these things are very big reasons why most people prefer Google over other search engines.

So, the end result was that I never found the real answer for my search. Sometimes, that happens. A person can still learn a great deal by searching for information. For example, in my searches, I also stumbled across the fact that today, 10 March, marks the 133rd anniversary of Alexander Graham Bell's famous phone request for "Mr. Watson, come here -- I want to see you." Bell had to have the last word! So, this is topical for today's date in history. Who knew?

Introductions

For a while now, I've thought my blogging could really use some direction. Having an editor would probably be nice and improve my writing, but then I'd have all that angst build-up that comes from creating a masterpiece and having someone else tear it to shreds. When I write for "A Boyd's Eye View", I'm fully aware that I jump from topic to topic like a bee going from flower to flower collecting pollen. While I love the freedom to write about anything that strikes my fancy at a given moment (The Amazing Snuggie!), it probably has a negative impact on readership.

Think about it: if a person arrives at my blog expecting to get opinions and commentary on the NFL, then that person will be upset to see posts on movies or economics. The same goes for anyone expecting to see a post on my wife or kids, which is why I'm moving any stories I have to tell about my family over to our family blog.

Lord knows, there are enough niche topics to cover out there, and it seems like you can find a group of like-minded individuals for anything under the Sun these days. That has been one of the most wonderful things about this thing here called the Internetses: no one has to feel alone when loving whatever it is they love these days. There's a group for that!

Shoot, at one time (pre-Phantom Menace), I even belonged to the Jek Porkins Fan Club group on Yahoo! Groups (long since deceased). Just try to tell me that wasn't cool! All eight of us even convinced Hasbro to make a Jek Porkins action figure (pictured below). Niiiiiiiiiiiiiice. Yes, I still have mine!


But when I was casting about, trying to decide where I could specialize in just one area, I had a hard time narrowing down my list of interests. Certainly, I could focus my energies on just fantasy football, but there are plenty of people who cover that fan base well enough already. If I really want to write about FFB, then I could always contribute future articles to a place like KFFL.com, which already published articles from me way back in 1998. No worries there.

I figured I could write strictly about movies and entertainment, no matter how out-of-date my reviews might be. I often stumble across movies that I really enjoy, and which I think are somewhat forgotten or ignored in the larger Hollywood scene. Brick, The Hot Rock, and Point Blank all fit into that category. However, when I did a word search for all the keywords I used for my review of film noir (in which I really wanted to highlight Brick), my own blog post did not show up anywhere in the first seven or eight pages of results. Using my own labels! Which really means that so many other people already got the word out on Brick, my own post was unnecessary.

But then I had an idea: I could tailor a blog to just cover one area that still seems to mystify many people. I could help people live better lives! I could... well, explain how to structure search terms in an engine like Google in order to find the most relevant hits soonest. Crazy? Maybe. I do seem to have an uncanny ability to find whatever it is I'm searching for within Google or any other search engine. Finding the symbol for the Greatest American Hero online after seeing it on The Big Bang Theory was just one example.

Another example: just today, I thought about a friend of mine who commented on Facebook about the song "Human" by The Killers. It's a great song, but many people dislike or openly criticize the lyrics of the chorus: "Are we human? Or are we dancer?" When I used the search term "are we human or are we dancer" in Google, of course, I retrieved all the information directly related to the lyrics in the song. Of over 40,400,000 hits for that search term, the first hit was the Wikipedia page for the song itself. In the discussion on their page, the Wikipedia folks mentioned how much controversy the lyrics caused, and some people call the lyrics silly.

As a Killers fan, I was not satisfied with reading the negative comments about the lyrics. I wanted to know more about them, and I wanted to help my friend understand more about what the lyrics meant. I found one link from another blogger that explained the lyrics from the point of view of the band. They said their lyrics were inspired by a comment by (in)famous gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, who once said the U.S. is raising "a generation of dancers" (meaning, puppets on the ends of strings). Controversy solved, no?

And yet, I also seemed to remember reading an old science fiction story where humans met an alien race called Dancer or Dancers. Boy, try to find any reference to old sci fi online, much less a specific reference like that! If it wasn't written by one of the biggies like Asimov, fugheddaboudit!

To try to find anything that supported my hunch, I tried the search term "human race sci fi", which returned 3,270,000 hits. None of those seemed to be all that relevant, but one link was for the blog DarkMatters mentioned above. One hit was for a photo from Flickr, for which the person who uploaded the picture used the lyrics from the song. On that photo, a Flickr user named vtpeacenik made a comment along the lines of what I wondered, whether the song referenced an old sci fi story. From her comment, I knew I was not the only person who made that cognitive link from the song lyrics.

Once more, I modified the search terms in Google to "alien race dancer sci fi". This time, the search returned only 144,000 hits, and guess what was number three on the list? This page! An author of science fiction named Kristine Kathryn Rusch wrote about a race of aliens known as Dancers back in 1997. While that's not old enough to match my memory of reading the story when I was a kid, it could very well be that I picked up this book for light reading during that time frame. It's still available for sale here, for as low as one penny (plus S&H)!

I've written in the past about searches I've conducted while in the process of writing other blog posts. With this blog, I will write strictly about searches I'm doing for other purposes, all while exploring what works well and what doesn't. I will also add some tips and tricks I've learned along the way, such as how to use math to deliver better search results. Strange, but true.

Is it sacrilegious to use a quote from Jesus to write about a secular topic like Internet search? Perhaps, just a little. If I can think of a better name for the blog, perhaps I'll change it.