Thoughts on Songs I Do Not Hear On the Radio

In 2000, during my senior choir trip to Gatlinburg, I found a CD entitled "Rebound Records Classic Rock 80s" in a strange mall music store. It consisted of some pretty cheesy but catchy songs that I knew, like "Mr. Roboto", "Owner of a Lonely Heart", and "Love Shack", as well as a fair collection of songs I'd never heard. I purchased it, not because it had all these songs so much as it was in the clearance bin for the price of $1. After listening to it in its entirety, I pegged one song as my clear favorite from the album.

The song is called "Don't Go" and it was performed by a band called Hot House Flowers. It had a catchy, piano-driven accompaniment, which I thought was cool, and the lyrics go by relatively fast and are sort of meandering, as if the singer is deliberately trying to not think of the fact that he's being dumped. It's only 3 minutes long and snappy enough that if one were so inclined, one could dance around like a moron in the solitude of their apartment. Anyways, it was generally well put together enough that I forgave the unspeakably lame saxophone cameos, and generally have thought to myself, "Yeah, I can see people really liking this song. It should make some money."

In my 25.5 years on this planet, I have never heard any other mention of that song or band. No radio play, no commercials, no VH-1 "I Love the 80s" reference, nothing. Likewise, I've never said to anyone, "Hey, have you ever heard of the Hot House Flowers? They sing a pretty cool song called 'Don't Go.' I recommend you check them out."

I mention this because I'm trying to reorganize my unorganized CDs, and have noted with some horror that the ridiculous $1 clearanced compilation CD where I discovered this one is missing, and for all I know, my cd could very well be the only known copy of the song in existence. Amazon professes no knowledge that my cd ever existed.

Luckily, I did a YouTube search for it. I got 5 results. One was a "Gilmore Girls" clip. One was an anime clip. Two were unrelated Justin Timberlake videos (making his second cameo appearance on this blog, thanks to Susie in comments). And the other appears to be it, although it also appears and sounds as if the source tape has about 20 years of dust gathered on it. It has 4 comments, and 7 ratings. People of the internets, congratulations, for you have now entered the super secret society of "People Who Have Heard of the Catchy, Non-descript, and Apparently Completely Forgotten Band Called Hot House Flowers."