Alzheimer's Soundtrack: The Buzzcocks

Most of the muzak I put up on the AlzTrak is bubblegum pop meant to catch you old farts up to what is good on todays radios. This is from a band nobody in America ever heard about and it is the template for Green Day and any band that pretends to play Punk today. This sound was my cure for zits in 1979. If lead singer Pete Shelley didn't sound like a feminine can opener this guitar band would have been the next Beatles. If you like this there are a lorry full of great punk-pop anthems from The Buzzcocks on YouTube with awesomely awful EuroTeeVee vids. Your kids will actually like this because absolutely no one else they know has heard of it.

Alzheimer's Soundtrack: Beautiful Girls

If you are old as dirt and haven't listened to pop music since the advent of hip-hop because you can't figure out the lyrics you need to give Sean Kingston's "Beautiful Girls" a spin. The Jamaican Kingston piles a thick layer of ghetto nuance over a harmony that would feel at home on an AM pop station in 1964. In fact much of it is ripped off from Ben E. King's "Stand By Me" but it's not a sampled ripoff, it's a really cool tribute to a genre. He wears an intentially infantile voice like a falsetto to great effect. I actually like the kids radio version that substitutes "... in denial" for "... suicidal" but this is a pop radio gem. This is weird stuff that you won't be able to scrub out of your ears for days.

Alzheimer's Soundtrack: Rehab

As much as I love the way the Amy Winehouse sings this retro classic, I am almost as impressed by the director who put on this stageshow. I really expect Ed Sullivan to stroll onstage afterwards. No one does sixties soul like Winehouse. Unfortunately her voice has gone down the tubes with her drug habit. To bad she couldn't stick the rehab ... no, no, no....

Alzheimer's Soundtrack: Potential Breakup Song

When I grew up the first thing to go was milk ... I doubt I drank mild without benefit of coffee for fifteen years after college. Then went video games, then finally music. Face it, the Clash is to a fifteen year old what Buddy Holly was to me in 1977. Legend yeah, but he ain't no Electric Light Orchestra. The best part of having kids late is that you get all of that good stuff back.

It started with milk and peanut butter. Then I got back the video games and now I've got back pop, bubblegum music. Oh by the way, my nine year old daughters favorite album: London Calling by the Clash circa 1979. Here's my favorite from her Ipod (great music for vacuuming at 10 in the A.M.):