Late October means football games, cider, picking apples, sleet, Halloween, and angst. Sometimes all in the same day.

1977: The Carpenters, “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft”

This is just a weird song, which I don’t think I have heard before. I had not heard it until putting together this post and, having heard it, I don’t like it.

1982: The Pointer Sisters, “I’m So Excited”

“I’m So Excited” was all over the radio in the early eighties, and it was strange to listen to it while down in the pit in the milking parlor, trying to coax milkers onto cows which had never been milked before, getting kicked and covered in manure as fun, happy songs like this one taunted us from our crappy little radio.

1987: Yes, “Love Will Find a Way”

I remember exactly when I first heard this song – fall semester of 1988, a year after Big Generator was released, and I picked up the cassette tape version at the urging of a young woman upon whom I was sweet at the time, several weeks into my sophomore year at GVSU. I like it, and I like Big Generator, though the previous studio album 90125 caused such a huge splash in my life that most other Yes songs kind of get drowned out.

1992: Technotronic Featuring Ya Kid K, “Move This”

I think I heard this one back in its day, but anything from the Pump Up the Jam album is almost completely drowned out in my memory by, well, “Pump Up the Jam.”

1997: Missy Elliott featuring Da Brat, “Sock It 2 Me”

I am pretty sure I have not heard “Sock It 2 Me” before now, and I certainly would have remembered the video, had I seen it before. It’s just weird and wonderful, and considering it came out in 1997, feels a little ahead of its time, in a nostalgic retro-futurism sort of way. Come to think of it, I wonder if Missy Elliott and company were the occupants of the interplanetary craft who The Carpenters were trying to contact back in 1977..?