Desperately Seeking Susan...'s Tunes

Boz Scaggs: Come On Home...Kris Delmhorst: Strange Conversations...John Mayer: I’m Gonna Find Another You...Janis Joplin: Piece of My Heart

I love music. I mean Really. Love. Music. But we’ve all been burned buying CDs on the strength of a song or two that we adored—only to have it turn out those were the only songs we liked on the album. Then there’s the additional problem for me of getting tired of hearing the same voice song after song, even on albums where I love most every tune.

Eva Cassidy: Dark End Of The Street...Otis Redding:These Arms of Mine...Vince Gill: The Reason Why...Bobby "Blue" Bland: St. James Infirmary

That is why, in my little piece of the world, I’m known for my medleys. I started putting them together back in the Dark Ages when the world still listened to cassette tapes. I transfered songs I liked from my cassettes to a blank tape. They have long since disintegrated and these days I use CDs and am the self-proclaimed Queen of iTunes. (Well, okay, I heard the soul mate tell his sister that's who I am, but close enough). I love the freedom of downloading just the songs I really want, particularly at 99 cents a pop instead of paying eighteen bucks for a bunch of tunes I don't want.


Paolo Nutini: Last Request...Kid Rock & Sheryl Crow: I Put Your Picture Away...Dire Straits: Brothers In Arms...Steely Dan: My Old School

I am currently up to my 22nd medley and working on number 23. My tastes are eclectic; I like everything from blues to rock and roll, country to classical, alternative to Fifties style R&B. Jazz is cool…as long as it's not the atonal type that sounds as if 6 musicians are jamming to 6 different songs. And I’m always, but always, on the lookout for a new artist or song. I collect them from all over, for while I use songs from my own collection (yes I do still buy some entire CDs) I've also discovered new talent listening to friends’ music or to what is being played in places of business. I’m not shy about asking, "Who IS that?" (Just ask the tattoo artist who was doing my permanent eyeliner to Andrea Bocelli’s Time To Say Goodbye CD). I can often run the title to ground from mere bits and pieces of a tune. Not always, of course. I still regret being so cocksure that a song playing on my car's satellite radio was Mark Knopfler singing something with the refrain Don’t Blame the Monkey that I didn’t bother to tape it on my digital recorder because I just assumed it'd be a piece of cake to track down. Now of course I can't find it. Does anybody know the song I’m talking about?


And that’s really what this blog is about. I’m appealing to everyone for more ideas to add to the Susan Andersen medley collection. Tell me some of your favorites. Music is as subjective as reading tastes, but I don’t mind taking the time to listen to a 30 second sample on iTunes. That’s one of the beauties of that place. It gives you a chance to determine if this song or that one is your cuppa Joe.

Billy Vera and the Beaters: At This Moment....America: Ride On...Stevie Ray Vaughan: Ain’t Gone ‘N’ Give Up On Love...Harry James: Harlem Nocturn
So I've listed just a few of the songs that I like. What are some of yours?