Calling Up the Flames Again Need to Find a Way Lyrics Rock

It's pretty mutual in music circles to run across people who have spent literally decades trying to identify an obscure song on an old mixtape. They've had no luck Googling lyrics or playing the vocal into Soundhound, Shazam, or friends' ears. There are entire communities—on websites similar Wat Zat Song?, Midomi, and Reddit—devoted to crowdsourcing the solutions.

Many times, without what felt like much work, I've been able to successfully ID such songs for strangers. Not because I'm Brainypants McMusicface; to the contrary. In every instance these take been songs and artists I'd never heard (or even heard of) earlier.

Just the recordings contained the necessary clues and context, to which I applied some deductive reasoning and research washed on freely-available websites. Here's how I've gone near information technology, in case crowdsourcing isn't working for you.

One instance: Slicing Up Eyeballs posted this to both Facebook and Twitter.

Can you ID this funky post-punk song taped off WNYU in the '80s?

A Slicing Up Eyeballs reader sent us the following note:

"I write from Deutschland so pitiful if i put words wrong. A Friend of mine was in America in the 80s and he listened to WNYU – FM. He heard a Song at that place only did not hear the Name and Artist. So i accept the Link here where you can mind to. If you don`t know it, maybe you lot tin help us with the Lyrics. Nosotros went them up and downward with no Issue. Especially after the commencement words "Oh well oh welcome ….. This might exist the Refrain of the Song considering he repeats it often in this Song. I would be very glad to get an answer from you because this Vocal is searched for more than 33 Years."

The post was accompanied past the song's audio on Soundcloud (and had already been an open instance on Wat Zat Song? for over v months).

one. Examine the audio and lyrics for clues, and search for keywords on Discogs.

Discogs is a website database detailing musical artists' discographies and, among other features (like its marketplace and the ability to catalog your entire music drove), it's a powerful search engine. The Advanced Search, which is gratuitous to use without creating an account, allows you to look merely inside Track (song) Title.

Since this song didn't accept a traditional chorus (where the championship would usually repeat), I started making out the lyrics from the height.

Oh well, oh welcome [turncoat?] Sam
He said he was a killer man
He doesn't care nigh your [love / life]

And then something most napalm? Sounds a fleck agit-prop. That showtime line repeats at the showtime of each verse, giving at to the lowest degree role of it the potential to appear in the title. A Track Title search for "oh well oh welcome" yielded 44 results which contained some combination of those keywords in their vocal titles (i.e. "oh", "well" and "welcome" might announced in three different vocal titles on a given album, not necessarily all in the same song championship).

2. Filter the search results to items released in a specific decade, geographic region, or genre.

The OP said the tape was from the '80s and the recording screams '80s as well. Choosing Decade>1980 from the carte down the left side of the search window narrows it down from 44 to vii.

As for genre, would Discogs have this filed nether punk, funk, other? Those distinctions are subjective, which is why I opted not to utilise their filters for this step and instead eliminated results that obviously weren't the genre I was looking for (i.e. skip over the items with "gospel" and "soul" in the titles, as well as the "Hot Hits" compilation. If this song had ever been a hot striking, someone would have identified it by at present). That left me with merely one effect to investigate:Maxi Dance Pool Vol. two – Musikladen Eurotops.

NB: Discogs, due to the way its records are structured, returned three dissimilar iterations of this same album in the search results: 1 being the 'principal page' for that release/album and the other ii detailing the separate formats of the release, CD and LP. All three are interchangeable for my purposes, so no need to look at each.

iii. Apply streaming music resource to follow leads.

Given that my keywords were spread across two track titles on this compilation—"Oh Well" (past an artist of the same name), and another titled "Welcome, Machine Gun"—and that my song inappreciably seemed like society provender, this was probably a dead finish but I was already hither and decided to run across it through. The sometime title was a better friction match to my lyric than the latter so I followed the hyperlink to the Discogs page showing Oh Well's discography. The vocal "Oh Well", since information technology was released as a unmarried, had its own subpage with an embedded YouTube video, a quick browse of which proved information technology wasn't the song I was later.

"Machine gun" didn't appear in the lyrics of my vocal, and then it seemed illogical to assume that the latter song had any relevance to my search. Back to the drawing board.

4. Repeat steps ane-3 as needed.

I didn't bother pursuing the words "oh well" any farther because, on their own, they simply didn't feel distinctive or interesting enough to be a title for this song. Instead, I turned my sights to "turncoat Sam." Few writers would be able to resist making such a unique plough of phrase the hook on which to hang a song, so it had a better chance of appearing in the title. But that search yielded but two results, which were quickly ruled out. Boosted searches for "turncoat" and "welcome turncoat" were similarly fruitless.

Out of other options, I searched for "Sam". Filtering down to just the '80s still left most 2700 releases. Scanning the first page of fifty results, I eliminated annihilation immediately recognizable (e.grand. T. Male monarch'due south "Telegram Sam"), the strange linguistic communication items, the ones apparently in non-applicable genres like jazz, and ones in which Sam was inextricably paired with other words ("Play It Again, Sam", etc.).

At the bottom of the page my eye was drawn to a dark, arty record comprehend that seemed to fit the vibe I was looking for—what looked like a monoprint of a face up that was disjointed, disfigured, with violence or chaos unsaid.

It was for a single of a song called "Uncle Sam" past a group I'd never heard of, Rhythm of Life. Clicking through to that subpage showed that information technology was a United kingdom release from 1981, classified equally New Wave. On this blazon of page, Discogs displays suggestions of like artists; while I wasn't intimately familiar with the ones listed hither (Josef K, Cabaret Voltaire), I knew enough to think they were reasonably aligned with my target.

I searched YouTube for "Rhythm of Life Uncle Sam," which returned one result; afterwards a brief pulsate intro that was missing from the original post, there was my song. It wasn't "turncoat Sam" after all… it was "Oh well, oh welcome to Uncle Sam", with "to" and "Uncle" sung then shut together as to sound similar ane word.

[Editor's annotation: that video used to be embedded right here so that you could hear it, just has since been removed from YouTube and not replaced. In fact, Rhythm of Life's "Uncle Sam" appears non to be available on any legitimate streaming service—or for digital download—in the US, and can only exist plant on a 2-CD Paul Haig compilation from Brussels-based Les Disques du Crépuscule label. And that fact, dear reader—that the spider web giveth and the web taketh away—is a perfect example of why I always view my personal music library as more essential and comprehensive than any subscription-based streaming service can promise to be.]

To be fair, intuition played a part in arriving at the solution, as did good luck; if my song had appeared on the 50th page of "Sam" results instead of the outset, would I have establish information technology? (Non to mention other factors in my favor: that the song had lyrics at all, was sung in my native language, was from an era and genre of which I have a decent if not comprehensive knowledge, etc.) Yet, this method has helped me solve one-half a dozen other mystery songs that had been plaguing people for 25+ years, where collective "Well, information technology kind of sounds similar [artist name here]" guesswork failed.

Here'due south ane more example off the elevation of my head, using the same steps—identifying the audio clues, lyrical clues, and parameters for the search.

Example #2

Audio clues: a song taped off an American alt radio station in 1988. The artist sounded American, slightly roots-rockish just with sonic polish, and a bit Paisley Underground.

Lyrical clues: a mention of Jerry Falwell bolstered my notion that it's American in origin. Focusing on the closest thing to a chorus, the only lyrics which echo are variations of:

Whatever name yous go by, she goes by now too
What else would she practise?
She's got her concluding resorts in the mail
To box three v comma oh oh oh

The search: the last line was the all-time bet. The number 35,000 spoken in that way, as its private components, was and then unusual that it took a while to realize that'southward what I was hearing, as opposed to the oh-oh-ohs simply existence vocal punctuations. Beingness catchy and unique, it was the about obvious hook. And radio beingness a contemporary medium, the vocal was probably either released in '87 or '88; songs generally don't get airplay years after their release unless they've accomplished some status. Searching Discogs in two fields—Runway Title for "35,000", and Twelvemonth for 1987—took me straight to information technology: "35,000" by Insiders, from an album called Ghost On the Embankment.

I'm not surprised it eluded someone for decades; information technology was a deep anthology cutting, not a single, and it's not on YouTube, Spotify, iTunes or Amazon. I had to track it downwardly on (now-defunct) Grooveshark in order to verify its identity.

Example #3, without sound

Once more, Slicing Upward Eyeballs posted a reader's plea on Facebook.

Proper noun THAT TUNE: Scott's having trouble tracking down a vocal he used to have on a mixtape. Does this ring a bell for anyone?

"I have what seems to be the mutual 'I had a mix tape years ago, what the hell was that song' trouble. '93 in college a buddy made me a killer mix tape. I lost the track listing after many moves, but accept managed to chase down almost all of the songs except i. Here'south what I think:

"The song begins with a clip of a British man calling bingo. He mentions one number and and then says 'bluish? 22. We accept a bingo- in 2 places.' So it cuts into the song. That is all I remember. I tin tell y'all information technology was '93 or prior. Whatsoever help from the good folks who follow you would exist fantastic."

Audio clues: none. This time in that location's neither a recorded snippet nor whatsoever indication in the OP'southward wording about what type of music it is.

Lyrical clues: just the spoken 'bingo' intro. At this point, I don't even know whether the rest of the vocal has lyrics or is purely instrumental.

The search: I take two facts—the bingo intro and a release date no later than 1993—and 1 assumption: that the artist is British, since there's no obvious reason for a not-UK creative person to source a few seconds of sound from a British bingo hall. Of course there's no guarantee that the song's title has bingo in it, but that's the only applied starting betoken.

Searching Track Title for "bingo" yielded 2,848 results. I filtered those down to items released in the UK (since odds are skillful that an creative person's work would be released showtime and foremost in their native land), which narrowed the results to 562. I applied a second filter in order to meet just items released in the 1990s, which reduced the results to 143. Then I clicked on the View options at the upper-right of the window to see the results every bit Text With Covers, which enabled me to run into the release twelvemonth for each item.

Ignoring annihilation released past 1993, I worked my way down the first page of 50 results, clicking through to each particular's detailed release page and looking up songs on YouTube (if they weren't already embedded in the Discogs page). Eventually I arrived at the album Accomplish by Snuff, released in 1992.

Since the release page featured a YouTube video of the full album and "Bingo" was rail ix of twelve, I scrubbed about 3/4 of the way into it, pausing at the gaps betwixt songs since I was interested simply in the beginning of any given track, and at the 21:32 mark is where I found my British bingo player. All told, this process took me less than 30 minutes.

I thought I was done, only something nagged at me: YouTube also has a standalone video of merely the song "Bingo", and that spoken give-and-take clip doesn't appear in information technology at all, either at the beginning or the end. Farther, the vocal in that video isn't the one following the bingo hall clip in the full-anthology video!

Afterward adding up the track times seen on the Discogs page, I realized that 21:32 into the album puts you at the cease of "Bingo," not the get-go of it. Therefore, if the OP is seeking the song that comes after the clip, it's really the next track on the anthology—"Ichola Buddha"—that's he's later on (and, when making the mixtape, his friend may accept mistaken the bingo hall clip for the intro to that vocal instead of what information technology actually is: the tail terminate of "Bingo").

Obviously my method is dependent on certain factors—not to mention some luck and intuition—and won't piece of work in every instance, but I hope it'll be a useful tool to aid you get closer to solving your ain mystery song. If information technology does, I'd love to hear your stories about where and when y'all originally came past a song, where the search took you lot over fourth dimension, and how you arrived at a solution.

(cassette photo by Laurent Hoffmann)

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Source: https://markfgriffin.com/2015/02/need-help-identifying-song/

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