I’ve had this conversation more than once. I’m chatting with a cashier half my age. A song circa 1967 is in the background.

Me: “Is that song familiar to you?”

Cashier: “Um, yeah.”

Me: “When I was your age, if I heard a fifty-year-old song, I might recognize it but it would be foreign, you know?”

Cashier: “Well, my parents played it.”

I guess my parents are weird: as far as I remember, the only records they had from between their birth and mine were South Pacific and My Fair Lady. When the Swing revival (Big Bad Voodoo Daddy &c) came along, Dad said “They’re playing my music again!” and up to that moment I’d had no idea.

(This is my first post in WordPress 5. I hope there’s a setting to restore the old-fashioned editor.)

My new telephone has dozens of ringtones and I hate them all: Newagey lo-fi orchestral crap, mostly laden with snare drums for some reason.

My last phone played the sound of an old-fashioned mechanical bell; the one before that, a pizzicato passage from a Ravel string quartet; before that, the quick part of Pachelbel’s Canon – in frankly electronic timbres that did not pretend to be an orchestra.

I want a ringtone that says “a digital device seeks your attention,” not one that sounds like something overheard on a cheap radio belonging to someone with no taste.

Given a piece of music written for just intonation, clearly you could derive another piece by replacing all factors of 3 with factors of 5 and vice versa (or pick some other pair of primes). Sometimes the result might even be good.

I used to have a ringtone that, pardon the pun, rang a bell: I was sure it was from some modern string quartet, but couldn’t find it in my collection.

Years go by. Today I get in the car, turn on the radio and hear that musical phrase. I wait for the piece to end, but the title is not announced. Well, maybe the station webs its playlist. I get home, refer to the website and find, for the time in question, some song by Daniel Lanois (surrounded by other songs rather than string quartets). Argh.

An hour later I turn on the radio again and hear “Every Day Is a Winding Road”, which was on the list. So I scroll back an hour . . . .

It is in fact the second movement of Ravel’s string quartet in F.

I tried to remember the title theme of Dexter and all I could summon was that of The Odd Couple. Hmm.

(by Glenn Gould)

2016: The embedding doesn’t work anymore, presumably because it used Flash; so here’s a link.

Today’s Straight Dope responds to this inquiry:

Everyone is familiar with the song that goes, “There’s a place in France where the naked ladies dance.” What’s the origin of this mysterious song and its seemingly Egyptian melody?

So naturally I’m not familiar with those words; but they do scan to the tune quoted in Divers Ayres on Sundrie Notions: “Ask for P.D.Q., take a tablespoon or two.”