As happens about once every six-to-eight months, I had an irresistable urge to hear One Less Bell to Answer this morning.  They just don't make 'em like that anymore, do they? 

It's funny how you can get a craving for a song every bit as strong as any craving for, say, chocolate, or even sex. Not surprisingly, researchers have found that the same neural clusters that process the pleasures of sex and chocolate, also light up for music.  Three words: chocolate ipod vibrator.  You'll make a killing, trust me.

Anyway, whatever the reason, I just woke up this morning, looked out the window, and knew it was gonna be a Burt Bacharach kinda day.

Bacharach and Hal David provided a good part of the soundtrack of my early childhood.  The duo worked with everyone from Dionne Warwick to Dusty Springfield, B. J. Thomas to Tom Jones.  They had a string of easy-listening hits in the sixties and seventies with such a distinctive sound they're utterly unmistakable.  They're whimsical and wisecracking — no one has coupled tuba and tack-piano to such sly effect — thoughtful — even dreamy — and sweetly melancholic.  When I was a kid, this is what I thought the adult world would be like, and once in a while it is. 

So I'm on a Bacharach binge.  Because once you start you just can't listen to anything else.  One Less Bell to Answer, which is great when you're kicking around in your PJs feeling sorry for yourself.  What the World Needs Now Is Love, with its brilliant "sad little tuba riff" and airy sentiments you end up taking seriously despite yourself, so sweetly, naively serious is Jackie DeShannon's delivery.

Onto B.J. Thomas's Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head, which is so indelibly a part of the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which is so indelibly a part of my childhood.  And What's it All About Alfie? That's a doozy.  I mean, what compares to the incomparable Dionne Warwick warbling:

What's it all about, Alfie?
Is it just for the moment we live?
What's it all about when you sort it out, Alfie?
Are we meant to take more than we give
or are we meant to be kind?
And if only fools are kind, Alfie,
then I guess it is wise to be cruel.
And if life belongs only to the strong, Alfie,
what will you lend on an old golden rule?
As sure as I believe there's a heaven above, Alfie,
I know there's something much more,
something even non-believers can believe in.
I believe in love, Alfie.
Without true love we just exist, Alfie.
Until you find the love you've missed you're nothing, Alfie.
When you walk let your heart lead the way
and you'll find love any day, Alfie, Alfie.  

Mmm.  Better than chocolate.