Jeni & I saw Gomez last night (see last post), and since then the song “How We Operate” has been driving me nuts. All day it’s been running through my head, and I kept thinking that it sounded very, very similar to some other song that I knew. At some point Alanis Morissette’s “Uninvited” came to mind, and somehow I was sure that was it, even though they didn’t seem similar enough.

Fortunately, when Dave came home for lunch, his musical knowledge came to my rescue. The reason they sounded so similar despite being different was that they have the same chord progression. Being a percussionist, I’m not 100% sure what that means, or how to hear it in a song, but it makes sense to me, and explains why these two songs have gotten stuck together in my head! Incidentally, Dave is amazing. I explained my predicament to him, and found him an old copy of Uninvited I had laying around. He listened to it for like 30 seconds, started playing along with it on his piano, and then listened to the iTMS clip of How We Operate again, and handed down his verdict. It was pretty awesome. Now he’s upstairs playing “Bui-Doi” from Miss Saigon by ear. Unreal.

Cool. I only wish I had a bit more control over this pattern-matching thing that goes on in my subconscious.

Hear what I mean:

“How We Operate” – Gomez
“Uninvited” – Alanis Morissette

Bonus amazing song:

“Bui-Doi” – Miss Saigon