Beats me where it came from, but I was making dinner (a nice shepherd’s pie on a rainy evening) the other night and out of nowhere, The Mountains High got tripped off in my head somehow and I found myself singing it while I cooked.

Was it a Proustian moment, where the scent of thyme and garlic with ground beef and carrots triggered memories of being eight and getting totally knocked out by the song? I actually doubt that. My mother was at best a pedestrian cook, and she would never have understood the Proust reference anyway.

But, the song did completely nail me when it came out in 1961 (I was eight, so cut me some slack). I think it was mostly the machine gun drums that got me, but something about the almost dissonant, but somehow very right mix of the vocals of Dick and DeeDee also got under my skin in a good way as well.

That and as a precocious eight-year old, I saw a pic (see above) of DeeDee and had a horrible crush on her. In fact I think that my tastes in women were largely as set there as anytime, as black hair and bangs and the skinny Parker Posey/Chrissy Hynde/Joan Jett look has always been my preference, although add glasses and being a Southpaw for some reason kicks that attraction into outer space. We humans are so odd, no?