Roger Whittaker during a concert given at the Weser-Ems-Hall at Oldenburg (Lower Saxony, Germany) in 1976. Photo by Wilfried Wittkow.
Hearing the opening 10 seconds of this several times a day as the station ID soundtrack on WGN-TV for months at time in my unguarded years has rendered me helpless before what my better self knows—I’m sure of it!—is an awful piece of tripe. But that Clockwork Orange–like exposure to those strains carved a neural pathway straight past my pineal gland and into my soul, where the entire cheap song—which I never listened to before a few years ago—has taken up residence with real memories and experiences and loves and can, if I have been deprived of sleep, can almost provoke tears.
We cannot choose our madeleines.
PS. Elvis does a nice version of this.
