13 Comments
User's avatar
Mike Casey's avatar

great read. my lostwave was and maybe still is the CVS phone on hold music from circa 2015 - really beautiful classical esque solo piano.

lots of other people looking for it online. some say it's "Golden Dragon" by Karl King but "no one really knows".

-Mike Casey

Expand full comment
merzy doates's avatar

My lostwave took 30 years to discover! In the 80's I taped a song from an unknown station that I called "Chinese kinda thing". It haunted me. No one I knew could identify it.

The lyrics were indistinct, definitely English English, sort of Fairport Convention, but it wasn't. There were heavy synths and odd drumming.

Not until we'll into the oughts did a search for "The church is ruined and the graves are deserted" reveal that this was Tree Top Club by Victoria Astley. All the more meaningful to me by dint of its obscurity!

Expand full comment
Chris Dalla Riva's avatar

That’s incredible

Expand full comment
South's avatar

What a beautiful article, thank you for giving a mention of Successful Bread, truly an incredible individual for the TMMS search.

- South

Expand full comment
CWK's avatar

It's pretty incredible how people are able to track down impossibly obscure tunes from just a snippet of music now, but I have to disagree with Catherine's dad. In the reduced-information days, there was huge amount of effort and great resources devoted to helping someone figure out a song based on a "vague description and misheard lyrics." After all, if someone couldn't find a song, how would they be able to buy it?!

If you worked at a record store, you fielded several of these requests a day. A little bit of a melody, a description of the style or instruments, and a few words were often ample information. If I didn't know offhand, my co-workers might. If they didn't, we could consult the many thousands of pages of the Phonolog or the first line index in "Find That Tune." More often than not we were able to figure out what they were looking for.

Expand full comment
Chris Dalla Riva's avatar

What was “Find that Tune”?

Expand full comment
CWK's avatar
Oct 3Edited

It was a big reference book---there were a couple of volumes. I think it was cross referenced by songwriter, recording artist, etc. but I pretty much only used it for the index of first lines. For everything else, I went to the Phonolog, which was much more comprehensive.

The big disadvantage it had was that it was immediately out of date. Great for tracking down older songs, but useless for current hits.

Expand full comment
Chris Dalla Riva's avatar

Very cool. Might have to see if I can buy one of those on eBay

Expand full comment
Kate Lillie's avatar

I have two lost songs that I have tried to find for years so I loved reading this. I wonder if everybody has one?

Expand full comment
Rick Massimo's avatar

My feelings exactly. It’s nice in the abstract to see songs get tracked down, but I hope TMS never is.

Expand full comment
//Alexander L.'s avatar

“a deeply human emotion found in everything from Marco Polo traversing the globe to Lostwavers trawling through old radio archives“

♥️

Expand full comment
Mark Nash's avatar

Wow, what a fascinating subgenre of music! I have to say, that Most Mysterious Song is a jam! I love it!!

Expand full comment
Ladyinsane's avatar

It's Ricardo Rangels the sun

Expand full comment