Curse You, K-Tel!

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Those of you who never had to endure a K-Tel album are lucky. They were original hits by the original artists, true; however, they were also seriously edited version of the songs. Think of a radio edit, and they edited the radio edit! But they did have benefits. K-Tel albums were the original mix tapes. (Well, not really "original," I have "various artists" country albums going back to the early 1960s.) You got 20 songs by 20 artists. Amid those 20 (edited) songs you'd get some real crap ("Playground in My Mind"?! ) and some pretty good things, too. Nearly all of the songs were top 40, and much of it was teenybopper (I remember the Osmonds' Jackson Five impersonation, "One Bad Apple," on one of them). I've been watching hurricane coverage online from various Florida local stations since last Wednesday. I grew up in Florida, I have lots of friends there, and I was stationed there, so this is quite personal. Amid all of the coverage they kept telling about the staggering number of people without electricity. "The website is now showing 1.2 million without power," they were saying. Power. One of those old K-Tel records started spinning in my head. And this song came up. Curse you, K-Tel! To be fair, I did have the 45 of "Devil Woman" (one of three songs named "Devil Woman" I have on my iPod), so it's not that I dislike Cliff Richard or anything. But this is one of those songs you go into your closet, turn the lights off, put the headphones on, and listen to. Curse you, K-Tel!