That's My Jam: The Three Song Challenge

This one's a little tricky, but if you're interested this is a nice little peek into just how much of a music nerd I am, and how I got to be that way. Think about the songs in your music collection -- whether it be the contents of your iPod, the CD's on the shelf, or (perhaps more importantly) the songs you remember from your lifetime.

Once you've got yourself in that frame of mind, ask yourself this question:

Can you think of 3 songs that share the same
title or theme, but sound completely different?

In other words, connect the dots through the music you love -- six degrees of Kevin Bacon-style into a unexpected mix. It's the sort of thing I used to do back when I was a DJ, both when I was doing parties and when I was working at the strip club. Very few of the girls picked up on it, but I do remember cracking a certain smile when Raven of all people walked up to me after her set and said, "All 3 songs related to Bela Lugosi movies -- nicely done, Mr. Man."

You might remember a couple of days back I wrote a post lamenting the fact that people close to me in age and seem to have no idea about any of the pop culture things I tend to reference in casual conversation.

To my way of thinking, a lot of the things I was talking about were pretty obvious -- but I'm well aware of the fact that I also tend to get into things that very few people know (or perhaps better said actually care that much) about.

For example, there was a time back in college when my CD collection was organized not alphabetically by band name, but by the name of the guitarist who played on the tracks. So you'd find Frank Zappa's Them or Us sitting next to PIL's Compact Disc, sitting next to Whitesnake's Slip of the Tongue because Steve Vai played on all of them.

Practices like these are what led me to come up with the 3-song game.

I used to make a lot of mixtapes for friends (don't do it so much anymore, which is a shame because they're fun to make) -- and I would always attempt to inject some sort of theme into them (especially if I was making one for a girl I was into -- because they always pick up on the cues in the lyrics on a mixtape, right? ..right?).

So here we go -- 3 songs that share the same theme or title, but sound nothing alike:

- Roger Miller, Engine Engine Number 9


- Deftones, Engine N º9


- Black Sheep, The Choice is Yours (connects the dot at 2:30)

So the question now becomes -- which ones can you think of?

I admit, it's not an easy task. I have trouble with it sometimes myself. Obviously it's a little easier to find matching titles with sappy love songs, but a lot of those tend to sound similar -- so be careful not to fall into that trap.

Once you've got your songs chosen out, make sure to post the titles (and YouTube links, if you can find them) in the comments.

Let's see who can come up with the best one!

[Listening to:  Fishbone - "Let Dem Hoes Fight Pt. 2" ]