My Top 1000 Songs #847: Mumbo Jumbo

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

I've talked before about--and covered in my book--how Squeeze's East Side Story is on the short-list of records which truly changed my life, at least from a musical perspective. (You can read that book excerpt in my write-up on the record's opening track "In Quintessence.") So, yeah, I could keep going back to the well, but I'm going to show a little restraint. 

Still, I'm gonna go with a third cut (joining "Quintessence" plus the more obvious "Tempted"). I'm not sure it needs to be "Mumbo Jumbo"--I probably prefer "Piccadilly"--but "Mumbo Jumbo" is one of those tracks that is so emotionally intertwined with a highly specific moment in my life, and that whole thrill of discovering a world of music outside of what I was hearing on the radio or MTV, that it still sends shivers up my spine. Plus, it's ridiculously fun, a song which, like "Cool For Cats" before it, shows that for a brief shining moment, Difford/Tilbrook could toss of a silly pop song and still have it come out sounding incredible. So "Mumbo Jumbo" it is!

Live 1982 (first song in set):

Live 2020: