My Top 2000 Songs #1163: Kim The Waitress

The prolific and woefully underappreciated Green Pajamas have been quietly releasing music since the mid-1980s, right up through their most recent 2022 release, blending melodic jangle pop and Paisley Underground-styled retro-psychedelia, often interwoven with themes of lust and witchcraft. The 1986 single "Kim The Waitress" dates way back to the beginning (finally seeing an LP release on the phenomenal 1997 compilation Indian Winter). It's a quietly insinuating track, a restrained, minimalist pop song that expands into an extended sitar-driven psychedelic journey. Like much of the work that followed, there's an odd blend of sexuality and mystery; plus, it's managed to worm its way into my subconscious, to the extent that I still walk into restaurants today and immediately start thinking about Kim the Waitress.

The song earned a well-deserved revival when Chicago power pop act Material Issue gave it a nineties alt.rock punch-up on 1994's Freak City Soundtrack.

Original version:

The Green Pajamas' later, more polished remake:

Material Issue cover:

Sister Psychic cover:

Green Pajamas, live 2010: