Ear Wyrm

Earwyrm taken from the German translation of Ohrwurm- my own spelling of Earworm. A song that won’t leave you alone although years have gone by it continues to haunt you.

I have had these lyrics in my head for years now: “She had a birthmark that looked just a staple…paper thin, paper skin”.

I knew it was from a band possibly from Seattle in the late 80’s called Maurice and the Cliques. The song reminds me of the smell of Aqua Net Hair Spray Extra Super Hold in the the white with pink fishnet design and a pack of stale clove cigarettes. To this day I can still smell the record store Second Time Around,(Which still has the same facade and day-glo abortion pink and yellow paint) it always smelled of stale cigs and old dusty vinyl records.
That smell still is a magical elixir for me, if they bottled it and called it 1988 I’d buy it. (A dash of clove, dusty records, stale cigarettes, diesel, oil, Aqua-Net and Patchouli.)
Reminiscent of dusty records, hot “batcaver” aka The Ave Rats boys smoking outside on The Ave in The U-District.
They’d loiter outside in murders of black clad rebellious teens outside of the record store wearing spiked dog collars and cuffs, black trench coats or black leather jackets with CRASS and local favorites The U-Men scrawled in white paint. This is in the time before Hot Topics and we’d often used Black Sharpie to paint our nails black and to get a quick buzz. (I liked to sniff those Sharpies.)

Marice and The Cliques- Softcore
Love his snide voice, and dark new wave keyboards.