Listen: Purple Heart / Margaret Explosion
Purple Heart / Margaret Explosion

There was a pretty daunting documentary on some sci-fi or mystery channel a few nights back, which I started watching at around 3:45 AM, trying anything at that point to cure my insomnia. Not only did the unsolved murders in North America theme fit the late, late hour, but so too did it’s soundtrack. Set to music which kind of replicated the old MYSTERY THEATER radio series theme but with more subtle menace, it made me wonder, were there any singles ever recorded that might indeed capture all this as well.

A few nights later, I was playing through stacks of around ten 7″ singles at a pop, throwing them onto my RCA changer. I really love that player, even if the permanent large center spindle eliminates UK 7′s altogether. Oh, and there’s one final detail about these machines, the last record in the stack, which ends up as the top one on the turntable, will play repeatedly until you manually shut off the device.

Last one in that stack: ‘Purple Heart’. Playing through for a third or fourth time, it suddenly struck me that song perfectly satisfied my quest for a 7″ with true sonic soundtrack paranoia qualities.

Play this alone in your country cabin during a thunderstorm and don’t be surprised by a visit from some Richard Speck wacko. ‘Purple Heart’ has the qualities to conjure up such thoughts.