Brett Seybert

I’ve been on a music nostalgia kick lately. A few weeks ago, we were out with the kids and, for some reason, the phrase “American Girls” worked its way into the conversation and I, of course, immediately needed to listen to the song of that name by a band named “HOMIE¹”. Turns out, this song is not part of the available music on any of the three major streaming services. I know I had this song as part of my old iCloud Music Library uploaded via the old iTunes Match service at some point (my collection of random Weezer-adjacent B-sides was, for a few years from like 1999 through 2002 or so, immaculate), but it wasn’t showing up in my library of songs on Apple Music either. Needless to say, it became my personal mission to find and rip a copy of the Meet the Deedles: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack that included the only officially recorded version of this song. Luckily for me, a Goodwill in Racine, Wisc., had a copy of the CD for sale for less than three bucks, shipped, on eBay. It arrived and I’ve since ripped and uploaded it to my Apple Music library and my “American Girls and Boys” playlist is now complete.

Relatedly, sometime in the days between the inciting incident mentioned above and the arrival of my eBay purchase, another song from my Apple Music library uploads came on while I was driving around with my 3-year-old daughter. This song, as far as my records indicate, is named “Hello” by a band I have listed as Planet Janet. My daughter LOVES this song and we’ve listened to it probably six thousand times in the weeks since. I also love this song and remember downloading it from a Weezer message board some time around the turn of the century – it’s filed next to “Dr. Frank Was Right” by The Benjamins in my brain which leads me to believe I was introduced to both of these songs around the same time and probably had them on a cool mix CD together and that song is from an album that came out in 2001. Anyway, this is the only song that I remember ever hearing from this band and I can’t remember if the reason the song was shared on this message board was because they opened for Weezer or opened for Ozma or were just a band that one of the other commenters on the message board liked (or maybe even was in) or something. Weezerpedia does not list Planet Janet as a band that ever toured with or performed with Weezer and the rest of my internet searching has turned up absolutely nothing on this band or the song. It’s a little frustrating because it’s seriously a jam and my daughter and I would both love to hear any other songs they ever did. I’m going to transcribe the lyrics here to the best of my ability just so they exist somewhere on the internet.

40,000 ways to say “Hello”
And I forget how to walk - oh nevermind
How do thirty seconds pass and I give up
And figure “This’ll take another week”
But another week comes and another day
Another awkward silence trying to find a simple way to say
To say…

“Won’t you stop and talk to me?”
Acknowledge my existence
I know I’ve been persistent
But won’t you stop and talk to me
…
Thirty times a day I’ve looked your way
Tongue-tied I fantasize about what I would say
If you were to waste your breath on me
But then I blink and I’m back suffering through my reality
But another week comes and another day
Another awkward silence trying to find a simple way to say
To say…

“Won’t you stop and talk to me?”
Acknowledge my existence
I know I’ve been persistent
But won’t you stop and talk to me
[some words I can’t make out]
And I don’t know what to do

And maybe I try too hard to make you notice me
So I’ll count my lucky stars and look distracted and sleepy
I’ll bet that Kara Beardsley never had to go to such great lengths
But as her bra size grew her brain seemed to shrink

… do do di do do do do do do di do . . .

“Won’t you stop and talk to me?”
Acknowledge my existence
I know I’ve been persistent
But won’t you stop and talk to me
[some words I can’t make out]
And I don’t know what to do