Music at the Baby Shower

Everybody Have Fun Tonight

A 1986 song by Wang Chung, previously discussed, from their album Mosaic. It reached #2 in the US, #76 in the UK, and was most popular in Canada, at #1. The song has been included on numerous compilation records, and still gets radio airplay in the US.

Who’s That Girl?

One of the “generic jazz” songs. It’s performed by Chris White and Danny Schogger. Chris White is an English saxophonist who has performed with Dire Straits, Robbie Williams, Tom Jones, Bryan Ferry, Paul McCartney, and Mick Jagger. Danny Schogger was the producer on his only solo album.

Baby Face

Previously discussed. Rory sings karaoke to the song. Every time she gets to the word “baby,” the women gesture for her to leave it out so she doesn’t lose her diaper pin. Rory manages to sing every note wrong.

Finger Snap

One of the “generic jazz” songs. It’s by Chucho Merchán, the professional name of Colombian jazz and rock bassist and guitarist Jesús Merchán, from his album Jazz. He has performed with artists such as The Eurhythmics, The Pretenders, Thomas Dolby, George Harrison, Peter Townsend, Dave Gilmour, and Everything But the Girl.

Wang Chung and Billy Joel

SHERRY: Finding something was impossible. I would be looking for my Wang Chung or Billy Joel and I would just have to give up.

Wang Chung: English New Wave band formed in 1980 by Nick Feldman, Jack Hues and Darren Costin. The name Wang Chung means “yellow bell” in Chinese, and is the first note in the Chinese classical music scale. The band found their greatest success in the US, with five top 40 hits there, all charting between 1983 and 1987, including “Dance Hall Days” (1984) and “Everybody Have Fun Tonight” (1986).

William “Billy” Joel (born 1949) [pictured], singer, pianist, composer, and songwriter. He has led a commercially successful career as a solo artist since the 1970s, having released 12 pop and rock studio albums from 1971 to 1993 as well as one studio album of classical compositions in 2001. He is one of the best-selling music artists of all time.

Joel has released 33 self-written Top 40 hits in the US, with three of them reaching #1 (“It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me”, “Tell Her About it”, and “We Didn’t Start the Fire”). He has won 6 Grammy Awards, was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1992, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, and the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2006. He received the Johnny Mercer Award for songwriting in 2001 and the Kennedy Center Honors for the arts in 2013. He has had a successful concert career, and continues to tour.

Jan and Dean

LUKE: I know a little about cars, that was all gibberish.

KIRK: Oh, well, would you mind not telling people about this? I’ve cultivated a reputation as sort of a car aficionado and in reality, all I have is a Jan and Dean record.

Jan and Dean, rock duo consisting of William Jan Berry (1941-2004) and Dean Torrence (born 1940). In the early 1960s, they were pioneers of the California Sound and vocal surf music styles popularised by the Beach Boys. Their song “Surf City” (1963) was the first surf song to reach #1. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.

Several of their songs are about cars, including “Drag City” (1963), “The Little Old Lady from Pasadena” (1964), and “Dead Man’s Curve” (1964).

In 1966, Berry had a serious car accident on Dead Man’s Curve in Beverley Hills, two years after writing a song about it. He was in a coma for two months, and had to recover from brain damage and partial paralysis. He returned to the studio in 1967, almost a year to the day since his accident.

“They’re cousins, identical cousins”

LORELAI: Hey, what do you know about this town loner guy?

LUKE: Same as everyone. Just kind of skulks around with that backpack, never smiles.

LORELAI: Does he also make cheeseburgers and secretly harbor a desire to wear a backwards baseball cap? … [sings] They’re cousins, identical cousins . . .

Lorelai sings the theme song to The Patty Duke Show, a sitcom which ran from 1963 to 1966, and featured teenage star Patty Duke, previously mentioned, as “identical cousins” Patty and Cathy Lane, who looked the same, but had opposing tastes and personalities – so not really a very good reference if she is trying to imply that Luke and the Town Loner are very similar in their demeanour and habits.

“Ground control to Major Tom”

LORELAI: [sings] Ground control to Major Tom . . .

Lorelai sings the opening words to “Space Oddity”, a 1969 song by David Bowie, from his album of the same name. It was released on July 11, in order to come out just ahead of the Apollo 11 Moon landing. The lyrics are about an astronaut known as Major Tom who undertakes a solo space flight which malfunctions, leaving him floating through space, and seemingly unable or unwilling to make radio contact with Earth.

The song was praised by critics and used by the BBC during its coverage of the Moon landing, but initially sold poorly, and was banned in the US, due to its lyrics which repeat that “something’s wrong”, and its downbeat ending. After Bowie sang the song on Top of the Pops in October, the song rose to #5 in the UK. “Space Oddity” was released in the US in 1972, where it peaked at #15, becoming Bowie’s first US hit. It remains one of Bowie’s most popular songs, and is regarded as one of his greatest.

Lorelai sings this song as accepting her fate in going to the concert, as Major Tom calmly accepts his fate. (The song also mentions “planet earth is blue”, chiming in with Lorelai being told to wear blue to the concert).

However, Bowie didn’t actually perform “Space Oddity” on his Heathen Tour in the US, although he did sing “Ashes to Ashes” and “Hallo Spaceboy” – two other songs of his that feature the character of Major Tom. The three songs are sometimes known as the Major Tom Trilogy. “Space Oddity” was performed only once during the tour, in Horsens, Denmark.

Blue Crush

[Rory, soaked from the sprinklers, runs down the street and bumps into Jess]

RORY: Get out of my way.

JESS: I like the new look. It’s very Blue Crush.

Blue Crush, a 2002 sports film directed by John Stockwell, based on Susan Orlean’s 1998 article “Life’s Swell” in Outside magazine. It stars Kate Bosworth, Michelle Rodriguez, and Sanoe Lake as three friends in Hawaii who share a passion for surfing. The film was a commercial success, and received modestly positive reviews.

Blue Crush came out in August 2002, so Jess may have seen it over the summer (it feels like it could have been Shane’s choice of film?). Note this is another mention of Lauren Graham’s home state of Hawaii! The film’s soundtrack includes a song by Jamaican DJ Beenie Man (stage name of Anthony Davis) – a possible inspiration for the name Beenie Morrison?

Jess is saying that Rory is so wet she looks as if she has been surfing (and she’s wearing a blue uniform). The choice of the title is provocative – “blue” like erotica, a “blue movie”, plus the word “crush”. It sounds as if he is saying Rory looks like his “sexy crush”!

Cardio Salsa, Miami Sound Machine

Salsa [pictured] is an energetic Latin dance, associated with the music genre of the same name, which was first popularised in the United States in the 1960s in New York City. Salsa is an amalgamation of Cuban dances, such as mambo, pachanga and rumba, as well as American dances such as swing and tap. It was primarily developed by Puerto Ricans and Cubans living in New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Cardio salsa is a high-impact fitness routine that uses salsa dancing to keep the heart rate elevated at the same level it would be during jogging.

Miami Sound Machine, previously discussed.

It is never said where Lorelai got the cardio salsa tape that she shows Rory, but it’s interesting that Rory bought Michel a cardio salsa tape for Christmas in 2000 (Season 1). Has he re-gifted it to Lorelai? Rory never says that she recognises it, but she certainly doesn’t seem impressed.

Bowie’s Farewell Tour

LORELAI: There’s no way I could stand this guy for another night. I’ll catch Bowie the next time he does a farewell tour.

David Bowie’s Heathen Tour in 2002 was not his farewell tour, or his final tour, nor was it ever planned to be so or promoted as such. His final tour was A Reality Tour in support of his Reality album, beginning in Denmark in October 2003, and brought to a sudden end in June 2004.

David Bowie suffered a heart attack on stage in Prague on June 23, and the tour was cut short after a music festival in Germany the next evening due to continued discomfort. The tour was officially cancelled after Bowie was diagnosed with an acutely blocked artery that required an angioplasty procedure (performed on 26 June). It was only after this incident that David Bowie decided his touring days were over, and he retired from live performance in 2006.

Lorelai seems to be aware that time is running out to catch David Bowie live (he was then in his mid-fifties), and perhaps also that her chances of dating a wealthy man who can pay for the tickets again is slender. However, Lorelai could have seen David Bowie at Madison Square Garden in New York City on 15 December 2003 – which really would have been his next time in New York, and his farewell tour. This makes her comment seem rather prescient.

Midnight at the Oasis

This is the song which plays when Rory looks at the clock at Dwight’s house, while putting the African violets back. It’s a woven basketwork clock that a china figurine pops out of when the hour strikes.

“Midnight at the Oasis” is a 1973 song written by David Nichtern. It was recorded by Maria Muldaur for her self-titled debut album, and released as a single in 1974. It peaked at #6 in the US, and was the #13 song of the year, becoming one of Muldaur’s most popular concert songs.

“Midnight at the Oasis” is about an offer of a love affair in a fantasy desert location, and is considered to be one of the most sensual songs of the 1970s, apparently inspiring numerous sexual encounters. It seems as if Dwight has more than just board games in mind now he’s moved to Stars Hollow! Perhaps he’s even set his sights on Lorelai – the gossipy Babette would have told him Lorelai was single.

The clock reads eight o’clock at this point, providing the name of the episode, “Eight O’clock at the Oasis”. I can’t see how it can be 8 am – Rory is meant to be at school in five minutes! And although they were running slightly late, Lorelai still thought they could have breakfast at Luke’s, as long as she drove Rory to school. Why do the Gilmore girls seem to have all the time in the world sometimes, and at others, time just suddenly disappears? They weren’t at Dwight’s for that long.

David Bowie Concert

LORELAI: Well, first, he asked me to the David Bowie concert next week.

David Bowie’s 2002 concert tour was the Heathen tour, promoting his latest album Heathen, which came out in June that year. It opened in New York City on June 11, before going back and forth through Europe and the US.

By October 11, Bowie was back in New York, with the final concert in the city being Sunday October 20 at the Beacon Theatre on Broadway [pictured]. That is the last possible date Lorelai and Peyton could have gone to his concert – and if that was the week after their first date, it suggests that this scene takes place around the second week of October.

There is no way that this tallies with the timeline within the show, way too much has happened for it only to be early October, so it’s probably best to think of it as a fictional concert date. On the rare occasions when real world events are mentioned as impinging on the action, they rarely match up exactly with the dates within the show. But I think it is safe to say it is now late October, so they only seem to be running about two weeks behind the real world.