Song sequels.

Last year James Lileks on The Diner revealed something I never knew, nor really needed to know:  Mungo Jerry, the band that had a massive hit with "In the Summertime" in 1970, tried to do a sequel with "Summer's Gone."

That worked about as well as you might expect.

Still, the idea of a sequel is oh-so-tempting when you've had a hit, especially if it looks like your bite of the cherry is all there is likely to be. You suddenly understand the idea of the sophomore slump---you threw your best pitch and now you can either vary it or throw as near the same pitch again, knowing that that's what the public expects. And then the public yawns and says, "They're still doing that same dumb thing."

Chubby Checker essentially made a career of it---although he had many non-Twist hits, he followed the massive 1960 chart-topper "The Twist" with "Twistin' U.S.A.," "Let's Twist Again," "Slow Twisting," "Twistin' Round the World," "Twist It Up," and, with the Fat Boys in 1988, "The Twist (Yo, Twist!)." All charted. But no less a light than Irving Berlin wiped out with a reworking of "Cheek to Cheek" called (really!) "Back to Back." * What was Irv thinking?

As they say: No one knows nothing. Hey, if I knew what the public wanted, I'd have freaking five books on the best-seller lists now. 

Still, one can only wonder what sequels other musicians might have tried... [Cue woowooshwoo music, woozy screen, dream sequence]

Musician	Song	Sequel
Blue Oyster Cult	Don't Fear the Reaper	Fear the Reaper's Cousin Melvin
The McCoys	Hang On Sloopy	Look Out Below (Sloopy's Fallin')
David Bowie	Suffragette City	Suffragette Sprawl
Paul McCartney/Wings	Band on the Run	Band Settles Down, Gets Work
Jethro Tull	Thick as a Brick	Slimn as a Hymn
Peter Gabriel	Shock the Monkey	Revenge of the Monkey
The Drifters	Under the Boardwalk	Over the Tattoo Parlor
Sir Mix-a-Lot	Baby Got Back	I Changed My Mind About the Butts
Bill Withers	Ain't No Sunshine (When She's Gone)	Now There's Sunshine (Since She's Back)**
Chuck Berry	Sweet Little Sixteen	Bitter Old Seventeen
The Lemonheads	It's a Shame About Ray	Sucks About Bob, Too
R.E.M.	Losing My Religion	Also Lost My Car Keys
Shirley Ellis	The Name Game	The Date of Birth-Social Security Number Game
The Bangles	Walk Like an Egyptian	Crawl Like an Etruscan
Murray Head	One Night in Bangkok	Equals Three Nights in Buffalo
Dire Straits	Sultans of Swing	Barons of Bebop
Don Henley	The Boys of Summer	The Puberty of Autumn
John Mellancamp	Jack & Diane	Jack, Diane, Jack Jr., Lynnette, Little Peewee, Francis, and Ditty the Labradoodle
The Free Design	Kites Are Fun	Balloons Are Okay
Frank Sinatra	My Way	(Thud)
Led Zeppelin	Stairway to Heaven	Dumbwaiter to Purgatory
Benny Goodman	Sing, Sing, Sing	Shut up, Shut up, Shut up
The Foo Fighters	Long Road to Ruin	Wide U-turn to Resignation
The Shangri-Las	Leader of the Pack	Treasurer of the Pack
Pink Floyd	Learning to Fly	Get Me the Hell Down
Clint Holmes	Playground in My Mind	Parking Lot in My Medulla
Tony Orlando & Dawn	Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree	Tie a Pink Bandanna to the Willow Stump
ABBA	Waterloo	Gettysburg
Bobby Darrin	Mack the Knife	Bill the Spork
Leslie Gore	It's My Party (And I'll Cry if I Want to)	It's the Next Day (Still Cryin')

* Really: "That's that new attack / That the other dances lack / You can see what goes on in the hall /When you dance back to back"

** He knows, he knows, he knows, he knows, he knows, he knows, etc.