Life is weird. Death, too, I guess.

Do you ever get in the melancholy mood for some old favorite tune and you dig it out and then listen to it over and over and over again? Like, 80 times?

No, I'm not talking about "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue" — although I suppose if that's the sorta song you personally would listen to over and over for bittersweet nostalgia, well, go for it.

Two gorgous ballads I've kept coming back to over the years are from one of the best bands of all time, the Dutch group Kayak. One is called "Irene," from their Starlight Dancer album, and the other is "Patricia Anglaia" off their Royal Bed Bouncer record.

I've spent part of two days listening to these two songs — "Irene" in the car and "Patricia Anglaia" here at my desk — and I just don't get tired of either of them. I don't get tired of marvelling how beautiful they are and how the band arranged and performed them and, yes, how largely ignored both are.

Each tune starts with mournful, arpeggiated, minor key piano patterns, but then moves into a subtly different direction. "Irene," an instrumental, adds predictable textures — strings, counter keyboard lines, bass-and-drums substructure and, ultimately, a tear-inducingly great guitar melody.

"Patricia Anglaia," though, relies on a different idea. The main melody is sung by a woman — but there are no lyrics, just the melody. Probably the most famous example of this in rock 'n' roll would be "The Great Gig in the Sky," the haunting work from Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon.

(I'm sure there's a technical term for this technique — probably something like "Ridiculously Operatic Babe Sings Wordless Hook.")

Anyhoo, that's what happens in "Patricia Anglaia." It's just a woman with the sort of voice that would cause jealous angels to rip each other apart with bone knives. The singer who guested on the track is named Patricia Paay — for years a sorta-famous singer in the Netherlands -- and it's unknown, at least to me, whether it's a coincidence or if she's the Patricia. *

(It would seem a little odd if Patricia was singing her own song — although Chrissie Hynde kicked the hell out of "I Go To Sleep," which I believe her then-boyfriend Ray Davies wrote for her.)

In any event, whomever "Patricia Anglaia" is/was, she must have inspired the hell out of Kayak drummer Pim Koopman because he's the guy who wrote the song. I remember thinking at the time (this would be the mid-70s) that it was pretty cool of Koopman; not that many drummers composed. And if they did, the songs generally weren't anywhere near as lovely as this. Of course, at the time, Koopman was also the band's lead vocalist, so his penchant for astounding melody was pretty well established — at least in the circles who'd know Kayak.

I also felt sorry for Koopman because the song very much suggests — even without words or maybe precisely because there are no words — that somehow Patricia Anglaia broke his heart.

I don't ascribe anything mystical or Ghost Hunter-y about any of this, but it's true that, this morning, after my first repeated listenings to the song in several months, I heard the news that Pim Koopman passed away near Thanksgiving of a heart attack — just two days after a gig on Kayak's latest tour.

I can't properly express how much "Patricia Anglaia" has meant to me over the years. It's just a wonder-work of grace and loneliness and elegance. Listen to it here and see tell me what you think.

* Okay, I just googled Patricia Paay and discovered she appeared in last December's Playboy as the oldest model to ever appear in the magazine! I'm not making this up! Plus: she has apparently been a recurrent nude-o in the periodical over time. Who knew? And, yes, it's the same Patricia Paay!

That's sorta like finding out that Jenna Jameson actually wrote all of your favorite Emily Dickinson poems. Or something like that.

How ironic is it that Koopman died the same month the magazine hit the newsstands! Erk! NO! I don't want to think about this anymore — and I will NOT let this ruin the song for me.

Sigh … Pim, thanks for all you did and for that song — and Rest In Peace.