Today we have two from Aimee Mann, a singer-songwriter who is the only performer at the Bronze to ever have a line of dialogue in the Buffy episode "Sleeper" in Season 7.
And it's really a good line:
Man, I hate playing vampire towns.
She utters her line while coming offstage at the Bronze after watching Spike dust a vampire in front of everyone.
Spike meanwhile has become a "Sleeper" agent for the First Evil, who triggers his vampire rage with a song his mother used to sing to him called "Early One Morning" - an ironic title referring to "as the sun was rising," which is deadly to vampires.
The song "Pavlov's Bell" is especially appropriate for this episode because it refers to the classic psychology experiment in which a dog is conditioned to search for food when the master rings a bell. In this case, Spike obeys the First whenever he hears that song playing, and that leads him to kill and then bury his victims.
"Pavlov's Bell" and "This is how it goes" can be found on Mann's album Lost in Space
. "Pavlov's Bell" is included on both versions of Radio Sunnydale.
Another interesting musical reference in this episode:
In one scene, the bouncer refers to Spike as "a Billy Idol wannabe," and Buffy starts to say that Billy Idol actually stole the look from him (implying Spike had told her this in conversation at some point). In Season Five's Fool for Love, Spike's resemblance to Billy Idol was depicted (though not acknowledged in dialogue) during his flashback fight with the Slayer Nikki Wood in 1977, at which time Spike's attire and hair mimicked Idol almost perfectly, several years before Idol's fame.
Aimee Mann started her singing career in the Big 80s band Til Tuesday and their hit Voices Carry
. She even had the Spike-worthy bleach-blond hair!
