Five minutes or less: I couldn't think of what to say

Oh, the languorousness of this first single off the fifth, overall kinda meh TT album! Up to the incongruous DD-style bridge--no wonder, as with "The Reflex," Alex Sadkin produced the album/track, which Nile Rodgers came in and zhuzhed (Chic-ed?) up--it's delightful. Unlike "Doctor! Doctor!," which, when played on the radio, I would gaze up at my DD poster hung in the angled ceiling of my closet, this track was reserved for thinking about 3D humans that you'd see putting books into lockers and kicking soccer balls. The songs, Irish twins released only 11 months apart in the same year, illustrate the difference between a teen in 8th grade (and at the end of 8 long years in the same grade school) and a teen in high school. Still moony-eyed when expensive synths play exotic sounds, but with different objects of the gaze.

I was in a terrible mood today ("life seems much too long," etc.) up until (sidestepping the obvious puns) I heard this track. 

Wouldn't it be good if we could live without a care?

This one never got its due. It didn't break the Top 40, and was not included in the Pretty in Pink soundtrack, instead covered by Danny Hutton Hitters--a lame-ass move as inexplicable as the changed ending. Roughly ten years earlier, Hutton crooned "Black and White" when he was in Three Dog Night. It's a long way from consciousness-raising cowbell to synth squiggles. 

Obviously, the original is the superior version, and Nik got to perform it at Live Aid . I distinctly remember seeing this part of the concert. How goddamn incredible that was, to watch all of my heroes ally day long. Including, hero though he wasn't at that time, Phil Collins on two continents!

It has such an angular and "aggressive"--and, yes, alien--sound for a longing and introspective song.

Whatever the form, it's just right for now, for figuring out where to go now that there feels like there's spaciousness, and the here where you have been is turning into someplace else. 

Are we gonna let the elevator bring us down?

This one comes from somewhere between convention and instinct. Marking the start of a new time, though if you ask the birds and the trees being smothered by snow outside right now, they don’t care, don’t know, don’t need it. They just need to stay warm and alive, and they have been preparing for this fallow time a while ago, driven by the almighty instinct.

Me, too? I guess I have been applying that guide inside (forgive the PSA and/or morning drive radio speak), preparing for winter’s starkness and solemnity. Somewhere behind it are outrageous colors, ease in the air...and the purple banana?

I'm sick of sitting 'round here trying to write this book

If no one can understand why I need to listen to this song over and over and over and over, they are living in the middle of the ocean.

All else are castles built in the air

I've been listening to this playlist because 1984 is, of course, the Best Year. These spins ease into 1985, too, but I don't mind that. After all, the early months of year was a continuation of '84 musically--Purple Rain, Born in the USA, and Wham! are represented--and in that we were still wearing natural fabrics and Madonna-inspired flounce and flash (and rubber bracelets), with the neon, knit, and cut-outs of the latter months not having taken hold.

Where was I?

This song.



I like this song because of its similarity in tempo and atmosphere to her bigger, and, of course, Best Year hit . It doesn't quite fit the movie, but it fits Tina's ca 1984-85 zeitgeist.

And, duh, the same dudes wrote it.

Someday I'll figure out why those 18-24 months hit so hard, then and now.

Pointless Radio Reviews: They Don't Know

I decided to review what’s playing on retro pop radio. Because somebody had to. 

“They Don’t Know,” Tracey Ullman. 1984.

Tracey takes on Connie Francis (via Kisty MacColl), and wins, because she sits behind a personalized car windshield with Paul McCartney. A great hit and heavy MTV rotator that we can probably thank for The Simpsons.

I always thought you'd be by my side

Me Now: How come u didn't go to the Purple Rain tour when you could have?

Me Then: I liked him, but I had to spend my money wisely--on L'Oreal eye shadow and Duran Duran import 12-inches.

Me Now: Gah---gackkk--ah. DUMMY!You liked Purple Rain...you liked it a LOT.

Me Then: Yeah, but I didn't buy it. Taped it off the radio...

Me Now: One lousy dime!!

Me Then: But none of my friends were going. I think. No, they weren't.

Me Now: You couldn't find a way to go?? I mean, you had to figure it out sometime. How else would you finally see U2 for the 45 (50?) dollars no one else was gonna pay to go with you?

Me Then: Yeah, but the concert was on a Saturday, and we had a speech tournament that day. We had to have. Or I had to work (and then go directly to Record Bar and buy another 12-inch).

Me Now: Just...just watch this:



Me Then: Goddamn.

Me Now: GODDAMN.

Random Play: Crushed my groove again

Now, it's distance and time that allows me to approach this track as an audiophile might. When it was contemporary, though, it was among a number of music videos I'd impatiently wait through in order to gawk at "The Reflex" one more time.

I could've sworn on a stack of shiny vintage car keys that this track as produced by same dude that produced ZZ Top--and not solely because it's firmly set in the world of fast vehicles and has a mid-Eighties video with a cast of a thousand extras.


Sammy Hagar - I Can't Drive 55 by jpdc11

No, I'm wrong, though Ted Templeman, unsurprisingly, did helm Van Halen records, and, very surprisingly, earlier recordings that are both ecstatic and smooth.

Which means the same dude that brought you "Hot For Teacher" also made "Tupelo Honey" happen.

I love the spectrum.

I didn't, however, love my dinner at the Red Rocker's restaurant in Cabo. He should stick to music.

JUMP BACK! What's that sound?

Back to the week of July 7, 1984: gaining eight spots on the charts that week is that shiny machine:




I've got to work on my high kick.

And heaven waits here at the door

Seven months and seven days in, I've got to start commemorating the Best Year Ever, which was, staggeringly, thirty years ago.

Coming in at number 7 this week, July 7, 1984:

Ain't lost yet so I gotta be a winner

I'm letting the Universe decide if I am going to get to do this next month. If I can get a ride back from the depths of western Wisconsin (the Minneapple, basically), then...and then...

Take away the pain and drink the wine

This brings me the exact amount of joy it did upon its first arrival in my senses. Furthermore, I believe The Swing was the first album I purchased as a high schooler, or at least as a rising one.

Your Guilty Pleasure: I'll give you all that you need

I've always been a fan of this one (love the dresses, ladies), and research shows that I'd better get around to seeing Love, Actually since it's continually recommended to me (and because I'm not going to take time now or ever to find out what "Girls Aloud" is). And I need it for some research for that show of mine that I've had in mind for so long and that just may be--finally--coming together.

Otherwise, I've always adored this song and had every leap in the video memorized since my eyeballs were glued to MTV daily during the summer of 1984 (particularly during nap times when babysitting) to sate my by-then-full-blown Duran Duran obsession. I'd probably--and with much ecstasy--discovered and purchased this book in the Fayette Mall Waldenbooks by the time "Jump (For My Love" hit the top of everything in July.

So a random tune-in to Internet radio this morning produced this, just randomly as if I had planted myself in front of Kathleen and Steve's Zenith to scan for Duran.

However, today, I don't need to see what I thought I was seeking after all--it's right here, in front of me.

Today's Shuffle: Home again and feeling right

It's good to be in sunny C....hicago. It's good to be home. Maybe I'm not absorbing as much vitamin D was I was through the windshield the last six days, but it's still shining.

I'll take it, 2013, I'll take it.

Level 42, Something About You  World Machine
U2, Pride (In the Name of Love)  Unforgettable Fire
Talk Talk, It's My Life  It's My Life
Beastie Boys, Jimmy James Check Your Head
Lauryn Hill, Doo Wop (That Thing)  The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
Carole King, Home Again Tapestry
Elvis Costello & The Attractions, I Hope You're Happy Now  Goodbye Cruel World
Juliana Hatfield, Stay Awake  Made in China
Nickel Creek, Beauty and the Mess  This Side
Uncle Tupelo, Watch Me Fall  Still Feel Gone
The Whites, Keep On The Sunny Side  O Brother, Where Art Thou? Soundtrack
Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Keep On Looking  100 Days, 100 Nights
Late Night Alumni, I Knew You When  Hed Kandi: Beach House
Beck, Strange Apparition  The Information

Today's Shuffle: You can't discrima-hatecause you done read a book or two

Guess it's time I tell you that I love Hall & Oates. 1975-83 only!

Wait --  through 1984. I kind of liked some stuff on Big Bam Boom. Because you know I like pretty much anything from 1984.

But that's a different post.

"I Can't Go For That" isn't my favorite track, though it does make me giggle thinking back to how my friend Eva and I assigned every track on her copy of Private Eyes to each of our Barbies to perform in what I guess was a Barbies Present Hall & Oates variety show in her living room. A precursor to reality singing competitions!

We should be rich.

Billy Bragg, From a Vauxhall Velox Back to Basics
Juliana Hatfield, Untitled How to Walk Away
David Bowie, Sweet Thing (Reprise) Diamond Dogs
Annie Lennox, Oh God (Prayer) Bare
Daryl Hall & John Oates, I Can't Go For That (No Can Do) Greatest Hits
Outkast Feat. Erykah Badu, Humble Mumble Stankonia
The Band, King Harvest The Band
The Beatles, What Goes On Rubber Soul
Arrested Development, Washed Away 3 Years, 3 Months in the Life Of...
Crowded House, Pour Le Monde Time On Earth
Field Music, Ce Soir Plumb