Archive for the ‘music’ Category

Best Debut Albums of the 20th Century By Newcomers Who Aren’t Somebody Stupid Like Foreigner

Posted: December 4, 2011 in music, Record reviews
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I finally watched The Doors, which I meant to see in 1991. (I’ve been busy.) Two hours of Jim Morrison self-destructing is not what I’d call a date movie. I did enjoy the Thanksgiving scene at the home of Morrison and his saintly but scatterbrained girlfriend, which ended with a burnt duck and a knife fight. I’m willing to add these features to next year’s feast if we could do it at someone else’s house.

Doors fun fact: Val Kilmer with long hair and a beard looks just like Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski.

The best Doors movie is still Apocalypse Now, but I was glad I saw Oliver Stone’s depressing film because it made me reconnect with his subject. For those of us who are lucky enough to have reached middle age, The Doors are like the authors we read in high school or college and haven’t touched since. Returning to their 1967 debut album for the first time in maybe 20 years, I was stunned. The Doors  rocks, mocks, and mesmerizes. “Break on Through (to the Other Side)” would be the big radio hit for most other acts. Here it’s just the opener. It’s followed by the funky weirdness of “Soul Kitchen.” And we still have “Light My Fire” and “Twentieth Century Fox” waiting in the middle of the record.

It’s hard to believe that four guys who had been working together for a year could have accomplished so much in so short a time. You could pick and choose from The Doors’ other records and create a standout listen. But even if it included songs such as “Touch Me” and “Love Me Two Times,” this new album still wouldn’t be as good as The Doors.

It’s not as if each member of The Doors was an instrumental wizard. They’re good (the drummer is adequate), but together they manage to be unique. And then there’s Jim Morrison. As a songwriter, he can be brilliant or lame, and he can do both in two consecutive lines, as in “LA Woman”:

Motels, money, murder, madness

With four simple nouns, Morrison pins LA like a butterfly.

Let’s change the mood from glad to sadness

Sadly, this is something I could’ve written in 6th grade.

But only Jim Morrison could lead us through the slow-motion asteroid belt that is “The End,” with its plaintive repetition of “the end,” which he finally rhymes with “I’ll never look into your eyes…again.” The song climaxes with enough murder and madness for anyone, along with some trenchant observations along the lines of “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Yeah fuck!” (Here in the U.S., this line is usually printed as “Kill! Kill! Kill! Yeah kill!”) I could only play The Doors when my parents weren’t home. This was the ultimate trip when I was 12 and I was delighted to discover that I’m still transported by it.

The Doors is the best debut ever recorded
Being me, I wondered which albums would fill out the Debut Top 10. So I made a list. And being me, there are 11 contestants in the Top 10.

The most important part of any project is making sure you can get it done before you die. To keep things manageable, I set these rules:

* 20th century only. I’m not confident picking rock albums after about 1995.

* No country, alt-country, neocountry, outlaw country, or in-law country. Metal is ridiculous. Reggae isn’t, but it doesn’t appeal. I made one exception for rap.

* Since The Doors is named for The Doors, each album must have the same name as the band. A few disqualified yet very worthy discs will appear in my next post.

* I don’t care if the album has the same name as the band, I won’t consider any band named after a U.S. city or state, or any members of the REO Styxjourneywagon military-industrial complex.

* The band has to be composed of newcomers. Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, and Crosby, Stills & Nash are out of bounds.

Here then are my picks for Best Debut Albums of the 20th Century By Newcomers Who Aren’t Somebody Stupid Like Foreigner:

The Velvet Underground, The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967)

Creedence Clearwater Revival, Creedence Clearwater Revival (1968)

The Clash, The Clash (1977)

The B-52s, The B-52s (1979)

The Undertones, The Undertones (1979)

Pretenders, Pretenders (1980)

Run-D.M.C., Run-D.M.C. (1984)

The Smiths, The Smiths (1984)

Tracy Chapman, Tracy Chapman (1989)

Moby, Moby (1992)

Some thoughts on each:

The Velvet Underground, The Velvet Underground and Nico
Maureen Howard, the drummer, has no sense of rhythm, and Lou Reed sings like Bob Dylan. If you call that singing. They make The Doors sound like the Vienna Philharmonic. But this garbage scow of a record has left miles of ripples behind it. The Doors had the talent, but the Velvets incited people to make their own music. I don’t know what Nico actually contributed here, and I hate her voice, so I’m pretending that “and Nico” isn’t in the title.

Creedence Clearwater Revival, Creedence Clearwater Revival
This one is a tour of American roots music. In that respect it resembles The Beatles’ debut, Please Please Me, which is about half covers of American R&B artists. Creedence Clearwater Revival has their lengthy cover of “Suzie Q,” which fills the A and B sides of one 45. “Porterville,” one of their originals, showed us where CCR was going.

The Clash, The Clash
The Clash, The Sex Pistols and The Damned all released their first records in 1977, but Johnny Rotten gets on my nerves and The Damned, while riotous, were less technically accomplished than The Velvet Underground. The Clash was a revolution and is one of the most serious competitors to The Doors. “I’m So Bored with the U.S.A.,” “White Riot,” and most of the rest of this lineup hit you like a flight of airborne watermelons.

The B-52s, The B-52s
Wall-to-wall party, featuring “Planet Claire,” “Dance This Mess Around,” and the greatest song of all time, “Rock Lobster.” I wish I could go back in time and swap some babies. My Hanukkah wish is to hear Fred Schneider handle the vocals on “The End” and Jim Morrison tackle “Rock Lobster.” If you imagine the albums on this list existing on a spectrum that runs from serious to frivolous, Tracy Chapman and The B-52s would be the farthest apart.

The Undertones, The Undertones
Take The Clash’s ferocity about politics and focus it on teenagers and their pitiful troubles and you have The Undertones. Cons: This record is a monoculture. The only variation between songs is in the speed with which they’re played. Pros: The 14 songs on this disc are barely half an hour long. The uniformity of sound doesn’t have time to wear out its welcome. “Teenage Kicks” still gets the airplay, but wait’ll you hear “Jimmy Jimmy.” Bonus: As good as this record is, their second album, Hypnotised (which includes their masterpieces, “There Goes Norman” and “My Perfect Cousin”), is even better. Of all the bands I’ve reviewed here, only The Undertones and CCR turned in a substantially superior performance the second time around.

Pretenders, Pretenders
Women have always had to fight for their right to rock. Bands like Heart don’t help. But Chrissie Hynde not only rocked, she disemboweled. There is no song in rock like “Tattooed Love Boys” and few women who can write words and music at Hynde’s high level. Pretenders is still a beacon for the ages. I wrote about the Pretenders at Ladies of the Eighties.

Run-D.M.C., Run-D.M.C.
Recently I ate lunch at a hip Portland burger place full of pale white 20somethings uniformly dressed in black and listening to 50 Cent with the volume cranked to 11. Given my stage of life, I deserved a free burger for correctly identifying 50 Cent. The cashier didn’t see it that way. I came along too late to get into rap, but in 1984 even I could tell that Run-D.M.C. was an early clue to a new direction. I don’t want to listen to it, but I have to acknowledge it. Now get off my lawn.

The Smiths, The Smiths
I always thought these guys were pretty funny, though I’m guessing that they weren’t trying to be, like when they sang about people dying. Here on The Smiths they already sound like veterans, and in fact in the four short years they were together they hardly varied their sound at all. I like to think that The Smiths’ collective philosophy of relationships is summed up by two back-to-back song titles on this disc: “What Difference Does It Make?” and “I Don’t Owe You Anything.”

Tracy Chapman, Tracy Chapman
Makes you want to reach through the speakers and hold her. Chapman was only 25 when Tracy Chapman appeared, but it was already obvious that she was in total control of her talent and able to tell someone’s life story in a couple hundred super-sharp words. What’s more heart-breaking than “Fast Cars” and the vicious life pattern the narrator struggles to escape? As for “Talkin’ ’Bout a Revolution,” this song has never gone out of style. Just ask Occupy Wall Street.

Moby, Moby
In the ’90s I discovered trance, house, and other forms of electronica. Once I found that I could sink into stuff like Moby and literally enter a trance-like state while I was writing, I was sold. Moby is an odd one, a vegetarian Christian who makes dance music for 24-hour party people who majored in recreational drugs. Praise the Lord and pass the beets.

Next post: Best Debut Albums of the 20th Century By Newcomers Who Didn’t Name Their Debut After Themselves and Who Aren’t Somebody Stupid Like Foreigner. Until then, the Twentieth-Century Fox I married asks you to remember that when the music’s over, turn out the lights.

A very special Run-DMSteve Thanksgiving

Posted: November 25, 2011 in Miscellaneous, music
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Today I give thanks for one of the many blessings in my life: My loyal readers!

40Rawk is an expert in the music of the 1980s (“I love Psychedelic Furs – as long as no animals are hurt in the process”). 40Rawk and I once had an email conversation in ’80s song titles. When I said I should put at least some of this in my blog, she replied, “The West End Girls would love it. They would have a Black Celebration for sure. But no trashy Girls on Film better show up. Everybody Wants to Rule the World these days.”

After reading my inaugural post, on Lady Gaga, 40Rawk commented:

“And, yes, the best part of the show was when she was fired from beneath the stage like a rocket and landed on her feet like it was nothin’ – oh, yeah, I jump out of bed every morning like that to come to work….I run on the treadmill to Telephone. I’m cool.”

I worked with 50% of the duo who masquerade as CowboyandVampire. Clark, my former co-worker, is an original thinker. He can’t remember if it’s nihilism or sex that sells. His wife reports: “Clark might actually have a clinical diagnosis of Pink Floyd Syndrome. One thing’s for sure: he’s got a little black book to keep his poems in.”

Another former Run-DMSteve co-worker, Orin, is not shy about his love for the ’70s: “I say if you love ABBA, Carpenters, Boney M, Barry Manilow, Nancy Sinatra, embrace it!!!” He is sick of hearing the same song by Yes (“Roundabout”) on local radio and suggests we switch to community radio or listen via satellite.

Mister Seaside had some simple advice for me after I tried to define hippie music: “Take some acid and try it again.” He also wrote, “So you ‘don’t like Knopfler’s voice.’ Next you’ll be writing that Bobby Dylan can’t sing and never could!!!” And I did!

La Société des Monstres has used my blog to overcome some childhood issues, as when she told off her brother: “Yeah, whatever Falco lover!” She found ’70s Week here at Run-DMSteve to be particularly cathartic: “I’m definitely one of the moons willing to orbit the ABBA epicenter.” The following mini-memoir deserves all the space I’m giving it:

“Side note #1: My mom took me to see SNF in the theater! I was seven. When calling the theater beforehand to see why it was rated R she was told it was just some bad language. Thinking that I’d already heard all I was ever going to hear in that department through the paternal lips, she took me. I was taking ballet and I loved to dance and that’s why she took me. Little did she know that SNF is actually one of the most depressing movies in the universe and that through it I would have my very first exposure to suicide and birth control pills (she told me they were cough drops.)”

“Side note #2: I loved the movie however and I had a tape of it that I listened to in our Jeep Wagoneer’s tape deck—I remember it so clearly, even down to the blurry printing on the cassette— that it finally wore out. My parents had NO intention of replacing it, I can tell you. I don’t know how my dad—who is blind and therefore had no visual escape and was a devoté of Beethoven—stood the disco version of Beethoven’s fifth on side 2. I told you I am the musical outcast in my family, but considering how fastidious they were musically, my folks were awfully tolerant of that tape….Barry Gibb in the Stayin’ Alive video looks like Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes.”

Barb and I crossed paths at several Seattle clubs in the early ’80s without actually meeting. Like me, Barb went to a Talking Heads concert on the Stop Making Sense tour:

“I was there at the Seattle show, over on the left about a third of the way back. Can you see me? I’m one of the endless supply of smart, inexperienced white girls with a bachelor’s degree, wearing ripped jeans and tee and way too much eyeliner. You’re right, Talking Heads was like high class porn. The band turned on my mind but did not give me the booty groovin soul experience that James Brown did that same year. Now *that* show was an education!”

Barb would get along famously with MisterSeaside:

“I have many formative memories of separating stems and seeds on my beat-up Dark Side of the Moon album cover. Of cupping my ears into my dad’s ear muffler sized headphones and zoning in the barcalounger while the helicopter of sound zips from one side of my skull to the other. Of going down to the dorm’s basement laundromat and discovering someone stole my Wish You Were Here t-shirt right out of the machine. Of wistfully deciding not to buy the CDs after all — my Pink Floyd experience needs the warm scratchiness of vinyl, the pause before flipping the B side.”

Laurel (who is also Number 9) is not shy about her opinions (“Donovan forever!”). She took exception to what I wrote about Queen: “Hipper than the Grateful Dead? Dude!”

“I have a lot to learn from Run-DMSteve in ’80s Week since my ’80s music appears to have happened on another planet,” she wrote, but accused me of inventing A Flock of Seagulls. If only.

Laurel provided a needed correction to my post on the Messiah: “Bach died in 1750, but who’s counting? I think he would’ve liked The Slits, but not Screaming Trees. He was kind of a romantic.”

Accused of Lurking occupies a special place in the Run-DMSteve chronicles, because he is our most prolific commenter. About America and their ballads he wrote that in his youth, “The lyrics seemed deep and wise and they spoke of longing and experience. Today, reading the lyrics from those songs, I am completely appalled.” And speaking of being appalled: “ ‘Friday’ [by Rebecca Black] is indeed the worst song ever recorded, which is saying a lot for a universe that also includes the song ‘Billy Don’t Be A Hero.’ ”

Accused has offered many trenchant analyses of what goes on in this blog. Here’s one, from my post about local band Red Fang and their video for “Prehistoric Dog”:

“For my money, a music video can never have too many beer cans, be they full, empty, crushed, or tin-snipped apart then spot-welded together to form armor. Of course, this video does come excruciatingly close to having too many beer cans. On second thought, this video crosses the line, re-crosses the line, and then turns the line into a Mobius strip. I would prefer to see the earlier, unreleased version of the video in which the band drank beer from long-neck glass bottles instead of cans.

“For those who are not beer can fans, I would recommend listening to the video while watching the Caps Lock on your keyboard. The song is pretty good once you rise above the distraction of the visuals.

“This music video contains the best spoken dialogue line ever: ‘Totally OOC, Dude.’ ”

Last but never least is Special D, who has inspired me numerous times. The girl has a gift for defining a band or an artist in one sentence:

About AC/DC: “They’re really annoying if you’re not drunk.” Should be a warning on their album covers.

About Coldplay: “I wouldn’t know them from a hole in the garden.” Coldplay probably belongs in a hole in the garden, but they’re so nice that if you needed help, they’d come over and dig all the holes you wanted.

About Frank Sinatra: “He sings like an adult who has had sex.” I’ve been looking for a way to write about Sinatra. This is it.

I’ve had many more comments from many more people, and I’m grateful. “Life’s been so good to me,” is the first line of Oingo Boingo’s “Gratitude.” That song is actually about the singer’s former girlfriend, who was a total bitch, so I’ll stop with the first line. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, and I hope to keep you entertained as Run-DMSteve plunges into Year 2!

Index to Year 1 of Run-DMSteve

Posted: November 20, 2011 in music
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There are more than 100 million blogs in the world, but there’s no one home at most of them. According to the numbers I’ve seen, most blogs are abandoned in the first month. If there is such as thing as the “average blog,” it has the life expectancy of a relationship that began in the “Casual Encounters” section of Craigslist.

But Run-DMSteve is still standing, one year and 47 posts later! In my next post I’ll tell you how and why I launched this publishing juggernaut and what I’ve learned. I’ll also give you the lowdown on my Loyal Readers. Until then, here’s the first year in one handy place. I’ll eventually move it over to the Blogroll column.

Thanks always for reading. Keep on rockin’ in the free world!

Bands

ABBA (’70s Week)

AC/DC (’70s Week)

Aerosmith

A Flock of Seagulls (’80s Week)

America (’70s Week)

The B-52s

Bananarama (’80s Week)

The Baronics vs. Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Pachelbel, and Vivaldi

The Beatles

Cat Power

Coldplay

Dire Straits and their MTV contemporaries

ELO

Gang of Four (’80s Week)

Godsmack, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and The Godfathers

The Grateful Dead and The Moody Blues

Hüsker Dü

Ke$ha and Bruno Mars

Kool & The Gang

Lady Gaga (my debut)

Pink Floyd

Queen (’70s Week)

Red Fang

The Rolling Stones

Santana

Screaming Trees

Simple Minds

Superheavy and Eels

Talking Heads

Tommy Tutone (’80s Week)

Translator (’80s Week)

Yes

 

Genres

Disco (’70s Week)

Dues songs

Grunge

Jazz

 

Miscellaneous

1st Annual Run-DMSteve Music and Sex Survey

Albums

Covers

Favorite songs of the ’70s (’70s Week)

Golden Oldies

Handel’s Messiah

Ladies of the ’80s (’80s Week)

My dogs explained by album titles

New Year’s Eve

Tough love for a Loyal Reader

Tribute to my father-in-law, Capt. Frederick K. Dezendorf

 

Ladies of the Eighties

Posted: November 16, 2011 in Miscellaneous, music
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I finished ’70s Week with a list of my favorite songs of the decade. I gave up on concluding ’80s Week the same way when my list of favorite songs surpassed 200. I’m going to choose one at random and call that my favorite song of the 1980s. OK, reaching into the hat now…The winner: Paul Simon’s “Rene and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After the War.” Done!

With that out of the way we can move on to a more important subject, and that subject is women. My list of favorites from ’70s Week mistakenly gave the impression that I don’t like music made by women. This is not true. I like music made by women and I like women who enjoy music made by women. I can prove these assertions with the ticket stubs to three concerts I took Special D to: Lady Gaga, The Roches, and Cher. Cher’s opening act was Cyndi Lauper so that makes six total women I went out of my way to experience in a concert setting. You’re probably thinking that I acted like a martyr each time, but I did no such thing. I survived Mudhoney. These gals were a snap.

Here’s my attempt at classifying women in music in the 1980s. By including them all here rather than spreading them through ’80s Week I am inadvertently creating a ghetto, but it took me days to write this post so you’ll just have to deal.

1)  Madonna and some lesser satellites
Of course the woman who strides across the 1980s like a colossus is Madonna. However, the only song I like by Madonna, “Vogue,” didn’t happen until the ’90s, which means we are now done with Madonna.

It’s fashionable to laugh at Pat Benatar, probably because she’s laughable. I wish she had fronted for a band rather than zig-zagged around on her own. Van Halen went through a parade of heavy metal idiots after David Lee Roth walked out. They should’ve hired Benatar. She would’ve been fantastic.

I have nothing to say about Bette Midler or Cher except that they don’t make your brain bleed like Mudhoney. Cyndi Lauper angered conservative groups with “She Bop,” which may or may not be about masturbation. Whether it is or not, tally-ho Cyndi Lauper.

2)  Singer/songwriters with folk origins or dangerous country tendencies
The 1980s saw a mob of confessional women following the lead of Joni Mitchell, Joan Armatrading, Judy Collins, Janis Ian, and Melanie. I mostly ignore them. I’m too busy with Pink Floyd. Examples of this phenomenon are Shawn Colvin (“Shotgun Down the Avalanche”), Sarah McLachlan (“Vox”), Edie Brickell (“What I Am”), and Melissa Etheridge (“Bring Me Some Water,” which rocks like a literate ZZ Top). I’ll talk about Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner” and Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” when we get to’90s Week.

The Indigo Girls appeared in the crossword movie Wordplay. They get my respect for that, and for “Closer to Fine.”

Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” is one of the decade’s milestones, while Michelle Shocked’s “If Love Was a Train” is one of the sexier moments (and a lot smarter than Aerosmith’s “Love in an Elevator”).

kd lang’s swinging “Walkin’ in and Out of Your Arms” is a crowd-pleaser, but that’s as country as I get, and I had to work at it. This is why Emmylou Harris is beyond me.

You’ll find Tracy Chapman in category 6 below.

3)  Party out of bounds
Could we live without “Venus,” “I Can’t Help It,” “Walk Like an Egyptian,” “Hero Takes a Fall,” “How Much More,” and “Vacation”? Absolutely not. The world will always need Bananarama, The Bangles, and The Go-Go’s. These bands are better than the critics think. But not a lot better.

4)  Quota system
Women rocked in the ’80s, but they were often limited to one rocking woman per band. (Heart and The B-52s had two women each, but they were from the ’70s so they don’t count.) Here’s how I rate these artists:

Unfortunately for Dale Bozzio, her voice is similar to Cyndi Lauper’s, who came along at the same time and blew past Bozzio’s band, Missing Persons. Their hits “Destination Unknown” and “Windows” were familiar to viewers of early MTV. The music hasn’t aged well plus they sound like somebody imitating Cyndi Lauper.

Margo Timmins is a haunting vocalist, but her brother Michael is the force that makes The Cowboy Junkies go. (Cowboy Junkies are so soft-spoken, I can’t always tell if they’re playing or if they’re resting following a prolonged squawk.)

Talking Heads may have started as equals, but they eventually became David Byrne and his backing musicians. I give Tina Weymouth (and her husband, Chris Frantz) credit for starting their own side project. But the side project they started was The Tom Tom Club, which makes me wish they had started a nice Italian restaurant instead.

Kim Deal didn’t do much with The Pixies (a band I don’t like), so she formed The Breeders (a band I do like) with Tanya Donnelly of Throwing Muses. The Breeders just missed the ’80s. Not many rock stars have had a song written specifically about them by other rock stars (The Dandy Warhols’ “Cool As Kim Deal”).

I always think I should like Donnelly’s Throwing Muses, but I don’t. I start each album with enthusiasm and never make it to the end.

I don’t like Sonic Youth and they don’t like me, so I can’t say anything about Kim Gordon except that she would wake things up, if not send people home, if she opened for Cher.

5)  All in the family
The Runaways were intended to be a tough female version of The Monkees. By “tough,” the record company meant “they might have sex with you.” This probably didn’t work out all that well in reality, but reality has little connection with marketing. Three women from The Runaways forged notable careers in music after that band dissolved: Michael Steele joined The Bangles, while Lita Ford and Joan Jett went off on their own.

Lita Ford was tough enough to play guitar in the male world of metal. Point! But the world of metal isn’t evil and extreme, it’s ridiculous and inane. Counterpoint! Ford worked hard for 10 years before finally scoring a hit, “Kiss Me Deadly.” Point! “Kiss Me Deadly” is deadly forgettable. Counterpoint! Her next hit, “Close My Eyes Forever,” was a duet with…Ozzy Osbourne. Counterpoint! Uh-oh, I don’t want her to lose. Fortunately, Ford spent the ’80s outfitted in rock-star lingerie. I’ll put her back in the plus column for having one of the best derrières in the business. And after a long hiatus and the birth of her children, she is rocking again at 53. Point! Whew. W00t!

In 1981, Joan Jet and her new band, The Blackhearts, took their version of “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll” to #1 in the U.S., Canada, and The Netherlands (a new band would kill to be #1 in The Netherlands). Jett is the hardest-working woman in music and an expert interpreter of rock standards. She salvaged “Crimson & Clover” and “Time Has Come Today” from the scrapheap of ’60s psychedelia and took “I Wanna Be Your Dog” away from Iggy Pop. As with Weird Al, her originals are not well-regarded, but she accomplished a lot with “I Hate Myself for Loving You.”

6)  The Four Horsewomen of the ’80s Apocalypse
My choices for the best female artists of the decade:

Tracy Chapman (“Fast Cars”) brings more emotion to a song than any contemporary artist I know, female or male. The only part of her career that takes place in the 1980s was her debut, Tracy Chapman. The stories on that album can go head-to-head with those on Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska.

Siouxsie Sioux (a name that’s impossible to type correctly on the first go) and her band, Siouxsie & The Banshees, put eight songs on or close to my list of ’80s favorites: Their covers of “Dear Prudence” and “Helter Skelter,” as well as “Christine,” “Happy House,” “Trophy,” “Clockface,” “Shadow Time,” and the one I like best, “Silly Thing.” And they still have “Kiss Them for Me” waiting in the ’90s.

Siouxsie & The Banshees and The Cure are the only goth outfits I can listen to. Robert Smith of The Cure moonlighted as a Banshee for a couple of years. I’d love to put that on my resume. “Banshee: Served as omen of death across all distribution channels. Initiated howling programs that decreased productivity by 400%.”

Deborah Iyall was the co-founder, singer, and songwriter of Romeo Void. She is one the best writers of the ’80s, able to cut you like a knife with one line (“Nothing makes me lonelier than a phone call from you”). Romeo Void had minor hits with “I Might Like You Better If We Slept Together” and “A Girl in Trouble Is a Temporary Thing.” I prefer “Just Too Easy” and “Myself to Myself.” They don’t have many good songs, but the good ones are very good.

Chrissie Hynde had it all. She could write the music and the words and deliver the whole package in the hurricane that was The Pretenders. They only had three worthwhile albums (Pretenders, Pretenders II, and Learning to Crawl), but those are three of the best albums of the decade. It was Hynde who made me realize that I had to abandon my attempt to list my favorite songs of the 1980s, as I picked most of the songs on these discs (I’m especially taken by “Private Life,” “The Adulteress,” and “Two Birds of Paradise”).

This has been my longest post. Women are exhausting. I’m going to go listen to some uncomplicated male music…maybe David Bowie.

Run-DMSteve alert: This weekend I will celebrate my anniversary by posting an index to this blog’s first year. See you then!

Don’t put those birds on it

Posted: November 13, 2011 in music, Record reviews
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“Pictures of You”
The Cure
1989

“Space Age Love Song”
A Flock of Seagulls
1982

I coach a chess club at a local school, grades 3-8. My toughest challenges are not explaining how to castle or how the knights move. It’s not the 4th-grade belching contests or the two 5th-grade boys I had to separate because they were fighting over the good-behavior trophy. The real problems are the 12- and 13-year-old girls.

One year, Madison, a 6th-grade girl, came to the club in a torn denim jacket and a Led Zeppelin T-shirt. Trying to bond with her, I said that I’d seen Led Zep in concert. Madison rolled her eyes and I suddenly saw myself as she saw me: an old man, claiming to know something about her music! The following year she showed up with black hair, black lipstick, black fingernail polish, and a Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me Cure T-shirt. I could’ve told her that I’d seen The Cure, too, but I’m a nice guy. I didn’t want to ruin another band for her.

The Cure have been around long enough to draw pensions. They (“they” meaning Robert Smith) are best known for being gloomy. Right up my alley! I’ve already written about my favorite Cure song, “Pictures of You,” a ballad of lost love that is 278 words long. That’s like a Dickens novel in rock ’n’ roll years.

Let’s instead move on to A Flock of Seagulls (affectionately known as A Flock of Haircuts). Loyal Reader Julius questions their existence. My apologies, Loyal Reader. No ’80s dance party would be complete without their two biggest hits, “I Ran (So Far Away)” and “Space Age Love Song.”

There’s not much to say about “I Ran (So Far Away)” that the song doesn’t say itself:

And I raaaaaaan.
I ran so far away.
I just raaaaaaan.
I ran all night and day.
I couldn’t get away.

“Space Age Love Song” is a simply structured number that moves from start to finish in an unvarying line. Sort of like an object in space. It was in constant rotation on MTV in 1982. As Springsteen put it, “57 Channels (and Nothing On).” It is exactly 73 words long, of which 15 are “I was falling in love” and 12 are “Falling in love.” Pithy. “I saw your eyes/and you made me smile,” the Haircuts sing in stanza 1, which is sweet, but the next line is “For a little while,” which is ungrateful. What have you done for me lately, person with eyes? In stanza 2, the narrator sees the eyes again, and this time “you touched my mind.” Cool. Telepathy. No wonder you fell in love.

Don’t take my word for it. Here are A Flock of Haircuts at the height of their powers.

A few years ago in chess club we had a boy who loved Culture Club. When I made the mistake of telling him that I didn’t, he started singing “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me.” By the end of the school year my answer was yes. Music from the 1980s can heal us – or it can be weaponized. Madison understood this when she adopted The Cure as a lifestyle. I’m sure it was her defense against the world and her rebellion against her parents. In the early ’70s I did the same thing to my parents with The Doors (minus the drugs, alcohol, and multiple sex partners).

You wouldn’t think these issues would arise in a roomful of kids playing chess, but they do. Adult themes play out in miniature, just as we play this miniature substitute for war. All you can do with these children is be patient, try to put yourself in their place, and don’t let on that you know anything about their music. Kids need to rebel, and The Cure are a good ally in a rebellion. Or The Doors. But not A Flock of Seagulls.

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