I’ve been planning for a couple of weeks to post a clip of Harry Chapin performing “Taxi,” a lengthy ballad about disappointment and thwarted childhood ambitions, but you know what? Screw that. I’m not in the mood to dwell on my dissatisfaction right now. It’s a hot, muggy summer night in the SLC, the kind of night when young people go out on the prowl, and we middle-aged types reminisce about the crap we somehow managed to get away with, back in our own prowling days. So instead of that downer ’70s tune, I’m going back to the genre I turn to when I need a pick-me-up, the dumb and lustful pop-metal that I absorbed like oxygen in my late teens and early 20s. Here’s a song I can’t begin to justify liking, but I do, and I won’t apologize for it. It’s by Lita Ford, another former member of The Runaways who had a few solo hits in the late ’80s, including a pretty big duet she performed with Ozzy Osbourne. The song is “Kiss Me Deadly,” and no, it has nothing to do with Mickey Spillane:

I don’t have any specific memories associated with this song, other than liking it a lot when it was first out. I still have a 45 of it down in the Archives somewhere that features a rather fetching photo of Ms. Ford on the sleeve — she’s naked except for her guitar, which is naturally positioned just so to hide everything. I think it was that flavor of blunt sexuality that drew me to this song, actually… the line about getting laid and the one about knowing what she likes… I don’t think I’d ever heard a woman sing about sex in such frank, almost masculine terms before. Certainly it was a far cry from the fragile romanticism and opaque metaphors of Stevie Nicks. And I thought it was pretty hot.

Hot just like this miserable night. Going to be a long one, I think…