For a couple years in the mid-80s, my favorite band was Loverboy, the Canadian quintet that recorded the party anthem “Working for the Weekend” and whose lead singer, Mike Reno, was infamous for performing in skin-tight red leather pants. I saw them live in 1986 during their “Lovin’ Every Minute of It” tour… and then somehow I lost track of them for 20 years. Now, like just about every other big arena-rock act from my adolescence, they’re back out there touring again, and I’ve been thinking I’d like to see them a second time. But somehow I keep missing the opportunity. They’ve played Wendover, the Nevada border town a hundred miles west of Salt Lake where the Girlfriend and I go just about every year to see my main man, Rick Springfield (pics from the most recent show here). And I think they played the state fair a couple years back. Missed them both times.

Tonight they’re appearing here in the valley at Usana Amphitheater with Journey and Pat Benatar (another ’80s icon I’d like to see live), but I’m not going to that show either. It’s the Girlfriend’s birthday, you see, and I didn’t want to make her do something I wanted to do on her day, and anyhow we’ve been to Journey a couple times already in recent years, so it just didn’t seem like a huge priority and we were going to talk about it some more, and then all of a sudden the date was upon us, and… well, maybe they’ll play Wendover again sometime soon.

There is a consolation prize, however, in the form of a brand-new Loverboy single and music video I just learned about a couple days ago. The song is called “Heartbreaker” — no relation to Benatar’s “Heartbreaker” — and it’s a cut from the band’s upcoming album Rock N Roll Revival, due to release on August 14. I think this is a great track; I’ve played it at least a dozen times since I stumbled across it. Reno’s voice is still strong (although it doesn’t look like he’ll ever get back into those red leather pants!), the melody is infectious, and the chorus is as instantly repeatable as anything from the band’s heyday. This is the kind of simple, fun song that makes me feel an uncomplicated sense of happiness, especially on a pleasant summer evening when the day’s heat has mellowed into something like a lover’s caress, and the shadows stretch across the road as I make my way home through golden sunlight with the top down…