The previous video reminded me of something a couple friends turned me onto a while back, which I’ve been meaning to post but just haven’t gotten around to. It’s another live performance, this time by a musician named Johnathan Coulton. I’m not at all familiar with him — I gather he’s an indie artist with a pretty sizable cult following — but the song is catchy and seems to have benign intentions, i.e., Coulton doesn’t sound like he’s being cruel toward my main man despite the (apparently) humorous nature of the lyrics. It’s hard to tell for sure since it’s sung in French and I don’t know French, but… well, I’ll let Johnathan himself explain what it’s about:
One thing I particularly appreciate about this (and which I assume is deliberate) is how much it sounds like… a Rick Springfield song! No, really, the guitar tone here is very similar to Rick’s own audio signature, the same sound you hear on “Jessie’s Girl,” among many others. I like that sound, obviously, and I liked it so much in this song that I was fully prepared to purchase one of those new-fangled download thingies until I learned the album recording is somewhat different. Maybe Coulton will release another version with that deep, early-80s thrum that I love so much. In the meantime, enjoy this one as we roll on past midnight, chasing after the early morning hours…
Between working in an understaffed office populated by inconsiderate ignoramuses and presided over by a hard-headed old skinflint, and a bad case of a medical condition called “positional vertigo,” The Girlfriend has been suffering through a truly craptacular week. So I’m going to dedicate this week’s music video to her, in the hopes that it will provide a little comfort. Or at least make her smile for a second.
“It’s Always Something” is a 1999 song by our mutual main man that gradually over the years has become one of my all-time favorites of his. Yes, it’s right up there with “Jessie’s Girl” in my book, believe it or not. I find a lot of meaning and resonance in this tune, and also a genuine sense of optimism that I often have trouble generating on my own. Just like Rick Springfield himself I would guess, based on what I’ve learned about him in the past 12 months. It’s a great song, in my humble opinion, one that in a more just universe would’ve been a tremendous hit. As it is, though, I didn’t even hear it until a couple of years after it came out. C’est la vie, I guess, and certainly right in line with the song’s own ironic narrative.
This isn’t a music video per se; it’s a live performance clip from a concert Rick gave earlier this year, so unfortunately you get the shaky-cam effect and the sound is kind of dodgy in places. But it’s the best clip I could find, and Anne knows the lyrics anyhow…
If any of the Loyal Readers out there don’t know the lyrics and can’t decipher them from the video (and also give a damn), you can find them in an earlier entry I wrote about this song…
I missed out on the heyday of the “let’s see what’s on your iPod” meme by about six years — what can I say, I’m a late adopter, part of that whole “analog kind of guy” thing — but I’ve actually got an iPod now, so when I ran across a variant of this old blogging chestnut on Tumblr last night, I couldn’t resist playing along.
If this is too passe for your tastes, feel free to surf on, but I feel like I’m finally filling a hole in my soul by participating in one of these.
Okay, maybe this experience wasn’t that profound, but it was kind of fun to see what a random sampling of my musical tastes might turn up. Fun for me, at least. Maybe not so much for you. But who’s writing this blog, anyhow?
Right, so, moving on, here’s the intro/instructions:
You can learn a lot about someone by the music they listen to. Hit “shuffle” on your iPod or MP3 player and write down the first 20 songs. No cheating or skipping songs that are shameful. That is the fun!
My list:
Calling All Girls — Rick Springfield
Windy — The Association
The Harder They Come — Jimmy Cliff
Shake Your Groove Thing — Peaches & Herb
Fall from Grace — Stevie Nicks
Heaven Knows — Robert Plant
Ask the Lonely — Journey
Sweet Talkin’ Guy — The Chiffons
Listen to Your Heart — Roxette
Mule Skinner Blues — The Fendermen
The Road Home — Heart
Nothin’ at All — Heart
Some Gothic Ranch Action (instrumental from the soundtrack of Rancho Deluxe) — Jimmy Buffett
Hot Girls in Love — Loverboy
I Can’t Stand It No More — Peter Frampton
Real Man — Bruce Springsteen
Dance Hall Days — Wang Chung
Don’t Look Now — Creedence Clearwater Revival
La Bamba — Los Lobos
Son of a Preacher Man — Dusty Springfield
Okay. Interesting that the first selection was my main man. I swear I did not set that up. I do wonder, though, exactly how that Shuffle algorithm works. You see, I can go for weeks without hearing anything from a particular genre — oldies, say — and then all of a sudden the machine is kicking out “Sweet Talkin’ Guy” and “Windy” and “Mule Skinner Blues.” Not to mention two songs by the same artist coming back to back… that doesn’t seem terribly random to me. In any event, I suppose this is a reasonably good cross section of my likes: mostly ’70s and ’80s pop-rock, some older stuff, nothing newer than ’89 or ’90, and some Jimmy Buffett thrown in for good measure. Probably nothing my Loyal Readers didn’t expect, right?
The West Jordan Sugar Factory is gone now, demolished last year in the name of “progress,” but the theatrical company named after it (and which hoped to turn the old factory into a permanent home) is still going strong. Anne and I attended the opening performance of its latest production, The Foreigner, just last night.
The Foreigner is a fun little play about a shy Englishman who finds himself in backwoods Georgia for a couple days, pretending not to understand English in the hope that all the eccentric characters around him will leave him alone if they think he can’t speak with them. Naturally, they start telling him their secrets instead, believing him to be the perfect confidante because he doesn’t know what they’re saying. And some of those secrets are very dark indeed (well, not that dark, I suppose; the play is a comedy after all!). Our friend Geoff Richards — who played the title character in another production of this play a couple years ago — has a supporting role as a crude redneck who turns out to be a leader of the local KKK. He’s really terrific in the part, particularly in a very funny scene in which Charlie, the titular foreigner, spooks Geoff’s character Owen with his seemingly supernatural insights. Geoff has been acting for several years now, and he’s getting better and better with each new performance. The entire cast is great, and the quality of the production is very high, far better than I usually expect from community theater groups. (I don’t mean to be cruel, but between the lack of money, the often too-earnest talent, and of course the local culture’s tendency to favor a handful of squeaky-clean titles over anything more adventurous… well, let’s just say I’m not usually a fan. But the Sugar Factory Playhouse is, in my opinion, running very close to pro level, a definite cut above the usual.)
Anyhow, if you’re one of my local readers and you enjoy live theater, I highly recommend this one. I was too late posting this for you to catch tonight’s performance, but there are still four more remaining — tomorrow night, Monday, Thursday, and Friday. Tickets are only $8.00 for adults and $5.00 for children, with a 7:30 curtain time. I guarantee you’ll enjoy this more than Contagion or that Bucky Larson flick that opened at the megaplex today. (What the heck is that movie about, anyhow? I feel so disconnected from my own hobby these days…) The venue is the Midvale Performing Arts Center, which people who grew up around the south end of the valley will probably remember as the former Midvale town hall at the corner of Center Street and 7800 South, in Midvale’s historic downtown area. (All right, if you want the official address, it’s 7720 South 700 West. It’s within spitting distance of the old Comedy Circuit club, if that helps.)
I’d also like to quickly mention that my buddy Jack will be riding tomorrow in the Lotoja Classic bicycle race that runs 206 miles from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to Logan, Utah. This is his fourth time in Lotoja, and The Girlfriend and I want to wish him and his brother Justin, who’s riding with him, lots of luck.
Hey, kids, how you all doing? Apologies for the rather brusque “I’m going on vacation, kthxbye” thing in the previous entry, but work and life were both pretty hectic leading up to my latest expedition and I just ran out of time to blog about my plans. There’s never enough time for all the things I want to do, never, and I don’t know how it got to be that way or how I can get my life back to something more like what it used to be. It’s probably my deepest, most chronic frustration.
Anyhow, in case you’re wondering, I’ve been in Washington, DC, and at various Civil War sites in Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland with my buddy, Loyal Reader, and fellow Blasphemous Bastard* Robert, finally ending up back in Pittsburgh, where he now lives. I returned home Tuesday night and have spent the rest of the week struggling with that surreal dissonant sensation you sometimes experience after traveling — well, that I sometimes experience, anyhow — where you feel like you ought to be someplace other than where you actually belong. Anyone else ever feel that way, or is it just me?
In any event, this week’s video is a little something I’ve dredged up especially for my traveling companion, who made a rather startling confession to me during our time on the road. In the 18 years I’ve known him, somehow it never came up that he’d once been a fan of Twisted Sister… you think you know a guy!
I don’t see how anyone who was a teen in the ’80s could not like this song, and it still works. On one level, it’s utterly ridiculous and silly, of course, but it’s also such an effectively rabble-rousing, almost existential cry of defiance against mindless authority and complacence. Truth is, our post-9/11, post-modern, post-everything 21st century America could probably stand to be reintroduced to the ideas espoused in this little ditty. Especially when it comes to being frisked like common criminals at the airport, something yours truly had to undergo on my way home from Pittsburgh.
Anyhow, the video for “We’re Not Gonna Take It” is nearly perfect, a genuine classic of the medium. The young boy’s Wonder Woman-style spinning transformation into the powerful, take-no-prisoners gargoyle figure of Dee Snider became one of the iconic images of MTV’s heyday, and the casting of Mark Metcalf as the, ahem, candidate for Father of the Year was nothing less than brilliant. (In case you can’t quite place him, Metcalf played the sadistic ROTC officer Neidermeyer in the classic 1978 “slob comedy” Animal House, and his spittle-flecked rant against the boy’s taste in music basically recreates one of the signature scenes from that film. Some Loyal Readers may also recognize him — or at least his distinctively resonant voice — from his recurring performance as The Master during the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Of course, The Master never raised his voice and Metcalf was buried under pounds of latex, so its wasn’t immediately obvious why the actor seemed so familiar. But I got a big grin when I finally figured it out.)
And now that we’re all pumped up and ready to go out and take on The Man, let’s start the weekend, shall we?
As promised yesterday, here’s Ben E. King performing his signature tune “Stand by Me” with the stars of the movie Stand by Me, Wil Wheaton and River Phoenix. (Wil and River aren’t actually singing or anything, but they are there in the video, along with some truly excellent — or egregious, depending on your perspective — examples of mid-80s casual fashion…)
Ben E. King had been a member of the fabulous R&B group The Drifters (a group notorious for frequent changes in personnel, usually due to disputes over money), but he left in 1960 to embark on a solo career. “Stand by Me” was his second major solo hit following the lovely “Spanish Harlem”; it made it to number four on the Billboard chart in 1961. Then, like many other notable songs from the ’60s, it found a second life in the 1980s after appearing in a popular movie. It peaked at number nine in 1986.
Interestingly, I don’t remember ever seeing this clip back in the day. I first encountered it on the Stand by Me Special Edition DVD released in 2000 and it utterly charmed me with its nostalgic transition from 1961 Ben E. King to 1986 Ben E. King — he didn’t change much in 25 years! — and of course with the presence of Wil Wheaton and River Phoenix. I like that they weren’t playing Gordie and Chris, but were (apparently) themselves, and they seemed to genuinely understand the coolness of hanging out with a musical legend. Or at least they acted as if they did. I can’t help but smile when I watch this… even if it is a little eerie knowing that River would die on a grimy sidewalk outside a sleazy LA nightclub a mere seven years later. Watching him in this video, seeing his effortless charisma and confidence, even at such a tender age, only underscores the tragedy of his too-soon death. He could’ve made so much of his life, and it’s so evident in this clip…
For this week’s musical selection, I was going to track down a fun little clip I know of that features Ben E. King singing “Stand by Me” with the young cast of the movie — I may still post that later — but my plans changed when I read this morning that Jani Lane, the original lead singer of the late-80s hair-metal band Warrant, died yesterday. He was only 47, just five years older than myself, and although his death is still being investigated, he is known to have had a lot of problems with substance abuse, so I’m willing to bet the cause of death won’t turn out to be “natural.” It’s too bad, and a little spooky considering how near he is to my own age.
Warrant is of course best known for the song “Cherry Pie.” With lyrics consisting of not-at-all-subtle innuendo and lots of sleazy attitude, it was naturally a monster hit in the waning days of glam-rock, just before grunge came along and depressed the shit out of everyone. But I’ll be honest, I never cared much for that one. There’s nothing I like better than a good, dumb, crunchy-guitar-based tune about getting laid, but “Cherry Pie” is a little too dumb for my tastes, and it doesn’t have much of a melodic hook, not like, say, Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me” or just about any of Poison’s major hits. (I did enjoy watching the video on the big projection TV in the student union, though. That Bobbie Jean Brown was rather pleasing to the eye…)
My favorite Warrant song — the only other Warrant song I know, to tell the truth — is actually this one, a track called “Down Boys,” which I discovered only a handful of years ago when I picked up a compilation CD of 80s-vintage hard rock that included it in between Aldo Nova’s “Fantasy” and Blue Oyster Cult’s “I’m Burning for You.” But what a great tune it is; have a listen and try to tell me this doesn’t make you happy:
Now there’s a song that’s just made for top-down driving on a sunny day. It has the kind of riffs that make me want to put the pedal down and power out around the slow-poke blockade of mommy mini-vans, making a break for the open road that leads to the foothills, the way I did when “Cherry Pie” was on the charts and I needed to clear my head. And in fact, I think that’s just what I’m going to go do right now. I can hear the Mustang calling. Time to find that compilation disc and crank it high…
Given the events of this morning, I think there’s really only one possible song I can post tonight:
Ah, Rush. The Canadian prog-rock so beloved of nerdy, intellectual fourteen-year-old boys and Ayn Rand fans (often the same people, now that I think about it). And also, weirdly, by the mullet-and-muscle-car set I used to hang on the fringes of. I was never a huge fan of these guys — a greatest-hits compilation is all the Rush I require, thank you, and then I really only like about two-thirds of the songs on the disc — but this particular song raises the hair on my arms. The throbbing synthesizer is very 1981, but also very dramatic and futuristic… at least in terms of how we used to imagine the future. Nobody in ’81 anticipated Auto-Tune. I’ll happily take the synths over that thing.
Anyhow, this song was obviously inspired by STS-01, the first shuttle flight made by the lost Columbia. The voices you hear layered over the music — part of what makes the song so awesome, in my opinion — are the real thing, taken directly from the tapes of that historic launch. And all the non-Rush clips in this video are authentic to the first flight as well. If nothing else, this song and video should demonstrate just how prominent the early days of the shuttle program were in the North American zeitgeist, as reflected by our pop culture. People were excited about the shuttles back then. It’s sometimes easy to forget just how excited. There was so much hope and optimism about where we were going, so much national pride generated by our achievements in space. Healthy, non-militaristic, non-jingoistic, non-partisan pride, I might add. The ’80s usually don’t seem that distant to me; I can clearly remember so many of the textures of everyday life back then. But tonight… well, things have changed so much in this country that the ’80s may as well have happened in the Cretaceous Era.
And now, to bed, I think. It’s been a long damn day. But first, maybe I’ll just click over to NASA TV and watch a few minutes of the earth slipping by beneath Atlantis on the live feed… so peaceful… Goodnight, kids…
McSweeney’s Internet Tendency has posted an incisive and terribly important piece of psychological insight: a list entitled “What Your Favorite ’80s Band Says About You.” But while many of the items on this list are right on target — if your fave is Big Country, for example, you probably have a Highlander poster in a tube in the back of your closet; get it? Big Country was a Scottish band, Highlander is about an immortal Scotsman — I have to confess that I’m utterly baffled by the one that best applies to me. Here it is:
Rick Springfield: Your wallet weighs over a pound.
Huh? WTF is that supposed to mean? Anyone? My wallet… weighs… over a pound. Why would it weigh so much? And what does liking Rick Springfield have to do with that? Sometimes, I feel very dense…
This isn’t the usual sort of thing I post as a Friday Evening Video, being neither a true rock-and-roll song nor a relic from the 1980s, but I ran across it earlier today and found it utterly charming, for reasons that will quickly become obvious:
Ah, pretty girls and rayguns… like sweet, sweet catnip!
My Loyal Readers are probably thinking that your host, being such a big-time nerd and all, can name the source of all these clips. Well, not quite. I recognize most of them but believe it or not, there are several that completely mystify even me. I’m guessing they were British productions that never made it to the states, or which I’ve simply never managed to catch. I could’ve done without the clip from Starship Troopers at roughly 2:30 — I loathe that piece of shit movie — but the poignancy of the very final scene more than makes up for it. Oh, my sweet Sarah Jane… the first celebrity death in a long time that genuinely hurt.
