The Moody Blues are a genuine rarity in popular music, a band that enjoyed two distinct periods of success twenty years apart.

They first came to prominence in 1967 with their second album, Days of Future Passed, which mingled classical music with rock and roll, and produced the iconic single “Nights in White Satin.” They had a pretty good run through the early ’70s, took a few years off in the middle of that decade while individual members pursued solo projects, then began recording together again in ’77. But even though the Moodies scored a number of hits after reforming, their big comeback — if it’s fair to call it that, since they never exactly went away — wasn’t until they released their 1986 album The Other Side of Life.

I’d been aware of them for some time by that point — “Nights in White Satin” was a favorite, along with “The Voice” from 1982 — but it was The Other Side of Life that made me a genuine fan, largely on the strength of that album’s big hit, “Your Wildest Dreams.” “Dreams” was the Moodies’ highest charting single since “White Satin” two decades earlier, and I just adored it, strange as that sounds considering the song’s protagonist is a middle-aged man thinking about a long-lost love, and I was all of seventeen at the time. I’ve always had an old soul, I guess. I just got it. And I liked the song’s catchy pop hook. And I admired the writing in the lyrics too, especially the memorable image of “skies mirrored in your eyes.”

The follow-up album, Sur la Mer was released in 1988, when I was in college. It wasn’t as successful as its predecessor, charting at only 38 in the U.S. (as opposed to The Other Side, which reached number 9), but it did produce a hit single called “I Know You’re Out There Somewhere,” which is a great little song on its own but becomes really fascinating when you realize it’s a direct sequel to the story told in “Your Wildest Dreams.” The protagonist of the earlier song basically decides he’s wasted enough time mooning about that lost love of his and sets out to find her.

The video was also a sequel, featuring the same love interest (played by actress Janet Spencer-Turner) that we’d seen in “Your Wildest Dreams.” Together, the two videos form a warm and fuzzy little diptych that celebrates the mod Sixties the Boomers were pining for by the ’80s, as well as the universal experience of wondering “whatever happened to… ”

All of this has been on my mind because of a brief interview I read earlier this week with Justin Hayward, the lead singer of the Moody Blues. Hayward says he doubts the band will record any more studio albums, that they’re mostly a nostalgic touring act now, and that interestingly enough, their audience these days includes as many Gen X fans who fell for them in the ’80s as Boomers who’ve followed them since Days of Future Passed.

However, the thing I’ve really been mulling over is this observation from Hayward: “People think the ’60s were our best time… but to be honest, the most fun was that time in the ’80s – to have that opportunity to be on TV and have all the times of having hit singles in your early forties.”

At first listen, the song in tonight’s Friday Evening Video might not strike you as especially romantic. It’s an uptempo rocker instead of a ballad, and the word “love” isn’t uttered once in the lyrics. But the thing about this song, the thing that made me think of it as we head into the Valentine’s Day weekend, is that it brilliantly captures the sensation of a new romance if not the poetry of it, that giddy euphoria you get right at the beginning when everything seems to be going right and you can’t stop thinking about that lucky girl or guy, and you’re counting the minutes until you can be with them again.

It’s also one of the handful of songs that effortlessly make me happy; something about its sonic construction — the melody, the beat, the quality of the vocals — presses a button in me and makes me feel good regardless of what sort of day I’ve been having. And the line “I walk home every evening and my feet are quick to move/because I know my destination is a warm and waiting you” is simply one of the dead sexiest lyrics I’ve ever heard.

Ladies and gentlemen, one of my absolute personal favorites:

“Nothin’ at All” was the fourth single released from Heart’s self-titled 1985 album, which was the band’s first on the Capitol Records label. Heart had been around for roughly a decade at that point, depending on which date you use as its official beginning, and I know some older fans were a bit put off by this album, which brought Heart a new, slicker sound and a hair-metal visual makeover. But it also yielded their greatest commercial success, becoming their first (and so far only) number-one album and spending a mind-blowing 92 weeks on the Billboard charts. The album yielded four hit singles, one of which — “These Dreams”  — was their first number-one. “Nothin’ at All” was released in April 1986 and peaked at number 10. Curiously, the song exists in different forms; the mix featured in this video and on the 45 rpm single is an alternate version of the album track, although some early pressings of the Heart album used this mix as well. The original mix, which has a far more subdued vocal track and guitar solo, appears on other pressings of the album and some compilations. For what it’s worth, my preference is the punchier alternate mix you just heard in the video.

As for the video itself, well… it’s admittedly not so great. Sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson were never terribly comfortable with the MTV thing and its emphasis on musicians’ appearance over the music, especially Ann, who has long been self-conscious about her weight (needlessly, in my opinion, but then I know firsthand that how you see yourself often isn’t how others see you). They both seem pretty awkward in front of the camera to me, much as I like looking at them, and the whole bit in their bedroom with Nancy trying on different outfits is just cheesy. Nevertheless, I do enjoy watching this one. It has an air of glamour that was common to a lot of popular media in the mid-1980s, and which I think we lost with the closing of that decade. I miss that kind of moody lighting. And it doesn’t hurt either that the video was filmed in Los Angeles’ Bradbury Building, a gorgeously preserved structure from 1893 that’s instantly recognizable fans of the movie Blade Runner as the home of JF Sebastian.

And with that, I’m going to press play on the video again and wish you all a very happy Valentine’s Day. See you in the pyramids in light!

I posted “Manic Monday” as a Friday Evening Video about a year and a half ago, but the song has been on my mind again since I read that Wednesday, January 27, marked the 30th anniversary of its release. Yes, you read that correctly: “Manic Monday” is now thirty years old. How is that even fracking possible? How can I possibly be old enough to have loved a song for three decades? Damned if I know… but considering how grim this week’s other 30th anniversary was, I thought I’d send everybody into the weekend with something a bit more pleasant.

I still love this song. And I still think Susanna Hoffs was (is) utterly adorable. (Michael Steele, the redhead in the hat, ain’t bad either!) And I still wonder whatever became of my “older woman” that I forever associate with this little ditty. The video, with its nostalgic combination of sepia-tone coloring and golden-hour lighting, resonates with me now more than ever.

Here’s my original post:

My junior year of high school, I was lucky enough to land a cushy job as a media aide during the class period just before lunch. What that means is, I got to hang out for an hour — unsupervised, no less! — in an isolated room just off the school library where we kept the VCRs, projectors, and assorted stage equipment. Once in a blue moon, I would have to check out some of this gear to a faculty member, or do a bit of cleaning and light maintenance when something was checked back in, but mostly I did homework from my other classes, read trashy paperbacks, and generally killed time before lunch while listening to the totally kick-ass stereo system that was set up in the back corner. (It had a graphic equalizer, the absolute pinnacle of audio technology at that time! At least I thought so… I just liked monkeying with all the sliders.)

The word soon got out that I was down there, and friends began dropping by for visits on one pretense or another. There was one friend in particular who was about to become… very memorable. She was an older woman, a senior to my junior, but — I have to be honest — I’d never given her much thought. Oh, I liked her well enough. We were definitely friends, and I enjoyed talking with her on the bus and such. But as far as romantic interest? Nada. I had my eyes too firmly fixed on the girls who were emulating Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”-era look, and this girl was the diametric opposite to that. She was a good church-going Mormon who carried her scriptures in her backpack and dressed very modestly and gave no indication that there were any ulterior motives whatsoever behind her visits to that equipment room. Until one afternoon when this song was playing on that way-cool, fully equalized stereo with the quadrophonic sound:

The Bangles’ “Manic Monday” debuted the week of January 25, 1986, and it stayed on the charts for months, eventually peaking at the number-two position in April. It was ubiquitous and inescapable, and it made The Bangles’ career. I loved it because it was cute and catchy and Susanna Hoffs’ breathy, little-girlish voice made me weak in the knees, and because it had that naughty line in the bridge about “making some noise.” And I loved it even more after it became the soundtrack for my very first lessons in French kissing.

Following that first afternoon, I had a brief and intense affair with this friend of mine, this good Mormon older woman who taught me such a valuable life skill, consisting mostly of her coming to the equipment room during my aide period and making out like crazy with me (often to the tune of “Manic Monday,” as it seemed to play sometime during that hour every day), then the two of us pretending nothing had changed during our bus ride at the end of the day. It lasted maybe a month, if that long. As I recall, we just sort of… stopped… as quickly and unexpectedly as we’d begun. And at the end of the year, she wrote in my yearbook, “Sorry you didn’t get everything you wanted.” (That was a fun one to explain to my mom, who of course loved reading everything her baby’s friends wrote in his yearbook.)

That makes it sound like this girl was a tease, or like I’d pressured her to go farther than first base. I don’t recall either of those scenarios being the case. In my mind, I was pretty satisfied with our arrangement. But who knows… I am seeing it through a hazy filter of 30-year-old nostalgia, after all. Maybe I was more of a boor than I remember. I hope not. I like to think I was just a little adventure for this conservative girl as her graduation and grown-up life loomed before her.

I have no idea whatever happened to her. I’ve looked for her on Facebook, and to the best of my Google abilities, and I haven’t found so much as an outdated phone number. Wherever she is, I hope her life turned out well… and that she gets as much of a warm glow from the opening riff of “Manic Monday” as I do…

Nearly all the commentary I’ve read this week about the late Glenn Frey has focused on his work with the Eagles, which I guess isn’t too surprising given the band’s position in the rock pantheon. And the sad truth is that his solo career never really caught fire the way his bandmate Don Henley’s did. Even so, he did score a few hit singles during the 14 years between the Eagles’ breakup in 1980 and their 1994 reunion, and those are worth mentioning, in my opinion. The biggest of them were from soundtracks: “The Heat Is On” from the Eddie Murphy film Beverly Hills Cop, and “You Belong to the City,” a beautifully moody, bass-and-sax driven anthem that was featured prominently in the second-season premiere episode of the TV phenomenon Miami Vice. Both songs reached number-two on the Billboard charts, and “You Belong,” in particular, was inescapable during my junior year of high school. Hearing it now instantly catapults me back to that time and place, and conjures up all sorts of emotional detritus and half-memories, in a way that few other songs do. But that’s probably another entry…

Also noteworthy was “Smuggler’s Blues,” a number-12 hit that first appeared on Frey’s album The Allnighter, but is more associated with (again) Miami Vice, which used the song in a first-season episode of the same name. (The episode is said to have been inspired by the song’s MTV video, in which Frey plays the smuggler of the title; Frey played a different character — also a smuggler — in the Vice episode, which led to other acting gigs in the TV series Wiseguy and Nash Bridges, and most notably in the feature film Jerry Maguire.)

However, the song that came immediately to mind when I decided to blog about Glenn Frey’s solo work is a bit more obscure than those others. Another soundtrack tune, “Part of Me, Part of You” from the 1991 film Thelma & Louise only reached 55 on the Billboard Hot 100. Nevertheless, I heard it a lot during the spring and summer of 1991, when that film was playing at the movie theater where I worked and I was cleaning up the auditorium every two hours while the end credits ran in the background. I loved Thelma & Louise, and I love this song, which manages the nifty trick of wrapping an upbeat “road tune” sound around a core of melancholy lyrics.

Those lyrics suggest to me the unspoken thoughts of a mentor, a parent, or maybe an insecure lover, depending on how you interpret them; their bittersweet suggestion that time is short and relationships evanescent has become especially poignant over the years as I’ve lost people, endured changes (some more welcome than others), and gotten old. There have been times when this song has made me too sad to continue listening… and other times when it’s simply brought a smile and the itch to get behind the wheel of my old Galaxie again. The fact that the man singing the song is now gone as well just adds another layer of meaning for me.

I’m sorry to say the video isn’t much to write home about. Like most videos for film music, it’s just a collection of clips from the movie interspersed with Glenn singing with a soulful expression. And this particular instance of the video isn’t even of very good quality, but it was the best version I could find. Just listen to the music and enjoy the visual of that long, sleek, beautiful T-Bird cruising through the southwestern deserts, and try to imagine me at the age of 21…

I wasn’t planning to do a Friday Evening Video this week; I only have half a dozen other entries on my “to-do” list, including a review of The Force Awakens, which will no doubt run a bit long (ahem). But when one of my Facebook friends posted the following in honor of the late, great Elvis Presley’s birthday today (he would’ve been 81, as difficult as that is to imagine), I simply couldn’t resist doing the same here.

This isn’t a music video per se; rather, it’s a clip from the 1968 movie Live a Little, Love a Little. However, Elvis’ movies were arguably long-form ancestors of the MTV-style video, existing for little reason other than to sell his music, as well as a particular image of Elvis himself (it’s not by accident that he almost always plays some kind of sexy, fun-loving playboy in those flicks). In addition, Elvis movies, like MTV videos, usually take place in some kind of artificial reality that is weirder, funnier, more exotic, and more glamorous than our own, populated by beautiful young people who don’t behave quite like any real person you’ve ever known, and always throbbing with an undercurrent of decadent lust. And the blue-screen effects are always atrocious, too. It really wasn’t that big a leap from Live a Little, Love a Little to “Hungry Like the Wolf.”

But hey, how about we do as the song requests and talk a little less:

“A Little Less Conversation” was released a month prior to the film as the B-side to a single called “Almost in Love,” and it became a minor hit. Elvis also recorded an alternate version of the song for his 1968 television special (usually referred to as the “comeback special,” even though it wasn’t officially titled as such; it’s also known as “the one where he wore that black leather outfit”), but the alternate ultimately wasn’t used in the special and it wouldn’t be officially released until it turned up 30 years later on a 1998 compilation album. I wouldn’t say either of version of the song was remembered as an important part of the Presley oeuvre, at least not until the start of the 21st century.

Then things got weird. The song was briefly heard in the 2001 George Clooney/Brad Pitt film Ocean’s Eleven, and suddenly it was back on the pop-cultural radar. An electronic remix of the tune by Junkie XL (or JXL) became a smash hit around the world, reaching the number-one chart position in at least 10 different countries. A version of the remix was used in a Nike ad and credited  to “Elvis vs. JXL,” and that was a number-one hit in 20 countries. In the U.S., the Elvis vs. JXL cut peaked at number 50 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Elvis’ first Hot 100 appearance since 1981 (remember he died in 1977). According to Wikipedia, one version or another of the tune has since been heard in TV shows, movie trailers, films, advertisements, and even political campaigns. Not bad for a minor tune from an era that’s widely dismissed as a low point in the King’s career.

One more thought: one of my greatest disappointments is that real-life computers do not have lots of meaningless blinking lights or make bleep-bleep noises…

My company holiday party was last night and it was… well, it was really something. An incredible venue with a panoramic view of Salt Lake City, a live band, an open bar, an ice luge, and a whole lot of people both younger and prettier than myself who were wearing their holiday finest. Despite my occasional griping, there are some real perks to working in the advertising business. And I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t overindulge just a bit, but under those circumstances, how could I not, right? Right?

Fortunately, I didn’t make an ass of myself — so far as I know, anyhow — and I had a nice long train ride in which to sober up before I had to drive home from the park-and-ride lot. Even so, I had to laugh when I snapped on my car’s radio and the first song that came up was this:

Lit was one of a handful of so-called “pop-punk” bands I became briefly enamored of during the last period in which I made any real effort to remain current in my musical tastes. (If you’re curious, the others were Sugar Ray, Blink-182, The Offspring, and Bowling for Soup.) “My Own Worst Enemy,” the band’s best-known song, was released in March 1999 and landed on a number of charts, including the Billboard Hot 100 (peaking there at #51), the Billboard Mainstream Top 40 (#31), and Billboard‘s Alternative Songs, where it was a number-one hit. Unlike the music of those other pop-punkers, I still hear this one from time to time; one of our local Sunday-night sports shows was using it as a theme song for a while, I believe. I still love the opening guitar riff, so raw and catchy at the same time, and the the lyrics still amuse me too, although now they’re more a reminder of a certain period of my life — the time when I was teetering on the edge of responsible adulthood, about to turn 30 — than anything I can actually relate to. Except of course when I’m driving home from a really wild party in the wee hours of a school night.

As far as I can recall, today was the first time I’ve ever seen the song’s video, and it amuses me too. I don’t know about you guys, but the the late ’90s “lounge lizard revival” fad seems a lot more dated to me than anything on Miami Vice. I might have to write a longer entry about that sometime. But for now, I’ve got a train to catch and a weekend awaiting. And some hair of the dog to imbibe…