Need a hearing aid tonight

"Смоленская церковь" [Smolensk Church]
by Антон Денисенко [Anton Denisenko].
Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
via Wikimedia Commons

This is what I learned yesterday:

In the INXS song "Need You Tonight," the opening line is as follows--

"All you got is this moment."

It is not, in fact--

"In the gardens of Smolensk."

As I have thought it was for the last 25+ years.

Blame it on a mid-'80s trip to Leningrad and a then-obsession with Russian culture. I could swear there was a Smolensk cathedral in St. Petersburg. Things were opening up in the Gorbachev era, so I just figured that Michael Hutchence, international jet-setting rock star, had been there and had been inspired.

This is what I thought about yesterday. And, yes, this is what I learned yesterday.

It was the only thing I learned yesterday.

* * *

My memory is not as faulty or confused as first feared: There is indeed a Smolensk church and cemetery in St. Petersburg. And look at the blue! The colors of Leningrad buildings are one of my favorite memories from my life of sporadic travel and adventure.

* * *

And why not give credit is where credit is due?



The late great Michael was certainly "sex on a stick" (as I think Kylie Minogue once described him). This doesn't mean that I wanted to sample his charms; I actually always thought he was rather a Sybarite--which is, as best as I can determine, ancient Mesopotamian for scuzzbucket.

He always struck me as the kind of guy who, well, *would* try auto-erotic asphyxiation--though I would have wagered he was expert enough at it that he wouldn't have accidentally killed himself in the process. So maybe it was suicide after all. Having to deal with The Prick Formerly Known as Bob Geldof would be enough to make anyone take his own life, I would imagine.

Regardless, Hutchence was a major pop talent who I'd love to see alive today, still singing, still performing, still creating, still dating the world's top models.

Miss you tonight, Michael.