And this is why the Berlin Wall fell

Ever since I made those two homage mixtapes to the movie Call Me by Your Name (poor, murderous, cannibalistic Armie Hammer, we hardly knew ye), I have been in a '80s Europop groove. I have done my damnedest to avoid '80s nostalgia even when it surrounded me, overwhelmed me, and dismayed me. The 1980s holds such an exalted place in the memory and imagination of so many. And yet I still prefer the 1970s.

Oh don't get me wrong: Even as ridiculous and ultimately predictable as '80s style was (I had an artist friend who once described all '80s visuals as being based on the shape of a triangle), it was infinitely less ugly than 1970s style--both early '70s earth-toned dirty hippie style and late '70s disco extravaganza coke-and-polyester style, neither of which have not aged well. Much like yours truly. Baddabing!

New Wave and electropop can be just as predictable, riddled with sound effect and vocal cliches. (Paul Young's "I'm Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down" comes to mind as does Corey Hart's "Sunglasses at Night.") Although it sounds so much more modern than '70s pop, ultimately so much of what we view as uniquely '80s and modern had its origins in the dodgy old '70s, especially the 4-to-the-floor disco beat, punk energy and rap esthetic, and the clackity-clack of Kraftwerk's, Giorgio Moroder's, and Telex's old-skool synthesizers.

Maybe it's that the '80s distilled the '70s sound, jelled it, and, for better, for worse, commercialized it, making it come together in a highly palatable, addictive form (all sugar and salt and sensory overload) without that '70s stigma.

But for me the beauty of the '70s is that, in retrospect, it seems more like a time or harmony, unity, and acceptance. Perhaps that's teenage me talking--perhaps it realy wasn't that way at all. However, after the intensity of the U.S. civil rights era, the violence of Vietnam, and the feet-of-clay politics of Nixon, the mid- to late '70s seems so much more relaxed. Or exhausted. Or sans souçi. Hard for me to say. And maybe too much of a North American perspective.

And having said all that, it's hard to resist a song as buoyant and simultaneously dark as German group Punch's 1985-ish hit, "Love Me." Honestly I can tell if the lyric is "You just have to touch me" "You don't have to touch me." Either way, coupled with that blazing beat and those blaring synthesizers, it fits, it works.

Nonetheless, my '80s nostalgia is quirky to the core: Living in Washington, D.C., at the time, I had never heard of Punch until recently. Nor had I heard of other oddities on my current '80s hitlist, such as "Don Quichotte" by Magazine 60, "Last Summer" by Wish Key, "Gloria" (the Italian original) by Umberto Tozzi, "Run for Love" by Winder, and many others. All Continental European takes on then-contemporary pop, some in English, some not, sounds that rarely registered a blip on the English-speaking world's musical radar. And now I am compelled to find each and everyone of them, cherish them, and fall in love with them, the unwanted bastard children of a bad relationship between '80s pop and broken English.

What a difference a couple of decades make. By the 2000s, the Swedes had figured out the manufacturing process and now seem to write all the hits. Like Legos with rounded corners, they fit together neatly and yet still seem reasonably cool and clever. Much like the Nordic countries themselves.

Anyway, sideswipes at Social Democratic paradises aside, I will continue to listen but only for so long. The formula will wear thin in time, the copy of the copy of the copy getting blurrier and grainier all the time. But today we dance.

A Members Only jacket means a vote for me!

On first glance, this may seem to be quite a reach for relevancy, but I think it's valid, nonetheless.

Way back in the early 1980s when I was still a young man and gave a toss about mid-range fashion for guys, I recall shopping at a Chess King at South Park Mall in Charlotte, North Carolina. Charlotte! The Queen City! Which seemed like Southern-fried civilization at the time because we didn't have "fancy" stores like that in Eastern North Carolina back then.

Store clerks worked on consignment at Chess King. I know this because I still remember this weird incident where a store clerk started literally begging me to buy something, anything, to save his job. He did this in front of his manager, and his manager stood by, arms crossed, in a way that suggested he expected the clerk to start performing up to and including genuflecting and prostrating himself to make a sale.

I didn't understand any of this at the time. I found the encounter confusing. Like any good WASP, I also felt deeply embarrassed and annoyed by the clerk's actions. Whether fairly or not, I thought the clerk was very much a loser; in the interactions I had noted between the clerk and the manager before the encounter, and in the midst of the encounter itself, the clerk struck me as someone who had been sliding through life on charm and good looks. He was in trouble now because that had only gotten him so far in a world that was based on sales and results.

And he wasn't even that good looking.

 

I wasn't too sympathetic so I didn't end up buying anything that day. And I *loved* Chess King, so that's saying something. I think Chess King sold Members Only jackets, and I would have genuflecting myself to find one in a color I liked at a price I could afford.

All of this is to say that now I think I might have some insight into how China's Xi Jinping must have felt when Our Fearless Leader, Donald J. Trump, started begging him to buy America's soybeans in order to help him get re-elected.

Key:

Me = China/Xi Jinping

Loser store clerk = Trump

Chess King = America 

Member's Only jacket = soybeans

Store manager = Wealthy Republican supporters of Trump or maybe John Bolton. (I haven't figured this out yet.)

Tickle your fancy

Are we not men? No! We are Jermaine Jackson and DEVO! performing together in a Halloween special in 1982!

Honestly, back in the day, I never understood why this song was not a number 1 in the U.S. Instead it had to "settle" for top 20 pop/top 5 R&B. Nothing to be ashamed of but a chart ranking middling enough to guarantee obscurity within just a few years.

Get this: You had a member of the Jackson mafia family, which was everywhere in the early 1980s. You had the ultra hip new wave band DEVO, which was probably at the peak of its alternative popularity. (At least if memory serves from my college days.) You had an incredibly catchy hook ("Let me tickle your fancy/let me excite your soul") and a highly danceable beat. And you had a very adorable and sexy Jermaine doing his best work, a few years before he'd crash and burn his credibility with a duet with Pia Zadora.

In essence, you had 1982 in a 3-minute pop nutshell.

Maybe it was racism--"black people don't play rock 'n' roll" and all that bullshit. Maybe it was a less popular Jackson in the spotlight (neither feast nor fowl, neither Michael nor Janet). Maybe it was a song stuck between worlds, not R&B, not rock, attempting to appeal to too many audiences through the talents of two slightly less than high profile performers. (How is this that different to "State of Shock," the Michael Jackson-Rollling Stones hit from 1984?) Maybe it was danceable but not in the right way - too alternative, not Hi NRG, disco's cheap, tacky, easy little sister. Maybe it was too perfect of a song and sounded like a lot of other stuff on the charts at the time. Which maybe it did, maybe it didn't.

Regardless, I thought this was a perfect pop gem at the time and still do nearly 40 (!!!) years later. Frankly, as old as it is, it still seems more exciting, entertaining, and authentic than every piece of pop pablum on the scene at this time.

Yeah, I'm *that* old.

Our history is history

My new post-election groove is 31 years old. Interestingly, this is same number of years of experience of each "outsider" cabinet pick of the incoming Il Douchie junta. (Sorry, but Silver Dollar Berlusconi will never be my president.)

Our love is "History" according to Dutch pop group Mai Tai, who in 1985 had a fairly global hit with this Chic- and Change-inspired groove. (Fairly global means "only minimally in the US.")

The lyrics could use some work--lots of English-language expressions looped together that mostly seem odd or out of context ("don't beat around the bush"?). Nevertheless, the vocal performances are powerful and playful, the visuals fun, and the music an exceptional representation of the era. Now culturally long, long gone. *Sigh.*

Then again, the '80s was the era of Ronald Reagan. If only we could use this groove to travel back in time and enjoy the cool culture of the era, all while plotting the demise of Reagan and all future Agent Orange political appointees.



And just when you think it's safe to love '80s culture, you watch the official video on YouTube . . . . *Sigh.*

Pink Cadillac

I always loved Natalie Cole's version of Bruce Springsteen's "Pink Cadillac." Having said that, this video is so 1980s it makes my scrunchy hurt.

Rest in peace, Miss Natalie.

Those were the days, my friend

. . . We thought they'd never end. We'd sing and dance forever and a day . . . .

Was there ever anything sexier than Adam Ant? No.

Except for Adam Ant and Grace Jones together in an ad for a Honda scooter that no one even remembers nowadays. Who was the market for this thing, les jeunes de Paris? Except in New York and Chicago, you wouldn't stand a chance on the street or in street cred on such a scooter in the U.S.

Honestly, nobody did devil-may-care, fancy man, naughty Bond villain, and sexy beast with Apache face paint and Burundi drums better than early '80s Adam Ant. Viva Le Ant!



Good lordy, could we use an Adam Ant today. The entire punk and new wave movement should be on standby throughout history to perform periodic cultural bust-ups: To unplug the jukebox; to force us all to try another flavor.

As much as I wax on about the '70s and early disco culture, by 1978 or 1979, things really did need to change, and change they did for a little while.

But then they went back to the beginning again. When did punk become as stylistically slick and predictable as disco? When everyone started calling it new wave? When Adam Ant and Grace Jones did a Honda scooter commercial? When some girls from one of my last classes at university starting telling me how much they loved Duran Duran and thought that made them edgy? Not in 1983 it didn't.

Then again, even early '80s Duran Duran had more substance than the stuff that was getting played and "rocked out" to in my college town's downtown bars back in the day.

The funny thing is, I don't think even the rawness of punk or the danger of new wave could break through the capitalist culture logjam we find ourselves in today.

Because I can, that's why

I can't tell you how long I've been looking for a video of this song, one of my favorites by Samantha Fox. A posting on the Facebook page of Annie for "I Wanna Have Some Fun," led to me sharing this static YouTube video of the album version of "Hurt Me! Hurt Me! (But the Pants Stay On)," a minor hit for "the Fox" in the early 1990s. I remarked that I'd never been able to find an official video for this song, having only searched YouTube, et voilà! A fellow Annie fan shared this video with me.

It pays to get out of YouTube every now and again. Otherwise I would have never found this video by Annie herself.


Annie - I Know Ur Girlfriend Hates Me [New] by elpolemico

Which probably remains one of my favorite pure pop tunes of the last decade.

You can snicker all you want, but I think Samantha Fox is a rather underrated pop performer from the 1980s and early 1990s. I mean, she sings a heckuva lot better than Paula Abdul ever did, had generally better production (at least in this case) than Kylie Minogue did at the time, had more sex appeal than early Whitney Houston, may she rest in peace, and certainly more presence than Britney Spears. Ever.

So what's the deal?

Hmmm, well, in a lot of her songs, she coos and baby-girl orgasms a little too much--but so does Britney in practically every record, and Samantha Fox simply does it better, with more feeling and lusty gusto.

It probably didn't help that she was everywhere, at least in the UK, at the time, and was better known for her busty portraits as a "page 3" glamour model in the British tabloids. Or that, according to Wikipedia (my source for all wisdom), she made some dodgy career decisions (shilling for a Leicestershire-based car company at the height of her popularity) or performed badly in some settings (such as the 1989 Brit Awards). Or that she has had a confusing, often contradictory personal life--from pin-up girl to born-again Christian to more-or-less out lesbian.

I think it's fair to say she was not seen as credible by many and grasping by others. But she did make some wonderful, pure-pleasure, pop records for a while, highly entertaining (at least to me), and later in life has seemed to try to give by through charitable works.

Samantha, I just hope you're happy and well. All these years later, you still make me wanna have some fun.

This woman's work

A break from my Thicke-hatin' and un-Wanted Rihanna attention-paying. Let's get to some music that matters: "Wow" by Kate Bush. Released in 1979 as the second single from her underrated album, Lionheart (one of my personal favorites, however). Gorgeous. In song and symbol.

OK, so the video and the interpretive dance are a tad precious perhaps and Kate's voice may be an acquired taste. (There is a cheesy parody out there, Pamela Stephenson from Not the 9 O'Clock News, knocking on Kate's artistic foibles in "Oh, England, My Leotard." I'll let you discover that on your own.) Nonetheless, the creativity and the fortitude it took to make this work of art! To be this incredibly intelligent, colorful, iconoclastic, nonconfirmist, sexy performer, singing her own work for the world to hear! All at the tender age of 20-something! For a major label in 1979 no less! With a backing track consisting of real horns and woodwinds!

I hope Katy Perry and Lady GaGa see this video and weep every night for what they are not and for what they cannot do - although I'm sure La GaGa would just co-opt the concept and clothes and Katy Perry would rip off most of the imagery from Kate's videos and call it her own.

There are so many things to comment on about this video and this song. I love the fact that when I finally discovered the video it confirmed my speculation about the line

He'll never make the screen
He'll never make The Sweeney
Or be that movie queen
He's too busy hitting the Vaseline

Wow. Indeed. That would be a very provocative line for 2013. Imagine it in 1979. Add to it that very suggestive bum pat Kate gives to underscore the meaning, and I'm quite surprised this video wasn't banned for life from the Beeb.

Before you get offended by Kate's tantalizing reference to gay male sexual expression pre-HIV/AIDS, do keep in mind that on the same album, she also included a song called "Kashka from Baghdad," which starts off with this line--

Kashka from Baghdad
Lives in sin, they say
With another man
But no one knows who

And continues with the chorus--

At night
They're seen
Laughing
Loving
They know
The way
To be
Happy

It took me some time to get that reference to "another man," meaning one member of the couple is a man and so is the other. Despite being released in Britain in 1978 a mere nine months after her debut, The Kick Inside, was launched, I didn't find Lionheart in a local record store until 1979 or 1980, as I recall. I finally acknowledged my same-sex attraction in the fall of 1980, "came out" as it were. So imagine the import of that song, of both songs, in conveying some understanding of gay existence, at least to me, during those formative years.

Here you had a respected songwriter telling tales about "us," openly, not in euphemism, at least in the case of "Kashka."

Anyway, "Wow." And "Hammer Horror" and "Wuthering Heights" for that matter. Oh, to be in England, to live in a country where songs like these could get played on the radio, make it on to the pop charts, into the Top Twenty, even number 1.

One of life's regrets? I didn't make my first trip to Europe until 1985, and then to the former Soviet Union, Estonia, Finland, and Sweden. All cool and memorable in their own right, but the UK circa 1977-1982 was where it was at. I'm sorry I missed it. I'm sorry I didn't buy more records and listen to BBC World Service and that the internet didn't exist as we know it then. I'm sorry that I didn't have the money and the good sense to say "fuck responsibility," "screw everybody who knows me," and "death to what's expected of me" and just go, live, love, explore.

Maybe next life. However, I'd probably have been way out of my depths -  life seems such much better from far away, especially when it's so boring at home. And I'd probably be dead now. Or not. I never have done very well among the British in terms of affairs of the heart or other, Vaseline-lacquered body parts.

It's no secret that I love the music from the '70s and '80s. The '80s everyone loves, but the '70s sewed the seeds for the '80s, good and bad. The '70s got it all started with punk, disco, singer-songwriters, Philadelphia soul, glam, new wave, electronica, rap, reggae, and a whole lot more.

So yeah, after 1985 or so, maybe even after 1983 or so, it all started to turn to crap. Clever synth riffs and thundering beats, all of which seemed novel a few years before, quickly became standard and then predictable. Even I tuned out Kate Bush after 1985's Hounds of Love, practically ignoring 1989's The Sensual World until a decade or more after its release.

I'm not sure we've ever recovered from what the classes and the masses did to the world in the 1980s. I'd be hard-pressed to come up with a more recent "golden age" of popular music, culture, or awareness (because there were issues too, ideas being addressed and tossed around, however casually). I certainly have enjoyed musical moments since - early '90s rave culture, late '90s drum-and-bass and Cool Britannia. There's plenty of world pop, stuff in other languages, and "pop with jagged edges" (like Annie) to have appreciated over time. Yet it doesn't feel as though there's been any groundswell of good music, great culture, or sustaining thought since then.

I'm old. Perhaps I just missed it or didn't get it (for example, grunge and hip-hop, neither of which I ever warmed up to, neither of which were aimed at me).

Nowadays, despite the technological and media advantages, I would imagine it would be tough to be a pop star. Too much capitalism. Too much conformity. When the possibilities for DIY pop should be even more spectacular and doable.

Kate Bush then for me represents a last, great era of yes-we-can popular music. I hope to convey in this and future posts how important in the pop panoply I think she is and why I just generally think she's "ooh, yeah . . . amazing."

Mutual surrender

The mood du jour is "mutual surrender."

And despite the incredibly godawful '80s hair and style, what a wonderful world it would be, indeed.

England's ruse

Oddly, while scoping out other Glen Campbell songs on YouTube,--namely, "Rhinestone Cowboy," one I never really liked at the time or even now--I was re-introduced to this early '80s, New Romantic jewel--"Avalon" by Roxy Music.

I've always loved this song (the whole album in fact) and the mood it evokes: One of romance, wistfulness, the blush of love, and heart-aching, dewy beauty of it all. I remember once reading that Avalon (the album) was the Great Dorm Room Make-Out Album of 1982, and having enjoyed dorm life in the early '80s, well, I can testify--but will never kiss and tell.

I have fond memories of the videos from the album, especially the one above, which received pretty decent rotation on early MTV, if I recall correctly. There was just something about that era that made Britain seem incredibly cool, suave, lovely, and stylish. A place of beauty and sophistication, where love with a slick-haired crooner in a white dinner jacket was simply a dance away. Videos like this certainly contributed to that impression, at least in my easily impressed psyche.

I wouldn't first visit England until 1993, then again in 2005, well past the New Romantic era, and well, let's just say that while I enjoyed my time there, it was no Roxy Music video circa 1982. (A Benny Hill video from 1982? Well, that's another matter for another post . . .)

But then again, a Roxy Music video from 1982 isn't the same Roxy Music video in 2012.

By that I mean, perceptions change. What seemed amazing, beautiful, cultured, and incredibly romantic in its day, now just looks like any ol' perfume advert.

So which came first, Roxy Music's neo-samba pretensions or Dior's 30-second elegant lifestyle commercials trying to get you to, oh by the way, buy a few liters of some perfume? Classic poulet vs. oeuf, that.

Anyway, I had a mad crush on Bryan Ferry for ages, and he's still cranking out the occasional romantic, melancholy cocktail of style and preciousness. I've even bought a few of them over the years.

But while I miss that era--the innocence, the charm, the style, the possibilities, and, god yes, my youth--watching this video, listening to this song, makes me wonder . . . was it all just a big fat stripey marketing lie? Nothing more than the selling of a lifestyle, the telling of tall, beautiful tales about "hauntingly beautiful" but vacant supermodels, along with the vending of a lot of vinyl, hair gel, cars, and clothes?

It sure looks that way, at least from the vantage of 2012.

I still love you, Roxy. I still swoon to you, Avalon. You were always how I wanted to see myself, aspired to be. Cool Britannia.

But maybe I'm more that kid on the couch in a small, suburban tract house, nestled among his sibs and parents, watching performances of "Wichita Lineman" on The Glen Campbell Good-Time Hour or "Harper Valley P.T.A." on The Porter Wagoner Show. Or was. And might wish to be again some day, if only for a moment.

Nevertheless, despite the desire to return to a less crazy, more hazy-golden era, I would pay hard cash to get "Rhinestone Cowboy" unstuck from my head right now.

* * *

Oh, who am I kidding. I would *so* tell if Bryan Ferry had ever been involved in the kissing.

We're not New Wave, We're New Romantic

Funny how the past revisits your life every now and again, stealing its way into your present day, gently, sensitively, surreptitiously.

Recently, I stumbled across David Sylvian's Voice of the Beehive album (well, the CD version of it at least) at a local record shop (well, CD resale shop at least). An album almost forgotten to me but one that I listened to repeatedly for a period of time in the late '80s, when it was originally released.

I was living in Washington, D.C., then but traveling some. I think I had a cassette of this album with me when I went to Australia in September-October 1987. Or maybe not. I definitely remember sharing my Feargal Sharkey cassette with a guy on a plane to Melbourne sometime around then. Maybe I did the same with David Sylvian, too.

Anyway, even though I sometimes, oftentimes, remember my Washington days with a certain bitterness and discomfort, I did enjoy the music, art, and culture I was exposed to then. I don't think it was a great town to be in to be tuned in, at least not in the '80s and at least not without a lot of money and an East Coast pedigree. Maybe there is no town like that, at least when you're in your twenties, and you're ready for your life to begin, not realizing that it already has. It's just another capitalist media fantasy, handed down, layered on, built up with the goal of increasing your dis-ease and making you want, strive, need, buy, break, die, then want, strive, and need, again and again.

But the times I visited New York then, often just going up for the day on the train, too cheap or too broke to stay overnight (a missed opportunity, no doubt), it did seem to be the place, at least in the mid- to late-'80s. Edgy, seedy, dangerous, forward, cool, powerful. Most definitely unlike Washington, where everyone seemed to be focused on an upper-middle-class sense of responsible cool and measured power of a different sort. Trenchcoats and 401Ks and liabilities and political maneuvering--and that was just among the clerk-typists.

If I had to do it all again, I'd probably do it all again, but I'd probably do it all again in New York or London. Or, heck, Melbourne. I'm not sure I would have been any more comfortable in my own skin there and then, but I think it would have been more interesting.

Having said that, I don't regret the times or the time in Washington. I just wish I'd done more with it, been less afraid, taken more risks, accepted more opportunities, and had more fun.

And I'm still feeling that way about my life today.

* * *

So one little David Sylvian album brought that all about.

It reminded me of then, and it reminded me of now, and it reminded me to feel: Moody, pensive, relaxed, luxuriant, sad, bittersweet. Something.

When was the last time I did that? Why don't I do it more often? Did I lose all feeling in my heart and my head after age 30? I can remember in my 20s having a glass of wine, listening to Nina Simone, sinking into the moment, shedding a tear or a giggle, enjoying my own company, and calling it a wonderful night.

And now . . . now it's TV and Twitter and Facebook and phone calls and trying to keep the stereo down so as not to disturb the neighbors (ironic, that), and staring out at the same street day after day, night after night, expecting it to look different each time. And not feeling anything at all, except . . .

The need for change is in my system again. It's been there for a while, and I've been too busy and dissatisfied with the day-to-day to notice it much. Maybe it's just the head cold and the cold medicine talking, but this year, or the next, but please God, not the one after, a change for the better will occur.

I turned 50 last fall, and I barely had time to notice it, so busy was I. But I feel it now. I'm still here. I'm still alive. And I want something more, something different, before it's too late. Or I simply forget to feel again.

Just jump in the pool already

Please choose from the following:

• One of my favorite pop songs. Ever.
• One of the most underrated bands of the 1980s. Ever.
• One of the dumbest videos. Ever.
• An explanation for part of my profile text.
• All of the above.

Class dismissed.

Get fresh at the weekend

I have had this song on brain for the last couple of days, "Serious" by Donna Allen. Specifically, I've had the line "Talk! Talk about serious!" earwigging me out--although I have to admit I kept remember hearing the line as "Talk! Talk about experience!" Like it was an ad for an investment firm. You have to admit having "Serious" or even "Experience" as a jingle for a brokerage operation would be far more appealing than those damn talking, vomiting babies they use over at E-Trade.

So I finally tracked the song down on YouTube and was rewarded with this "fashion forward" video of '80s excess. Whenever anyone nowadays tells me how much they loved or continue to love the '80s, I will henceforth shudder at the thought.

The music? Oh yeah, it was great, and this is a perfect little slice of mid-80s funk pop. It's got more going for it than just that one misremembered line. There's that beautiful, multi-tracked chorus beginning with "Baby I don't know what I should do . . . about you." That "Rock Rock Planet Rock"-styled, vocoderized background voice repeating, "Are you serious?" And that wonderfully sexy-voiced male rap beginning with "Breaking hearts is my claim to fame . . . ."

All worthy of acclaim, confetti, parades, fireworks, and spontaneous, interpretive dancing in the streets. (Very '80s video, I should add.) Most people who love '80s music probably think about the early '80s stuff--Haircut 100, Duran Duran, Bananarama, ABC--all very British, all very brilliant. But there was also a lot of fantastic, American funk and dance pop--Janet Jackson's "Escapade," Gwen Guthrie's "Ain't Nuthin' Goin' on but the Rent," and Donna Allen's "Serious," to name but three--that should be celebrated as well.



No screaming divas, no smutty lyrics, no scrawny blonde girls trying to be "fly," innocent, and trashy all at once. (In other words, Ke$ha wasn't even born yet--imagine!) Just good, happy, sexy, funky, fun pop. It was all so very, very lovely, despite the incredibly dodgy fashion sense.

That is, until Stock-Aitken-Waterman's "Sound of a Bright Young Britain" (excluding Mel & Kim, I hasten to add) and Paula Abdul's bleating blasted it all to hell, for Brits and Americans alike, leaving anything commercial and clever (not diametrically opposed concepts after all) for dead.

Or worse--for the '90s and Naughties. I'm not sure pop music and culture have ever recovered.

Still, one thing that was ruined in the 1980s long before the music was the fashion. These few videos exemplify some of the worst of it. Let's enumerate:

1. Huge hair
2. I mean HUGE HAIR
3. Ridiculous, day-glo colors
4. Body-sleek spandex and other stretch fabrics
5. Or worse, leftover bolero pants and hats (really? really?!) from the '70s
6. Thick-as-cake-batter make-up
7. Perms on men
8. That weird sort of quiff up-front, piglet tail in back hairstyle on me, the forerunner of the dreaded, derided mullet
9. Overuse of the V-shape as a design motif
10. And everything just way too shiny-shiny

Please, let's never go back to any of this, not even for Halloween.
 

Today's '80s Flashback: Out of Mind, Out of Sight

For some strange reason, I woke up with this earwig, "Out of Mind, Out of Sight" by Models, an Australian group from the '80s, stuck in my head quite insistently.

It's a song that pops to the surface of my memory every now and again. Funnily enough, I never owned the single or the album (neither of which are available in the U.S. version of iTunes at the moment) but always liked them. Very INXS in some ways, I guess. And real brass! When's the last time you heard that in a pop song? Other than a sample of real brass, I mean.

I don't know much about the group, but the song makes me nostalgic for, yes, the '80s, specifically '80s music. At least as far as pop radio is concerned, it was so much better then--and, yes, I'm sure I could quantify that statement with very little effort. You had to be there, and I was, but it all went by so quickly. In fact, I'd say in 1985, when this song was released, the golden era was severely tarnished by then.

The song also makes me nostalgic for another, older life--being in my mid-20s, living on my own in Washington, D.C., and trying to learn as much about life as I could in as short a time as possible. Traveling to Leningrad (yes, when it was still known as Leningrad, not Petersburg, Petrograd, or whatever it's being called this month), Moscow, Tallinn, Helsinki, Stockholm, New York (for the first time), and Melbourne, Sydney, Alice Springs, and Uluru (Ayers Rock), Australia, all within the space of . . . two years.

Really, two years?! Is that even possible? That's amazing. Spring/summer 1985 to the USSR and Northern Europe. Fall 1987 to Australia. Come to think of it, I did indeed do so much in such a little amount of time, without even realizing it. Now I'm lucky if I get to Chicago or Canada every couple of years.

Here's some proof of two of my destinations--

Montag at the Hermitage, Leningrad, 1985

Montag at Uluru (Ayers Rock), 1987

So file Models' Out of Mind, Out of Sight under "One of those albums (yes, albums) I meant to buy but never got around to."

And file this time in my life under "Better than I remembered" and perhaps also "If only."

* * *

Whenever I'm feeling melancholic about the road(s) less traveled, there is always (thank heaven) my Mom to cheer me up. Today's memorable quote from Vivien Leigh:  "Whenever you're feeling bad about your life, just watch an episode of Hillbilly Handfishin' on Animal Planet, and I'll guarantee you'll feel better about how things turned out."

If you're unfamiliar with this latest example of non-elitist American excellence, I refer you to this Wikipedia article. However, apparently it fails to relate some of the nuances of the presentation--such as, the winner of said contest being referred to as the "Big Dog," donning a coonskin cap, and howling his or her success before a roaring campfire.

Now that you mention it, I do feel better.

Today's '80s flashback

I so loved Sparks in the late '70s/early '80s. Even though some of the stuff from this era sounds a little dated now, this one, "When I'm With You," from their 1980, Giorgio Moroder-produced album, Terminal Jive, seems rather timeless to me.

The story goes that this single did practically nothing on release (the album from which it was taken wasn't even released in the U.S., their home country), except in France. There it hit and stayed at number 1 for eleventy-billion weeks. Yet another reason to love the French.



Ron Mael's ventriloquist act has Jeff Dunham's beat all to pieces. And here's hoping that image comes to life some day . . .

We'll save discussion of my long-standing crush on Russell Mael (the "dummy" in this video) for another place and time. You're welcome.

Meanwhile, I'm going to dance around my living room while this one plays, much as I did at my parents' house in the early '80s when I first bought this record. (Or was it a cassette? Please god no, not an 8-track . . .).

My poor parents and neighbors indeed.