Okay, second post from the Oy! High School Years and because I was on vacation, didn't post one last week.
C'mon 40-somethings, you know you all loved this damn song! If you say you didn't you're a damn liar!
As mentioned in my Big Country post, the 80s were the launch of MTV and the influx of everything not American and very funky looking was attractive. We all heard it at every sock hop and turn-about dance we attended.
Flock of Seagulls was just something we weren't all exposed to. The look, the hair, the big glasses, the full-on synthesizer music... we ate it up and yelled out the lyrics when they hit the chorus.
But probably what Flock are most known for is the hairstyle which, when you take a good look at it, looks like Donald Trump got caught in a Hurricane force wind storm. They didn't exhibit this during the I Ran video but on their other big hit, "Space Age Love Song".
I never had the guts to try it. I had the typical part down the middle, hair feathered back on the sides look during this time. I'm not sure Mr. Brown (dean of students) or any of the good Benedictine Brothers, Priests and Nuns would have allowed it in the doors of good ol' Benet Academy if I had even tried. Maybe as long as I had my tie on straight they would have?
Well, although I mostly tended towards hard rock, metal, classic rock during High School there was a time when, gasp, MTV and Friday Night Videos took a prominent place on my weekends.
Combine the fact that we could now see the artists performing along with the influx if much needed imported video with my oft-cited attraction to unique sounds et voila, Big Country, one of the biggest bands to come out of Scotland during that time other than The Signals ;-p (inside reference to someone who will know what it means)
The unique guitar sounds, often which were made to sound like bagpipes playing were constructed by lead guitarist and lead writer for the band, Stuart Adamson. The songs were fun, invoked references to their love of their homeland and transported me to 80's Scotland as I would read the liner notes to their first albums.
The video below is from roughly their last performance with Stuart at the helm. There may have been one or two performances after this but a year and a half later, he was found dead in a hotel in Hawaii having committed suicide.
I couldn't find the 'official' video that played in heavy rotation on MTV during that time but if I do ever find it, I'll post it. It just made you want to get to the UK, which I did some 14 years later.
Well, since one of the big hub-bubs before yesterday's Superbowl commercial-o-rama was about the VW spot and a few mis-guided, talking-head race-baiters calling it racist (it WASN'T), I thought it was appropriate to choose a Jamaican artist for today.
Kudos to VW for still running the ad. My wife had NOT seen it OR the 'outrage' and laughed through the whole thing.
As I mentioned in my previous OMM post, college was a GREAT time for me and my music tastes and experiences rapidly broadened further than I could have ever imagined.
There were a few Reggae/Ska bands in Milwaukee and somehow the Delta Chi boys attached ourselves to a band of WHITE guys called Those X-Cleavers who were sort of a punk/ska sort of group. (Note: I think the ONLY other group was Kojo at the time and then there was Tony Brown Band out of Madison). But what came from that was the quick exposure to groups much more than just the Bob Marley stuff that was playing on ever jukebox in every campus bar and house party.
I'll feature a group of guys later in the year named Sly & Robbie but back to this post; Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Jimmy Cliff playing "The Harder They Come".
Now, this song came out in 1972 (or close to it) but I hadn't heard it, at least not consciously, until the mid-80's. I ALSO was able to finally see the movie around that time as well. Jimmy was the star of that movie and of course, as he mentions in the video, it really propelled him into at least US notariety.
During the mid 80's he also did a movie that I actually PAID to see called Club Paradise with Robin Williams.
Jimmy never really had a ton of commercial music hits, but amongst the Reggae community, he continued to represent the 'no problem mon' attitude that helped tourism to this very day. Frankly, most of anything he had ever chart were covers of other songs but hearing his original "The Harder They Come" is one that left its mark on me.
I was fortunate to see him live and it was absolutely fantastic and I got that chance in the early 90's at Summerfest where the aforementioned Those X-Cleavers opened up for him (and not like the band that plays at 12:00, they were the band that played right before he took the stage).
Lastly, please notice that he plays guitar left-handed but doesn't re-string the guitar, he just plays it upside down. I heard an interview with him (again on the Guitar Center Sessions on DirecTV) where he said that it was just cheaper to buy a right-handed guitar and play it upside down. Hell it worked for Paul McCartney and Jimi Hendrix, why not him
Funny enough my son plunks around on a right-handed guitar but he too is a lefty. Maybe if it gets really good at it, we'll have a star on our hands.
Yes, I know that in my original post, I said I'm using Old Music Monday as a vehicle to ensure I write more but it's also to take time to express my creative side which sometimes is blunted by the day-to-day rigor of my day gig. But every so often, it crosses my mind that by the time Aidan is eighteen years old, I'll be sixty.
As we get older it's inevitable that we ponder what life will be like without us. I'm not fixating on that, but with all of the social media we're engaged in, and I, a heavy-user, there's going to be amazing catalogs of material on us that one could use in tribute when we finally pass.
For me it's more about sharing with Aidan things that I may not take the time to do as he continues to mature and grow into the wonderful, young man he's going to be. I think I'm doing a pretty good job of it right now by ensuring his iPad is loaded with a good balance of current and older music.
I'm amazed at which songs he gravitates to and which ones he doesn't. It's actually become a bit of a game by me changing songs on his playlist to see what he picks up on the most.
But since life can be short and sweet, I might as well document songs and artists I love, give a tiny bit of history on where I was in my life or what was going on when I embraced it and hope that he learns to do the same.
OKAY, so this 'make up' Old Music Monday submission is actually a movie and album all in one kinda making this a Two-Fer-Tuesday (ha!).
I think, although I'm surely wrong, that this was the FIRST album (actually cassette, thank you) I bought upon my arrival at Marquette University in the Fall of 1984.
From top to bottom, I could sing the words to almost every song from the opening Psycho Killer to Burning Down the House, Once in a Lifetime (with many seizure-inducing actions straight out of the film) and finally, Take Me To The River.
Just classic songs to be hearing at the age of 18. But what really happened with me here was that my music tastes were now being stretched. Okay, it wasn't the FIRST time they were, but from this point on, I opened up to a lot more than Classic Rock & Roll, Metal, Hard Rock and AOR with a smidgen of Pop.
Not sure if we called this 'Alternative' back then, it was more New Wave. Whatever, it got me listening to a hell of a lot more than I used to be. Part performance art, part musical genius. David Byrne really is something to behold. Plus there was a Milwaukee link in that Jerry Harrison from the group was born and raised in the Brew City.
I never saw the movie until we decided to have a "Stop Making Sense" video/dance party at our Fraternity House maybe a year later, but that really didn't matter to me, I loved the sound, concept and performance. I DO remember having to run over to some East Side shitty video store to get a VHS copy of the movie so we could play it on my stereo VHS player that I had bought the summer before.
"You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile. You may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife. You may ask yourself, WELL, how did I get here?"
First of all, Yes, I know I missed last Monday. Okay, so I failed a bit on my New Year's Resolution but to make up for it, I'm doing TWO entries this week, watch for one tomorrow as well.
Little did I know as a young man, how much I would eventually love Joe Walsh.
Now, there's no way in hell I heard Funk #49 when it was first released (1970) and if I did, well, then it was burned so deeply into my subconscious that when I did realize what I was listening to sometime later in the 70's, it resounded nicely.
The combination of Walsh's funky Cleveland/Jersey accent sort of drunk-singing was something unique (remember, unique sounds pique my interest in almost any kind of music) but add to that the Fender Telecaster through the Fender amp and you had a sound that Joe still uses today on just about every song he writes/sings.
I like this particular performance of it from the December 2012 Guitar Center Sessions show which plays on the Audience channel (only on DirecTV). It's really an interview show with some of the artists' hit songs smattered in between. Enjoy, you can see how much fun he still has playing it and of course, now, being 17 years clean and sober!
Okay, Joe gets two songs, as a solo artist (of course there's Eagles' tunes forthcoming) and the second one is Life's Been Good (1978) which is, of course, a song about the life of a Rock & Roll star and his tales from the road basically.
As an 'almost' teenager, this really struck a chord as you're still in the untainted dream stage of what you want to do in your life and hell, a musician was still a possibility! That sort of life sounded like a LOT of fun and well, we all know now how much fun Joe actually had back then. The lovely thing about this song is that you are going to get TWO videos for it, both sort of long but then again, the song was long to begin with. I think the WLS on-air staff probably did a lot of bathroom/smoke breaks during this one.
First you'll get Joe's performance of it from the OTHER music show I love, Live from Daryl's House which was originally only a web-only show (love it!!) but now plays on Palladia and the second one was from May 2012 where Joe sort of told a little story about how he wrote the song from an appearance at The Troubadour in West Hollywood.
I think my love for Joe was only deepened as in the mid-90's when he started sitting in with Steve Dahl on his shows and then sitting IN for Steve when he'd go on vacation for a week. "Howya DOIN?" became a regular catch phrase for me and it gave some insight into who the heck this guy was, plus he was 'real' in the fact that he had new found sobriety which Steve had just sort of found as well.
Although I fully do not intend to do this "Old Music Monday" series in chronological order, I will stick with 1977 (my Buddy Holly song came to me in '77) with probably Foreigner's most famous hit, "Cold As Ice".
Now, at the age of 11, there's no way I understood that this song was about some evil 'cold as ice' bitch but what I did know was that 4-part harmonies sounded like butter to my ears and this song was in massive heavy rotation on WLS-AM. After listening to the lyrics a few hundred times I started figuring out what was being sung about.
Also, since I had my shiny new first cassette player, this is one of those songs that I would record off of the radio onto blank tapes. You know, the press record and play buttons simultaneously while it sat NEXT TO my am/fm radio. I'd always get mad when the DJ (John 'Records' Landecker most likely, as he did nights) talked up to the post or jumped in during the fade at the end.
Lou Gramm had one of those voices that stuck out in the crowded music I listened to. With Mick Jones the guitar playing was a highlight on many of their other songs as well and given his pedigree (Leslie West Band, played with Frampton and George Harrison on some of their albums/tours) this band was destined to be a big hit and were.
For some reason on this one, the repeating/rhythmic keyboard sound got to me. Also, what I learned later, was that there was this unique sound of a Hammond organ being used. There's a couple of other songs I'll share later on where the famous Hammond B-3 is front and center. This song wasn't the B-3 though. Al Greenwood (the keyboardist) said in an interview in the late 70's that he was using the Hammond L-100 with an EML 101 synth. He did say that in the early 80's he then switched over to the B-3 (a cutdown version)
Enjoy this video which was the official release from back in '77. Loves me the 70's hair and who couldn't love this all being done by a Union Pacific Commuter train. What the hell did THAT have to do with the song? Remember, this is still before MTV.
Totally stripped down in its original format. As I got older, I realized that I was always drawn to very unique or different sounds in music. Things like unique instruments or unique vocal arrangements will always capture my attention.
Although it isn't the first song I can remember hearing, it's significant because it was a song I really loved on the very first Cassette Tape I ever bought with my own money. Honestly, about five times through listening through it and I had the words down and would sing along.
For some reason buying my first cassette tape sticks out in my head because I bought it through a fund-raiser that my grade school, Fairview Elementary (now closed), was having. I was in 5th Grade, Miss June Coradetti's class and it was Spring of 1977.
In a very forced attempt to ensure I contribute to my OWN blog on a regular basis, for 2013, I will be posting once a week about a song (or a couple from the same artist) that significantly shaped my life in one way or another.
They won't be long posts, unless warranted, but will, where legally allowed, have a link to a YouTube video (or other sources) along with why that particular choice was made.
In the industry, new records are released on Tuesdays ("New Music Tuesdays") but since these aren't new, I'm going to call my posts "Old Music Mondays".
