Jeff Buckley

For several years, the position of main buyer at a large record store in a major music city afforded me opportunities that would make most music fans delirious. I took advantage, but, at times, it was overwhelming.

So, when a friend who worked for a label called me on a rainy Sunday night, I had no intent of trekking out into the gloom. However, as this friend was not prone to hyperbole and he made his case that this show was a must, I reconsidered.

Fortunately, my then-girlfriend’s apartment was two blocks from the club. It was eight o’clock. I think that I told her that I’d be back by nine.

The club was small, housed in a building in which one half was a candlelit café with a decidedly bohemian slant. The club occupied the other half. It was filled to maybe half capacity – no more than a hundred people.

I found my friend at a table with several other of our usual group, likely ordered a glass of red, and watched as a slight kid with a mop of unkempt black hair took the small stage. A large statue of an angel – a noted feature of this club – hung behind the band, high above, seeming to levitate against the dark, theatre-style draperies.

The artist was Jeff Buckley.

Jeff was the son of folk singer Tim Buckley, who had died of an overdose in the mid-‘70s. It was March of ’94 and Jeff’s debut album, Grace, wouldn’t arrive in stores until late summer.

Buckley’s voice was one of the most compelling I’d ever heard. It was primal. It soared and swooped like some beautiful, yet fragile, bird of prey.

When he sang Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, the clinking of glasses, the idle conversations all stopped.

(and I’d argue that the version that appeared on Grace is the definitive take on that modern classic)

Afterwards, he hung out with us for a bit. The details are hazy (I was drinking on my label friend’s expense account), but I remember him having a gentleness about him. He seemed down-to-earth, quiet, and to have a vibe of restless calm about him.

I didn’t make it back to my girlfriend’s apartment until well after two.

Six months later, Grace was released to critical raves and (everyone say it together) public indifference.

But the album didn’t merely fade away. The acclaim was so strong and listeners who had found it had the need to reach converts. Though it didn’t become a mammoth commercial smash, Grace sold well and did so steadily for the next year or so.

Praise came from legends such as Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Bob Dylan, David Bowie and Lou Reed.

During the late winter of ’97, Buckley had relocated from Manhattan to Memphis to work on his second album. He had already recorded an album’s worth of songs but was dissatisfied with them.

On May 29, the day his band had arrived in town to continue work on the record; Buckley waded out into a channel of the Mississippi River, taking a late night swim. According to a roadie, who was onshore, he was singing the chorus to Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love.

That night, I was with the same label friend, out with most of the same friends from that show, having drinks, when he received a phone call that Buckley was missing. Word of the incident seemed to spread quickly.

Our group ended up at the house where I lived. We sat around watching a compilation of live and video footage my friend had, as mesmerized as we had been three years earlier. It was an unexpected, impromptu wake.

Buckley’s body was found six days later and – as he was sober at the time – his death was ruled an accidental drowning.

Jeff Buckley – Lover, You Should Have Come Over
from Grace

Jeff Buckley – Last Goodbye
from Grace

Jeff Buckley – Hallelujah
from Grace

Jeff Buckley – Everybody Here Wants You
from Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk

Jeff Buckley – Yard Of Blonde Girls
from Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk

Jeff Buckley – New Year’s Day Prayer
from Sketches For My Sweetheart The Drunk

Let's Have John Madden Make Kim Jong Il An Offer He Can’t Refuse

So, Kim Jong Il is engaging in shenanigans again. I can’t help but think that it’s a damned shame that there’s the whole threat of an isolated, paranoid, totalitarian regime possessing nuclear toys overshadowing the amazing comedic potential of the little fellow.

The crazy hair, the diminutive stature, the dubious stylistic decisions – Dear Leader is a craze waiting to happen. With the proper marketing campaign, there wouldn’t be a car in this country without a facsimile of him hanging from the rear view mirror or a puppy without a Kim Jong Il chew toy.

Unfortunately, there is that whole nuclear weapon thing.

Kim actually is not so dissimilar from an icon in the American sports world – Al Davis.

Davis, of course, is the owner of the Oakland Raiders, once one of the premier franchises in the National Football League; now, the organization is an isolated, paranoid, totalitarian regime.

Like Kim, Al has crazy hair, though he opts for an oily, slicked-back coif as opposed to Kim’s towering wall of hair.

Sartorially speaking, Al has his infamous white jumpsuit and granny glasses on a chain. Kim, too, also favors jumpsuits, albeit of a more drab variety, and shades.

Both are also obsessed with the vertical game – in Kim’s case, its intercontinental rocketry; for Al, its rocket-armed quarterbacks and track-star wideouts.

Al even once had a quarterback nicknamed The Mad Bomber.

(I must consult with my intelligence expert – don’t laugh, I have one – and I hope to find that Kim has a rocket expert nicknamed Darryl Lamonica)

Now, as both North Korea and the Oakland Raiders are failed, rogue states, isn’t it possible that the solution to the angst caused by both men is connected to the uncanny similarities between this dynamic, diminutive duo?

Before he became a video game inventor, John Madden proved adroit at working with Al, managing to coach the Raiders to a Super Bowl win. Madden is now retired.

Bring him into the mix, have him broker some kind of treaty between the two figureheads. Maybe it’s as simple as having Kim own the Raiders and Al lead North Korea.

Both would still receive the attention they so desperately crave.

Al’s good at rattling the cages of the powers that be and thumbing his nose at popular opinion. Kim has managed to drive an entire country into despair and destitution.

(ask any of the demented, psych hospital escapees that make up Raider Nation if that doesn’t sound familiar)

Maybe the two are too alike. Maybe the result of a swap would be status quo.

But consider the hilarity as draft expert Mel Kiper, Jr. bursts a blood vessel in his eye as he goes all apoplectic if Kim uses the sixth pick in next year’s talent hunt to select some unknown receiver from Southern Idaho State named Ray Ray Gorgonzola simply because he ran a 4.22 40 at the Combine

Tell me that wouldn’t be preferable to where things stand now.

Kim and Al might not have the market cornered on inexplicable behavior, but, when it comes to crazy, they certainly have the makings of a good cartel. So, here are a few songs for them…

Francis Dunnery – Crazy Is A Pitstop
from Let’s Go Do What Happens

I posted a track from Dunnery’s solo debut, Fearless, awhile back. This trippy little number comes from his second album and both are worth seeking out – very talented fellow.

Crazy might, indeed, be a pit stop, but it seems like an awful lot of folks treat it as a parking lot.

Nazareth – Crazy (A Suitable Case For Treatment)
from Heavy Metal soundtrack

As a teenager, Heavy Metal was among the favorites for movie rentals with me and my friends. The movie’s soundtrack was far more diverse than its title implied, ranging from Devo and Stevie Nicks to Donald Fagen and Blue Oyster Cult.

As for Nazareth, my best friend in our neighborhood as a kid had an older brother who we all held in awe. He had sideburns, sunglasses and a Camaro. And usually blaring from that Camaro was Nazareth’s Hair Of The Dog (on eight track, no less).

Paul Davis – I Go Crazy
from Singer of Songs: Teller of Tales

If Gordon Lightfoot’s The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald is the light rock Stairway To Heaven of the ’70s, then I Go Crazy is…what? I do remember when this was a hit in ’77 and it was inescapable. It seemed to always be playing over the loudspeakers at our town’s public pool that summer (and on the radio of our bus returning from swim meets).

Bob Marley & The Wailers- Crazy Baldhead
from Rastaman Vibration

To Rastifarians, a baldhead is someone without dreadlocks, a non-believer. I have no idea what Kim Jong Il or Al Davis believe and, whatever it is, it’s likely mentally inscrutable to the sane.

However, I have no doubt that the two could benefit from throwing on some Bob Marley albums and blazing away. As hilarious as Harold And& Kumar Go To White Castle was, someone needs to draft Kim & Al Make A Taco Bell Run. It simply must be done.

I Could Grow A Beard, I Could Be A Champion

I’m ever vigilant for opportunities to add to my list of accomplishments. You know, new feathers for my cap and such.

Opportunity presented itself the other day as I read of some kid who, mere days ago, was declared a winner at the World Beard & Moustache Championships.

This seemed to be the kind of thing that is the calling of a select few – like climbing Everest or finding the image of Jesus in a grease spot on a pizza box.

And, best of all, unlike those feats, growing a beard requires absolutely no effort, focus, or even consciousness from me. Even ordering a pizza demands some expenditure of energy.

However, in the time it takes to order, receive, and eat a pizza, my beard would grow…well, it would be an imperceptible amount, but it’s still doing its thing at, I’ve read, the rate of one half inch a month.

There are numerous, intriguing categories in which to compete. In the partial beard division alone there is the Musketeer, Imperial, and the Alaskan Whaler.

These championships are held every two years so I have time to become a follicular force.

(Paloma has promised her full support)

For the moment, I’m leaning toward the Fu Manchu. Some fellow named Ted Sedman took the title at the 2007 championships in Brighton, England and I have already penciled him in as my latest arch-nemesis.

I figure that the Fu Manchu balances a sinister, malevolent vibe with a quiet, sinister dignity. I can imagine responding to the knock of the pizza delivery guy, throwing open the door, muttering something in an unintelligible growl, and pausing for a split second to offer a threatening scowl.

He would certainly flee in terror, unconcerned with payment, leaving me and my Fu Manchu to enjoy our free pie.

In the meantime, some acts that might be formidable bearded and/or mustachioed competition…

Bee Gees- You Should Be Dancin’
from Saturday Night Fever soundtrack

I was nine when Saturday Night Fever ruled the world. At the time, I couldn’t have cared less and was indifferent when I received the double album as a gift. I imagine that soundtrack was probably the default gift for a lot of folks that Christmas.

As for the movie – I didn’t see it until twenty years later. It was on late night television one night in a hotel in Stratford-On-Avon. I was trekking through the UK with two friends and had just returned to the room. I decided it was a good time to check it off the list.

I also knew that the aunt of another friend had worked on the lighting and appeared in the nightclub scenes. I immediately recognized her the moment she appeared on screen (though I’d never met her).

She resembled an older version of my friend in drag.

(and, as either gender, this friend wasn’t as dashing or as bearded as Barry Gibb)

The Call – Let The Day Begin
from Let The Day Begin

I can’t picture The Call’s lead singer Michael Been and not think of him as the apostle John in the movie version of The Last Temptation Of Christ. Of course, the few pictures that I’ve seen of the band always find him bearded, too.

As for the underrated The Call, the band had a strong following on college rock when I was smack dab in that format’s demographic. Let The Day Begin was probably their best-known song and the rousing anthem featured actor Harry Dean Stanton (who also appeared in The Last Temptation Of Christ) playing harmonica.

George Michael – Cowboys And Angels
from Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1

I’m not sure if there’s a stubble division among the beard and moustache aficionados, but the most famous facial scruff of the late ‘80s/early ‘90s had to have belonged to George Michael (toppling Miami Vice’s Don Johnson from his pedestal).

The dreamy Cowboys And Angels appeared on Listen Without Prejudice, Michael’s follow-up to the mammothly successful Faith. I was rather ambivalent to the latter, but I thought that the more downbeat Listen Without Prejudice was glorious and near perfect.

Kenny Loggins – This Is It
from Keep The Fire

I wouldn’t describe myself as a fan of Kenny Loggins, but This Is It served as the theme of the 1979 NCAA basketball championship when the hoops world was formally introduced to Bird and Magic. So, that is certainly noteworthy.

Also, the bearded Loggins was accompanied on the song by Michael McDonald on background vocals, making This Is It a two-for-one in the musicians’ pantheon of facial hair.

More Than Merely A Man Of Science

(reposted from Tuesday sans music)

I once convinced a co-worker that cooking show host Alton Brown was actually musician Thomas Dolby, having adopted an American accent and working under a pseudonym.

I didn’t really, but tell me that Alton couldn’t be Dolby twenty years after She Blinded Me With Science.

And as Dolby pretty much didn’t exist for most music listeners other than that song of science, it isn’t so farfetched to think that he might have reinvented himself as Alton Brown. I mean, Alton is known for offering the scientific details behind things like brining the Thanksgiving turkey.

(I felt as though I had discovered fire the first time I brined the annual bird – it might have been one of the greatest moments in my life)

But, as far as I know, Thomas Dolby is not Alton Brown (or vice versa).

And it’s unfortunate that Dolby is known to few for an intriguing and diverse career. I’d forgotten that he performed on Foreigner’s song Urgent and Waiting For A Girl Like You (and isn’t it the keyboards – his keyboards – that make the latter?)

He also appeared on Def Leppard’s breakthrough Pyromania.

I knew more of Dolby’s music than most because of my friend Chris. Yeah, he dug The Golden Age Of Wireless, but it was that album’s follow-up, The Flat Earth, which he played constantly during the summer of 1984.

I remember that the video for Dolby’s cover of Dan Hicks’ I Scare Myself got played a bit (maybe on Friday Night Videos), but The Flat Earth was pretty much ignored.

That was quite unfortunate. It’s a lost classic.

For the next decade, Dolby would issue an occasional, underappreciated album. He also produced a trio of brilliant albums for another criminally ignored act, Prefab Sprout.

But Dolby hasn’t released new material since ‘92’s Astronauts & Heretics. He is rumored to be readying a new album for this year.

And I do so hope that his management books him a spot on Alton Brown’s show as a musical guest or pairs them in a buddy-cop flick.

Some recommended songs and personal favorites by Mr. Dolby…

One Of Our Submarines
from The Golden Age Of Wireless

I actually seem to recall hearing One Of Our Submarines on 97X, the one alternative rock station to which I had access, back in the day. The keyboard passage in it always reminded me of the theme to the television show The Six Million Dollar Man.

The Flat Earth
from The Flat Earth

Yes, Dolby has a well-deserved reputation as a techno boffin, but, despite the gadgetry, he somehow imbues his songs with more humanity than most more acoustic-based acts. The title song from The Flat Earth is strange and lovely – “The earth can be any shape that you want it to be.”

Screen Kiss
from The Flat Earth

The bittersweet, wistful Screen Kiss scrapes the sunny superficiality from the surface of Hollywood dreams and the myth of Southern California and finds a lot of crushed hopes and heartache.

Budapest By Blimp
from Aliens Ate My Buick

Dolby’s 1988 album Aliens Ate My Buick was a mixed bag. Working with folks like George Clinton, much of it is brittle funk that doesn’t always succeed in living up to its ambitions. On Budapest By Blimp, the funk is handled with a lighter touch (although the mid-section of the song has some searing guitar) and the song is one of the album’s highlights.

It really wouldn’t surprise me if Dolby had actually made the journey of the title track. He just seems like that kind of guy.

Eastern Bloc
from Astronauts & Heretics

Eastern Block with a nifty Bo Diddley beat is a musical sequel to the song Europa And The Pirate Twins from The Golden Age Of Wireless. That song told of a childhood friendship with a young girl who would grow up to be a supermodel. Apparently, Dolby has such an experience and, years later as an adult, the girl blew him off when their paths crossed in an airport.

Instead, he married actress Katherine Beller.

I Love You Goodbye
from Astronauts & Heretics

Aside from The Flat Earth – this might be my favorite Dolby song. Another song for people who think they know Thomas Dolby because they’ve seen the video a thousand times on VH1.

A cajun-inflected tale of corrupt local sherriffs and stolen cars on the road from New Orleans to the Everglades…I Love You Goodbye is evocative and mysterious.

Morgan Freeman Is Leading Us Down A Path To Economic Ruin

That headline is more than some sensationalistic ballyhoo. It’s more than some flimsy, baseless caterwauling from someone possessed by the spirit of a carnival barker, newsstand tabloid, or Republican pundit.

No, I fear that, sadly, there is considerable truth behind it.

Like many people, I too have been a fan of this award-winning thespian, but I now realize that I might have been lulled into a false sense of admiration.

I used to look at him as a kindly fellow – compassionate and wise. I mean, if he wasn’t offering rides to cantankerous, elderly women, you might find him engaging in the much-needed rehabilitation of falsely convicted criminals or – great Gotham! – lending logistical support to masked vigilantes wishing to rid our cities of such criminals.

(of course, lily-livered, bleeding heart types would rather that we not rid our streets of falsely convicted wife-killing bankers and, instead, target bankers who merely engage in casual games of multi-billion dollar three-card Monte)

The existential threat posed by Morgan Freeman to America came to my attention weeks ago, but it didn’t really register until this morning when I saw his most recent commercial for Visa before I’d ingested enough caffeine to think straight.

(oftentimes things only make sense when you don’t really think about them)

In this commercial, calming images of undersea flora and fauna fill the screen accompanied by the soothing strains of The Moody Blues’ Tuesday Afternoon.

Then, you hear the earnest voice of “the only guilty man in Shawshank,” asking, in an accusatory manner, “When was the last time you went to the aquarium, with your daughter, on a Tuesday?”

Sure, it sounds like a lovely way to spend the day after Monday. One of the finest aquariums in the country is a two-hour drive away and, though I have no daughter, the way some of my co-workers squeeze out offspring of both sexes as though it was a bodily function, I could likely borrow one…

But this is exactly what Morgan Freeman wants me to do. In other words, he is promoting not only truancy, but he is espousing a fiscal policy that encourages absenteeism from work.

This would all be well and good for aquarium barons, fishmongers, and oceanographers who would likely see profits that would make those of Exxon be mere pocket change, but at what cost?

Well, the rest of the economy would fall into a death spiral. If people were relaxing at aquariums instead of engaging in the daily grind of commerce, consider the revenue lost simply by those treating bleeding ulcers, intense malaise, and depression.

And the cost would extend to the next generation who – instead of learning how to take tests at a level that places them smack dab at mediocre compared to the rest of the world – would end up as ichthyologists or marine biologists.

Fortunately, today is Sunday and I suggest we all give Morgan Freeman (and his dubious, probably Socialist economic theories) the finger and head to the aquarium today.

Moonpools & Caterpillars – Sundays
from Lucky Dumpling

Joe Jackson – Sunday Papers
from Look Sharp!

‘Til Tuesday – On Sunday
from Welcome Home

The Pretenders – Everyday Is Like Sunday
from Boys On The Side soundtrack

Maybe I'll Have Fleetwood Mac Perform At My Island Coronation

Inspiration strikes at the most wondrously random moments. The other day, Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk popped up on shuffle.

I realized that somewhere, out there, there is a remote tropical paradise – white sandy beaches, warm water, hammocks, pineapple, and a pliant native population who has never seen a white man. It occurred to me that these people might easily be impressed with a single flick of my lighter.

I would be declared to be The Pale God Who Brings Fire and, as ruler, I would declare Tusk to be my island kingdom’s national anthem.

Of course, it could go horribly awry, I could be deemed a malevolent sorcerer, and end up in a bubbling cauldron as soup (making Rhiannon – Stevie Nicks’ ode to a Welsh witch – more appropriate).

Plans for colonial conquest aside, there’s something about Fleetwood Mac that makes me think summer.

Maybe it’s because of the summer of 1977. Even though I had little interest in music, Rumours was inescapable and I was well acquainted with the album having heard most of the songs on the rock station adding ambiance over the speakers at our public pool.

By the time Fleetwood Mac managed to follow-up Rumours with Tusk, two years had elapsed and my interest in music was still little more than background noise that I heard with friends.

Over the ensuing years, radio would make me quite familiar with Fleetwood Mac. A slew of their songs were staples and hits on several formats.

From the first hits of the Buckingham and Nicks’ era through Tango In The Night, there were songs I might have tired of hearing (Rhiannon), but not one that I disliked.

And strangely enough, I owed none of it until I snagged a copy of their four-CD box set The Chain as a cut-out for less than ten bucks. It’s most certainly one of the shoddiest box sets in the history of mankind.

(a kindergarten art class could have done a better job with the presentation and likely put the damned thing into chronological order, too)

The music, though, was amazing. It was the first time I’d heard the early music of Fleetwood Mac and the greatness of guitarist Peter Green.

(and Green deserves far, far more than this cursory mention)

As for the later period of the band, I was stunned to realize that while the stuff I didn’t know wasn’t essential, there was a consistency that was rather remarkable.

And much of it had a breezy vibe to it no matter how melodramatic or, as Paloma pointed out, melancholic the lyrics.

So, with warmer weather here, the time seems right for some Fleetwood Mac…

Fleetwood Mac – Tusk
from Tusk

Bizarre and tribal, I heard Tusk incessantly from the bowling alley jukebox where my friends and I spent a lot of time in junior high. It’s “real savage like” and a testament to the twisted genius of Lindsey Buckingham.

Fleetwood Mac – Sara
from Tusk

I’d read for years that Sara was about a child that Stevie Nicks’ had aborted. Over at Popdose, they have a bit more on that.

I have no idea what Stevie’s going on about, but I don’t care. Sara might be her finest moment and it really does sound like someone “drowning in the sea of love.”

Fleetwood Mac – Storms
from Tusk

As I noted, Rhiannon has worn out its welcome with me and I prefer the chainsaw guitars of Hole’s version of Gold Dust Woman. But Storms is lovely, low-key, and an underrated jewel.

Fleetwood Mac – Only Over You
from Mirage

Christine McVie usually brought something sunny and playful to the Mac mix (Say You Love Me, You Make Loving Fun, Over My Head…), but she did heartbreak well, too.

Fleetwood Mac – Hold Me
from Mirage

When Mirage showed up in the summer of ’82, my burgeoning interest in music had reached critical mass. Hold Me (here’s the playful Christine McVie) was all over the radio that summer.

Fleetwood Mac – Peacekeeper
from Say You Will

Between Mirage and 2002’s Say You Will, the most commercially successful line-up of Fleetwood Mac released one lone album, Tango In The Night, in 1987. It too got a ton of radio play, but I was in college, experimenting with modern rock, and the album never really took root with me.

By 2002, radio (or what remained of radio) was pretty much dead to me. However, I do recall being pleasantly surprised when I heard Peacekeeper – yet another immaculately arranged song by Buckingham. The song immediately stuck in my head.

Does the chorus remind anyone else of Paul Simon’s Kodachrome?

The Hills Have Eyes (And They're Sensitive To Obscene Finger Gestures)

The other night, the cable offerings were rather uninspiring, but, as it was after dark, I stopped on the remake of The Hills Have Eyes.

The flick wasted little time getting to the carnage, opening with a group of scientists clad in protective gear being torn apart by some savage creature. It was gruesome but hardly shocking.

What has stuck in my head is a scene that came later, after the vacationing family had broken down taking a shortcut through the same remote stretch of desert.

It wasn’t the family dog getting gutted or the patriarch being beaten to a pulp then set aflame. No, it was a scene in which one daughter in the family gave the finger to her sister.

The defiant digit was blurred out.

Pondering the interesting choices in censorship aside, the movie made me miss the horror flicks on which I had grown up in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

I’m not referring to the movies of that time but rather the late-night television fare in a world without cable on our local independent station (usually the only one still on air after midnight).

These were mostly B-movies from the ‘50s, ‘60s, and early ‘70s and often in black and white. Sometimes they were surprisingly eerie, rising above their budgetary limitations, but, often, they were laughably shoddy or dated – bobble-headed alien invaders, puppet creatures and hippie vampires.

It was the latter which held the most entertainment value for me and several friends from the neighborhood when we’d hang out on Saturday nights in the early ‘80s. Not yet old enough for cars, girls, or guns, we’d be sprawled out on bean bag chairs in the dark basement of our friend Willie.

(as it was his basement, he had right of first refusal on the ancient couch)

Saturday night was the night for Nightmare Theater, hosted by the ghoul/zombie Sammy Terry (pictured above), who would add his commentary during commercial breaks or banter with a fake spider named George who “spoke” in squeaks.

For a couple years, ours was a ritual gathering most summer nights on Saturdays – Chris would be wired on Mountain Dew, Kurt would be obsessing over the dollar he’d loaned to Chris for the drink. Sometimes there would be a half dozen of us hanging out in that panel-walled womb.

We’d howl in amusement with every bad pun Sammy would deliver and yell, “George!” in unison the first time that rubber spider would descend into the scene.

By ’83, we had access to cars and had begun the pursuit of girls. There weren’t as many viewings of Sammy, but it was always fun to catch the show on occasion.

Years later, crashing out and watching Nightmare Theater was an incentive to make the trek home from college.

I hadn’t seen the show for twenty years until discovering a trove of clips here.

In 1982, the last year my friends and I regularly tuned into Nightmare Theater, I was still coming to the realization that I quite liked music – to an almost obsessive degree. It was still mostly Top 40, but I was venturing to some album rock, too. Some of the songs I remember from that spring…

Hall & Oates – Did It In A Minute
from Private Eyes

Hall & Oates were such a constant presence on radio and MTV in the ’80s, there are songs of theirs which I really wouldn’t miss if I never heard them again (I Can’t Go For That and Out Of Touch come to mind).

Then, there some of their lesser hits from that time – songs like How Does It Feel To Be Back, Wait For Me, Family Man – which are pleasant surprises when they pop up. The breezy Did It In A Minute is in the under appreciated category.

Joan Jett & The Blackhearts – Crimson And Clover
from I Love Rock N’ Roll

Joan Jett’s I Love Rock N’ Roll was a monster in early 1982 and I imagine she could have belched the alphabet and had a follow-up hit. Instead, she opted for a cover of Tommy James’ Crimson And Clover.

Of course, my schoolmates and I had no idea who Tommy James was. It was one of our “hip” teachers who played the original for us in homeroom one afternoon.

We much preferred Joan.

Van Halen – (Oh) Pretty Woman
from Diver Down

Diver Down might have been Van Halen’s fifth album, but as the first four were released when I had little interest in music, it was my first exposure to Eddie and Diamond Dave.

Their take on the Roy Orbison classic isn’t bad, but I wouldn’t even offer it up as the best cover song on Diver Down (and there are several). Instead, I’d go with their version of Dancing In The Street.

John Cougar – Hurts So Good
from American Fool

American Fool was the album that would make Johnny Hoosier (as my friend Bosco called him) a household name. Growing up in Indiana, Hurts So Good was on every radio station from the moment it was released and the rest of the country soon joined us.

I was fairly ambivalent about Hurts So Good at the time. I had no idea that its success would, by the time Johnny Hoosier had become John Mellencamp, literally change the course of my life in ways I could have never imagined as a kid in junior high.

Rhode Island

If there is one state about which I know practically nothing about, it is Rhode Island.

I can’t even really picture Rhode Island in my head. I think it might be kind of square-shaped.

(and would it have killed us to have made one of the fifty states a rhombus or a trapezoid?)

I’ve never really even thought about Rhode Island. There’s only one person I think I’ve ever even known from the state. In college, my friend Chris dated a girl from Rhode Island.

All I really remember about her is that she had a friend with hair like a fringed lampshade.

But as Rhode Island is the setting for The Family Guy and the show airs for thirty-six hours a day, I’ve learned a lot about the state…

…the actor James Woods is from Rhode Island.

…it is populated by animated ne’er-do-wells.

…the forward-thinking citizens have elected Adam West to office.

The latter two items are things I can enthusiastically embrace.

(James Woods seems a bit intense – although he’s apparently easily distracted by candy)

And, as for music, here are a few acts with Rhode Island connections….

Velvet Crush – Why Not Your Baby
from Teenage Symphonies To God

Originally from the Midwest, the aptly named Velvet Crush stated their musical intent with an album whose title is a nod to Beach Boy Brian Wilson as most of the songs focus on girls and summer.

Why Not Your Baby is actually a cover of a Gene Clark song and it has an appropriately melancholic twang to it.

Belly – Feed The Tree
from Star

Throwing Muses were one of the darlings of the burgeoning modern rock scene of the late ’80s. Personally, I didn’t pay much attention to them.

By the time MTV was making alternative rock mainstream in the early ’90s, Tonya Donnelly, who had been a member of Throwing Muses with half-sister Kristin Hersh, formed Belly. Like Throwing Muses, I mostly ignored Belly, but Feed The Tree was inescapable in 1993 and with good reason.

John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown – On The Dark Side
from Eddie And The Cruisers

The flick Eddie And The Cruisers, about a fictitious band, flopped when it was released to theaters in 1983 (I don’t recall it playing in our small, Indiana town). Then, it became a hit a year later via repeated showings on cable (which hadn’t made it to our world, yet).

However, On The Dark Side was on the radio given momentum by the movie’s cable revival and the fact that, with Born In The USA a commercial juggernaut, the song (and the band’s image) bore more than a passing resemblance to Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band.

Talking Heads – I Zimbra
from Fear Of Music

Talking Heads, who had formed while the members were in school in Rhode Island, had come to the attention of more conservative music fans in 1983 with the album Speaking In Tongues and the smash Burning Down The House. And their follow-up, the surprisingly playful Little Creatures, was ridiculously popular with my high school classmates.

The Heads (pictured above) were not a new discovery for me, though, as my friend Chris was a huge fan of the band. It was through him that I gained an appreciation for them and, especially, the album Fear Of Music and its tribal, rhythmic textures.