Who Am I Gonna Call? Maybe Ray Parker, Jr.

Maybe it’s the first real autumn chill or that Halloween is weeks away, but I opted to throw Poltergeist into the DVD player the other night.

It’s a good flick. It was an event during the summer of ’84 and it still holds up. The members of the aggrieved household were totally believable to me. They looked, behaved, and interacted like a family that might have lived in the subdivision where I grew up.

The father in Poltergeist, Craig T. Nelson, could have been a patriarch in our neighborhood. His celluloid spouse, JoBeth Williams, resembled a neighbor’s mom who liked to get some sun.

(nothing brought a halt to a pick-up baseball game like Mrs. Cheeseburger – as she had been dubbed – laying out in a bikini)

But there was someone else who looked familiar to me when I saw Poltergeist in the theater the summer of its release. It was one of the parapsychologists who arrive to check things out.

I kept thinking, cool, it’s Ray Parker, Jr.

(it’s not, but it’s fun to pretend it is)

It would have made sense, though. Parker was also spending that summer singing the theme from Ghostbusters, so he had insight into the paranormal.

But, he had also been all over radio two summers before with The Other Woman. The protagonist in that song proved to be quite the scoundrel. Ray might be too focused on trying to hook up with JoBeth Williams or that diminutive medium (“This house is clean”) to perform his duties as a parapsychologist.

However, he did play guitar in Stevie Wonder’s band while still in his teens as well as on the Talking Book and Innervisions albums during Stevie’s heyday. And I quite liked a number of his songs that were staples on radio during the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

So, if ever a need arose to rid a home of supernatural antics, I might be inclined to call Ray – have him play a few songs, tell a few stories (he also worked with acts like The Temptations, The Spinners, Aretha, Herbie Hancock…even The Carpenters).

It might be cool.

(so long as he doesn’t play Ghostbusters or leer at Paloma)

There are still a few Ray Parker Jr. songs that I still dig…

Ray Parker, Jr. & Raydio- That Old Song
from A Woman Needs Love

Parker had a couple hits – Jack & Jill and You Can’t Change That – with Raydio which I really liked and was surprised I didn’t own. That Old Song, though, is smooth, breezy and wistful.

Ray Parker, Jr. & Raydio- A Woman Needs Love (Just Like You Do)
from A Woman Needs Love

Ray gives relationship advice. Of course, considering the subject matter of some of his later hits, it might be better to let him rid your house of malevolent spirits rather than act as your relationship guru.

Ray Parker, Jr. – The Other Woman
from The Other Woman

Leaving his band Raydio behind, Ray went solo in 1982 with The Other Woman and the funky, guitar-driven title track was all over the radio that summer.

Ray Parker, Jr. – Bad Boy
from Greatest Hits

Bad Boy wasn’t one of Ray’s biggest hits and, truth be told, I didn’t pay it much mind at the time. But it has stuck with me all these years because one of my friends in high school never tired of it. If there was a jukebox and Bad Boy was on it, he’d play it. Repeatedly.

It’s not a bad song, though – kind of a lighter follow-up to The Other Woman.

Great Expectations (Let The Rumpus Begin)

Maybe it’s been the events of the past week, or work, or the rain (I swear it’s been raining since August), but there’s been a dearth of nonsensical thoughts and/or whimsical mayhem in my head.

But, I have become certifiably and irrevocably stoked at the upcoming release of Where The Wild Things Are.

The trailers look amazing and the imagery and choice of music – Arcade Fire’s Wake Up – is pretty powerful. It’s caused Paloma to get a bit teary and it’s affected me, too. Based on the online chatter, it seems we’re not alone in our reaction.

Maybe it’s the vibe of those clips and the palpable undercurrent of childhood lost that resonates so much. Maybe it taps into some desire to sail away to a land of fantastic creatures.

Maybe it’s the fact that we’re part of a generation who were children when the book was just beginning to be recognized as a classic and – for many of us – the book is among our earliest memories.

There were numerous trips to the library as a very small child that ended with me poring over those pages, utterly mesmerized by the iconic artwork and spellbound by Max’ adventure.

Quite simply, I find myself invested in this movie like few I’ve known in my lifetime. It’s one of those situations where I find myself so hoping that it will brilliant and instill in me the same sense of wonder and awe that the book did when I was four.

I’m aware that I might be creating unrealistic expectations, but, based on what I’ve seen so far, I’m thinking that director Spike Jonze just might pull it off.

If so, I can’t wait for the rumpus to begin.

Arcade Fire – Wake Up
from Funeral

Arcade Fire – Wake Up
from Where The Wild Things Are trailer

There’s been a lot of hulabaloo over Arcade Fire for some time, but I was left underwhelmed at the few songs I had heard. Not Wake Up, though. Maybe it’s because it is now and forever connected to me through its use in the movie’s trailer.

Its use in the trailer is inspired (I’d say perfect), fusing together poignantly with the visuals and snatches of dialogue.

There’s something about the dynamics of the song that remind me of Smashing Pumpkins and, like the Pumpkins, the song has an epic scope. It’s towering and majestic and sounds as if it was written specifically for the movie.

King Kong, Hippie Empowerment And The Towers

Happening across the movie King Kong on cable the other night, something occurred to me – it might have been the most influential movie of my childhood.

I’d seen the original version watching it on the late, late show when I slept over at a friend’s house in second grade. Not long after, the hype began for the remake.

It was nothing compared to the hullabaloo for some movies now – no cable, no internet – but it seemed to begin a year before and the scope and duration was something I’d never seen at the ripe old age of eight.

I vividly recall a poster in our small-town theater of Kong, astride the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center with a Santa Claus hat perched on his noggin’. The tagline read “Guess who’s coming for Christmas?”

I knew that it would be months after the national release before it would arrive in our town. That poster should have shown him wearing a leprechaun’s hat and clutching a bottle of Guinness.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to learn a lesson in patience. My dad was kind enough to drive me and several friends into the city to see the movie during our Christmas break.

I did learn a lot of other things. I learned that oil company board rooms were populated by the ruthless, the kind of men who might twirl their moustaches as a train headed down tracks to which a distressed damsel was detained.

Of course, Charles Grodin as a petroleum executive had far more panache than the corporate officers I know. They burp up banalities like “sweet spot,” “drill down,” and “bring to bear.”

Grodin uttered things like “If that island doesn’t produce huge, I’ll be wiping windshields,” “Sweet Jesus! Dear Rockefeller!” and “It’s some nutty religion – a priest gets dressed up like an ape and gets laid.”

(you don’t get such rich fare in a business meeting)

The lush island scenery and the underlying message of the movie certainly made me receptive to an environmental consciousness in a way that a Native American crying over litter in a television commercial couldn’t.

As much as Christopher Cross, viewing King Kong likely fueled in me the desire to travel. I haven’t been to Indonesia – from where Grodin and company began their voyage – but I have been to Borneo and, in Malaysia, some friends and I scaled hundreds of steps, monkeys roaming about us, to reach some cave.

Jessica Lange was fetching enough as Dwan, but blondes have never held me as entranced as they apparently do most males of the species.

(although I have been known to be drawn to vacuous girls with unusual names and a flair for the dramatic, so she must have made some impression)

King Kong was also the first movie I think I ever saw with Jeff Bridges whom I’d argue might be the most underrated actor of his generation.

Not only was Bridges the dashing man of action in the flick, he was a hippie.

(of course, at eight, any guy with long hair was a hippie to me)

It was Bridges, as a long-haired paleontologist from Princeton, who taught me that a guy with long hair could grow up to be a paleontologist from Princeton, able to tangle with large apes and woo Jessica Lange.

Years later, in my twenties and en route to London, I first visited New York City and saw the Twin Towers.

I’ve seen some things in my time.

I’ve been to Bangkok.

There are few things that have left me as jaw-droopingly stupefied as standing in front of those buildings. For me, it inspired the same sense of wonder as seeing King Kong in the theater as a kid.

It was during the first few days of 1977 that I saw King Kong. I hadn’t discovered music, yet, but there was a lot of music on Billboard’s chart in early January of that year that would someday be quite familiar to me…

Elton John – Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word
from Blue Moves

I can’t claim to have intimate knowledge of Elton John’s entire catalog as it does encompass four decades. I do know his extensive string of hits and I own a number of the classic albums, though, and I’d have to choose the wistful Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word as my favorite of his ballads.

Boston – More Than A Feeling
from Boston

For some reason, even though it was apparently a hit in the winter months, I think of More Than A Feeling as a summer song. Although I’m not rabid about the song, it does conjure up a good vibe for me and I’ve never quite understood the venom reserved for Boston.

Also, I find it amusing that Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit echoes the song.

Manfred Mann’s Earth Band – Blinded By The Light
from The Roaring Silence

When I saw Blinded By The Light on the chart, I realized something – this song was likely my first exposure to Bruce Springsteen’s music.

10cc – The Things We Do For Love
from Deceptive Bends

Since Paloma and I started collecting vinyl a little over a year ago, we’ve snagged several 10cc albums and they’ve been a revelation of musicianship, craftsmanship and quirkiness.

The Things We Do For Love is a breezy and flawless pop song.

A Toast To Whiteray

Some time ago, I mentioned Roxy Music to a couple of co-workers, both older than me, one of them having spent ten years in the music industry.

That remark was met with a blank stare.

After spending ten minutes giving a rough history of the band, offering examples of their influence, and explaining their place in rock music, I realized my audience was unimpressed.

(with both Roxy Music and me)

There was a time when pretty much everyone in my orbit would have known of Roxy Music – whether they were fans or not. During my vagabond days working in record stores, the mention of Roxy Music would have prompted one friend to interject Brian Eno into the conversation.

The Drunken Frenchman would have regaled us with some tale – some more obscure than others – about Roxy Music, Brian Eno, or whatever artist that was the subject of debate and/or discussion.

(the experience of listening to rock and roll lore as told by The Frenchman was akin to what I imagine it to be like listening to an old mariner telling tales from the briny deep)

Sometimes passions flared, but it was a collective passion for music that was ever present.

Now, the deepest discussion I hear from co-workers about music revolves around some kid on American Idol performing Hallelujah with no knowledge of Leonard Cohen, who wrote the song, or Jeff Buckley, who put his indelible stamp on it.

It’s made the numerous blogs focused on music – and a wide variety of music – such a wonderful surrogate for a time when hour upon hour would be dedicated to similar banter among friends.

Which is why it’s disappointing to read that Whiteray, author of the wonderful Echoes In The Wind, is on, what I hope, will be a brief hiatus.

Like JB over at The Hits Just Keep Comin’ (as well as the other destinations to which I’ve provided links on your right), Whiteray has a knack for chronicling the music that has meant so much to him, doing so in a manner that is engaging, amusing, and informative.

It isn’t even necessarily the music about which he wrote that made me a faithful reader. Though the music sometimes doesn’t connect with me, his affection and enthusiasm for his subject matter is like listening to one of my friends from back in the day.

So, here’s hoping to read something from you soon, Whiteray. Morning coffee won’t be the same without you.

Here are some songs that were on Billboard’s chart this week in 1982, a time when my own love of music was taking root…

The Go-Go’s – Vacation
from Vacation

The title song for The Go-Go’s follow-up to their massive debut Beauty And The Beat is giddy beyond repair (even if it does detail the end of summer). Fittingly, the first time I heard it was blaring from the car radio on a family vacation.

Years later, I’d interview Go-Go guitarist Jane Weidlin which was a true highlight of my music journalism endeavors (such as they were).

Elton John – Blue Eyes
from Jump Up!

Sir Elton’s output post-’70s has been a bit erratic. Of course, how could anyone have been expected to match the heights he did during his heyday?

I don’t think I cared for Blue Eyes at the time, but, nearly three decades later, I never tire of hearing John croon this simple, uncluttered ballad.

Jackson Browne – Somebody’s Baby
from Fast Times At Ridgemont High soundtrack

Fast Times At Ridgemont High was the movie for me and my friends in 1982 and was endlessly quoted. It also provided Jackson Browne with a song that was always on the radio late that summer.

Eddie Money – Think I’m In Love
from No Control

Eddie Money never aspired to reinvent fire. Instead, you knew that he was going to offer up straight-ahead, no-frills rock and roll, but, when he nailed it, he nailed it.

Few songs sounded better on the radio during the late summer of ’82 than Think I’m In Love

Keep On Rockin' In The Midwest

Recently, I showed some love for Foreigner and, over the time I’ve existed here, I’ve made no effort to conceal an even greater affection for Journey.

It’s time to complete the (some might say unholy) trinity with Styx.

The mention of those three bands likely makes the blood of some run cold, but, if you were in junior high in 1979 and discovering music through mostly radio in the Midwest, you knew the songs intimately.

I’ve told of how Styx’ was my first concert. Of course, that post was more of a concert shirt post as opposed to a Styx post.

It was spring, ’83, when Styx announced their Kilroy Was Here tour and a mere thirteen dollars secured me a ticket. I did have to allay the concerns of my mom who had read a newspaper article rehashing the controversy surrounding the band’s song Snowblind – backwards masking on the song had drawn Christian wing nuts out to declare the song and band Satanic.

My mom, while not overly religious, frowned on Satanism.

(more importantly, wrap your head around Styx, the band that brought us Babe, being thought by some to be in league with the devil)

In June, my pyromaniac friend Kurt and I climbed into his older brother’s Ford Fairlaine and headed to The City. As neither Kurt nor I had our licenses, we hitched a ride with his brother and two of his friends.

I seem to recall some tension heading to the show. I think the pyro’s brother got us lost. I feared missing the beginning of the show – no opening act but a fifteen-minute movie setting up the premise of the conceptual piece that was the Kilroy Was Here album.

(there simply would be no following the intricate plotline)

So, I was introduced to the magic of live music by Styx on their Kilroy Was Here tour, one of the most ridiculed musical spectacles of the ‘80s.

I was there and I did buy the shirt (and I wouldn’t be too surprised if I still have it buried somewhere). I don’t even truly remember it aside from the movie.

(I far better remember seeing Rush at my next concert)

Fifteen years later, Styx lead singer Dennis DeYoung was shopping in a record store where I worked. I told him the tale.

He was dressed like someone’s father. I had hair down to the middle of my back and several nose rings.

It was slightly surreal.

Here are some songs I’m sure I was hoping to hear at that show (and, aside from, Mr. Roboto, don’t remember for sure whether they played them or not)…

Styx – Miss America
from The Grand Illusion

The Grand Illusion was the first Styx album I remember listening to repeatedly. We had The Grand Illusion on eight-track in our locker room when I started playing football in junior high.

Guitarist James Young growling Miss America rocked suitably and had a message. At twelve or thirteen, it made me feel like an intellectual.

(it’s deep, man)

Styx – Renegade
from Pieces Of Eight

Renegade was more straightforward. The only meaning to the song was of a desperado on the lam which was exotic as we merely had older, high school guys smoking cigarettes and cruising in Camaros in my hometown.

I actually met Tommy Shaw, who sang lead on Renegade, backstage, after seeing Styx again when I was older. Like Dennis DeYoung, Shaw seemed like a gracious, affable fellow. I feel kind of bad because I interrupted our conversation. I noticed a girl with a broken foot. I knew her from hanging out at a coffee shop and thought her to be quite fetching.

Adios, Tommy. Hello fetching, broken-footed, coffee-shop girl.

(of course, I would have understood had he done the same)

Styx – Half-Penny, Two-Penny
from Paradise Theater

Paradise Theater was one of the first cassettes I ever owned (I pretty much skipped right past vinyl as a kid) and I played it to the breaking point. Sure, I bought it for the hits I’d heard – The Best Of Times and Too Much Time On My Hands – but I’d repeatedly listen start to finish.

Half-Penny, Two-Penny was near the end of side two and, though I was initially unfamiliar with it, it soon became a favorite.

Styx – Mr. Roboto
from Kilroy Was Here

I suppose Styx was never a hip listening choice and, at the time, Mr. Roboto puzzled even the fans (or perhaps it pained listeners to know that we would soon be under the thumbs of our Japanese overlords).

Then, the song’s use in some television commercials in recent years (and the realization that we would actually end up under the thumbs of Chinese overlords) gave the song a bit of cachet.

As for me, it was Mr. Roboto’s creepy plasticized countenance leered out from the front of the shirt I bought at the show.

97X, Again

A few weeks ago, a television commercial spurred me to reminisce about the discovery of 97X during my musical formative years. It prompted me to do a bit of research.

I’ve been well aware over the years how fortunate I was to grow up having 97X in a radio landscape that was mostly Journey, Foreigner, and Styx.

(not that I’m necessarily anti-Journey, Foreigner, and/or Styx)

I did not know that 97X was one of the earliest stations in the country to adopt a modern rock format.

The view from my bedroom as a kid might have been a vista of cornfields, but, beginning in the autumn of ’83, 97X made it possible for me to discover Talking Heads, U2, Peter Gabriel, and other future staples I wasn’t hearing on other stations.

I’d forgotten that the station broadcasted from studios at an unused golf course.

(I always pictured Caddyshack when this was mentioned)

Reception was dodgy. It wasn’t a station that my friends and I listened to when we were in possession of a car. 97X was a station I’d listen to mostly alone on winter nights while not doing homework.

(meanwhile, several friends were doing the same)

Like most radio stations these days, 97X has a website from which you can stream their broadcast.

(actually, 97X is no longer a terrestrial station)

More intriguing to me than their current playlist is the fact that the site also offers a vintage channel. It’s heavy on acts like The Clash, The Smiths, The Pixies, and such, but it seems to lack some of the lesser-known acts that they played at the time.

The Suburbs come to mind as 97X used to play their song Love Is The Law religiously. I haven’t heard the song in twenty-five years and, though I heard it daily for months on end, I can’t even remember the chorus.

It’s kind of like Dee Dee Deuser, a girl who sat next to me in kindergarten. I can’t recall for the life of me what she looked like, but three plus decades later, I remember the name.

(of course, you don’t forget a name like Dee Dee Deuser)

Each Memorial Day, 97X would count down the Top 500 modern rock songs of all time. Finding the list for the countdown from 1989 online allowed me to build a playlist that surprised me in its breadth and depth.

Here are a few songs that popped up randomly…

Talk Talk – Life’s What You Make It
from The Colour Of Spring

In 1984, I saw the video for Talk Talk’s It’s My Life more than I heard it on radio (even though it was a hit). The hypnotic Life’s What You Make It was from their next album and the only place I heard it was 97X.

After The Colour Of Spring, Talk Talk got progressively more…umm…progressive. Their music on the successive albums – Spirit Of Eden and Laughing Stock – was a melange of classical, jazz, and ambient improvisation, and, though I own them and they have been critically lauded, those records require a serious commitment.

Fetchin’ Bones – Stray
from Galaxy 500 Plus

Sometimes funky, sometimes with a bit of twang, Fetchin’ Bones rocked harder than Athens contemporaries like R.E.M., Pylon or B-52s (all staples on 97X). Singer Hope Nicholls is formidable like Niagara Falls is wet.

Stray is a corker, but I’m still partial to their song Love Crushing – “Be my flesh blanket and lay upon me” – from Monster.

The Jam – That’s Entertainment!
from Sound Effects

On those archived lists of 97X’ Top 500, there was no shortage of songs by The Jam and, still, I don’t recall them from my years listening to the station. It’s likely they were simply too British for me to take notice.

Nonetheless, I do remember when I first did take notice of them and it was sitting in Paloma’s apartment years ago and her playing Sound Affects over and over. It’s impossible now for me to hear That’s Entertainment! and not hear her singing along (and adding her own exclamation point).

Bob Marley & The Wailers – Could You Be Loved
from Uprising

There’s no doubt in my mind that 97X was the first place I ever heard reggae. Surprisingly, the radio stations that I had to choose from in 1983 in Southeastern Indiana didn’t find a place for Marley, Jimmy Cliff, or Peter Tosh alongside REO Speedwagon and John Cougar.

Fortunately for me, 97X offered me a healthy dose of all three reggae greats.

Baseball

For the first time in I have no idea how many years, I watched the MLB All-Star game the other night. It surprised me a bit to realize how rarely I’ve watched the game in the last twenty years.

I stared quizzically at half of the players during this year’s introductions as though I was trying to identify someone from a police line-up.

As a kid, the All-Star game was appointment viewing. We knew all of the players and most of us could rattle of a relevant stat or two.

In a world where summer had no internet, no mp3 players, only the most rudimentary of video games, and no cable television, baseball was often our favorite waste of time.

By ten o’clock in the morning, most mornings, the first pick-up game in our neighborhood would have already ended (usually in an argument, sometimes to steal strawberries from the patch out beyond our first base line).

The afternoon game that would come together (once tempers cooled and boredom set in) was like an Ironman competition and a test to merely endure in 95 degree heat.

Over the years, my interest in the sport has waned. I think it’s mostly due to the disparity in spending between the teams.

But it’s also football. Now, even in the middle of July, my focus is not on baseball but rather that my favorite team has signed some free agent linebacker and how that signing might affect a season that won’t really be underway for another three months.

It’s an onslaught of information that is, in the middle of summer, mostly empty calories. Even a dedicated fan doesn’t need to be so in the loop (and, if you do, you might have a serious gambling problem).

The first All-Star game that I vividly remember was 1979. Maybe it’s because my grandfather, a lifelong Pittsburgh fan, had passed away a few months earlier.

Almost every evening during baseball season, he’d sit on the couch with my grandmother. They’d hold hands and watch the Pirates on television or listen to them on radio.

(that autumn, the team would win the World Series in dramatic fashion)

Baseball was far more important to me than music in 1979, but perusing the Billboard charts from July of that year revealed a number of songs that, even as a casual listener, I recall hearing…

John Stewart (with Stevie Nicks) – Gold
from Bombs Away Dream Babies

The man who wrote Daydream Believer, Stewart was joined by Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks on the timeless-sounding Gold. It’s a pretty perfect pop song.

If Paloma and I ever open up a bait shop in the Southwest (I always pictured this song taking place on some dusty, desolate stretch of road in Arizona), I’d insist this song be on the jukebox.

The Knack- My Sharona
from Get The Knack

I had little interest in music in ’79, but, like all of us, I knew My Sharona. I don’t recall the mania surrounding them or the backlash, but I’ve wondered if it was similar to Oasis a decade and a half later.

Joe Jackson – Is She Really Going Out With Him?
from Look Sharp!

OK, I can’t honestly say that I ever heard Is She Really Going Out With Him? at the time. In fact, I’m positively certain that I didn’t hear it ’til several years later after Jackson had hit with Steppin’ Out.

Better late than never, though, and Is She Really Going Out With Him? is classic stuff.

Supertramp – Goodbye Stranger
from Breakfast In America

I’ve declared my affection for Breakfast In America before. But, as a non-music fan in 1979, I thought Goodbye Stranger was the brothers Gibb.

Doot Doot (The Future Must Be Now)

The movie Rain Man had a personal connection. It had nothing to do with autism, though I did have an ex-girlfriend who once accused me of being slightly autistic.

The early portion of Rain Man – where Tom Cruise first meets Dustin Hoffman – takes place in Cincinnati, a city about forty-minutes from where I grew up and known to us as The City. So, I was familiar with some of the landmarks and places mentioned.

However, the real connection was when Cruise and Hoffman hit the road. Hoffman’s character tunes the radio to WOXY out of Oxford, Ohio. You might recall Hoffman incessantly repeating the station’s tagline – “97X, Bam! The future of rock and roll.”

97X just happened to be my station of choice for several years in high school. Oddly enough, according to the station’s page on Wikipedia, it began broadcasting as a modern rock station in September, 1983 and I had stumbled across it a month or so later.

It was the station where I heard Aztec Camera, Gang Of Four, The Suburbs, and other bands I wouldn’t hear elsewhere. It was the station to hear Talking Heads, Peter Gabriel, and U2.

It was even the station where I first heard Cyndi Lauper and Nena before they became mainstream pop sensations on Top 40 radio.

The thing that triggered me to think about 97X wasn’t coming across Rain Man on cable. Instead, it was a far more surprising event – a television commercial.

I’m not even sure what the commercial was pushing on me. It was the music that caught my attention. It was a song by a Welsh band called Freur called Doot Doot (not to be confused with Trio’s Da Da Da or The Police’ De Do Do Do De Da Da Da).

Freur was short-lived, but members of the band would go on to be Underworld and be global with their wonderful song Born Slippy from the movie Trainspotting. Apparently, Doot Doot was Freur’s lone hit in the UK and a small on – #59 – at that. I think it did little here in the States.

But I did hear it numerous times while listening to 97X in the winter of ‘83/84. I even had it recorded on a cassette. I haven’t heard it on the radio – or elsewhere – in twenty-five years.

I wouldn’t describe Doot Doot as rock and roll, but it certainly seems as though 97X knew something about the future.

Doot Doot and a few other songs I was hearing on 97X at the time…

Freur – Doot Doot
from Freur

Freur – Doot Doot (12″ mix)
from Freur

I was surprised to hear Modern English’s Melt With You in a commercial.

(the first time)

Of course, Melt With You was a fairly popular song in 1983 even if it wasn’t a massive mainstream radio hit. In seven years of working in record stores, I can remember seeing anything by Freur once, on an ‘80s compilation.

I hope the commercial makes it a hit twenty-six years later. It’s sparse and spacey with the earworm of a chorus being little more than the title.

Is there a more obscure song or artist to be used to sell humans products two decades after it was released?

(I’m guessing maybe Nick Drake would be in such a discussion)

Aztec Camera – Oblivious
from High Land, Hard Rain

During the winter of ’83/’84, few things could make the day less dreary than hearing the bouncy Oblivious. Whatever name you want to pin on it – New Wave, modern rock, alternative rock – there were some classic pop melodies in the ’80s.

Tom Tom Club- Pleasure Of Love
from Close To The Bone

Sure, everyone knows Genius Of Love (another ’80s song that’s made its way into a television commercial), but Talking Heads’ spin-off Tom Tom Club have released a handful of worthwhile albums.

Though not as groundbreaking as Genius Of Love, Pleasure Of Love, is, like most of Tom Tom Club’s songs and in the words of a friend, “music to eat pineapple to.”

It truly is.

ABC – That Was Then This Is Now
from Beauty Stab

ABC’s debut The Lexicon Of Love is widely regarded as a classic ’80s album. It wasn’t as wildly popular in the US as it was in the UK, but The Look Of Love and Poison Arrow got played on even the most pedestrian of Top 40 stations which I was listening to at the time.

That Was Then This Is Now, the first song from their follow-up, was something of a shock upon arrival. Yes, lead singer Martin Fry still croons (he can do nothing else), but the music is harder, more guitar-oriented, not the lush New Romantic/Roxy Music we had all come to know.

I liked it. The song wasn’t around long and I pretty much forgot about it ’til years later. It seems as though Beauty Stab is held in higher regard now than it was then.

An Oasis Called Pizza Hut

There was no such thing as air conditioning when I was a kid. It existed, but we didn’t have it – not in our house, not in our school, not in the family car.

The last situation made for tense times on six-hour drives to Western Pennsylvania for vacation each summer.

Perched on the couch the other night, the drone of the central air was comforting, lulling me into a drowsy state. I was still coherent enough to have a personal revelation during a television commercial.

As a kid, Pizza Hut was nirvana.

Sure, it’s mediocre pizza, but how many times have you run across pizza that was truly inedible – especially as a kid?

(I could probably count mine on one had)

My hometown had Pizza Haus as the one establishment singularly devoted to purveying pie. It wasn’t bad but hardly the place you rave to friends about years later in one of those mindless discussions that occur shortly after one in the morning at some bar.

It was pizza. It was greasy. It was ours.

(and a place where we enjoyed heckling the town drunks)

The nearest Pizza Hut was twenty minutes away in a thriving megalopolis of ten thousand best known for the tree which grew from the roof of the courthouse.

Times were catatonic.

But there was a Pizza Hut. It was air-conditioned and dimly lit. There was pizza. And, once I was in high school and my friends and I could procure transportation (usually without prior consent of our biological guardians) and escape there, the juke box was of great importance, too.

Those treks rarely ended without souvenirs. One friend had a dozen of those red, plastic glasses at home (I believe he told his mom that they were free with a purchase). We once even made off with a pan pizza pan which another friend’s father was surprised to find in his trunk.

As much as those antics were important in keeping my friends and I occupied, it was those family vacations during which the familiar architecture of Pizza Hut was salvation – a brief respite from hunger, heat, and the drudgery of the road.

The (usually) annual pilgrimage that occurred in 1981 was memorable to me as radio was a new interest and, thus, a new way to pass the time with an eye scanning the horizon for that familiar red roof.

Some of the songs I recall hearing on that trip…

Kim Carnes – Bette Davis Eyes
from Mistaken Identity

I wasn’t exactly taken at the time with Kim Carnes’ mysterious, new-wave tinged take on this Jackie DeShannon song. That was unfortunate because it was simply inescapable that summer.

Over the years, it’s grown on me considerably and I dig the raspy vocals of Carnes.. And, in a brush with semi-greatness, I once bumped into her at Kroger’s. She was hidden behind a large pair of sunglasses, but it was definitely her buying a carton of eggs.

Jim Steinman – Rock & Roll Dreams Come Through
from Bad For Good

I like Meat Loaf. He seems like an affable, eager-to-please fellow whom you could depend on in a jam. I think I’d like to be his neighbor

The reason I mention Meat Loaf is because it was singing the songs of Jim Steinman that brought him to global fame. Rock & Roll Dreams Come Through was on Steinman’s lone solo album, released during the long wait for Meat Loaf to follow-up Bat Out Of Hell.

It’s gloriously bombastic. If you’re going to go big, you might as well go Spectorian.

Journey – Who’s Crying Now
from Escape

I distinctly remember hearing Who’s Crying Now for the first time on that vacation and, by the time it finished, I was already surfing the radio dial in hopes of hearing it again.

I wouldn’t even hazard to guess how many times I heard it during that two-week stretch. I am certain that it must have been enough times that had my family bludgeoned me to death with the lid from the cooler and left me for dead on the side of the interstate somewhere in West Virginia, they would have been acquitted.

Foreigner – Urgent
from Foreigner 4

You’ve got Junior Walker adding sax and Thomas Dolby playing synthesizer – on a Foreigner record. It’s lots of fun.

Personally, Foreigner 4 is a fantastic, straight-ahead rock record and I never really understood the critical angst over their records up through this one. Of course, I grew up in the Midwest and, during the late ’70s and early ’80s, Foreigner on the radio was omnipresent.

Sheena Easton – For Your Eyes Only
from For Your Eyes Only soundtrack

I confess that the only James Bond movie that I have ever seen is A View To A Kill (it’s a rather shameful admission, I suppose). I like James Bond, but, if he was a neighbor of me and Meat Loaf, I can’t imagine he’d let us use his pool or go bowling with us.

Anyhow, Sheena Easton was a bit too unremittingly perky for me, but I did/do like For Your Eyes Only. Blondie actually was supposed to do the theme to the James Bond flick of the same name, and I like their song, too (even though it is an entirely different song).

Michael Jackson

(reposted from Saturday sans music)

Word spread quickly at our office on Thursday that Michael Jackson had been rushed to the hospital. Less than two hours later, while I was navigating rush hour traffic and dodging hobos on the interstate, the announcement came over the radio that Michael Jackson was dead.

The news was broken by the host of a sports talk show. Such was swath that Jackson cut through the world of pop culture and music for forty years.

I arrived home to find Paloma tuned in to the drama airing on CNN.

It seemed surreal.

I was too young to be fully aware of The Jackson 5, but there are grainy images of them in my mind. Michael’s solo breakthrough, Off The Wall, had run its course by the time I was beginning to care about music.

Then, Thriller was released.

I was still listening to Top 40 at the time, but my interest was skewing toward more rock-oriented music and the emerging New Wave acts. The Girl Is Mine, Thriller’s first single, didn’t do much for me, but its follow-up had me hooked from the opening notes.

It was, of course, Beat It, featuring a blistering performance by guitarist Eddie Van Halen.

For the next two years, the string of hits from Thriller saturated radio and Jackson dominated entertainment headlines. He was an inescapable musical juggernaut.

Some of the songs I liked and some less so, but I – everyone – knew them all intimately. In 1983, if my friends and I had managed to get hold of a car, it likely didn’t have a tape deck. It was radio that served our need for sound (and it served us far better than it was often given credit).

It was a time of far greater shared collective consciousness.

So, I didn’t own Thriller. There was no need to own it when any run through the radio dial was certain – completely certain – to result in hearing at least one of its songs.

By the time Bad arrived, I was in college and pop music had mostly fallen from my radar, but each Michael Jackson album was an event and, as it had been years before, something that managed to cut through the increasingly fragmented clutter of modern pop culture to burrow into the collective consciousness of much of the globe.

And suddenly his brother Jermaine was stating that Michael was dead.

Watching Jermaine struggle to maintain his composure, I felt sad. I have a brother and at that moment Michael Jackson wasn’t Michael Jackson.

He was Jermaine’s little brother.

Over the years, I’ve been mostly a passive, casual fan of Michael Jackson’s music, but, I’m a music fan and I appreciated the singer’s considerable talent, but changed the landscape of pop music – and the music business – as few acts ever have.

(or probably ever will again)

Some songs that stuck with me from when it was only his music that mattered…

The Jackson 5- I Want You Back
from Diana Ross Presents The Jackson 5

I probably first knew of The Jackson 5 through their Saturday morning cartoon. There’s really nothing to write about the ebullient pop/soul/bubblegum classic I Want You Back that hasn’t been said, but it’s still amazing to think that it’s a ten-year old singing the song.

Michael Jackson – Ben
from Ben

I seem to recall watching the 1971 movie Willard, about an army of rats, with a babysitter when I was about five. I don’t recall seeing the sequel Ben which spawned Michael Jackson’s first #1 hit without his brothers.

So, Ben is a song about a rat and it is syrupy. But it’s also a song about aching to belong and, after reading this excellent piece by LA Times music critic Robert Hilburn, hearing the song again is damned near heartbreaking.

The Jacksons – Can You Feel It
from Triumph

Can You Feel It was one of the last hits Michael had with his brothers before becoming a solo superstar. Accompanying the anthemic disco track was a video that, at the time, was pretty spectacular.

Michael Jackson – Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough
from Off The Wall

I don’t dance – not even at gunpoint – but the unbridled enthusiasm and hypnotic groove of Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough makes it impossible for me not to tap my webbed toes.

Michael Jackson – Human Nature
from Thriller

And then there was Thriller. You only get to discover fire once, but, apparently, Jackson was obsessed with trying to recapture the unparalleled success of that album for the rest of his life.

Personally, I always thought that the lush, dreamy Human Nature, despite being a massive hit in the late summer of 1983, was the most underrated song on the album.