I'm Waiting For The Rain Man

Some bloggers whose writing I regularly enjoy incorporate recurring segments into their mix.

JB over at The Hits Just Keep On Comin’ has One Day In Your Life, Whiteray has the weekly Saturday Single at Echoes In The Wind, and the Major Dude of Any Major Dude With Half A Heart has several regular features.

(I keep waiting for another installment of Major Dude’s Great Moustaches In Rock)

Alas, though I might have recurring subject matter, I haven’t had the imagination or commitment to post such an ongoing series.

(psychobabble apparently being a train that runs on no fixed timetable)

I have posted several times of my discovery of alternative rock when I first tuned into 97X. The station, a pioneer in alternative rock radio, is also secure in pop culture lore for its reference in the movie Rain Main as Dustin Hoffman incessantly repeated the station’s tagline “97X, Bam! The future of rock and roll.”

So, when I happened upon the movie the other night, inspiration struck. I thought, why not post a handful of random tracks from the 97X playlist I’ve created. And, why not do so each time I do come across Rain Man while channel-surfing (or, at other arbitrary times).

However, I think I might hold off on giving a name to this random ongoing series until I decide to keep it…

Here are four random tracks that I would have heard on 97X back in the day as well as Freur’s Doot Doot, the song which led me to rediscover the station twenty years after I last listened to it…

INXS – Don’t Change
from Shabooh Shabah

Coincidentally, I mentioned Don’t Change this past week in a post and it shuffles up on the iPod first. I declared it to be brilliant then and nothing has changed my thoughts on the matter in the past seventy-two hours or so (or, really, twenty-five years or so).

Don’t Change is simply a transcendent four minutes and change.

10, 000 Maniacs – What’s The Matter Here
from In My Tribe

By 1987, the only time that I got to listen to 97X was on the rare treks home from college. I was already hearing 10,000 Maniacs a lot at school as Natalie Merchant and the band were college rock darlings at the time.

Years later, with mainstream success for the band and Merchant’s solo career, people seemed to either adore the singer or think she was insufferably precious. She was granola. I once saw her open for R.E.M. and she stopped her set for five minutes tending to an errant moth that had landed on stage.

I dug some of the Maniacs’ stuff and Merchant’s as well, and What’s The Matter Here is some melodic folk-tinged pop gem despite the grim subject matter.

Devo – Through Being Cool
from New Traditionalists

This song immediately makes me think of the movie Heavy Metal. Though Devo’s Working In The Coal Mine is probably their better known song from that flick, Through Being Cool was in it, too.

Devo is a bit like Sparks to me. Both were quirky and underappreciated for their twisted pop. I had a high school friend who was wildly into both bands, so I got to hear a lot of their music. I thought much of it was wonderful stuff and I’ve always meant to go back and delve into their catalogs.

Concrete Blonde – Joey
from Bloodletting

I absolutely loved Concrete Blonde in the late ’80s/early ’90s. Their music was so gritty, usually (bitter)sweet and responsible for how I’ve always imagined Hollywood to be.

Their records could be erratic, but all had scattered treasures. I think I’d go with Mexican Moon as their most consistently strong and rewarding album, but Bloodletting wouldn’t be a bad choice.

The album is burned into my memory as one of the soundtracks to my last winter living in the Midwest. It suited the short hours of daylight, the shadows, and the chill autumn air. And I still can vividly recall being stretched out on the couch with notes, not studying, and seeing the video for Joey in the wee hours.

It captivated me then and it still does.

Freur – Doot Doot
from Freur

Beyond The One Hit Of The One-Hit Wonders Of The '80s

During the past week, on several different evenings, I channel-surfed into one of those countdown shows on VH1 – this one covering the greatest one-hit wonders of the ‘80s.

It sucked me into its vortex like a black hole scarfing down a small galaxy.

(I am not a physicist so I do not stand behind the accuracy of that simile)

It was a lot of familiar ground – Thomas Dolby, Toni Basil, The Buggles – but there were also songs by acts that actually had other, lesser hits or at least other songs that I heard on the radio.

There were also songs by groups that might not have been well-known to most of the public, but who were favorites of me and my friends – the aforementioned Dolby, Devo and ‘Til Tuesday (to name a few).

So, here are some lesser-known songs by acts identified far more by a singular hit…

Devo – Girl U Want
In high school, a friend who was passionate about Devo made me familiar with the band beyond Whip It and Working In A Coal Mine. There might still be graffiti in our hometown relating to Devo.

Girl U Want is simply groovy – groovy being the first word that comes to mind when I think of the song. Then, I think of the movie Tank Girl as it appeared in that flick’s animated, opening credits.

Big Country – The Storm
Is there anyone who still believes that there were actual bagpipes in Big Country’s song In A Big Country?

I owned the first four or five Big Country albums, buying them as they were released. Steeltown, their second record, would be the one to own, but their debut, with the hit, is a strong album, too.

The Storm was a favorite from the first time I heard it on that debut.

‘Til Tuesday – Coming Up Close
Like most guys watching MTV in 1985, my friends and I were left slack-jawed and smitten by Aimee Mann in ‘Til Tuesday’s video for Voices Carry.

Image aside, ‘Til Tuesday made three very good records, shedding members over the course of those albums. By the time the band reached its end after Everything’s Different Now, Aimee Mann had guided their sound from chilly New Wave to a more organic, guitar-jangling alternative rock.

That sound had been hinted at on the group’s second album, especially on the stellar Coming Up Close.

Aldo Nova – Monkey On Your Back
I’ve read music writers who have noted Aldo Nova’s song Fantasy as one of the first pop metal hits, paving the way for radio stations to play acts like Def Leppard.

His second album, Subject, was a more interesting record (at least it was to me in 1983) – the songs were stronger and there were some strange, brief instrumentals between some of them.

Lyrics were not one of Nova’s strength, but Monkey On Your Back seemed edgy to me at fifteen; not so much now, but it’s a cool trip back in time.