Hall & Oates

I haven’t really been all that enamored with the new spin-off from Family Guy, The Cleveland Show. I am still holding out on a final decision, though, as it did take me awhile to warm up to American Dad.

(though I dug Roger, the incorrigible alien, from the start)

The other night they made a reference to Peabo Bryson which was amusing because, musical considerations not considered, Peabo is a fun word to say and it is a fun word to hear said.

(however, aside from that one infommercial for some soft rock collection which Bryson hosted and possibly Casey Kasem, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard someone say “Peabo”)

Hall & Oates was also referenced as a good angel/bad angel on Cleveland’s shoulders, trying to influence a decision.

I lived through the years of the early ’80s, they were my musical formative years, so, at the time I began listening to radio, Hall & Oates was a pop music juggernaut.

Pull up a list of their hits and run through their singles during that period; it’s staggering.

I don’t recall if Hall & Oates had any credibility in the early ’80s. The only rock criticism I had access to at the time was a still somewhat relevent (but beginning to decline) Rolling Stone. I think that the magazine mostly ignored Hall & Oates.

But, I don’t remember animosity toward the duo, either. Everyone knew the songs and most were big radio hits. However, this ubiquitousness didn’t seem to generate the rancor usually accompanying such familiarity.

You’d hear the songs, enjoy some more than others, but I don’t remember knowing anyone, personally, that was passionate about Hall & Oates – no one mocked them, no one wore their concert shirts.

Most of those songs still sound fantastic thirty years later, though. And Hall & Oates do seem to be experiencing a rediscovery during the past few years (and getting some long-overdue acclaim).

It made me consider what Hall & Oates songs that I’d most want to hear at this moment.

I don’t want to hear You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling. To be honest – and I know this statement will make some shake their heads in dismay – I don’t want to hear that song by anyone.

(Thanks Top Gun)

I’m so tired of You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling, I can’t remember if I ever liked it.

I dug Adult Education at the time, but time has not been kind to the song. Now, I think I find it overwrought and even a bit creepy.

Method Of Modern Love was too goofy for me in 1985 and it’s still goofy but not in a way that appeals to me.

But most of the songs are ones that are more than welcome to pop up on shuffle.

Some of the lesser hits – How Does It Feel To Be Back, Your Imagination, Possession Obsession – are appealing (maybe because they weren’t as monstrous hits as songs like You Make My Dreams, I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do), or Maneater).

So, if I wanted to hear some Hall & Oates right now, I think here are a quartet of songs I’d be inclined to pull up (and Wait For Me would be on here if it hadn’t made a recent appearance)…

Hall & Oates – Kiss On My List
from Voices

So, after touting Hall & Oates lesser hits, the first one I opted for was one of their biggest, but, from the stutter-step opening, Kiss On My List hooks me when I hear it. It’s lighthearted, playful, and has a fantastic chorus.

It’s also the first song by the duo which I remember being all over the radio. It also makes me think of rainy Friday afternoons in seventh grade when our homeroom teacher would allow us to play albums. She usually went with Christopher Cross, but I recall Kiss On My List being a favorite, too.

Hall & Oates – Your Imagination
from Private Eyes

In the summer of ’82, we took a family vacation to Western Pennsylvania. For two weeks, I heard Your Imagination, which I hadn’t heard on the stations back home. Those stations still weren’t playing the song when we returned and it was though it had never existed.

Maybe it was because Hall & Oates had already had the massive hits Private Eyes and I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do) as well as the underappreciated gem Did It In A Minute from their Private Eyes album, but the quirky, understated Your Imagination seemed to get lost in the wake.

Hall & Oates- Family Man
from H2O

Dark and paranoid, Family Man stood out from Hall & Oates hits of the early ’80s with its agressive guitars and New Wave vibe.

The track is actually a cover of a song by Mike Oldfield, of Tubular Bells fame. I used to have a copy of Oldfield’s version and, aside from the female vocalist on the original, Hall & Oates take is, as I recall, pretty faithful.

Hall & Oates – Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid
from Big Bam Boom

By the time Big Bam Boom came out in late 1984, pop music and Top 40 stations had begun to hold far less interest for me than it had merely a year earlier. So, I was unimpressed with Out Of Touch and Method Of Modern Love, the first two hits from the album. I’ve already declared the latter to be goofy, but the former just seems soulless and stilted.

Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid was the album’s third hit the following spring and is neither soulless nor stilted. It bobs along on a gentle melody and was one of the last songs by Hall & Oates to get a lot of airplay even if it didn’t reach the heights that they had earlier in the decade.

The Spectrum

On Halloween night, Pearl Jam played The Spectrum in Philadelphia, the final concert in the forty-five year existence of the venerable arena. At some point in the very near future, the building will be razed.

I’ve never set foot in The Spectrum. Obviously, I never will.

I’ve never lived in (or near) Philadelphia and, unless Paloma surprises me and has it on her short list of potential future destinations, I don’t intend to.

But, as a kid, despite growing up some six hundred miles west of The Spectrum, the building had a prominent spot in my life and the lives of many of my friends. The Spectrum was home court for the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team.

In the pre-Larry Bird/Magic Johnson (not to mention pre-ESPN) era, the NBA wasn’t a big deal. We had the Pacers in Indianapolis, sixty miles away, and their games were shown on a local channel, but no one watched and, most seasons, there was little reason to do so.

The team that had our attention was the 76ers. There was the mammoth center Darryl Dawkins, shattering backboards with his dunks, who worked the media as savvily as Shaq with his eccentric ways. He christened himself “Chocolate Thunder” (one of many nicknames) and claimed his home planet to be Lovetron where his girlfriend Juicy Lucy still lived.

The team had guards like the scrappy Doug Collins and the lockdown artist Maurice Cheeks as well as sniper shot Andrew Toney. We loved the gangly forward Caldwell Jones as much for the fact that he was gangly and named Caldwell Jones as his game.

And, most of all, the Sixers had the good Doctor, the incomparable Julius Erving.

We all spent a lot of snowbound, Sunday afternoons hoping the Sixers would be on the weekly game of the week so we might get a glimpse of Dr. J.

(we often got our wish)

And to this day, I’m far more excited to see footage of Dr. J than Michael Jordan. I suppose it’s because he was likely the first athlete that made me stare dumbfounded, amazed at what I’d seen.

(and, as we didn’t see endless replays in Dr. J’s heyday, there was a mystique – usually, you saw the play live or you didn’t see it)

Erving’s high-flying exploits were often beamed into our living rooms on those drab, Midwestern afternoons from The Spectrum.

I think we even thought the name was cool. It sounded space-age, futuristic and intergalactic.

Maybe Chocolate Thunder was telling the truth.

It’s strange to think The Spectrum will be gone

There’s no shortage of music from Philadelphia natives. To be understated, there’s actually a staggering array of amazing stuff. Here are songs from four such acts – not necessarily classics, merely ones I wanted to hear…

The Hooters – All You Zombies
from Nervous Night

This was the introduction of The Hooters, who had a sizeable local following, to the rest of the country. All You Zombies hooked me first time I heard it in late winter/early spring of 1985. It had an interesting, reggae hitch and portentous lyrics.

Nervous Night left me mostly underwhelmed, but it had several hits over the next year or so. Their second record came and went pretty quickly (though I thought it had a couple of decent tracks).

A songwriter friend hosted a couple members of the band (main lyricists Rob Hyman and Eric Bazilian) to do some writing years later. Apparently they were delightful guests.

The Stylistics – You Are Everything
from The Stylistics

I know that Philly is famous for soul music, but there are a lot of gaps in my knowledge of the genre. The Stylistics are one of those acts who I love the handful of songs I know and keep intending to check out their music beyond the hits.

They’re still on that list – thanks to a combination of apathy and forgetfulness – because I never tire of songs like Betcha By Golly Wow, I’m Stone in Love With You, Break Up To Make Up, and the smooth as silk You Are Everything.

Hall & Oates – Wait For Me
from X-Static

Whether you listened to a lot of music in the ’80s or not, if you are old enough to have been there, you likely know (or would recognize) a good number of songs by Hall & Oates – Kiss On My List, Private Eyes, Maneater…

And twenty-five plus years later, the stuff holds up and seems to have earned a measure of belated respect. As good as their big hits were, the duo had a lot of hits that seem to have been forgotten a bit – Did It In A Minute and Family Man come to mind – that were pretty fantastic.

I’d put Wait For Me on that list, too.

Ween – Flutes Of Chi
from White Pepper

I just didn’t get Ween. I tried. I really did.

Then, the duo put out White Pepper. Chock full of immediately engaging melodies, I couldn’t believe how effortless it was to enjoy. I intended to revisit their earlier albums but, White Pepper was released in 2000 and I still haven’t gotten around to doing so.

Flutes Of Chi always reminded me of XTC.