These songs still sounds so stunningly good to me. & They are great to play loud while driving. If you’re us they are, at least.
Two Tune Tuesday: Love & Rockets
Two Tune Tuesday: Elvis Costello
There are really way too many to touch his insanely long & cool career, but I think I’ve got at least some of his range in here.
& A Very happy 50th Bday to my sister Jeanne, who took me to see that incredible Elvis show when he was touring with Spike (with Nick Lowe opening).
Two Tune Tuesday: 8th Anniversary
In a couple of weeks we’re going upstate to watch good friends get married, so right now they’re in the middle of that stomach-knotting freakout time right before the big party. I’m sure it’ll all be perfect, but today is our own 8th wedding anniversary, & no, I’m not explaining these two songs. If you were there, you know how we used them.
(Happy Anniversary, my many-named love!)
Two Tune Tuesday: MJ
Goodbye, Michael. For me he wrote some of hte best dance music ever, & for that, alone, I’ll remember him.
I do know, for certain, that his music is hella better than this memorial crap on TV. My only hope is that a ton of people read Saint-Exupery’s Le Petit Prince now that Brooke Shields mentioend it, as that is one little gem of a book.
Kids These Days
The Walkman turned 30 and one kid who’s 13 took three days to figure out you can flip the cassette for more music. And they say these kids are clever.
& Yes, I do still have my yellow Sports version… somewhere. And a LOT of cassettes. I still miss the mindful mixing of 45 minutes of music. Tape-cover making was an art form all its own too: my favorite personal creation was a cover I painted a purplish black and then wrote on with a toothpick dipped in Wite-Out. It was a Love & Rockets‘ Express b/w Tones on Tail and gave me many hours of listening pleasure. Now, Tones on Tail songs are on car commercials. *sigh*
Ah, back in the day.
MJ, Again
& Then there is the issue of whether Michael Jackson was trans or not. I don’t think it’s anything we can know, but it wouldn’t have surprised me, or Betty, if he had announced a transition at some point.
Goodbyes
It’s a lot of death in a week: first Ed McMahon, who we knew was ailing; then Farrah Fawcett, who was fighting her illness with bravery and in the spotlight, and then Michael Jackson – who was always ailing, invisibly.
Maybe it’s unexpected that I should admit I liked Farrah Fawcett, pinup as she as for the dumb blonde, but I was a tomboy in the 70s, and Charlie’s Angels were fantastic. They really were, in those crazy velour shorts and flippy hair. But I had the trading cards, and I remained a fan even through the Cheryl Tiegs season(s?). I became a fan of Fawcett’s when I saw her in Extremities and in Between Two Women – both of them, believe it or not, cementing what I would articulate as my first feminist awareness.
But Michael Jackson’s death is unreal, much like his life was. Keith Olbermann used the word “human” a lot tonight in talking about Jackson’s death, which is something we all need to be reminded of. He was a person, a broken, fucked-up soul, maybe wrong and bad in criminal ways, maybe just broken and sad. We don’t really know, and won’t really know, I don’t think.
As someone who loves to dance, though, there is no denying his talent: Off the Wall is a perfect gem of pop music, and it dances from track to track. I have it on vinyl from way back when – the secret perfect dance music of a punk rock child. I was a little surprised tonight to remember exactly how many “world premieres” of his videos I saw – “Thriller” I remember, as many Gen Xers do, but also “Bad” and even “Remember the Time,” which is a hokey but perfect little romantic song. It’s impossible to deny a man’s talent who was – despite your best efforts – a major soundtrack of your life. His music had something so perfectly immediate about it; I remember where I watched all of those world premieres, and I remember the first time I saw, and held, a copy of Off the Wall, and the party I was at the first time I heard the tracks on Thriller.
It’s hard to explain to younger people than me that MTV never ever showed videos by black artists before MJ (and that hip hop had its own special show in the late 80s, because hip hop was just too *whatever* to mix with the rest of what they played). & You can’t hate a man who obviously took notes on every move James Brown ever made & every sound he could make.
So goodbye to Ed, to Farrah, and to Michael. As the duo Yazoo once put it, a little early, Goodbye Seventies, too.
Two Tune Tuesday: Breakup Songs
Here are two songs that are two sides of the same breakup coin: “Love of My Life” by the rowdy band Cowboy Mouth, and “Suddenly” by The (now defunct but brilliant) Bogmen.
It looks like The Bogmen are coming back, since there’s new music and oh, they played in NYC last December for the first time in a long while. (We saw them last in 2001.)
Two Tune Tuesday: The Damned
In honor of them playing in NYC last week, when I *wasn’t there dammit* here’s some tunes from The Damned, who threaten retirement every couple of years. I’ve seen at least two Farewell tours, maybe a decade apart, at places like The Ritz, The (New) Ritz (or the former Studio 54, depending on how you look at it), Coney Island High, Irving Plaza. Oy. Yes, I am missing NYC pretty hardcore these days.
Betty was not a big fan, having been introduced to them when they were doing kitschy goth things like
- “Grimly Fiendish” (which dammit I love anyway), but I took her to see them live & she was, alas, converted. What I think she said was, “goddamn they’re the loudest band ever.”
- “New Rose” was the first punk single. They beat everyone, including the Pistols, to that one.
- “There Ain’t No Sanity Clause” is very Captain Sensible: stupid and funny and fun to sing along. Uhhuh.
- “Smash It Up Pts 1 & 2” is in the canon of great punk rock theme songs.
- “Anti-Pope” is well, perfect, & was especially for a good Catholic girl with a lot of anger.
- “Generals” is from the Strawberries album, which came in bright red vinyl. It’s a pretty record, & a good one. Dave Vanians’s Interview with the Vampire tribute is on that one, too. These last two are a bit of the politics I imbibed with the tunes.
Two Tune Tuesday: Happy Birthday Dad
My dad turns 81 today, & this is some of the stuff that he listened to, & that I loved right from the start (Hampton) or had to learn to love over time (Sinatra). I grew up in a family where the radio was always on, usually on WNEW AM (& because my mom insisted on not only listening to the old stuff, WNEW FM, too, where I grew up as well on Vin Scelsa, of all DJs). My peers’ parents were usually a little younger, the first wave of Boomers (born in the 40s & 50s), & my parents were born in the 20s & 30s, so the music I grew up with was significantly different. Honestly, I’m glad: I missed all that hippy crap.
Do bi do bi do is highly preferable poetry, no?