Another dance-on-the-tractor favorite. Sometimes when this song came on I'd stop the tractor so I could hear it better. Then I'd take a leak after the song was done so I had at least a little better excuse for stopping. Maybe that's why I feel the urge to pee after hearing this song.
I'm a little confused by the juxtaposition of the lyrics and the video. In the song, he's inviting us to "Put on your red shoes and dance the blues." But in the video, he seems to be warning that if you put on those red shoes, you'll set off a nuclear explosion in the Australian outback. Since Australia doesn't have nuclear weapons, I'm guessing the bomb would be detonated by radical kitten-heel terrorists.
Oh, 1983, how I miss your nuclear paranoia. And Dabney Coleman's mustache.
Lyrics about a London riot that broke out after the police ignored a black kid that had been stabbed and lay bleeding on the street. Not so good.
Still couldn't resist turning it up and singing along and dancing in my seat while driving...the tractor.
This is one of the songs I remember enjoying while discing the hell out of the fields by Mormon Canyon. There are a lot of them coming up on the countdown, so prepare yourself for plenty of summer-of-'83 flashbacks.
While the Chippendale's dancers skit för "Wörking för the Weekend" kind öf ruined the söng for me, the cöwbell skit för this söng just made me like it even möre.
Will Ferrel and Christöpher Walken are hilariöus!
But yöu knöw what isn't hilariöus? A live versiön öf the söng that DÖESN'T feature the cöwbell!
Argh! Can such things be?! Hey, Blue Öyster! While yöu're at it, why dön't you thröw away all the guitars and just play harps instead?!
That sucked! But it can be even suckier. Höw aböut a hörrible a cappella versiön?!
80. "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" by Meat Loaf
Sheldon is the reason I still like this song so much. I have a vivid memory of Sheldon laughing about these lines at the end of the song:
I swore that I would love you to the end of time!
So now I'm praying for the end of time
To hurry up and arrive
'Cause if I gotta spend another minute with you
I don't think that I can really survive
I'll never break my promise or forget my vow
But God only knows what I can do right now
I'm praying for the end of time
It's all that I can do
Praying for the end of time
So I can end my life with you!
Besides the memory of Sheldon, I still find the entire original video of the song to be entertaining, but it's the end of the song where Meat Loaf's rock-opera acting skills really shine.
"Bat Out of Hell" is a classic rock album, and so much different from everything else that was coming out in the late 70s. But out of all the songs on the album, this song is the best. In fact, I'd say that "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" is, without a doubt, one of the very best in all of rock 'n' roll.
(If you didn't watch the video to the very end, you need to go back and watch it. Why? Because it is, without a doubt, one of the very best in all of rock 'n' roll.)
Am I the only one that is a bit creeped out by Meat's groping of the lady during the baseball play-by-play? And am I the only one that thinks the older he is, the creepier it gets? When I watched the baseball part of the video below, I found myself wondering when the Dateline guy was going to show up.
I can't believe he grabs her like that! Who does he think he is? The President?!
Speaking of going almost all the way, here's somebody else that Meatloaf groped.
Poor Mitt. After that performance by Meat Loaf, there was no way he was going to win. You just couldn't get elected President in 2012 without the Pro-Busey vote.
But as with everything else that was upside-down about the 2016 election, Meat's endorsement helped carry the election for the Donald. Meat Loaf loves Trump, and Trump loves Meat Loaf!
The Donald actually let Martha touch his meatloaf!
Yet another reason why Melania is praying for the end of time to hurry up and arrive.
While I was working on a grant between Utah State University and the Utah Department of Public Safety, I basically worked from home. The idea sounds nice at first. But the problem with it is that at some point you realize that you're never away from work when you're at home. That work mostly consisted of writing a training manual for people that trained first responders throughout the state. To add a little fun to my spend-all-day-in-the-unfinished-basement job, I bought a bunch of secret agent music and played it while I typed because it made me feel like I was a spy on a top-secret mission and had to hack into a mainframe computer to keep the world from blowing up. And the best spy song that I discovered was "Espionage" by Green Day. They wrote it for the Austin Powers movie.
About a week after I finished writing the training manual, they put in new leadership at the Utah Highway Patrol, which was the agency I worked with on the grant. They promptly fired me as part of their budget restructuring. And they changed all their plans for offering training to first responders. I don't think they ever used my training manual. The whole job turned out to be a huge waste of time. But at least I got a good song out of it.
82. "Battle Without Honor or Humanity" by Hotei Tomoyasu
This is the song by Hotei Tomoyasu's that is most likely to be recognized by Americans, as it's the song from the Kill Bill movie soundtrack. But Hotei has done a number of different versions of the song besides what you hear on the soundtrack, including some jam sessions with other musicians in which they take turns playing their own guitar solos.
Here's the movie soundtrack version.
And here's a performance he did on the telly. His form of guitar showmanship includes a variety of stances and moves with his legs. Most of them just look goofy--like he wants to finish up his guitar solo because he really has to go to the bathroom. He's got legs, but he doesn't know how to use them.
He had a composer/conductor friend that wrote a symphonic version. While the rest of the symphony had sheet music to cue them on what to play and when to play it, Hotei has to do everything from memory, since he doesn't read music. The video on this is super-choppy on purpose to avoid detection from the YouTube copyright bots, so you may want to just listen and not watch it.
This concert version is played at the regular tempo at first, but then it shifts into funky overdrive at the end.
And here's a concert with Brian Setzer from The Stray Cats and Char, a Japanese guitarist that has collaborated with Hotei on other songs. Setzer's the guy not wearing a pink cowboy hat with feathers in it.
Here's another version with some really famous jazz guitarists that I've never heard of.
The only jazz guitarists I know by name are Earl Klugh, George Benson, Pat Metheny, and Sonny Sharrock.
And now that I've named them, I feel obliged to share some of their music.
I was introduced to Earl Klugh by Elder Anderson on my mission. He's the one that played the guitar song on that tape I sent you from Sweden. He said, "I am Earl Klugh" to psych himself up before he started playing. One of Earl's greatest hits was the following George Benson tune "Living Inside Your Love."
George Benson's soft guitar jazz triggers a lot of memories from the 70s and 80s. Breezin' and Give Me the Night are the two songs I remember best. Here he is playing Breezin' on The Old Grey Whistle Test, which is widely known as the most difficult of all the standardized college-entrance exams.
Pat Metheny--did the soundtrack to the movie "The Falcon and the Snowman" which featured this little ditty in collaboration with David Bowie.
Sonny Sharrock--the man behind the music of Space Ghost Coast to Coast! When Sonny died back in the 90s, they had a whole episode where they played long blocks of his music. If you listen closely, it sounds like Earl Klugh is playing in the background when Space Ghost and Zorak are flying to work in The Phantom Cruiser.
Is there any topic more fun to sing about in all of rock 'n' roll?
Nope.
That's why the funnierest song in the movie "This is Spinal Tap" is "Big Bottoms." The lyrics are a masterwork of non-subtlety, and to get the point across musically, all the guitars are bass guitars, and the drums are mostly bass drums. It's all about the bass.
What song was Spinal Tap spoofing? It had to be "Fat-Bottomed Girls." As kids growing up in Arimo, this was one of those naughty songs that we weren't supposed to know the lyrics to. But somehow we did. And to this day, whenever this song starts up on the radio, I can't resist the guilty pleasure of singing along with the volume topped out.
Of course, there is a particular girl I have in mind when I sing this song. And I'm betting it's the same one you have too. It's because of the "Bicycle Race" song tie-in the band did with the line "Get on your bikes and ride!" Due to that line, the fat-bottomed girl I think of with this song is the push-bike girl on the Paul Hogan show.
Crickey! Those fat-bottomed sheilas make me want to spend some time exploring the beauty of the land down under. Fair dinkum!
The version of this song you hear on the radio features Bon Scott because that's the front man that originally sang it. Brian Johnson also does a good job screeching out the lyrics in concert. But the song really isn't a showcase for either Bon or Brian. It's all about Angus's driving guitar hooks and raucous solo at the end. How raucous was it? During the recording of the song, Angus played it so loud for so long that the amplifier melted.
MELTED!
Think about that for a second or two. Do you know what that means? It means if Angus wanted to, he could make amplifier fondue!
In concert, this is the song where Angus puts all of his guitar showmanship on glorious display. He stomps and runs and duck-walks and poses and thrashes uncontrollably on a hydraulic stage that lifts him up where he can be idolized by tens of thousands of adoring fans that get blasted with a whirlwind of confetti. Of course, you wouldn't know that from watching the video below. However, it's worth a peek because it contains rare footage of Angus playing the song while wearing an angel's halo instead of his signature devil horns.
It's a hell of a rocker, but we don't hear it very often on the rock 'n' roll radio. I think the song doesn't get regular airplay because it's so long. Billy says if you want to have hit you gotta cut it down to 3:05, and this song clocks in at a little over 6 minutes. But that's just the studio version. The concert versions--of which there are hundreds online--are much, much longer epic riff-fests where Angus lets the Rock Monster loose and whips the crowd into a call-and-response frenzy.
Near the end of my stint at Boise State, I liked to listen to three of these longer versions one after the other while I was working on some mundane HTML coding task. Why three? Because that's about as long as my bladder would hold out. These are loooooooooong songs. How long? So long that they put Albuquerque to shame! Here are my three favorite performances arranged in Benjamin Button order.
You know, after watching these massive guitar solos, I think it's pretty clear who Nigel Tufnel's guitar hero is.
Want more proof? Here's the bootleg long version of Nigel's solo. Let there be rock!
The Wall. I should just put the whole album on the countdown in one giant entry. With the way the songs merge into each other (kind of like Monty Python skits), I could almost get away with it. I probably heard it a hundred times when Randy lived with us. He'd play something from it at least every couple days, and I'd make the request to hear something from it just about as often. It had some good mellow stuff that we liked to play while we just lay in bed and listened. This song was the best of the mellow tunes.
Here's a video Randy would have appreciated. It's Dr. Strange singing the doctor's part on "Comfortably Numb."
The song has taken on new layers of meaning as I've gotten older. I was thinking just this morning about how different I am now from when I was kid listening to all this music from the 70s and 80s. I'm really not trying to relive my past, but it can be surreal at times when listening to these songs because every now and then I get a quick flash of memory that brings back the feelings I had back then. And for a moment, it's like I'm that kid again looking at my older self, and I think, "What the hell happened to you?! You aren't anything like the person I wanted to become!"
And sometimes when I think about it honestly, the answer always comes down to the simple fact that I have indeed become comfortably numb. That's when it feels like I'm just waiting for the worms to come.
When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown
The dream is gone
I have become comfortably numb
But other times when I think about it, the answer is that there's still that best part of my younger self that's just waiting for me to get over my old-man cynicism and start having fun again. And that young inner Daren got a big boost this last Monday evening when Julie gave me the go-ahead to buy a motorcycle. My brother and sister-in-law said that as soon as I got on the bike, they saw the teenager in me come right out. And I have to say that the smell of the gasoline, and the sound of the engine, and the feeling of freedom I get riding it has really given old-man Olson a real kick in the butt. So, say hello to my 1977 Honda CT 125. It's old and slow and dinged up and needs some parts fixed up--kind of like me. Hopefully, it will help me go from being comfortably numb to comfortably fun.
87. "Ca Plane Pour Moi" by Plastic Bertrand (kind of)
To get me through the boring, repetitive tasks assigned to me at Boise State, I adopted a strategy of listening to French 80s music. Since I speak very little French, the lyrics didn't distract me, but the upbeat 80s vibe kept my mood up. Funny thing about French music--it always seems to be either really sad or really happy. And the lyrics don't even have to make sense when translated into English either. Random French phrases will do. Also, the lyrics don't have to be actual French words. As long as the words sound French, that's good enough.
Let me show you what I mean. Here's "Foux Du Fafa" by Flight of the Conchords. (Didn't you introduce me to this video? I don't remember.) The lyrics don't make much sense when translated. But I guarantee you'll feel happy at least five-and-a-half times before the end of the song.
Also, if a song is in French, anyone that doesn't speak the language will have no idea if the sound they hear is even your own voice. It could be the voice of someone else, and no one would ever know--unless the guy you hired to sing the song in French decides to take you to court and expose your music fakery.
And that is exactly what happened to Plastic Bertrand, a Belgian singer that Milli-Vanillied his way to a hit by hiring a guy named--and I'm not making this up or misspelling it--Lou Deprijck to sing and produce the song. But after Plastic lip-synced his way to fame and fortune with the song, Lou decided to be a real prijck about it and sued for a chunk of cash and the rights to perform the song.
Much has been made on the interwebs of the meaning of the lyrics of this song, which some translators portray as a nonsense song, while others point out that the French idioms used in the song make complete sense. "Ca plane pour moi" means literally, "It glides for me." But from the research I've done on the lyrics, I believe that the best translation of this French idiomatic phrase would be "I'm going to milk the cow."
I don't care. It sounds French. It makes me happy. Plus, there is an English line in it where he says, "I am the king of the divan." Who doesn't love a song that lets you proclaim "I am the King of the couch?!"
Anyway, this became my favorite song played on the French 80s stations I listened to at Boise State. The only problem I have with it is that it came out in 1977, so it really shouldn't be played on a French 80s station. But hey, that's what punk music was all about, right? Breaking the rules!
And one of the non-rules of punk had to do with "pogoing" on the dance floor. Apparently, dancing like you're an epileptic on a pogo stick was a thing associated with punk or new wave music. (I don't know why I did not know this.) The reason I bring it up is that it might be reason that the audience starts clapping in the middle of the song after Plastic pogos.
Fun Fact: "The Safety Dance" by Men Without Hats was written after the lead singer got kicked out of a Canadian dance club for pogoing. Of course, if you think everyone pogoed like Debra Harry does in the video above, you'd think that it was stupid for the bouncer to kick the dude out. But in the video below, you'll see a more violent form of the pogo. After you see the dancing going on while the Sex Pistol's sing "Anarchy in the UK," you'll probably side with the bouncer.
And now I understand a little better why They Might Be Giants didn't want that kind of dancing going on at their concert. Yikes! (Foux du fafa!)
This song is the sound of my post-mission summer, which was mostly spent working the 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM shift at the Tupperware factory.
Mmmmm! The smell of freshly molded plastic! It's the gift that keeps on giving. (You can wash it out of your clothes, but not your nostrils.)
On my days off, I tried to keep my same sleep schedule, so I'd watch movies and MTV until I couldn't anymore because Mom and Dad slept in the TV room, and then I'd lay in bed and read the Lord of the Rings or the Shannara trilogy.
I know that sounds like a nerdy thing to do, but I'm definitely not a nerd. After all, would a real nerd enjoy watching a video of a white woman with long red hair rapping about being rejected in love while a bunch of musicians with their shirts buttoned up to the tippy-top button join her to form a band named after a Vulcan priestess?
When I came to this song, I thought, "Why do I think of Randy riding in a red sports car when I hear it? And why do I imagine the drummer sitting behind a huge drum set? And why does the title of this song make me think of cheese?"
Then the memories began to flood back.
I remembered that along with the Van Halen, Pink Floyd, and Ten Nugent albums, at some point while he lived with us, Randy bought the Moving Pictures album by Rush.
"Tom Sawyer" was the song on this album that got me into Rush, what with the very enjoyable sing-a-long line "Catch the spirit, catch the spit." However, it's been so overplayed throughout the years that it's fallen out of favor with my ears and been replaced by "Red Barchetta."
Then I also remembered that when I was introduced to the Freaks and Geeks television show, I got a big kick out of the Rush references by the kid that idolized Neil Peart and bragged to Linda Cardellini that his 29-piece drum set was only six pieces away from being a bigger set than Neil's.
But then Linda Cardellini's TV dad tried to crush the kid's hero-worshipping of Neil with a little jazz drumming.
Granted, those jazz drummers really know how to make the sticks fly. Still, there's a part of me that understands the kid's awe of Neil's drum set. Behold the drum set in all its glory!
A slightly smaller drum set is featured in this 80s performance of "Red Barchetta."
So that's why this song makes me imagine Randy riding in a red sports car while somewhere in the Great White North a drummer is banging away on a gigantic drum set. However, I still have no idea why I think Barchetta is a type of cheese. Could it be because it really is a cheese? Well, there's only one way to find out--check the most comprehensive list of cheeses available on the interwebs.
Mmmmmmm...Rogue Cheddar.... A snack that is a winner, but yet won't spoil my dinner!
Well, I guess Barchetta isn't a cheese then. And I have no idea why I think of cheese when I hear the song. But you have to admit that Barchetta would make a damn fine name for a cheese!
The Marsh Valley High School student newspaper often featured an interview with one or two students. I don't ever recall being interviewed for the paper, nor do I recall anything that was written about any of my classmates in these interviews, except for one--Piney VotezalVoteselVotzul -- okay, I give up. Let's just call her Piney, shall we? There was only one Piney in all of Marsh Valley, so there's little chance of confusion.
Anyway, I remember Piney's interview because in it they asked her what her favorite band was, and she said "Supertramp." And I remember thinking, "Hey, I like Supertramp too! I've got something in common with Piney!" And then I remember thinking, "I've got something in common with Piney?!"
What's the difference between real tramps and supertramps? The sax?
I saw Piney twice after high school. The first time was right after my mission when I went to the grocery store in Downey to get a root beer. She was the clerk at the register. As I bought my sodey-pop, she asked me what I was doing with my life, and I told her that I just got back from Sweden, and that the family was moving to Twin Falls. I asked what she was up to, and she said she was married and working there at the store. Then somebody else came up behind me, so I said goodbye and left so she could keep doing her job.
The second time was at our class reunion--the only one I've attended. I remember she got up and gave this hilarious speech where she said that she was really sorry for what she had done in high school--and she said, "Yes...THAT too!"--after which a lot of people laughed. I had no idea what exactly THAT was. But I wondered if THAT is why the lady is a Supertramp fan.
Now some they do and some they don't,
And some you just can't tell.
And some they will and some they won't.
With some it's just as well.
One of the things I tried to specialize in during grad school was the design of instructional simulations. Consequently, I felt compelled to purchase "The Sims" computer game when it first came out and do a post-mortem on the game to figure out how it was designed. I probably learned more about designing simulations from that game than anything else I studied, and every time we discussed simulations in class, I could always relate everything back to the game. So all those hours and days and months I spent playing the game were NOT completely wasted.
One of the cleverest things about the game design was that the Sims--the little virtual people you controlled in the game--spoke a made-up language called "Simlish." It's a combination of made-up words along with a few actual words in various languages (including English) thrown in from time to time just to screw with your mind. (It's jarring to hear an English word or phrase, because your brain says, "Hold on a second! That made sense...didn't it?") Anytime the Sims talked, you would see a bubble with the text in English, but you'd hear them say something in Simlish. Even more clever, the game featured a radio you could purchase for your Sims, and you could turn it to stations that played various music genres--country, jazz, rock, etc.--with all the song lyrics in Simlish.
Since that first game, they've had some well-known professional musicians record new music (Mike Mothersbaugh from Devo did the music to Sims 2) or record their own songs in Simlish.
Here's Katy Perry recording the Simlish version of her song "Last Friday Night."
I'm not a Katy Perry fan, but I think I could listen to a little more of her singing in Simlish.
Shortly after the game came out, Apple introduced its first iPod, which let me put one thousand songs on a little magical white brick and listen to them in random order wherever I went. One day, I got the bright idea to download all of The Sims music onto my iPod and listen to it while I went shopping. Now, the game had some lame shopping music it would play while you were "shopping" in the game, so listening to that same music as I searched for real items to purchase was more than a little surreal. I felt like I was one of the little cartoon people inside the game!
My favorite song in that first game was one of the five rock station songs that played when you turned on the radio within the game. There was one song in particular that actually rocked pretty hard. They call it "SIM Hagar" now, but it was always song #4 to me. It is especially fun to lip-sync the lyrics in Simlish--if you can figure out what they are.
"Taki Rari" is another rip-roaring mood-lifter from my interwebing days at Utah State.
Hey, kids! Do you like bongos? Yeah, I thought so!
Would you like to play bongos while Yma sings "Taki Rari?" Of course you do!
What?! You say you don't know how to bongo?!
Well, you're in luck, because Jack Costanzo can teach you everything you need to know to bongo your brains out! Click and learn, my young friends! Click and learn!
Now that you know how to hold the instrument correctly, it's time to bang those bongos to make a fresh batch of piping hot mambo! Also, while you're bongoing, try to lip-sync the lyrics, and make sure you look like you're really straining to reach those high notes.
During my first three years of grad school at Utah State, I worked as an instructional designer/web page developer (see song #109). Much of my day was spent copying and pasting HTML code into web pages and testing them out to see what was and wasn't working. As part of my coping strategy for the mind-numbing boredom involved in this work, I got a set of headphones and listened to music that I thought would lift my mood. One woman that I worked with had all these weird Ultra-Lounge CD sets with some damn good mood lifters in them. She loaned them to me, and I put the best ones on my iPod. In exchange, I got her and her friend tickets to see Billy Joel and Elton John with my family, and she ended up getting to stand right next to the stage with my wife and kid.
I think it was more than a fair swap.
And I think you'll agree with me when you hear my favorite organ song that I pilfered from her Ultra-Lounge collection--"Enchanted Farm." Having grown up on a farm for fifteen years, I can almost identify every sound.
There's only one way to listen to this song. Crank up the volume, nod your head to the beat, and end every sing-a-long verse with "--Ahhh!" (e.g. "We're off to Never-Neverland--Ahhh!")
I don't have any particularly interesting memory with this song. I remember listening to it late one night while driving through Marsh Valley. That's it.
Why do I like it? It rocks. Hard. Especially the intro to the song. Of all the thrash metal songs I've heard, it does the best job of building up to an irresistible head-banging beat.
What I don't like is the video for this song. It is absolutely...um...how do I put this?
Terrifying.
Yep. That's the word. Terrifying.
And I'm pretty sure it can actually cause seizures.
And nausea.
And horrific nightmares.
I really don't like this video at all. I'm not a fan of horror movies in general. But horror movies in which children are scared out of their minds are off my list of the best things in life.
So why would I include such a video in my list? Because one of the things I'm trying to do with this Top 200 is share my thoughts and feelings through writing about music. And this video precisely captures what I felt as I laid me down to sleep on November 8, 2016, only multiplied by ten--Ahhh!.
As far as 80s rock albums go, Toto IV is an absolute monster.
Not only do the songs that charted sound incredible, but there isn't a single bad song on the album, which is kind of a hard thing to accomplish for an 80s album. Most 80s albums had a few hits on them, but the rest of the songs were mediocre at best. But my ears tell me that while some songs on Toto IV are better than others, it's all pretty damn good. It won the Grammy for Album of the Year, and "Rosanna" won Record of the Year. And Toto won four other Grammys that year. And "Africa" became their first #1 song on the charts, which happened about ten months after the album was released.
In non-music industry awards, Rosanna also won the award for song I would most likely sing in the high school hallway during class time in a loud, high-pitched voice--ala Eddie Murphy's "Roxanne" in the movie "48 Hours."
And I did exactly that one spring day at the end of my junior year of school. As I walked down the hall, I screeched out "Rosanna! Rosanna! I never thought that losing you could ever hurt so bad!" I did this to make some girls in the hall laugh at my musical idiocy, which they did. But then something happened that was even more satisfying than making girls laugh. My arch-nemesis, Rand Greaves, walked out into the hall to find out who was making all that racket and disrupting his perfectly quiet class. When he saw it was me, he just turned around and walked back into his classroom without saying a word and shut the door behind him.
That's right, Rand! You better walk away! Or I'll unleash the full might of my falsetto voice to move your desk and filing cabinet out of their regular spots! And then you'll have to compulsively realign them back to their original positions the next time you come into class late after the bell rings.
Yes, yes. I know. Moving furniture slightly out of place was not a very sophisticated mind game to play on a teacher. I really should have come up with something more clever to torture the man. But sometimes a simple annoying thing done repeatedly over a long period of time can produce some surprisingly good results.
At some point in my junior year, Rand eventually caught on to my furniture nudging activities. (Somebody ratted me out.) And one day just as the bell rang and we were getting out of our desks to leave a lecture on some ultra-depressing story, he said something to me like, "Hah! Daren! You moved my desk today, but I didn't straighten it out this time! Gotcha!" I just looked at him, shrugged my shoulders, and said truthfully, "It wasn't me," and then I walked away like I didn't even care what he thought of me (because I didn't). He had accused me of the act to let me know that he was on to me and to discourage me from moving his stuff around in the future. But it had the opposite effect. I became even more encouraged, because now someone else was into the mind game and doing my dirty work for me! It took the mind game to a new level, because although someone else had committed the crime, I still got the satisfaction of watching him suffer from it just as if I had done it.
Back to the song.
Although "Rosanna" won Record of the Year, I am obliged at this point to admit that the video sucks. While we are severely divided as a nation, I believe we can all agree that the punishment for creating a Jets vs Sharks dance/fight sequence in a music video should be much harsher than just putting the offending musicians behind a minimum security chain-link fence. At minimum, there should be some flogging.
There should also be some extra flogging for Ron Hendren, Mary Hart's cohost on Entertainment Tonight during 1982-83. For some reason, I used to watch the show. (It probably came on just before "Dukes of Hazard" or some other appointment television show that had a show-opening song that I liked to hear.) Ron Hendren was the first person that I ever heard utter the word "supergroup," and it was in reference to Toto. What a douchebag!
Ron Hendren--what douchebags looked like in the early 80s.
Listen, Ron. There's no way Toto could be called a "supergroup" by any definition of the term, except for definitions used by douchebags.
Is Toto "super?" It could definitely be argued that they are, indeed, super. They might even be super-duper. Toto IV was a super album. And "Hold the Line" was sure as hell a super song. So, yes, the band is super.
Is Toto a group? Undeniably, they are a group. They might even be grouper-duper. After all, they still played in other bands and worked as session musicians even after Toto was formed. So they weren't just part of one rock group, they were part of many groups.
But even though Toto is super and a group, it is NOT is a supergroup! And for douchebag Ron's sake, I'll repeat that once again. Toto is NOT a supergroup!
Now you might ask, how do I know this, and what gives me the authority to make such a declaration? Well, Greg, I can say it because I've listened to Toto IV at least three hundred times since it came out. And although I have no idea which box in my garage or attic contains my old Walkman, I can tell you for sure that there's a Toto IV tape inside it. However, I can't tell you the name of a single member of the band. Nor can I tell you anything about their lives, except that there's an urban myth that the song was written about Rosanna Arquette. It wasn't. But that didn't keep the band or Rosanna from claiming the myth was true (as a joke).
To be a "supergroup," people that listen to your music three hundred times should know the names of the people in the band, and they should know at least a few pieces of juicy gossip or mindless trivia about each member of the band. If they did, then the group might famous enough to be considered a supergroup.
But let me be clear on this point. Just because fame is a defining criteria of the individual members of a supergroup, that doesn't mean a group of famous musicians can get together to record a song and than call themselves a supergroup. "We Are the World" was not sung by a supergroup!
Members of a true rock supergroup should have also been well-known for their previous work in another band or from their successful solo careers. They bring what they learned from that experience to enhance the sound of the supergroup. That doesn't mean that the supergroups songs sound like a collection of songs from the old bands. The supergroup has their own distinct sound, but you can also hear echoes of the former groups' sounds in the music. For instance, I can hear ELO-like sounds in songs by The Traveling Wilburys. And I can also hear George-Harrison-and-The Beatles-like guitar and Tom-Petty-and-the-Heartbreakers-like guitar. But The Traveling Wilburys have their own unique sound that wouldn't be mistaken for the sounds of these other bands.
Also, a supergroup isn't a band that adds a new member to it that was already famous, but then keeps the same name and has basically the same sound as the band did before the new addition. Sorry, Van Halen, but adding Sammy Hagar didn't make you a supergroup. Don't get your hopes up, AC/DC, because adding Alex Rose as the frontman on your tour definitely didn't make you a supergroup.
And a supergroup isn't a band with members that, after the band splits up, they all go out and have successful careers as solo artists or create their own band, and then, after a decade or so, the band gets together again and starts making music that sounds like their old band. Sorry, Eagles. You're not a supergroup.
A band cannot be a supergroup if a complete unknown is one of the principle members of the band. Sorry Damn Yankees. Your drummer didn't get even slightly known until after he had joined the band. But lets face it, the drummer isn't their biggest problem. With Ted Nugent in the band, that automatically disqualifies it as a supergroup. The Nuge is good for one thing, and one thing only--embarrassing Republicans. The only reason Republicans put up with him is because they know he's packin' heat, and they don't dare ask him to leave the room. And if you show up at a Republican rally and the Nuge takes the stage, you better have your Kevlar vest on. Why? Because apparently, the Nuge is impervious to bullets. The proof is in the following scene from their video for their highest charting song "High Enough." In this scene the cops show up at the house and draw their guns as the Nuge comes out on the porch in some kind of body-length zebra cammo. The police then proceed to unload their revolvers into...pile after pile of cans. There's a pile on the window sill. Gone! There's a pile on the porch. Blown away! There's a pile on a cooler by the window. Shot to hell! There's even a pile of cans on a chair inside the house that gets taken out with some kind of exploding bullet. Ka-blammo! While the rest of the band members duck hard to avoid the hail of bullets, the Nuge just keeps on playing on the porch, his zebra guitar forming a protective sonic shell.
But I digress again. Back to the supergroup rant.
And the group can't consist of someone that got famous doing something other than music and then decided they wanted to be in a rock band, but they didn't have enough real talent to hit the charts. Sorry, Hollywood Vampires. You'll NEVER be a supergroup with Johnny Depp as a core member.
So with these criteria, it is clear that a true supergroup is a rare thing. What bands qualify as a supergroup then?
The Traveling Wilburys. They are the epitome of a supergroup.
The Million Dollar Quartet. Roy Orbison joined after Elvis died, making Roy a member of two supergroups!
The Highwaymen. More country than the Million Dollar Quartet, but the exact same ratio of Johnny Cash.
Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young. They couldn't come up with a catchy name for the band? How about Long-Haired Geriatrics?
Okay. Four examples should be enough for us to arrive at the following key conclusions.
At the end of my freshman year, I received a rather weird church calling for the next school year--to be the only sophomore on the seminary council. Because I was the youngest of the group, I got assigned to (a) clean up the seminary closets/library and (b) produce all of the two-and-a-half-minute church talks for kids to put into their seminary binders. Since my cousin Laura had held the sophomore representative job the year before, the seminary closets/library were in pristine condition. (She ran a tight ship!) That meant my only real concern was the church talks.
But here's the thing--plagiarizing church talks back then was not an easy job. The seminary teachers wanted me to find two or three different talks for every month because they didn't want two seminary students from the same ward to ever give the same talk in church. So I had to come up with 18-27 of these talks. That meant every month I had to type up at least two of these 1-2 page talks on an electric typewriter, make enough copies for everyone in the seminary program to have one, and then punch holes in them so everyone could put them into their 3-ring binder.
Again, this might sound easy now, but this was in the days before the photocopier became standard issue equipment for seminaries. I had to make all the copies on the purple-ink ditto machine. It was kind of like the ditto machine in the video below, only I think it was hand-cranked, not electric.
The only pleasurable thing about the whole process was the smell of the toner.
Mmmmmmmmm...ditto fluid!
It should be noted that at that time in my life I did NOT know how to type. This is one of the reasons that I talked Chris into blowing a third elective by taking a typing class with me during our sophomore year. (The other reason being the typing class had zero homework.) In the beginning, typing one of these church talks without making a mistake took me soooooooooooooooooooooooo long. And one false move with the toner cartidge would mean the purple copies would be too faded or too smudged to read. And the carbon copy that I had to surgically implant into the drum would sometimes get crinkled, which would make the text all skitty-wampus, so I had to put a new carbon copy on the drum if that happened. And after about 40 copies, the carbon copy would run out of whatever magic it had that made the things print out in purple text. Consequently, I had to put on new carbon copies at least three or four times before the whole process was finished for just one of the talks. Then I had to do it all again for the second talk (and a third, if I had it). Then I had to be damn careful with the hole punch, or the holes would be off and wouldn't fit into the binder, which meant I could only punch about five sheets of paper at once. I remember that because of all this work it took to make the talks, I was late one month during the first semester with all of the talks, and Petersen and Hellstern were not pleased one bit, and they let me know it.
But there was one thing about this seminary calling that made it all worthwhile. Once every week or so, I got to participate in a seminary council meeting that included a particularly pretty junior girl--Kim Hawes. I would always look forward to the times when she spoke, because I had implicit permission to stare right at her beautiful face and hair the entire time. I rarely spoke during these meetings, and only on rare occasions did I speak directly with Kim. But she was always super-nice to me, and would even laugh at a few of my jokes.
Kim was also part of the group of girls that pretty much ruled the typing class. As per the official High School Laws of Socialization, these junior girls never talked to sophomore boys, so they didn't pay much attention to Chris or me. There were only three boys in the entire class: Chris, me, and Richard Watson. Richard Watson would try to flirt with the girls because he was a junior too. But as underclassmen, Chris and I could not flirt with them. They were the Alpha females, and we were not even in the same sphere of existence as they were.
The typing class Alphas
At the beginning of the typing class, Chris and I would do our practice exercises and compare who got the better scores. Chris always outdid me every time. But Man! I tried damn hard to beat him! After the first two weeks, we had our first timed typing test, which meant everyone in the class tried to type as many words as they could as fast as they could without making any mistakes--all on these electric typewriters that clicked and whirred and ka-chinged in a cacophony of office sounds. If you made a mistake, you didn't have time to correct it. The mistake would just count against your official final score of how many words per minute you could type.
After that test, all the Alpha females were comparing their scores with each other and making a big deal over who had the fastest typing speed. Chris and I also compared scores with each other. He beat me, of course. And neither one of us got super-fast typing speeds, but we did get faster scores than one of the Alphas. I don't know how they found this out, but when the Alphas discovered that the two sophomore boys beat one of them, they used that information to really tease the slow-typing Alpha. That's when Chris and I discovered that if we typed faster than these girls, they would pay attention to us.
This was a life-changing event. Chris and I tripled our efforts in class after that, not because we were in competition with each other now, but because we wanted those girls to pay more attention to us in class. On the next typing test, we blew away all the Alphas except for one or two, which startled the hell out of them all. They began to see us as the competition, and they began to pay attention to us in class on a daily basis to see how we were doing because they didn't want to be embarrassed by getting beat by us again. They were always checking on our assignment scores, which we readily shared with them, because you just don't refuse an Alpha anything. They completely ignored Richard Watson, as he took on the role of the slowest typer in the class.
[Sidebar--Richard was the guy that was going to ask Jennifer Palmer to our senior year Homecoming dance, so she made arrangements to get me to ask her out to it instead. I was only Richard repellant to her. I think I saw him a year or two after that dance (was it at the MTC?) and he mentioned that both of us had wanted to be Jennifer's boyfriend, but neither one of us had succeeded. Maybe one of us would have succeeded if we had just typed her some barely misspelled love notes.]
At the end of the semester, we had our final typing test, and the Alphas were out to crush us. When the teacher said "Go!" our fingers nearly flew right off our hands. Both Chris and I were super-focused but relaxed and confident--we were in the prime of our typing ability. After the test scores were calculated, I had scored 98 words per minute--good enough to beat almost all the Alphas. Chris got 105--top score in the class.
Because of our typing class performance, all the Alphas decided that it was okay to talk to us. And when Chris and I became juniors the next year, the Alphas would sometimes talk to us in the halls or in other classes we had with them. Of course, we weren't officially in the group of guys that they'd want to date. But we were acceptable enough to talk to.
During our junior year, I believe the Arimo Mafia (except for Sheldon) was also in the Virgin Lips Club (VLC). I made the mistake of complaining that I'd never been kissed to Chris's family once while they were driving by us one day by the Arimo park. Chris's grandmother said, "Come here, Daren. I want to tell you something." I got closer to the car and said, "What?" She said, "Come closer. I need to whisper it to you." It was kind of a weird request, but I could not refuse her anything, as I'd known her since I was three years old and had nothing but respect and love for the woman. I leaned through the car window to hear what she was going to whisper. She then grabbed my face with both hands and kissed me hard on the lips. Then she said, "Now stop your complaining!"
Thankfully, the VLC ruled that the kiss did not count as my first kiss, as it had been given by an older married woman and was not done voluntarily on my part. Also, the VLC ruled that any kisses I had to do as part of a role in a school play did not count either. The kiss had to be voluntary and consensual. Consequently, I remained a faithful member of the VLC until the very end of my junior year.
Of course, by that time, Ruth Christiansen had already tried to be my first kiss. She was giving a talk on chastity in Mutual one day and asked for a raise of hands of those who had never been kissed. When I raised my hand, she publicly scoffed at me and said, "Yeah. Right. We all know you've been kissed before." And I threw up the Scout sign and said, "Scouts Honor." She scoffed again, but my friends confirmed the fact that if I said "Scouts Honor," it was guaranteed that I was really telling the truth. And that was the end of that argument. After that, I could tell she had it out for me. She wanted to be my first kiss. And she tried really damn hard to do that by having Bishop Bellon ask me out to the Sadie Hawkins dance for her. And when the kiss didn't happen at the dance, when we returned to her house to watch Young Frankenstein as a group in her basement, she tried to sit next to me on the couch that was behind everyone else (and out of their field of view) so that she could plant one on me. But I got the hell off the couch and watched it sitting on a single chair that was several arms-lengths away from her (about one Metric). Kissing catastrophe averted!
However, I did finally loose my VLC membership at the end of my junior year right after the last performance of the year-end high school musical. There was this Kissing Bandit tradition at the end of the last performance that people would shmush lipstick all over their lips and run around kissing cast members on the check so that when they went out to greet their parents and friends, they'd have lipstick marks on their face. (Hilarious!) Everyone in the cast was in on the joke, and the behavior was not only tolerated by the cast and drama teacher, it was expected. Since I was in the drama class, had a minor role in the play, and was also one of the main backstage crew people, I designated myself as one of the Kissing Bandits for the evening. Once the curtain fell, I quickly planted a number of extra-lipsticky kisses on the cheeks of some members of the cast--so much so that my lipstick was pretty much gone.
That's when Kim Hawes walked by.
Before I proceed with the story, let me once again explain how pretty she was. She was a tall girl with a beautiful face and long curly blonde hair. She was a senior, which meant her body had all the right curves in the right places (see the picture below). Overall, she was as cute as any girl could be. In fact, she had recently won the Jr. Miss Idaho pageant. She was a bona fide beauty queen!
Pono Hussey's best day ever.
When Kim walked by me, I thought to myself, "Hey! We were on seminary council together last year. She knows me, so she won't freak out if I play the Kissing Bandit with her." So I grabbed her and dipped her backwards in my arms for the kiss. She laughed, as she knew what the Kissing Bandit thing was all about and prepared for me to leave a big red kiss mark on her cheek.
But as I held her in my arms and looked down at her beautiful face, I realized that I had an opportunity here to do something much better than leave lipstick marks on her cheek. She could see in my eyes what I was thinking, and she said, "Ohhhh, no!" I said, "I'm sorry, Kim, but I will never have a chance like this ever again."
Then I kissed her right on the lips.
Now, I had been a trumpet player in the school band for five years at that point, so I had firm, muscular lips that knew how to pucker. And I used the full power of every one of those muscles as I tried to give her a respectable kiss--one that would impress her enough to avoid being ridiculed throughout the school for being a bad kisser. I locked lips with her for about five seconds, but to my disappointment, she really didn't respond. However, she didn't pull away either, and that meant I still had a chance to impress her.
With that small glimmer of hope, I took the kiss up another notch. Drawing upon every memory I had of all those old Hollywood kisses I'd ever seen on the KID Cash Call movie night, I doubled down on the kiss. Instead of giving up in shame, I poured all of my pent up teenage passion for every crush I'd ever had into that single kiss.
Then Kim performed what I believe was the greatest act of charity in all of human history. She began to kiss me back.
A jolt of electricity shot up and down my spine repeatedly, like my brain was caught in some kind of Tron pinball machine. My entire body tingled with wave after wave of goose bumps as she held me tightly and kissed me in a way that was far beyond any dream kiss I'd ever imagined. The whole experience began to overload the pleasure centers in my brain, and although I had my eyes closed, I actually began to see stars popping in and out of existence. The room started to spin, and my arms and legs felt like they were turning to jello. I then realized I was on the verge of passing out.
Because I didn't want the kiss to end by me dropping her on the floor and then fainting on top of her, I brought her up out of the dip, still kissing her on the way up. We then parted lips, and I looked at her in complete astonishment, barely able to stand up with the floor spinning around me. She gave me this movie-star look that said, "Now THAT'S how you're supposed to kiss a woman!"
What I wish had happened next was that either (a) I would have said something witty or romantic that would have made her want to kiss me some more or (b) she would have made a perfect Hollywood leading lady exit--the kind where the woman removes the cigarette from her mouth and blows out a stream of smoke with a playfully mischievous smile. But the ugly truth of it is that Brian Friedel butted in and gave her a quick Kissing Bandit smooch on the cheek while I stumbled toward the nearest chair.
Her kiss absolutely destroyed whatever part of my brain that made my legs walk. For the next five minutes I just sat it that chair thinking about how good her lips and body felt while all the other kissing bandits finished chasing everyone off the backstage area. Left alone behind the curtains, I had to sit there until my legs finally said, "Okay. You can walk now." I then stumbled into the backstage bathroom where I washed off all my makeup and splashed cold water on my head until I could think straight again. When I walked off the stage that night, I knew for sure that I had lost my membership in the VLC, but it had been totally worth it!
Several decades later, I saw Kim at a librarian conference at Weber State University. I'd been invited to talk about instructional technologies that librarians could use to teach library stuff. When I saw her in the crowd, I stopped my presentation on instructional technologies and told everyone there that I owed any success I'd had in my academic studies and professional life to Kim. She gave me this confused look like "What the hell are you talking about!" But then I related the whole typing speed story, to the audience's delight, and finished by saying the only reason I had succeeded at anything in my life is because I could type fast. And the only reason I could type fast is because of Kim and her friends paying attention to me in typing class. They all laughed pretty hard at the whole thing--well, as hard as librarians laugh, anyway.
After the presentation, she came up to me while laughing and gave me hug. Then I said, "I'm sure you don't remember this, but I have to thank you for what was the single greatest moment of all of high school." Without missing a beat, she smiled and said, "You mean the kiss?" I nodded my head vigorously and said, "Oh, yeah!" She laughed again at that. Then we talked a little about our work and families, and then I left the conference with sweet memories of that long-ago kiss going through my mind.
Ever since that backstage kiss, whenever I hear "Kiss On My List" by Hall and Oates, I think of Kim, and how even though I completely botched every attempt I had made at any kind of romantic relationship in high school, I had at least done one thing right--my official first kiss with Kim.
How much of our lives are spent dealing with an uncontrollable urge?
For you, it might be a few minutes every now and then--maybe every other week.
For me, it's every damn minute of every damn day. I think that as a small child I contracted some kind of weird, chronic form of Tourette syndrome, only without all the fun of yelling obscene curses at complete strangers whenever I don't want to. (I only do it when I'm driving.) And to my unending shame, these urges have stayed with me for many decades in spite of all the exercises, low-carb diets, self-help books, psychotherapy sessions, and medications that I've tried. Of course, the urges aren't the kind that will end up on a Pete Welsh slide show. About 57% these urges are pie- and/or donut-related. Another 17% deal with laziness--the urge NOT to do something. Approximately 11% of the urges involve walking out of church meetings. The urge to switch channels on TV or the radio account for another 9% of my urges. I'd say about 3% of my uncontrollable urges are all about using inaccurate made-up statistics. And the last 7% are none of your damn business!
Metaphorically speaking, here's what my uncontrollable urges looked like in 1980.
Here's what my uncontrollable urges look like now.
SNL has two types of musical guests. First, there are the well-known singers/bands that have a new album coming out--safe bets for at least half-decent music that will appeal to the general populace. Second, there are singers/bands that most people have never heard of or seen before--high risk bets that can either bomb horribly or blow people's minds with their new sound.
Since I'm an old codger now, the new bands usually bomb for me. Normally, I watch the first few seconds, dismiss them as total crap, and then head to the kitchen for a snack. But once in a while, I'll be curious enough to watch the newbies for a minute, and then I head to the kitchen. Rarely, I'll like the first song enough to watch the entire thing. Even more rarely, I'll like the second song just as much as the first.
Late in the evening on May 17, 2014, I was minding my own business watching Andy Samberg close out SNL Season 39--a little something I like to do every 39 years--when a new (to me) musical guest came on. Andy introduced a band called St. Vincent, which turns out to basically be this one woman, Annie Clark. The camera zoomed in on this young woman with a messy mass of platinum-blonde hair wearing a black dress and holding a white guitar. She looked very beautiful but also seemed more than a bit scary--kind of like Lady Galadriel when she went all dark and freaked out in front of Frodo.
St. Vincent -- If Lady Galadriel had an electric guitar.
Lady Galadriel -- If St. Vincent had the One Ring.
When the music started, I began to rise from my reclined position on the couch and prepare to enter the kitchen. But as I sat up, I found that I could not stop watching this woman sing. She was doing these wacky hand movements (ala Talking Heads) that looked like some kind of freaky performance art, but the music was really catchy. I quickly realized the song was about people wasting away their lives watching TV. (Hey! That's me!) I thought it was kind of a gutsy thing to be singing on late night television about how TV turns people into mindless insomniacs. I kept watching, mesmerized by the spectacle, unable to force myself off the couch to the kitchen, just like the people she was singing about in the song. (So meta!)
A minute in, I began to think she was just a singer that held the guitar there mostly for show, as she had only played a few chords and some rather simple parts. Then, a little after the two-minute mark, she ripped out a short guitar solo, which was only a couple of bars, but it clearly showed this lady knew her way around a guitar. By the time the song finished, I wanted to actually see more of this singer/guitarist. I wanted to make sure the song wasn't just some kind of fluke and the only good song by St. Vincent.
The second song--which is usually the spot in the show where I head to bed, since the last skit after the second song is rarely any good--turned out to be just as entertaining as the first. The other band members did the performance artsy-shmartsy movements while she rocked the guitar throughout the song. At the end, she did this strobe-light effect thingy where it looked like the two guitarists were floating back and forth.
Mind. Blown.
Within a matter of days, the self-titled album "St. Vincent" took up residence in the car's CD-player. I bought it thinking my son Erik would like her artsy style and sounds. But he never really took to the album. I, on the other hand, found myself playing it repeatedly. When the song "Digital Witnesses" first played on the car stereo, I was pleasantly surprised by a much fuller sound than what I had heard on the SNL performance. (Imagine that--music sounds better on a six-speaker surround-sound stereo than a single television speaker. Who would have thought such things could be?!) The deep bass sounds especially pleased my old ears. Which brings me to this warning--if you can't listen to this song on a stereo with good bass, you probably won't ever understand why I like this song. (When I listen to music in the car, I likes me a rumble seat!)
I also happened to take the album on our anniversary trip to the Oregon coast (see entry #139: Get Lucky). Consequently, this song also brings back good memories of lighthouses, fresh seafood, giant redwoods, crystal-clear Crater Lake, and a happy, sleeping wife (somehow, she could snooze through this album even when I had it playing pretty loud).
The "St. Vincent" album ended up winning the Grammy for Best Alternative Album for that year, so I was not alone in my enjoyment of her music. Still, some of it is just a bit too weird/disturbing for repeated listening. With song titles like "Rattlesnake," "Psychopath," and "Severed Crossed Fingers" it's pretty obvious the replay button won't be hit on every song. But that's okay. It's called "alternative" music for a reason. And it did stretch my musical mind in new directions, which I enjoy doing every now and then. In spite of what this Top 200 list seems to indicate, I don't believe that the only good music to ever play on the radio came out in the 70s and 80s. I do admit that I surprised myself by liking St. Vincent. But with my chronic sleep apnea, regular bouts of insomnia, and affinity for binge-watching TV shows, how could I possibly resist a song like "Digital Witnesses?"
Get back, to your seat
Get back, gnashing teeth
Ooh, I want all of your mind
People turn the TV on, it looks just like a window, yeah
People turn the TV on, it looks just like a window, yeah
Digital witnesses, what's the point of even sleeping?
If I can't show it, if you can't see me
What's the point of doing anything?
This is no time for confessing
I want all of your mind
People turn the TV on, it looks just like a window, yeah
People turn the TV on, it looks just like a window, yeah
Digital witnesses, what's the point of even sleeping?
If I can't show it, if you can't see me
Watch me jump right off the London Bridge
This is no time for confessing
People turn the TV on and throw it out the window, yeah
Get back to your stare
I care, but I don't care
Oh oh, I, I want all of your mind
Give me all of your mind
I want all of your mind
Give me all of it
Digital witnesses, what's the point of even sleeping?
If I can't show it, if you can't see me
What's the point of doing anything?
What's the point of even sleeping?
So I stopped sleeping, yeah I stopped sleeping
Won't somebody sell me back to me?
With one hundred songs completed on this list, it is now time to offer the reader/listener/internet stalker a cleansing of the musical palate with a little piano jazz.
This cat can jam! It's solid murder, gate!*
*If you want a truly authentic jazz experience, play all four of the songs at once.
I don't remember how or when it happened, but an 8-track of Styx's "The Grand Illusion" somehow made it into the house.
You want to hear it when? Baah-ha-ha-ha-ha!
During high school, I claimed it as my own property and played it until I had memorized the album. It wasn't because I liked all of the songs on it. It was because 8-tracks had the most frustrating way of navigating the album.You couldn't just forward ahead to the start of the song you wanted and listen to it. Instead, there were four "Programs" that you could skip around to, but if you skipped in the middle of a song, it would put you into the middle of some other song on another program. Here's the tracklist for "The Grand Illusion" 8-track:
Program 1 (9:46)
1 The Grand Illusion
2 Miss America
Program 2 (9:46)
1 Superstars
2 Man In The Wilderness
Program 3 (9:46)
1 Come Sail Away
2 Castle Walls (Part 1)
Program 4 (9:46)
1 Castle Walls (Part 2)
2 Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man)
3 The Grand Finale
You'll notice that "Miss America" started in the middle of Program 1. This meant that I either had to listen to "The Grand Illusion" first, or listen to the song that came first in some other Program. I usually listened to "Come Sail Away," but not all the way to the end. If I wanted to skip to hear "Miss America in its entirety, I could only listen to part of "Come Sail Away" and then skip at just the right time to Program 1. Then if I wanted to listen to "Miss America" again, I had to first listen to either "The Grand Illusion," "Superstars," or "Come Sail Away" again.
Why not skip to Program 4 and listen to "Castle Walls (Part 2)? Because the idiots that invented this format would only allow 9 minutes and 46 seconds of music to be on any one program. Since "Come Sail Away" is a long song, they couldn't get through all of "Castle Walls" in Program 3. This meant that somewhere in the middle of the "Castle Walls" song, the music would stop for a second and...ka-chunk...it would advance to Program 4 where the song would continue where it left off, thus ruining the song completely. That is why I don't know the lyrics to "Castle Walls"--the incomplete Part 1 of the song was always competing with "Miss America." And do you know why Miss America is called Miss America? Because she blew away all the competition! If she hadn't eliminated the competition, she'd be called Miss Ohio!
Miss America 1985 -- Charlene Wells
Miss Ohio -- Charlene's closest competition. And yes, this is the best (and only) picture I could find on the interwebs.
Of course, the limited space for each Program on the 8-track also meant that the producers would often have to rearrange the order of the songs on the album so that they could have the fewest number of songs with the jarring split-program ka-chunking. Good idea, right? WRONG! Bands like Styx often created these concept albums where the ordering of the songs was an important part of the listening experience. The order of the songs created an extended story or message that gave the entire album a meaning that was more than the sum of the meaning of its individual songs. By dicing up and rearranging the songs on the 8-track, the original concept of the album got lost or, even worse, so screwed up that you got a different album-level message than what the vinyl album gave you.
And some people wonder why 8-tracks died.
Of course, at this point you may be asking, "Why would anyone go to all that trouble to listen to 'Miss America' over and over and over again?"
Well, Greg, if you must know, sometimes when you're a teenage boy, you get a crush on a girl that treats each day of her life like a beauty pageant. And she starts up a relationship with you because either (a) she's interested in how good it might make her look to others (mostly other girls) if she's with you OR (b) she wants to avoid having to be with a boy that she thinks will make her look worse than if she's with you. She won't be really interested in how good you make her feel about herself. She'll care more about what others think--even more than what she thinks about you in her heart.
Your relationship with this girl will last exactly as long as she thinks you make her look good. But if she thinks being with you makes her less attractive to others (mostly other girls), then she'll dump you so fast you won't even realize it's happened yet. You'll think you're still in a relationship with her, but she's already moved on to some other teenage boy that she thinks will make her look better. And because she's really self-centered and doesn't care about your feelings, you'll have to hear about how your relationship is over from one of her girlfriends, who will accidentally say something about how she's dating someone besides you, and you just overhear it and realize you've been dumped.
Most likely this event will occur during a date you had planned well before your girl dumped you, and she's just out with you on the date because she doesn't want to have to tell you it's over to your face, but you'll be sitting next to her thinking you're on this date because she still wants to be with you. You'll be holding a fondue stick with something stuck on the end of it that is fully submerged in a pot of boiling cheese, and that's when your girl's girlfriend lets it slip that your date for the evening is now dating someone else behind your back. And that's when you'll decide to pretend like you didn't even hear what was said because you were talking to someone else at the time it was said, but you still overheard it.
Then you'll try to fake them all out by keeping up the conversation you were having with someone else, and you then make a joke about melted cheese to the group just to make everyone think you're having a great time and didn't actually hear that you've been dumped. And then you'll pull out the fondue stick and take whatever it is that's on the end of the stick (you don't remember anymore because your brain is reeling) and jam it into your mouth. And as you chew on it without even caring that its damn hot cheese, you will realize you've played the fool for the past month of your life.
But because you don't want to ruin the date for your friends that are on it with you, you don't confront her about it. You just sit next to her on the couch while you watch Ponyboy and his fellow greasers meet a tragic (and hopefully violent) end. And you'll wish to yourself that you were actually in the movie so that you could take Johnny Cade's switchblade and plunge it through your own right eye socket into your brain so that you can somehow stop thinking about what just happened.
After that, you'll drive home after the date with your friends, because she is staying behind to sleep over at her friend's house, and you'll lay on your bed and play the events of the past month through your head over and over and over until you fall asleep from exhaustion.
But the next morning you'll wake up super-pissed, and that's when you need a song like this to make you feel better. And you'll want to listen to it over and over and over, because once you get super-pissed about something, you tend to stay that way for a long, long time.
Of course, that's all just a hypothetical scenario. I made it up as an example of a possible reason for repeatedly listening to "Miss America" on a stereo system with the world's most frustrating piece of music technology--the 8-track player.
Fortunately, with today's technology, you don't have to use your finger to punch a button anymore. We have now advanced so far technologically that now all you have to do is use your finger to click a virtual button--like the one in the middle of the video below.
During my senior year, I liked to play "Miss America" and immediately follow it up with "Those Shoes." I did that so often that the two songs became pretty much inseparably connected in my mind. Of course you hardly ever hear "Miss America" or "Those Shoes" on the radio anymore. That's why about five years ago, when I was driving at night on the interstate by Mountain Home, I got really excited when "Miss America" came on the radio. I cranked up the volume and sang/yelled along with James Young without missing a single lyric. It had been a while since I heard it, so I was more than a little proud of myself for remembering it all. And at the end of the song, just as "Miss America" repeated and the guitars faded, I said aloud to myself, "Oh, man, I wish they'd play 'Those Shoes' now." And guess what--without even taking a break for a commercial or annoying DJ talk, "Those Shoes" began to play! I yelled "YEAH!" and sang/talk-boxed my way down the road in complete radio-induced ecstasy.
Truth be told, I probably like "Miss America" much more than "Those Shoes," but I wanted them to be listed next to each other in my Top 200 because in my mind, both as a teenager back then and even now, so many (too many) years later, the two songs are inseparable. The only thing that might possibly split them apart is a song about some damn hot cheese.
Mmmmmmm....after seeing all that glorious gooeyness, I can't help but hanker' for a hunka!
