I don't remember exactly if it was me or my sister Ruth that bought "Working Class Dog," but I definitely listened to it the most, so it was probably me. And it was probably because of "Jessie's Girl."
See, I had a number of crushes on a number of girls, but they all had boyfriends--none of which were my friends, so it was really easy to hate them. And "Jessie's Girl," more than any other song of the 1981-82 school year, best expressed the frustration and disappointment and jealousy and anger and sadness and desperation and loneliness and awkwardness and longing and placing of the hands in coat pockets and dancing with the left hand in a pants pocket and face washing and self-examination in the mirror and playing the guitar in the bathroom while looking in the mirror and repeated smashing of said mirror with a guitar that inevitably arises from such situations. I mean, what teenage boy in the early 80s didn't go through all that?
The album was actually pretty good with several other chart-topping hits like "Love Is Alright Tonite" and "I've Done Everything For You." It also had some real stinkers like "Easy to Cry" and "Inside Sylvia"--the song with the record for the number of times anyone has sung the name "Silvia "(39).
To this day, whenever I hear "Jessie's Girl" on the radio, I sing along and think about all the girls I liked when I was a sophomore (none of which were named Silvia) and how much I hated their boyfriends (most of which were named Cory Barnes).
Somebody (not me) in my family owned "The Jazz Singer" album at some point in my youth. That's the only explanation I can think of for why I know some of the lyrics to so many songs from that album, including "America," "Hello Again," "Love on the Rocks," and, for some strange reason, "On the Robert E. Lee." Of course, the first three I could have learned off the radio because they got plenty of air time. But not "On the Robert E. Lee." So even though I don't have an explicit memory of listening to that album at home in Arimo, I had to have listened to at least parts of it dozens of times, and that means somebody owned it. And the truth be told, I probably listened to "On the Robert E. Lee" as much as I did because I liked the General Lee on the Dukes of Hazzard. (That sign up ahead says "Dip." Let's jump over something big in the road! Yeeeee-hah!)
The one memory that I do have of "America" is actually from Sweden. I was biking down a forest path, as one does in Sweden, when I just started thinking about how good it would feel to go back home to America. So I started kind of singing the song under my breath as I peddled, and I thought about how proud and lucky I was to be an American citizen. I even got a bit of a chill down my spine singing the lines, "Home, don't it seem so far away, but we're traveling light today, in the eye of the storm, in the eye of the storm."
The song can still give me chills today, especially the beginning part when the bass and drums come in and the audience starts to cheer at the sight of Neil's sparkly scarf.
Hey! Isn't that Lucy Ball's daughter?!" As a kid, I always thought she was cuter and funnier than Marie Osmond. But then again, I loved Lucy.
The other memory I have of this song is hearing it played over the radio while watching the Pocatello July 4th fireworks at Julie's parents house. Yes, this song is severely overplayed at July 4th celebrations. But I'll take it over Lee Greenwood's flag-waving patriotic pandering any day (especially on July 4th). Diamond's song somehow avoids that pandering element, I think mostly because he's not singing to Americans about how they're so awesome because they're Americans. He's singing about immigrants sacrificing so much to become Americans and experience liberty not available to them in their home country, which is a much more powerful idea. And this is how you really know it's not the same kind of song as Greenwood's "God Bless the USA." Imagine that Donald Trump finally gets his way and builds a gargantuan wall along the Mexican border. Now imagine what songs they're going to play at the rally where he dedicates the wall to himself. Greenwood's song is definitely on the I'm-the most-patriotic-person-you'll-ever-meet playlist. But Diamond's song would never ever be chosen to be blasted into the audience and over the wall, inviting everyone on the other side to come into the country and become citizens "TODAY!"
Oh, well. Regardless of who sits in the White House, I do at heart believe that America is and always will be the sweet land of Liberty...and of sparkly scarves.
In my youth, the Soviet Union was filled with the worst bad guys. Yes, everyone still hated Nazi's--especially Steven Spielberg--but they had been defeated in World War II by Hogan's Heroes, so the big living, breathing enemy was anyone with a Russian-sounding name. Yet because I had been raised on the Beatles' White Album, I believed that maybe there was something good to be found in the Soviet Union, namely, beautiful and sexy women. This belief was reinforced by every James Bond film I ever saw, as well as the Pink Panther Strikes Again.
My interest in Russian women went so far as to get me to study the Russian language and culture for about two months during my freshman year of college. It wasn't a class for credit, so I didn't learn much other than how to say Yes (Da) and No (Nyet)--two words that I think would have served me well if I had actually gone to Russia at any point in my life, but it was not to be.
The closest I got to Mother Russia was on my mission in Sweden, where I met a Russian businessman that asked me to explain the rules of American football to him, which was kind of difficult because we didn't learn how to say "linebacker" in the MTC. I liked the guy, so my opinion of Russians became really positive.
I also ended up getting a part of Russia embedded in my flesh for life when Chernobyl exploded and the winds blew all the leftovers into Sweden. I didn't like being bombarded with radiation, and my opinion of the Russians sank to the lowest it had ever been.
But my opinion of Russian people--not their leaders--was forever shifted into the positive range when Billy Joel went on tour there. Them liking Billy so much made me think I had waaaaaaaaaaay more in common with the Russian people than I'd like to admit. And because I had grown up singing "Back in the U.S.S.R" at home, I knew all the words when I saw Billy sing it in concert in Leningrad. He ended up writing another song about how he made friends with some Russian clown (that's his vocation, I'm not using the word "clown" in a derogatory sense just then). But Billy's song "Leningrad" didn't shift my feelings towards the Russians any more than it already was. Watching him sing "Back in the U.S.S.R." was all I needed.
Now, if that performance doesn't make your balalaikas ring, then you are a clown (and I mean that in the most derogatory sense possible).
If you love the sweet, sweet sounds of early 80s synthesizers in stereo, this is your song. It's got it all. Bleeps and blorps and tonks and schonks and plinks and plonks and wavy-woozies and hiccups and grunty grindy English accents. And it's quite trippy to listen to it in stereo while laying in bed with the speakers positioned so that your head is right smack dab in the middle of it all. You feel completely engulfed in a sonic recreation of a mad scientist's laboratory, complete with a beautiful Japanese assistant.
This is, of course, one of the nerdiest songs ever written. How nerdy? It was the theme song for the original pilot for "The Big Bang Theory," but that episode was never shown, and they went with a theme song by the Bare Naked Ladies instead. (And only a nerd would know that.) There is only one thing that could make this song nerdier--being sung/talked by THE SHAT!
