164. Yes, it was a cruel, cruel summer

164. "Venus" by Robbie van Leeuwen, performed by Bananarama

This was another song from "The Lost Years" that I really, really liked when I got home. It didn't get much airplay in the summer of 1987 because the song had been released a year earlier. But when it did come on the radio, I would nearly rip the knob off trying to turn it up. I loved the synthesizer bass line mixed with the electronic drum sounds. And the women's voices screaming "Wah!" before the chorus was quite enjoyable.



Part of the reason I liked this song so much is because during my freshman year at Ricks I took a humanities course right before I left for Sweden. My favorite painting that we studied in that class was "The Birth of Venus" by Botticelli. It featured a young, serene Venus with long red hair being blown by the west wind over the ocean waves while standing sans clothing on a white, scalloped shell. The painting reminds me of the many aspects of love--the physical, emotional, and intellectual--and how it always seems to be emerging from the subconscious ocean but never quite touches the shore of conscious awareness. And no matter how hard we may try to dress it up as something else, we can never quite get the fabric of our choosing over its shoulders. This song reminded me of that painting.

I also liked the song because the women in Bananarama were really hot. I'd been on a mission for two years stuck in dumpy apartments with male companions, and we spent most of each day trying to not look at all of the gorgeous Swedish women that surrounded us. Two years of repressing normal feelings and forcing my eyes to look the other way produced a good amount of awkwardness around women when I got home. And even when I got home I didn't stay home for long, since the folks moved to Twin Falls three weeks after I returned. That meant I didn't know any "safe" girls that could introduce me to other girls that I might be interested in spending time with outside of a church building. Nor did I have much of an opportunity to interact with any young women, since I worked the night shift at the Tupperware plant in Jerome. I'd come home at 7:30 in the morning, watch MTV and movies until I passed out around noon, and try to stay sleep until 9:00 or 10:00 at night. Then I'd get up, shower, eat something that functioned as breakfast, and then head back to the Tupperware plant to start my next shift at 11:00 PM. I tried to stay on this same sleep schedule on my days off because it was hard to stay awake at work if I didn't. This all meant that I really didn't have any opportunity to date anyone, so the summer of 1987 was kind of a miserable time for me socially. Watching three beautiful Bananaramas dance in the Venus video turned out to be a very important part of my post-mission recovery efforts to get my libido back to normal levels for a 21-year-old single guy.

Need a cure for those after-mission love blahs? Wah! She's got it! Yeah, baby, she's got it!

165. Wee Beasties

165. "Fight for Your Right" by the Beastie Boys

Written as a pie-in-the-face parody of party-on rockers, this song is better than most of the rock songs it tries to lampoon.

Kick it!

Fight for Your Right

When I die, I don't want a funeral. Instead, I want my nieces and nephews to honor my memory by having a pie fight like the one in this video.

This song came out during what I call "The Lost Years"--the two years I was on a mission. In Sweden, I was able to hear some new American music that was playing in public places or on the TVs in people's houses, but my exposure to new songs during that time was quite limited. Sweden usually got American music and films well after it came out in the states, so a lot of the music I heard at the beginning of my mission was old stuff that I'd heard 6 months before I left. When I got back home to Idaho in May of 1987, there were a bunch of great 80s songs that were old to everyone else, but brand-spankin' new to me. "Fight for Your Right" was one of them. I found out about this song from my sister Ruth, who when I said I didn't want to go to a church-sponsored dance/party because it would be really lame, yelled out the line, "You gotta fight…for your right…to paaaarrrrrrrtaaay!" and then started to laugh out loud. I had no idea what was going on. Then I saw this video a couple days later, and it all made sense. (Post-mission reorientation required lots and lots of MTV and video rentals.)

While "Fight" is my favorite song from the boys, I think the best video is "Sabotage." If I thought I could have this much fun being in a hip-hop group and make videos spoofing old 70s television shows, I'd do it.

Sabotage

Fred Kelly is Bunny!

166. But did she sing "For Your Eyes Only?"

166. "Funky Cold Medina" by Tone-Loc

My affinity for this song centers entirely on the hook--a Foreigner "Hot Blooded" chord mixed with not one, but TWO cowbells! I can't turn the radio up fast enough when I hear that hook.



But as much as I love the hook, I'm not that crazy about the song lyrics. I have never really understood what the hell is going on in the story.

Break it down.

Tone-Loc can't get women. A dude at the bar takes pity on Loser-Loc and tells him about a powerful aphrodisiac. Tone-Loc is so excited about the elixir that he immediately tries out on his…dog?! You're already at a bar with lots of women! Why would you go home to first try it out on your dog?! Well, the dog immediately humps Tone-Loc's leg, which apparently Tone-Loc permits. After he's seen how effective the potion is on canines, Tone-Loc decides to go back to the bar and give the first woman he sees a shot of the love liquor. It works (no surprise there), so he takes the woman back home to have meaningless relations, but it turns out the woman is really a transgender man dressed as a woman (big surprise there), so Tone-Loc immediately ends the tryst. Having bombed-out at the bar, Tone-Loc decides his best course of action is to go on a dating game show, where he wins a dinner date. But before he can even get through the appetizers, she starts talking about getting married. It would seem to me this would be the optimal outcome for a guy that is seriously looking for love. But Tone-Loc flees the scene. Moral of the story: the absolute worst consequence of using effective love drugs is matrimony, which is even worse than being the object of mutt-love.

Dumb story. But awesome cowbell. And sometimes, the sins of the lyricist can be forgiven and forgotten if there is enough quality cowbell in the music.

Ya know what I'm saying'
That cowbell's a monster, y'all

167. Patio of Doom

167. "Private Idaho" by the B-52s

Thanks to the Columbia Records and Tape Club, I was able to buy the B-52s album "Wild Planet" for a fraction of a single cent. That's how far we could stretch our money back in our high school days. Music was practically free!

The reason I bought "Wild Planet" was because I'd heard the song "Quiche Lorraine" on the radio and thought it was quite funny, both lyrically and musically. Also, in 1980 there were a very limited number of songs about a two-inch,  dark green, run-away poodle with a strawberry-blonde fall (fall?) that wears sunglasses, a bonnet, and designer jeans with appliqués. Basic economics tells us that when there is a very small amount of a good, the demand for it will go way up. Economics also tells us that when the price of something goes down, the demand for it will go up. When you consider the rarity of wacky poodle songs in the 80s and the low price of joining the Columbia Records and Tape Club and getting 10 albums for a penny, I think I was pretty much compelled by the laws of economics to buy that album. However, after listening to the entire album a couple of times, it turned out "Quiche Lorraine" wasn't my favorite song. Begin a native Idahoan that spent a good portion of his summer in a blue, blue, blue pool full of strangers, "Private Idaho" quickly became the frontrunner.




I remember playing "Wild Planet" during a scout service project involving the painting of the Marley's house. I didn't expect everyone to like the album that much, so I wasn't shocked or disappointed when I was asked to turn it off. It was a different kind of new wave music that wouldn't become really popular until after the emergence of MTV.

I think "Cosmic Thing" is the B-52s best album. "Love Shack" is definitely their most popular song. But I think "Rock Lobster" has to be their most influential song, as it was an underground hit in the late 70s that made an impact on many other artists, including…John Lennon! He decided to come out of retirement and make music again after hearing "Rock Lobster," so without the lobster song, we probably wouldn't have "Double Fantasy," which has to be the greatest rock album ever…to have included Yoko Ono songs. The reason I chose "Private Idaho" to be on my top 200 list over most other B-52 songs is probably because Mrs. Marley indoctrinated us in 4th Grade Idaho history class to love the gem state and all of the beautiful things in it. And this song more than any other helped to keep Idaho beautiful in the 80s by warning all the new wave freaks to stay the hell out.

168. Hang on! Here come da devUL!

168. "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" by the Charlie Daniels Band

Top 10 Reasons The Devil Went Down to Georgia

10. Lookin' for a soul to steal.
9. Only state where it's legal to gamble with gold violins.
8. Site of professional stump-jumping tournament.
7. Hissin' fiddles.
6. Liked to hear demon disco band play Wonder Woman bass line.
5. Looking for work as a wildland firefighter.
4. Low mortgage rates.
3. Free-range chickens.
2. Friendly dogs.
1. Had to play at the Boar's Nest to get out of a speeding ticket.




This song came out about the same time that the Dukes of Hazzard started tearing up the Georgia landscape in the General Lee. I heard this song so many times while driving tractor that I have all of the lyrics memorized. It's a solid country song with an epic tale of good vs. evil, some wicked fast fiddlin', and oodles of southern twang. The only way this song could be improved is if it was about playing guitar instead of fiddle and if it was sung by Jerry Reed.



Keep singing, Jerry!

169. Fizzy Lifting Drinks

169. "Theme from The Dukes of Hazzard (Good Ol' Boys)" by Waylon Jennings

I watched The Dukes of Hazzard religiously from the time it premiered in 1979 until the fifth season character replacement debacle when Bo and Luke disappeared and Coy and Vance showed up. BOOOO!!! This song not only brings up many fond memories of the show (mostly of Daisy Duke in her Daisy Dukes), it also brings to remembrance how I used to drive like the Duke boys on our farmland and the gravel and dirt roads of Marsh Valley. I prefer the TV version over the longer version Waylon recorded commercially. The TV version has the banjo throughout and a hardy "Yeee-haw!" at the end on the intro. And the ending credits have Roscoe's distinctive laugh to close it all out.



The Dukes of Hazzard was one of the few shows on television that I could at least partially relate to. No, I didn't have a souped up car that could jump and/or fly over ravines and creek beds, but I did live on a farm outside of town, my wardrobe was very similar to what the Duke boys wore, and I had lots and lots of cousins with the same last name living in the same county.

Also, like the Duke family, my family had a long tradition of making alcoholic beverages from scratch. No, we didn't make moonshine. We made root beer, which my Mormon Mom assured us at that time was completely alcohol-free. But later in life, when my own son did a 5th grade science report on how root beer gets its fizz, I found out that if you put yeast and sugar together then the yeast will turn lots of those sugar molecules into alcohol molecules and fizz molecules. The more fizz in the drink, the more alcohol. And Mom used to let the root beer cure in the basement until it was super-fizzy--to the point that some of the bottles exploded (one reason we wrapped them in quilts). Mom still believes there was no alcohol in our strange brew to this day, even though I've explained to her that it is chemically impossible for us to have created fizzy root beer without any alcohol. So, while we weren't bona fide moonshiners, we did make and transport alcoholic beverages of our own making, and we did serve them to kin and friends when they came over to the house, which I guess made our home kind of like the Boars Nest, only without a steady stream of country stars performing their biggest hits live in order to get out of speeding tickets. Yessiree, if you ever drank a bottle or glass of root beer from the Olson family, then you were drinking some of the finest Mormonshine in Idaho!

Yeeeeee-haaaaaaawww!

170. Yo-ho! Yo-ho! A pirate's life for me!

170. "Elvira" by the Oak Ridge Boys

Can anyone resist singing along with this song? No. They can't. Because this song has three sing-along phrases that few other songs have.

1. Giddy up.

2. Oom poppa oom poppa mow mow.

3. Hi-yo Silver, away!

Each of these phrases individually would be giant fun to sing on their own. The genius of the Oak Ridge Boys is that they took all three and sang them in a row with a deep bass voice sounding out the oom poppa mow mow. With most songs the sing-along challenge is to see if you can strain your voice to get as high as the lead singer on that super-high note (e.g. Freddy Mercury singing "For me!" on Bohemian Rhapsody). This song turns that challenge on its head. The question with this song is "How low can you go?"



I always thought the Oak Ridge Boys sang out the Lone Ranger call of "Hi-ho Silver, away!" But in doing my extensive research for this song, I found a couple Dave Barry columns that say Lone actually yelled "Hi-yo" not "Hi-ho."

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2000-04-30/news/0005090324_1_lone-ranger-yo-horoscope

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/2000-06/18/093r-061800-idx.html

But even with this revelation, I still may sing "Hi-ho" instead of "Hi-yo," because "Hi-yo" kind of sounds to me like a lyric from a Vanilla Ice rap.

"Hi-yo! Kick it!"