96. I'm Super! Thanks for asking.

96. "Rosanna" by Toto

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.

Conclusion #1. Toto is NOT a supergroup!

Conclusion #2. Ron Hendren is a douchebag!

Conclusion #3. Rand Greaves is a douchebag!

Conclusion #4. Ted Nugent is a dou--

Phew! Phew! Phew-phew! Phew! 'Merica! Phew! Phew!

97. The Best Fifteen Seconds of High School

97. "Kiss on My List" by Hall and Oates

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.

98. Are We Not Men?

98. "Uncontrollable Urge" by Devo

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.





Same urges. But in a much fatter package.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-YEAH!

De-evolution indeed!

99. Alt Elf

99. "Digital Witnesses" by St. Vincent

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?

100. Then, when you have found the shrubbery, you must cut down the mightiest tree in the forest...wiiiith...a herring!

100. "The Lumberjack Song" by Monty Python

And now for something completely different.

A Cleansing of the Musical Palate

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.

Nerts!

101. Fondue Styx

101. "Miss America" by Styx

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!