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!
Arguably the greatest song every written to include someone wearing a grapefruit for a hat and a hockey-talkin' kitty. But that's not why it's on my list. It takes the honored place of #52 (my football jersey number) because it triggers one of my favorite memories of Chris.
For reasons that will forever remain unknown, when Chris and I asked to be driver's ed buddies and do all of our driving together, Gary Yearsley said "Okay." He then said he normally didn't do early-morning driving, but for us two he'd make an exception. Neither of us was crazy about getting up early. We were even less crazy about having to face the Little Short Fat Man before breakfast. But there are few sacrifices teenage boys are not willing to make to get a driver's license, so we said thank you and walked away grateful that we hadn't been paired up for driving with some nincompoop from McCammon.
Since driving around Arimo did little to challenge our considerable driving skills (we'd both been driving farm trucks since we were nine or ten), Little Short Fat Man decided to test our abilities in the big city of Pocatello. Now I had been born in Pocatello and lived there for the first three years of my life, so I steered us toward my old home on Cahoon street--a favorite destination of the Olson family anytime we made a supply run to the Gate City. More importantly, just down the road from Cahoon street was the Hot Spot--one of the premier gas stations in all of Bannock County. It's premierness was based less on the quality of its gas and more on the quantity of its donuts. Chris and I convinced Yearsley to stop at the Hot Spot by promising to buy him a donut. He is not called Little Short Fat Man for nothing, so he negotiated for a second donut before giving us permission to pull into the gas station. I don't remember exactly what kind of donuts we got for Yearsely, but I know for sure that mine were filled with either jelly or custard. Upon returning to the car with our donuts, we began to drive back into Arimo before school started. Because Yearsley had become so contented by the free donuts, he allowed us to turn on the radio, and at some point before we got onto the freeway, "Wasn't That A Party" began to play. Normally, such a song would be heard only on the Dr. Demento show. But "Wasn't That a Party" had become a big enough hit to be played on popular FM radio. Yearsley hadn't heard the song before, and he cracked up at the line, "That little-bitty track meet down on Main Street was just to see if the cops could run."
What joy filled my heart that day! Because of my innate rebellious nature, I derived great pleasure from the experience of driving while eating a jelly and singing along with Chris about drunk driving in a PO-lice car in front of my driver's ed instructor. It just didn't get any better than that! The only thing that could have made that moment any more pleasurable to my teenage brain would have been to see the Solid Gold dancers do a scantily-clad routine to the song. But I can't have everything.
Third Stage is the album that I associate the most with my engagement with Julie. I think our engagement started about two weeks after I met her, but she's probably got a different opinion about that. I hated having to wait four months to get married. I wanted to get married and get on with our lives! And out of all the Boston songs on Third Stage, this song is the one that sums up the impatience I felt during those long summer months waiting for the wedding day--Why are we waiting so long to get married?! We're ready!
Now it's been thirty years since that album was playing nearly non-stop in my black step-side Chevy pickup. And to mark the occasion, I decided to learn to record myself singing all of the parts while playing both rhythm guitar and lead guitar. (But not the drums.) I know that I'm not as young as I used to be, so my voice isn't as high as I wish it was to hit all those super-high notes. And I know that I'm not as thin as I was before, so I really have to stretch to get my arms around the guitar. But I think my performance still manages to recapture all the inpatient romance of our summer of 1988 engagement.
When I hear this song, I don't think of the blank-faced lipsticked models in the music video. I think of my wife. Really. I'm not even lying a little bit. This song came out during the summer I was engaged to Julie, and I did, in fact, find her simply irresistible.
Palmer's use of stoic-faced gyrating women in ruby-red lipstick made quite an impression on both the general public and the only Mormon celebrity on TV at the time (besides Ray Combs*).
The overt sexuality of the video made reverse parodies of it inevitable.
And Pepsi advertising execs couldn't help themselves from using these sexually suggestive images of women in swimsuits to hawk a beverage so cheap it's sold in an aluminum can. Really! Who does that?! (Warning! The following video contains suggestive winking and lip pursing.)
And if you want to waste a couple weeks of your life, just google "Simply Irresistible Parody" and watch thousands of people that think they are being exceptionally clever by spoofing the video. (They aren't.) The level of online ridiculousness surrounding this song is truly astounding.
And yet, I still like this song. Because it reminds me of my wife. And I love my wife. So much that I still find her simply irresistible. Especially when she's wearing a swimsuit and ruby-red lipstick and dancing and gyrating suggestively with a pop can in her hand while she winks and purses her lips at me.
Damn! I'm thirsty!
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*In 1996, Ray hung himself with bedsheets while being involuntarily committed to a mental hospital, so his Mormon celebrity status has diminished somewhat since that event. In his defense, he probably could have come up with a better way to kill himself if he hadn't been in lockdown. It's hard to be creative with your suicide when the only tools you've got available to you are bedsheets. Death by hanging is pretty much your only option. Inexplicably, Marie Osmond has not yet committed suicide, so her Mormon celebrity status is still rock-solid. For now. I believe her status will take a nosedive when the county coroner reveals that for the past ten years she's been purposefully poisoning herself with Nutrisystem red velvet whoopie pie (yes, that's an actual thing).
