Showing posts with label 1984 in music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1984 in music. Show all posts

Friday, July 8, 2016

More 1984!


I'm old enough to remember a time when we just listened to music. That method had its downside, though. For several years I thought the best Beatles songs were sung by Paul McCartney, because he was the cute Beatle. I was woefully wrong.

Thus, when MTV came along in the eighties, it was manna from heaven. Who needed a radio? And we actually knew what the guys and girls singing the songs looked like! This was a concept, like personal computers, that we didn't even know we needed -- until we discovered we did. Maybe I like eighties music so much because of MTV or maybe the music was just that good. I'm going with "that good".

There are one-hit wonders whose song we like; there are fads that now seem cheesy and what-the-hell-was-I-thinking; and then there is Hall and Oates:

 
Before the nineteen eighties, Tina Turner, to me, was Ike and Tina Turner -- you know, "rollin', rollin', rollin' on the river" and a gaggle of gals in sequined, tasseled dresses doing the frug...or some other sixties dance.

Surprisingly, Tina popped up again just when MTV came along. "What's Love Got To Do With It" put Tina back in the spotlight. Luckily. Because I heard her follow-up single on the radio a few days ago, and damn! It's bad! Here's how it goes (in its entirety):

I'm your private dancer, a dancer for money
I'll do what you want me to do
I'm your private dancer, a dancer for money
And any old music will do


And that's it! As a songwriter, I think that's cheating. You can't just repeat the same four lines over and over!  Yet it worked for Tina, so there's that.


That doesn't take away from her seminal hit. Let's listen (and watch):



I like this one better. I think it must be from a movie, and I'm going to Google that and find out right now. In the meantime, watch John Waite:


Well, according to my research, the song was featured in the movie "Selena" and also in Miami Vice, which I never watched, so I guess I only imagined that it was included in a John Hughes flick. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it should have been.

Whatever happened to Deniece Williams? She had a hit single from one of those movies I never actually saw, Footloose. Which doesn't explain why I know the song so well, except for endless plays on MTV. I saw the non-existent fore-mentioned John Hughes movie featuring John Waite's song more times than I saw Footloose. That doesn't take away from the giddy poppishness that was "Let's Hear It For The Boy":


You know you remember this next track. You probably didn't get it -- it is in German (?) after all -- but that didn't stop you and everyone else from turning it into a hit. Number twenty-eight of the year is the incomprehensible hit by Nena -- I don't know whether that's the girl's name of the name of the band, but what does it matter, really?


Apparently in the eighties there was this band called "Journey" (which is a really cheesy name, when you think about it).  I'm guessing they hit it big right before MTV came into existence, because I had absolutely no knowledge of them. Of course I know about Journey now. But I'm not (too) ashamed to admit that I had no clue who they were in 1984. All I knew was there was this great track by a guy named Steve Perry. I figured he was just a single act; a one-hit wonder. Hell of a singer, though. If someone handed me a list of pop songs and said, pick the best ones, I would pick this. I love this song:


Contrary to what Jack Black's character utters in High Fidelity, this is not the worst song ever recorded. Let's cut Stevie some slack, okay? I like it. I'll admit, though, that line in the movie made me feel supremely uncool. However, I'm okay with uncool. Uncool is the new cool. Number twenty-five!


Remember that list of pop songs someone gave me? Well, here's another one I'd pluck from it. My oldies station cued up this song as I was pulling into the Target parking lot, and I refused to kill the motor until I sat and listened to it all the way through. Elton John is a treasure and this song proves why:




Okay, I know I never saw the movie, Streets of Fire. I had to Google it to even know what it was. Nope, never ever saw it. Rick Moranis? Seriously? He was great on SCTV, and I loved him in Parenthood, but...nah....no clue. Nevertheless, I know this song, which again proves the power of music videos. This is Dan Hartman...who resides somewhere near Deniece Williams, I'm guessing; and they're both living off the royalties of their singular hit songs. I still like this one, though:


Confession:  For years I hated, detested! Billy Joel. I think it was subliminal. I remember as a pre-teen listening to a radio show on KFYR on Sunday nights called Padre's Platters. It was hosted by a real-life priest. Seriously. Well, Padre (I don't remember his actual name) went on a tear one night about how sacrilegious Billy Joel's song, Only The Good Die Young, was. I guess because it blasphemed Catholic girls.  Good Catholic girl that I was, in my subconscious I determined that listening to Billy Joel was akin to committing a mortal sin. That, plus I never liked how he yelled so much in his songs. I've come around a bit since then. I actually like some of Billy's tracks now and I'm ready to confess that I do. This one I really liked, mostly because I really liked the Four Seasons and this is a tribute to them:


Purists will say that Chicago ceased being Chicago when Peter Cetera joined the group. Poppists will say, there was a Chicago before Peter Cetera joined the group? Sorry, but hop off that high horse, guys. There wouldn't even be a nineteen eighties movie industry if it wasn't for Peter Cetera. Peter Cetera will easily duel with Kenny Loggins for the most tracks featured in hit eighties movies. Maybe he's an acquired taste -- I never had that problem. I always liked Peter's voice. Trust me, if it was just Saturday In The Park, I never would have purchased the "Best of Chicago". What screams the eighties more than Peter Cetera and Chicago? I bet the other Chicago guys, much as they disdain Peter, are living pretty high off their royalties.



This might be a good spot to bid adieu to 1984.

All in all, it was an excellent year for music.

I truly miss good years in music.

















Saturday, June 11, 2016

Ahhh, 1984

The eighties. Some people love 'em, some hate 'em. I loved them. In music, that is. And life in general was pretty good. We had a good president, a more or less unified country. People were essentially happy.

There are times in music that reflect people's state of consciousness. The late sixties were angry, raucous; and thus was the music. The seventies lulled everyone into a quiet catatonia, which gave rise to artists like John Denver and the Carpenters. Times were bad. People had to wait in line to fill their cars with gas. While Jimmy Carter quietly read his Bible in the White House, everyday folk were clawing to put food on the table for their kids and bemoaning that the world was going to hell. The soft strums of Denver's twelve-string helped to quell the bitter bile that rose in people's throats.

The nineties were a blur. No one stood for anything. The nineties were a static line. Not bad; not necessarily good. They just existed.

I am a firm believer that the mood of the populace at any given time can be gleaned from its music. We are reflections of the life we live.

I hadn't yet turned thirty by 1984, so life was alive with possibilities and new wonders. I had two boys who were turning out quite nicely; I never had much money -- I had a little credit union account at the hospital where I worked, in which I would deposit a little money from each paycheck to save for our summer vacation, which invariably took place in the Black Hills of South Dakota -- camping in a pop-up trailer. Camping beneath the tall pines. Granted, I've always been a creature of habit, but if you find a place you love, why only visit it once? The blacktop on the way there was hot and dusty, our car had air conditioning that worked "sometimes" -- at least until it froze up and then we'd roll down the windows and let the hot breath of July whisk the sweat from our sunburned faces. We played Mad Libs, the boys tried their best to annoy one another; we joked and bantered.

And we had the music.

I expected this song to be the number one hit of 1984, as much as we heard it. I mean, as much as we heard it. Over and over and over again. But surprisingly, it was only number six. I eventually formed a raw hate for the song, but that happens anytime one is forced to listen to something ad nauseum. We didn't have choices; no iPods and certainly no cell phones. What? A phone one can take with you? When our camper blew a tire along Highway 83, we couldn't punch up a highway helper. Instead we limped along to the first town on the map; thumped rubber for eighteen miles 'til we got to a truck stop that, mercifully, had a tire in stock that fit. If Van Halen was playing on the radio somewhere along that eighteen-mile chug, I'm sure I punched a tiny fist-sized dent in the car speaker.


I loved Huey Lewis & The News. Huey always seemed to me like the accountant who got pulled onto the stage on karaoke night and was mortified, but decided to just go with it. And he knocked everybody out and found himself the talk of the office come Monday morning. "Who knew?" Good old Hugh from down the hall. The guy with the pocket protector!"

I don't get it, but this song was only number forty-four:




When I first saw this next video, I thought, "what a quirky girl!". Cyndi Lauper was definitely different. She wasn't Madonna (that's a good thing). She was her own self, and nobody was complaining (#15 on the year). Totally the vibe of the eighties:


Culture Club was certainly different, but that was a-okay. Boy George was a pretty girl; soft, feminine. It didn't even cross my mind to make any judgments. I liked their music. This song was number ten for the year:


Confession:  I never saw this movie. I may have seen a part of this movie, but never the whole thing. And that's just not like me. I'm all about guys dancing -- from Saturday Night Fever to Dirty Dancing to Grease. Men won't understand this, but women love to see a guy dancing. It's sexy, maybe because it's so rare. It takes an elegant confidence for a man to get out there and do it. John Travolta did it (twice), Patrick Swayze did it with awesomeness. And Kenny Loggins also did it (in the guise of Kevin Bacon):


And then there is this:


An aside -- practically every movie soundtrack from the eighties featured Kenny Loggins. It was decreed.

Ghostbusters:  Had to buy the t-shirts; my kids demanded them. The red circle crossing out the ghost in the middle. Ghostbusters was a touchstone of the eighties. I didn't get it then; later I watched the movie and still didn't get it. I love Bill Murray, but this movie is essentially lame. It has...count 'em...two laughs in its entirety. It was an eighties thing, which requires no explanation. It just was:


There are two artists who essentially dominated the eighties. Like 'em or loathe them; it's how it was. There are tons of hits from 1984 and I'm just scratching the surface, but let's give credit where it's due. And it's due here:


Courtney Cox was just some girl in a music video who was pulled onstage by Bruce Springsteen. Who knew she would later become mega-rich and would live on in reruns forever. Nevertheless, this video is about Bruce, not Courtney. And Bruce was, only after Lionel (sorry) almost the biggest name of the eighties:


Yep, somebody's sorely missing. Trouble is, he was pathologically private about sharing his music online. Sad for many reasons, but primarily because he had the biggest hit of 1984. I'll try next time around to find something of his to post. Or, failing that, maybe I'll just post his picture.

Nineteen eighty-four:  happiness.

It's gonna be a hard year to beat.