In fall 95 I spent a weekend in Ft. Wayne, IN, playing at a regional bridge tournament with my friend Mark. On the way home that Sunday night, I caught a show on the radio featuring Ben Folds Five, a mix of interview and in-studio playing. I still remember three of the songs they played: “Underground,” “Philosophy,” and “Song for the Dumped.” The first two of those were featured on their debut disk; the third was recorded later for the follow-up. I was impressed enough to go out and get the disk, and it’s become one of my all-time favorites.
I remember back in college my friend Warren claiming that Making Movies by Dire Straits might be the greatest album of all-time by a trio; I’d think about making the case that Ben Folds Five (featuring only piano, bass, and drums) deserves to be in the conversation. It’s got melody and hooks galore (“Philosophy” includes an homage to “Rhapsody in Blue”), interesting off-beat topics (an interview between Howard Cosell and Muhammad Ali, the mosh pit scene at clubs), and maybe most of all, energy, confidence, and flair.
My top track on BFF is this one. It’s a witty take on the question of “who’s really behind that mask?”
Note: This series originally appeared on Facebook in a slightly different form, Aug-Sept 16.
“You see us as you want to see us. In the simplest terms. The most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain…and an athlete…and a basket case…a princess…and a criminal. Does that answer your question?”
“The Breakfast Club” was one of the iconic movies of my college years. I saw it when first released and probably a time or two since; it’s a pretty good flick. Today’s song appears at the end of the movie, as the Club’s essay, quoted above, is read in their voices. My understanding is that Billy Idol was given first crack at it, but it wound up with Simple Minds. Keith Forsey, Billy’s producer, stayed at the helm and it sounds like he tried to make Jim Kerr’s voice a little Idol-esque. It was #1 the third weekend of May 1985.
One of the great kiss-off songs of the 80s. Lots of good venom here! This was Briley’s only American hit.
Several years ago I assembled the tunes on this countdown into a playlist; a primary reason was for some of the songs present at the bottom: this one (it’s at its peak of #36), “Slipping Away” by Dave Edmunds (its only week on, at #39), and “Pieces of Ice” by Diana Ross. Lots of fun stuff towards the top, too. 83 is turning out to be one of my favorite years for popular music as I look back.
Note: This series originally appeared on Facebook in a slightly different form, Aug-Sept 16.
I can precisely peg the moment collecting LPs (and subsequently CDs) became part of my identity: a weekend night in February 1984, probably Saturday the 11th. There were a couple of albums I was interested in checking out, so it was over to Cut Corner Records (now CD Central), which in my college days was located over the old Tolly-Ho at the corner of Limestone and Euclid in Lexington. It’s difficult to overstate the impact those two records, along with a third I got a few days later, had on the development of my future musical explorations.
One of the albums I got that night was U2’s War. This is still my favorite of theirs, though Achtung Baby comes close. I don’t have any of their songs on these two tapes, but they were central to my listening at the time.
The other was Marshall Crenshaw’s debut, eponymous record. “Someday, Someway” had been one of my favorites in late summer 82, and I’d read good things about the album. I wasn’t disappointed–twelve magnificent pop songs, all clocking in at 3:10 or under. This is one of its best tracks. His style evolved somewhat over the years but I bought and enjoyed just about everything he put out through the mid-90s.
Note: This series originally appeared on Facebook in a slightly different form, Aug-Sept 16.
“New wave” sprung out of the punk movement in the latish 70s in the UK but soon spread to the US and other parts of the globe. It’s a term that has been applied to so many bands that it’s been rendered almost meaningless. That said, it’s easy for me to see that my musical tastes through most of the 80s and even beyond clearly aligned most closely with this “movement” and its evolution(s).
Whatever “new wave” is, this song certainly qualifies. A #3 hit in Britain, it made #36 in the US toward the end of 1980.
A year before this countdown, George McCrae, a heretofore unknown soul singer, had just peaked at #1 with “Rock Your Baby,” written by two members of a struggling Florida band. The original intention had been to give the song to George’s wife Gwen, but by the time she got to the studio George had already laid down the tracks that would become his big hit. Gwen did get her chance for real reasonably soon afterward: this is at #10, one short of its peak position. It’s one I clearly remember hearing on the car radio at the time.
One week after this countdown, the songwriters of “Rock Your Baby,” Harry Casey and Rick Finch, made their first appearance on AT40 as members of KC and the Sunshine Band with “Get Down Tonight;” their time in the spotlight was just about to begin.
Note: This series originally appeared on Facebook in a slightly different form, Aug-Sept 16.
If you’re trying to think about what might be coming next and guessed today’s song has a video that features Madonna writhing around in the middle of a road, all I can say is… you’re right.
I guess I’d been digging on “Borderline” and “Lucky Star” in the summer of 84, because I purchased her first album (which this comes from) early that fall semester, just a few weeks before she became a superstar with Like A Virgin. There are a number of Madonna tracks from the 80s that I still rather like, and honestly, I think a few are great songs. Alas, though it’s okay enough, I can’t say that this is one of them…
It’s not unreasonable to say the story starts with Michael Stipe.
Maybe, though, it’s more accurate to say it begins with Stacey’s admiration of REM. It was probably sometime in the spring of 85 that Stacey began playing them for James and me in our dorm room, almost certainly Reckoning. Fables of the Reconstruction came out that summer, and “Can’t Get There From Here” actually got some radio play. I don’t remember exactly why I didn’t go along with James, Stacey, and the others (who else went?) to see them play Memorial Coliseum that November. Perhaps I was caught up in the fog of my own world around that time–I had been going through a short arc of dating. What I do recall is my friends’ description of the lead singer for the opening act.
“You should have seen her up there on the stage, dancing and flailing around!” “She looked just like Maura!” (Not the real name–it was a reference was to one of our classmates, the daughter of a faculty member.)
Such was my introduction to Natalie Merchant and 10,000 Maniacs.
Not long after I began atoning for the sin I’d committed of ignoring Stipe and Co. to that point. I bought Fables as part of a Columbia House membership in the summer of 86; a copy of Lifes Rich Pageant came my way that fall by being the right caller to a radio station soon after I moved to Illinois; a friend put their first two albums on a tape for me in spring 87; I saw them in concert at the Assembly Hall in Champaign in fall 87 as part of the Document tour.
And right around the time Document was released, they showed back up. I’d pretty much forgotten the whole Maura look-alike thing, but all it took to bring it back was seeing the name of the band. It was my first fall of teaching, a couple of recitation sections of Calculus I on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Afterwards I’d often stroll over to Record Service, THE place on campus to buy new music. They loved to promote recent releases over their in-house system. I have to believe that was how I first heard pieces of In My Tribe (released 30 years ago today). Yes, VH-1 was also playing their now-shunned cover of “Peace Train” around this time, but it would have been at “the Service” that I wound up captivated and practically willed to purchase the LP.
It was impossible for me not to try to mimic Merchant’s vocal inflections as those twelve songs became embedded in my consciousness (I still do it–I’ve had the chance to sing along to “What’s the Matter Here?” and “Hey Jack Kerouac” on the radio in the last few months). I was also struck by the presentation of the lyrics to Tribe, written in prose form (maybe pretentious, but I found it darn effective, as well as true to their spirit).
Reviews of Tribe regularly noted the discipline imposed on the Maniacs by producer Peter Asher. I found out what they meant when I bought The Wishing Chair, the release they’d been supporting in 85. It’s a solid disk, assuming they’re your cup of tea, but truth be told the playing isn’t all that tight, and Natalie sometimes wails away (at times you can practically visualize the writhing my friends witnessed). There are some fine moments, though: “Lilydale” is a charming tale of two friends strolling around a cemetery (it came to mind when I was recently searching for the mathematician David Hilbert’s grave in Göttingen, Germany), and “Scorpio Rising” hints at Merchant’s developing eye/ear for capturing tense relationships.
(Aside: Joe Boyd of Fairport Convention produced both Fables and Chair in London in early 85–makes me think this is how the two groups came to tour together that fall.)
Blind Man’s Zoo came out in 89 and they re-released their pre-Elektra recordings as Hope Chest in 90. Zoo, also produced by Asher, wasn’t as good as Tribe, but that was no real surprise–it might have been more of one if it had been better. Zoo is most notable on a personal level for having been one of the CDs I played on Halloween night, 2000, the day before my son was born–the last time Martha was “eating for two.” (Insert smiling emoji.)
In Fall 90 I was faced with a big dilemma. Toby and Karl were after me to see ZZ Top in Peoria with a few other friends. That same night, the Maniacs were scheduled to appear in Bloomington/Normal; Greg offered to go with me. What to do?
The Top show was pretty good (Greg still gives me grief about my choice). The most memorable thing about the evening, however, was the introduction of the phrase “administer the bird” to our group’s lexicon after I saw Jay flipping off the driver of a car that cut us off as we were trying to get out of the parking lot (“Jay, did you just…?”). “Administering” got a lot of mileage in our bridge conversations after that (it became a synonym for doubling a contract). But of course I’d blown my second chance to see the Maniacs perform.
By the time Our Time in Eden was released in fall 92, I had started my job at Georgetown. While I don’t love it quite the way I do Tribe, Eden is every bit as good, maybe better. Merchant’s lyrics and vocals are fully mature now, and the band feels both focused and confident.
Jay and his sweetheart Michelle got married in New Mexico in June 93. I rode out and back from St. Louis with Greg, Katie, and Karl, and it just so happened that the day after we returned, you-know-who was appearing in an outdoor venue just outside Nashville. My college friend Jim lived in Murfreesboro and we made arrangements to meet up. We didn’t sit particularly close, but at last I was there!
Just in time, too. After the tour ended, Natalie announced she was going solo. Somewhat anti-climactically, the “posthumous” Unplugged album produced their first Top 40 hit. Merchant enjoyed pretty strong success with her solo debut Tigerlily in 95. The group, meanwhile, brought back John Lombardo, who’d left before Chair and recruited Mary Ramsey as vocalist; they had a #25 hit with a cover of Roxy Music’s “More Than This” in 97. To me, however, it was never the same post-Eden (hmm…that feels like a sentence that could be applied elsewhere).
But.
As Jim and I were waiting for that Nashville show to begin, we caught a buzz from folks nearby that the vocalist for one of the biggest groups around would be making an appearance that night. Right, I thought–why should he show up? It’s true that he did a guest turn on one of the songs on Tribe, but still…
The show was great; they played many of their songs I really wanted to hear. For the first encore, someone–I never figured out who it was–came on stage and joined Natalie for a fine duet of “Dallas.” Could it have been Jimmie Dale Gilmore, who wrote it? I wouldn’t be aware of him and his music until a little while later, so I wouldn’t have recognized him if it were he. Natalie did pair up with David Byrne for a version of it as part of their Unplugged show, but I’m pretty certain I would have sussed him out.
It was the second encore that proved the whisperers correct. The rumored one came out and he and Natalie sang two songs together. I don’t remember now what they did first, but the second was unforgettable: “Because the Night.” Months before Unplugged came out and the version on it became the single that hit #11. Honestly one of the most magical concert moments of my life.
Yeah, I guess it’s not unreasonable to say that the story ends with Michael Stipe, too.
Note: This series originally appeared on Facebook in a slightly different form, Aug-Sept 16.
I was never a fan of the hair metal scene of the late 80s-early 90s. I guess I remember some of those bands’ names–Warrant? Winger? Skid Row? I do have a bit more appreciation for the head-banging scene from earlier in the decade–Dokken, Dio, etc. I didn’t pay enough attention to know where or even if Def Leppard fits into these constellations–they had way more chart success than any of these bands, particularly with Hysteria in 87-88. I first heard them via “Bringing On The Heartbreak” while still in high school, but they really broke open with Pyromania and this song in 1983.
This morning I learned of the passing of June Foray, one of the voices of my childhood. I watched plenty of Looney Tunes and Bullwinkle back in the day (though not as much of the latter as maybe I should have). She worked regularly with Stan Freberg (for instance, the maiden almost devoured in “St. George and the Dragonet”) and she was active well into her later years (for instance, Mulan). She died just a few weeks shy of her 100th birthday. RIP, Ms. Foray. You brought joy and laughter to so many.