she breaks like the wind…

sadly, we lost patrick swayze this year. an accomplished actor and dancer with a fabulous comedic streak, swayze should have quit while he was ahead.

but nooooooooo.

during the making of dirty dancing, swayze shared this song, originally recorded in 1984 for a movie that did not use it, with his producers,  who passed it along to someone who could actually make the song happen. and happen it did, all over the place, on the coattails of the wildly-successful movie. i suppose i ought to be grateful — it was his one and only hit, and it doesn’t appear that he tried again after this, sparing the world of more aural misery.

the ultimate stamp of approval sign of success: david hasselhoff covered it on his greatest hits album. sadly, youtube does not offer that lovely version up, so please accept this consolation prize: the hoff’s cover of hooked on a feeling. (hey~ don’t hassle the hoff!)

RIP, patrick swayze. i think you’ll prefer to be remembered for your work beyond this song. and you will.

tonight’s top story: five men with the will to survive a walk through the mean streets in jeans so tight, they will likely cause a blood clot.

[embedding is borked on this one, so you can click through to you tube to listen to it in all it’s splendor or you can merely click here.]

eye of the tiger, theme song from rocky XXX, has been parodied so many times, it is difficult to even think about it in a fresh way.  (here’s some weird al for you, BS, because i love you.) one has to suffer through it every time a TV show wants to be cute and show its protagonist undertaking some incredibly trivial trial. it ends up getting played by every freaking team with a tiger mascot. and if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then there are a jillion people out there who fancy this song.

i would not be one of them.

all these macho anthems become favorites of people whose most difficult survival experience is making it through a day of work without snapping and going on a shooting spree.  this was bombastic and overblown when it was released in 1982. now, it sits, like a bloated elvis, ready to topple over and off a toilet.  please join me as i try to close the eye of the tiger. let it rest peacefully in the annals of history. it’s 2009. no one should have to suffer needlessly through this song anymore.

it’s time to euthanize the beast.

but why?

there are several artists in the 1980s who make it difficult for a hater music critic like myself. billy ocean is one of those people. his musical output in the 1980s is a scourge on the face of the musical earth.  i mean, how can you pick when you can choose from such works as suddenly (which, i would add was my brother and sister-in-law’s wedding song — this being BTD, the guy who probably single-handedly hepled influence my complete and utter neurosis fascination with rock, which tells you that love does strange things to people), there’ll be sad songs (to make you cry) (yeah… like this one), soundtrack staple when the going gets tough, and of course, his mega-hit, caribyooon queen caribbean queen (now we’re sharing the same dream… would that be the one about world domination? nope. didn’t think so.) yes, millions swooned to billy ocean’s mellow sound, including chris rock’s sister on everybody hates chris.

but not me.

the man has an inviting voice… and what does he do? he orders me to get into his vehicle. do i know whether he’s been drinking? do i know whether he’s got a record? do i know whether he even has a license?  no. but somehow, simply by virtue of the fact that he has been dreaming about me, i am supposed to drop what i’m doing and go for a drive with him? mr. ocean, didn’t your mom teach you a thing or two about how to treat a lady?

i have the feeling that part of what made this song a hit was the video. if you look, you’ll notice some cutting edge (for 1988) animation interacting with ocean, the same sort of thing your homegirl paula abdul would later use. (is that a duck witha boombox?) yep. cartoon fish are what passes for entertainment. and the new twist on the mousy librarian who takes her glasses off and pulls her hair down is the lady at the carwash who has some satin number underneath her work jumper. of course, her outfit cannot compare with ocean’s giant white muu-muu of a caftan suit. ah, eighties videos and songs. you think it can’t get much worse than this.

but it can.

how do you feel when you got no herb?

mon, i like me my reggae as much as the next gal, but seriously? give this song by the mighty diamonds a listen and you tell me…

the song, originally pass the kouchie (slang for bong), was sanitized for these british-jamaican schoolboys and converted into a song about a dutchie (cooking pot.) Loaded with political overtones (how do you feel when you got no food?), the song shot to number one here and all over the place.

Something about the song drove me nuts when it came out. Was it the mind-numbing chorus that echoed through my brain on constant repeat? Was it the fact that boys were singing a song that really, really was about drug use, nudge-nudge, wink-wink, for someone else’s commercial success? Was it the fact that a piece of the melody sounded a little like a carpenter’s song i loathed, top of the world? or was it the fact that half the time, i could not figure out what the hell the little dude was saying?

who knows. but the song has not improved with age, at least not for me.

enjoy the earworm.

the beaters?

at this moment is one of those songs that didn’t do amazingly well the first time around (1981), but boy, the second time was the charm, thanks to my boy alex p. keaton. alex, played by my beloved michael j. fox, was one of the star characters of the hit ’80s comedy family ties, a show that poked fun at liberals and conservatives alike. during the show, alex fell in love with a young lady named ellen reed who was played by tracy pollan. pollan and fox ultimately married in real life and are still together to this day, raising a family and fighting the good fight against fox’s parkinson’s disease. anyway, during some charged romantic scene between alex and ellen, at this moment played in the background. apparently, people went nuts and asked for this song. one quick re-release later and bingo, bango, billy vera and the beaters had a hit on their hands.

i tend to shy away from sappy songs, and this one is definitely retro-sap. with sincere apologies to friends like testosterone zone (who i know loves this song dearly), i never could stand this song. and the beaters? what sort of beaters? the mind reels.

billy went on to guest star in plenty of TV and movie projects and is still involved in music today, both playing and as an historian. the beaters are still playing with billy.  (i know. that sentence simply is wrong. bear with me. i didn’t name the band.) and easy listening stations everywhere continue to play at this moment, perhaps somewhere at this moment.

gah.

never heard a song that made me want to lose my lunch so bad…

ah, the lady in red. somehow, it sounds so much more romantic, lady in red, then, say, the harlot in scarlet. when this song came out in 1986, i was a bit sour on the idea of love. (to put it mildly.) sappy love songs, especially ones that are the aural equivalent of valium as this one is to me, were not my style, not then and not now. how lovely, a romantic contrarian might think, that the singer remembers what his wife was wearing the first time they met (as the story goes.) i’m sure if you asked my husband what i was wearing, he would have that deer in the headlights look. fortunately, there are so many, many other important reasons why he is a keeper. (hell. there are days when i’m not entirely certain what i had for breakfast.)

anyway, as a followup to his earlier minor hit don’t pay the ferryman, de burgh’s lady in red was just incredibly disappointing to me.  it is the poster child for the concept of twee.

as an aside, i cannot hear this song now without thinking of one of the most psychotic television characters i have seen in a long time: trevor morgan.  trev, who i am pretty sure was voted the worst of the worst in terms of meanness on a variety of UK polls, is the presumed dead ex-husband of Little Mo on my beloved EastEnders.  an incredibly abusive spouse, trevor would pummel the mousy Mo and make her feel like she had earned it. he shoved her face in food on the floor and made her eat it. he bloodied her. her had an affair — with a baby resulting — and yelled at Mo for trying to figure it all out.

finally, on a new years eve, Little Mo was babysitting at pauline fowler’s house when the doorbell rang.

ding dong: psycho calling!

mo made the grave error of opening the door. BAM! trevor came in and started to pound away. only, too bad for trevor: pauline fowler kept her kitchen well-stocked with cleaning supplies. mo grabbed a hot iron she was using and BAM! she beat the hell out of trevor. her sisters came in and helped her hide trevor’s body and clean up the kitchen, but when they went to check on trevor’s body — he had disappeared…

little mo ended up spending time in prison for what she had done, and trevor continued to terrorize her until he essntially burned up in a house explosion, along with the at-the-time hottie on the square, tom. such a waste, but for such a good cause.

anyway, what does all of this have to do with lady in red?

lady in red was little mo and trevor’s song.

am i the only one who keeps hoping sheena easton gets tied to the tracks?

hello, and welcome to a month of egregious ’80’s music. our first offender? sheenapoo. it wasn’t easy to pick which one of her musical contributions was most offensive; after all, she also sang prince’s sugar walls, an incredibly vile song about a vay-jay-jay.

but morning train bothered me from the very first time i heard it.  when it was released in 1980, i could not see anything redeeming in a bouncy-brite pop tune about a lady who basically waits at home all day long until her man comes home from work. yep, nothing to see here, just a lady who is completely and utterly dependent on her guy for her happiness.

now at 15, i had read plenty of articles in magazines telling me that the worst thing in the world that i could do in my existence would be to basically drop everything for a boy. to hear miss white-bread dizz-ball proclaiming that she spent eight straight hours doing nothing but sit and stay while her master is away was vomit-inducing then (and now.) why, go do something useful in the world, hon. get a job. volunteer. be a human, fer cryin’ out loud.

unbelievably, the song gets worse:

He takes me to a movie
Or to a restaurant, to go
Slow dancing
Anything I want
Only when he’s with me
I catch a light
Only when he gives me
Makes me feel alright

did i shut my eyes and enter the 1950s? can someone please get this chick a copy of the feminine mystique, please!   i feel like i need to sponsor an intervention here! girl, if you only got a job, you could pay for things you want and not have to wait for this dude. you can take yourself to your own damn movie — a chick flick, even — and not have to wait until he deems it ok. even i, at 15, knew that there was something terribly, horribly awful about the message this song was sharing: depend on your man and of course he will always look after you.

until his leggy secretary enters the picture.

girl — you’re good enough, you’re smart enough, and gosh darn it — you have bouncin’ and behavin’ 80s hair. derail yourself from this song and move on.