glen frey could do so much better than this.

during the mid-1980s, you could do a lot worse than live in miami. i disagreed, of course, and moved back to NJ; but in the time i lived in coral gables (an affluent suburb of my ami, my miami), miami vice was white-hot on TV.  rumors would float about as to where the miami vice people were shooting in town.  i suspect if any of us ever actually fell upon don johnson or phillip michael thomas johnny bob, we would have probably died or at least turned to dust (a dust which probably would have ended up snorted up someone’s nose in miami. those were how those times rolled.)

glen frey wrote this song for an episode of miami vice. now, i like glen frey as much as the next person; he, of new kid in town and tequila sunrise (just to mention two — there are so many, many others.) but you belong to the city sounds like a bad poem from the high school literary magazine.

‘Cause you belong to the city
You belong to the night
Livin’ in a river of darkness
Beneath the neon lights

You were born in the city
Concrete under your feet
It’s in your moves, it’s in your blood
You’re a man of the streets

deep.

anyway, after it’s appearance on the show (and the subsequent soundtrack LP, which did very well), the song ultimately became the bed for an incredibly annoying pepsi commercial starring don johnson and glen frey. (but of course.)  the joy continued.

this is just a case of a man who i knew could do so, so, SO much better.

this song belonged in the trashcan.

…just like every aging rocker has his hair extensions…

every rose has its thorn, an annoying number one hit for the hair metal band poison,  had died a quiet, happy death for me since it’s seemingly-never-ending days on playlists in 1988. then, two events revived this tripe from the dead.

first, lead singer bret michaels started the series rock of love. (then, rock of love 2. then, rock of love bus. and of course, how can we forget rock of love charm school and charm school with ricki lake? i know i am still trying.) all along, this 40-something former rock star moaned and emo-whined about finding his soulmate, and yet the primary criteria for the women present were: 1) the amount of silicone they possessed; 2) the sheer vulgarity of their personalities; and 3) whether they were willing to basically give it away.  most (blissfully) were pretty unaware of michael’s old band; most in fact had the musical taste of a rock, screaming and grinding like crazy every time they attended one of his solo performances.

but thanks to this franchise of shows, i ended up hearing every rose has its thorn more than i cared to.

this, in turn, led to the second reason the song has re-emerged. our new local rock station, 105.9, has apparently moved the demographic up a bit and now includes a lot, and i do mean a lot, of 80’s hair metal. and every single hair metal band who wanted that one hit pulled together a power ballad. maybe the favorite power ballad that gets a ton of airplay on this station is…you guessed it. every rose has its thorn.

But I guess that’s why they say
Every rose has its thorn
Just like every night has its dawn
Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song
Every rose has its thorn

so now, i get to endure this rancid (and i don’t mean the band) song every time i forget my mp3 player in the car. as an english major, i have difficulties with michael’s rhyming scheme as well as his simile. thorn, dawn, and song don’t really rhyme (unless you are a new yawker, and even then, song is pushing it.) i don’t seem to recall roy rogers or gene autry singing sad, sad songs, but then again, i was never a huge fan of westerns.

if every rose has it’s thorn, then perhaps every car radio ought to have it’s mute button. for just such occasions, i mean.

do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

in 1981,  american ex-pat joe dolce came up with cult hit shaddup you face, an unintelligible song with a chorus apparently written by joe’s eye-talian mama:

Whassamatta you? (hey!)
Gotta no respect?
Whaddaya think you do?
Why you looka so sad?
It’s-a not so bad
It’s-a nice-a place
Ah, shaddap you face!

it actually ended up on the billboard hot 100 and took its place among the thousands of novelty songs that litter doctor demento’s mind and radio show.  in the UK, it even knocked ultravox’s vienna out of the number one spot.  this is somewhat surprising since the song hearkens back to an old sing-song that someone’s grandmother might have sung, albeit with wildly different lyrics.

annoyance aboundeth.

for starters, telling ANYONE to shut up was verboten in my family — it still is today.  you can disagree with someone else’s opinions, you can shush little kids who need to be quiet in a theater, when wildly provoked, you can tell a grown someone to hush. but to tell someone to shut up is like to slap someone in the face. it is just not done around here. and so hearing this song to me was a full affront on kindness. it was a dude encouraging people to behave badly. and to me, the 16 year old emily post of NJ, this was just wrong.

secondly, this ended up on a rock chart??? seriously??? novelty acts often annoyed me, but they were an annoyance that hardly showed up anywhere except on novelty shows. but i was subjected to this in my car on a regular basis for awhile. was it because people in the NY/NJ metro could relate to the eye-talian mama? (was it because the station managers could?) i couldn’t bear to hear this the first time; after the 50th time, i was screaming uncle.

to say it was a major step below  pac man fever pretty much would be an understatement.

hi, sailor.

i have never been a huge fan of cher’s singing. so when the former mrs. bono / former mrs. allman made a musical comeback aboard the USS Missouri in 1989, i was not among the people cheering her on. to me, this song is an anthem to cher’s future of never-ending attempts to be younger. between her plastic surgeries, her cougar antics, and her musical choices, cher has been trying to be the female dorian grey.

maybe it’s easy for me to say, as i am not yet in my 60s and don’t make my living in front of a camera in an industry ruthlessly in pursuit of young and younger and thin and thinner.  but it is infuriating that a beautiful woman like cher has the need to reupholster herself. cher is a wonderfully talented actress (her performance in moonstruck still remains one of my favorites) who shouldn’t need to prance around in little nothings singing utter crap. she should be appreciating herself at every age… and acting!

if i could turn back time with cher, i would somehow get her to appreciate her worth so that perhaps she wouldn’t resort to plastic surgery. (as for dating much younger men, i’d say go for it.)

and i would get her to sing better stuff. i realize that diane warren, the author of this song, is a very-much awarded songwriter.  but the thing that sold the song as far as i’m concerned is cher strutting her stuff in a body stocking barely covering her naughty bits. otherwise, it is a droning drag of a song.

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.