From FaceBook:
Sunday:
A 1980s song each day for seven days? Not too tough! As to whom to tag...well, three people who could do so at least as easily are Kate Laity, Paul David Brazill and Brian Arnold, even if Brian might be best with the latter '80s. If you choose to accept this chain letter, untold Likes might befall you. Or even 3-6. Mark Hand tagged me with his initial offering. This Joan Armatrading song, "Kind Words and a Real Good Heart", has been liked by essentially everyone I've played it for,..including one young hiphop fan whose mind was blown by his first experience of her on my Philadelphia radio show. It's not Too obscure, but not well-enough known either.
X
Monday:
1980s songs, day 2 of 7: The first song I heard from Jawbox, their first released recording aside from a demo cassette (and a very good one), iinm...on the MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL anthology album pictured, 1989, purchased by my ex Donna (when not yet my ex). A somewhat milder, if better-recorded, version appeared on their first album, GRIPPE (Dischord 1991). I don't think I ever got around to asking them how much John Cheever's novel had to do with the song's title...a literate bunch, even if their first drummer found folks such as myself as making them out as greater sophisticates than he thought they were...or at least he was. The song "Motorist" (on their first Atlantic album FOR YOUR OWN SPECIAL SWEETHEART) was definitely inspired by J. G. Ballard's novel CRASH.
Playback without surface noise, from the Jawbox rare and scattered tracks collection MY SCRAPBOOK OF FATAL ACCIDENTS (DeSoto 2004):
The album version, released 1991--on this link cued up to "Bullet Park":
Tuesday:
Keiko Hassler turned me onto the Bangles in 1982, I think it was, with the first five-song EP on Faulty Products...recorded when Annette Zilinskas was still the bassist (and harmonica player). By the time they signed to CBS, Michael Steele (formerly, briefly one of the Runaways, as Micki) had joined the band and their first album, ALL OVER THE PLACE (1984), was more than fine. Since I put up "Bullet Park" yesterday, here's another song that shares a title with a literary work, albeit it was only the title, plucked from an academic anthology (an OXFORD BOOK OF, iirc), that the song shared with the Matthew Arnold poem. I've half-wondered ever since if the debut of the atrocious (Scholastic Productions!) tv series CHARLES IN CHARGE, with a theme in its original form that has a similar arrangement as well as melody to "Dover Beach," was leveraged against CBS to get them to put more support behind the second album...though I wonder also if CBS's hostility to the band as a band (choosing to emphasize the clothing, putting out singles that featured non-band compositions) also might've resulted from any seeking of redress there. I'd just moved to the DC area in April 1984, and went to the 9:30 Club for the first time that summer to see the band.
At one point, after a song, some jackass shouted "Play some REAL music!" Susanna Hoffs's rejoinder, "That's not fair. We're from L.A." was better than the audience response it got.
Wednesday:
The first all-woman "supergroup" in bluegrass, featuring dobroist Sally Van Meter, violinist Laurie Lewis, banjoist Cathy Fink, guitarist and mandolinist Marcy Marxer; and bassist Molly Mason (no known relation). Blue Rose produced what I believe was their only album in 1988. This concert recording is pretty close to their studio sound.
Thursday:
Throwback Thursday got several videos for its trouble...
The Roches: "Everyone is Good"
Chumbawamba: Never Mind the Ballots...Here's the Rest of Your Life
A song which helped lift my spirits at a very bad time indeed, in 1984...first time I heard Husker Du, carpooling back to an office after some canvassing work; this came on the commercial "alternative" station, WHFS, long gone now, in DC...everyone else was trying to figure out who and what that was...I knew it was the Byrds' song, but didn't know by whom...:
Husker Du: "Eight Miles High"
Husker Du: "Friend, You've Got to Fall"
A friend of mine once got actually angry at me for noting that this song was rather sober...so important was it for him that Bananarama be a frothy bunch of funsters...
Bananarama: "Hotline to Heaven"
Friday:
From funk (however mutant) to rap to jazz-pop. No lack of that in the 1980s...
The Gil Scott Heron Band: "1980"
Sade: "Is It a Crime?"
Klymaxx: "Meeting in the Ladies Room"
Sting and the jazz-rock band: "If You Love Somebody, Set Them Free"
War: "Koronos"
Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers: title(s) unknown to me
Salt-N-Pepa: "Shake Your Thang"
Joe Jackson: "You Can't Get What You Want Till You Know What You Want"
King Crimson: "Three of a Perfect Pair"
Miriam Makeba: "Soweto Blues"
Saturday:
Sandra Bernhard: Burt Bacharach medley/monolog
Tanira Takaram: "Good Tradition"
The Go-Go's: "Turn to You"
The Go-gos Turn to You by Celtiemama
The Pretenders: "I Hurt You"
Human Sexual Response: "Anne Frank Story"
X: "Your Phone's Off the Hook--But You're Not"
Girlschool: "Demolition Boys"
The Pandoras: "That's Your Way Out"
Sunday:
A 1980s song each day for seven days? Not too tough! As to whom to tag...well, three people who could do so at least as easily are Kate Laity, Paul David Brazill and Brian Arnold, even if Brian might be best with the latter '80s. If you choose to accept this chain letter, untold Likes might befall you. Or even 3-6. Mark Hand tagged me with his initial offering. This Joan Armatrading song, "Kind Words and a Real Good Heart", has been liked by essentially everyone I've played it for,..including one young hiphop fan whose mind was blown by his first experience of her on my Philadelphia radio show. It's not Too obscure, but not well-enough known either.
X
Monday:
1980s songs, day 2 of 7: The first song I heard from Jawbox, their first released recording aside from a demo cassette (and a very good one), iinm...on the MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL anthology album pictured, 1989, purchased by my ex Donna (when not yet my ex). A somewhat milder, if better-recorded, version appeared on their first album, GRIPPE (Dischord 1991). I don't think I ever got around to asking them how much John Cheever's novel had to do with the song's title...a literate bunch, even if their first drummer found folks such as myself as making them out as greater sophisticates than he thought they were...or at least he was. The song "Motorist" (on their first Atlantic album FOR YOUR OWN SPECIAL SWEETHEART) was definitely inspired by J. G. Ballard's novel CRASH.
Playback without surface noise, from the Jawbox rare and scattered tracks collection MY SCRAPBOOK OF FATAL ACCIDENTS (DeSoto 2004):
The album version, released 1991--on this link cued up to "Bullet Park":
Tuesday:
Keiko Hassler turned me onto the Bangles in 1982, I think it was, with the first five-song EP on Faulty Products...recorded when Annette Zilinskas was still the bassist (and harmonica player). By the time they signed to CBS, Michael Steele (formerly, briefly one of the Runaways, as Micki) had joined the band and their first album, ALL OVER THE PLACE (1984), was more than fine. Since I put up "Bullet Park" yesterday, here's another song that shares a title with a literary work, albeit it was only the title, plucked from an academic anthology (an OXFORD BOOK OF, iirc), that the song shared with the Matthew Arnold poem. I've half-wondered ever since if the debut of the atrocious (Scholastic Productions!) tv series CHARLES IN CHARGE, with a theme in its original form that has a similar arrangement as well as melody to "Dover Beach," was leveraged against CBS to get them to put more support behind the second album...though I wonder also if CBS's hostility to the band as a band (choosing to emphasize the clothing, putting out singles that featured non-band compositions) also might've resulted from any seeking of redress there. I'd just moved to the DC area in April 1984, and went to the 9:30 Club for the first time that summer to see the band.
At one point, after a song, some jackass shouted "Play some REAL music!" Susanna Hoffs's rejoinder, "That's not fair. We're from L.A." was better than the audience response it got.
Wednesday:
The first all-woman "supergroup" in bluegrass, featuring dobroist Sally Van Meter, violinist Laurie Lewis, banjoist Cathy Fink, guitarist and mandolinist Marcy Marxer; and bassist Molly Mason (no known relation). Blue Rose produced what I believe was their only album in 1988. This concert recording is pretty close to their studio sound.
Thursday:
Throwback Thursday got several videos for its trouble...
The Roches: "Everyone is Good"
Chumbawamba: Never Mind the Ballots...Here's the Rest of Your Life
A song which helped lift my spirits at a very bad time indeed, in 1984...first time I heard Husker Du, carpooling back to an office after some canvassing work; this came on the commercial "alternative" station, WHFS, long gone now, in DC...everyone else was trying to figure out who and what that was...I knew it was the Byrds' song, but didn't know by whom...:
Husker Du: "Eight Miles High"
Husker Du: "Friend, You've Got to Fall"
A friend of mine once got actually angry at me for noting that this song was rather sober...so important was it for him that Bananarama be a frothy bunch of funsters...
Bananarama: "Hotline to Heaven"
Friday:
From funk (however mutant) to rap to jazz-pop. No lack of that in the 1980s...
The Gil Scott Heron Band: "1980"
Sade: "Is It a Crime?"
Klymaxx: "Meeting in the Ladies Room"
Sting and the jazz-rock band: "If You Love Somebody, Set Them Free"
War: "Koronos"
Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers: title(s) unknown to me
Salt-N-Pepa: "Shake Your Thang"
Joe Jackson: "You Can't Get What You Want Till You Know What You Want"
King Crimson: "Three of a Perfect Pair"
Miriam Makeba: "Soweto Blues"
Saturday:
Sandra Bernhard: Burt Bacharach medley/monolog
Tanira Takaram: "Good Tradition"
The Go-Go's: "Turn to You"
The Go-gos Turn to You by Celtiemama
The Pretenders: "I Hurt You"
Human Sexual Response: "Anne Frank Story"
X: "Your Phone's Off the Hook--But You're Not"
Girlschool: "Demolition Boys"
The Pandoras: "That's Your Way Out"
