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July 27, 2006
Mudge's Favorite 134 Songs of the 80s: Video Classics
95. Whisper To A Scream, Icicle Works Is it just me, or were there an awful lot of really good one-hit wonders in the 80s? New wave seemed to enable a whole bunch of bands to come up with that one lightning-in-a-bottle song that flew up the charts and then never happened again. Here's one example. I love the drum and bass line to this song -- love them! -- and the rest of it's pretty damn cool too. There are very few 80s lyrics that make any sense, and this song's no exception ("birds fly in the eye of the faithless daughter/broken at the bitter end" -- WTF??). But this one's a new wave classic. How come Icicle Works never had any other hits? Check out the video here.
94. Beat It, Michael Jackson. I'm just not a fan of people who like to give children the bad touch, so you won't find the King Of Popping LIttle Boys on this countdown anywhere else; despite his dominance of the decade, I can't make myself include him or even like anything he ever did anymore. (Yes, Tim, I know it's sacrilege to do a best of the 80s and not include Billie Jean. And were I being honest, I would admit that I loved "Billie Jean" and it would have made any list I made at the time. But MJ's place on my list has gone the way of his complexion and nose: faded badly and disappearing.)
But "Beat It" has to go on. It just has to. Beyond the Eddie Van Halen solo (all hail and bow when you speak his name), there is the video -- the classic, iconic video that established so many of the genre's most lasting images. It's easy to forget just how groundbreaking this video was when it came out; it really was a landmark achievement. I never did learn whether the apopcrypha about there being "real" gang members dancing in this video was true... but who cares, this was a classic. The star of pop music's most famous morality play comes in for his one and only apperance on my countdown at #94.
93. Sharp Dressed Man, ZZ Top Man, did I go through a ZZ Top phase when the Eliminator album came out. I mean, that tape was all I listened to for about six months. I even had the cheesy ZZ keychain. I was convinced that the single greatest second in the history of rock was when Frank Bread growls "Black tie" behind the lyrics in the first verse. I loved ZZ Top. Of course, by the time their next album came out, I was soooo past them -- had moved on to the metal gods of the time, like Ronnie James Dio and Dokken and Motley Crue. But the irony is, today, ZZ's blues-based rock is much closer to the stuff I really love, and holds up sooooo much better than the goons I left them behind to follow. So let this serve as a belated apology to Billy, Dusty and Frank for abandoning them.
Re: the classic video, did anyone else think that the snooty doorman looked kind of like Qaddafi? (I didn't think so - had to be just me.) As for the rest, all I will say is: the first woman to emerge from the Eliminator car at the party? Hubba forkin' hubba. (The fact that she's probably a grandmother by now is extremely depressing.)
So... is every girl crazy about a sharp dressed man?
92. Love Removal Machine, The Cult Another one that I have fonder memories because we played this one in the band. The first time I was ever able to get my voice to go above it's normal register and stay in tune -- a critical ability if you wanted to sing in an 80s band, given the style of the time -- was learning to hit the "Baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, I fell from the sky" line to open the second verse. And I still remember the first time I actually hit it, rehearsing in the drummer's garage... I'd been flat and low on it every time we'd practiced it, and it was noticeable enough that we weren't going to do it live anywhere... and then the verse began, and I finally got it, and I remember the "holy spit, he nailed it!" look on our bass player's face, and we kept playing it, and eventually it ended up being a staple of our set. God, I miss being 20.
The video is not on YouTube; I could only find a live performance, and even then only of the solo. Sigh.
91. Ace of Spades, Motorhead Nooow we're talking. Good old-fashioned bug-the-spit-out-of-your-parents, turn-that-noise-down! metal from Motorhead. Lemmy is a forkin' god. A god, I tell you. The ugliest god in history, true -- but a god nonetheless. And yeah, this is the Motorhead song that everybody always cites. But there's a reason for that; it's just a great, great song.
Read 'em and weep, the dead man's hand again,
I see it in your eyes, take one look and die,
The only thing you see, you know it's gonna be,
The Ace Of Spades
The Ace Of Spades
Poetry, man. Pure poerty. I realize I've had nothing articulate to say about this song, only mindless gushing. Sometimes music does that to you. Check out the video here -- turn it up, and bang your head!
Comments
Sharp Dressed Man is a great song, one of my faves.
Not including the King of Pop anywhere else on the countdown...Very lame, especially if you like the songs.
Only including "Beat It"...not a bad choice. Oddly enough MJ might be one of the few people that convinced Eddie Van Halen and Slash to do guitar rifts for him when they were at the height of their abilities.
Posted by: Corey at July 27, 2006 03:17 PM
