September 01, 2006
Mudge's Favorite 134 Songs of the 80s: #1
Could there really have been any other song up here?
I mean, yeah... sure there could. I said myself that my top ten or eleven might have been shuffled around in a different order if I had it to do again. But somehow, I have a feeling that this one would have come up right around number one no matter how many times I did the list.
There are rock anthems, and then there are the ones that become guaranteed to become all-time classics, known and loved years beyond their initial run. These songs provide an automatic adrenaline rush to accompany their opening notes and bars. These anthems are easily adopted by sports teams as "fire-up-the-crowd" songs. Queen was particularly good at this; "We Will Rock You" is a stadium staple, and "We Are The Champions" is guaranteed to be played at least a thousand times a year, every time a professional franchise or college or high school team wins a title. Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train" gained a new generation of fans who first heard it at a ballgame of some sort. The song at #1 on my list is another in this pantheon, being used by everyone from the old Minnesota North Stars to the Cincinnati Bengals to Derek Jeter.
My favorite song of the 1980s is "Welcome To The Jungle" by Guns N'Roses.
But it's not great because of its use in sporting events. It just happened to lend itself to use in arenas because of the classic opening by Slash (in my opinion the most underrated guitarist of all-time... there were a couple who were better, but they all get their just due; Slash gets overlooked despite writing some classic riffs and laying down classic solos), and because of its instant classic theme... you just got into something way over your head, son.
As Wikipedia notes about the song's origin, Axl Rose wrote the song after an encounter with a homeless man, who accosted him and a friend in the Bronx late at night. Trying to put a scare into the young runaways, the man yelled at them, "You know where you are? You're in the jungle baby, you're gonna die!". The incident made such an impact, Axl turned it into one of the greatest hard rock hits of all time.
From that run-in with a street person came the 80s' most signature rock song -- the inspiring line screamed to great effect during the build to the final chorus. That build is only one of a half dozen classic elements to the song. From the echo-note guitar-followed by slow chord build opening that featured Axl's siren-like caterwaul... to his stuttering "kn-kn-kn-kn-kn-kn-kn-kn-knees" in the chorus... to the driving rhythm line thanks to the bass & drums that make the song impossible not to stamp your feet along with... to Slash's great guitar work, in both his solo and in the distinctive sounds he added to the bridge... to Axl's vocal work on the song, which rivaled anything Robert Plant did on his best day... to that classic build out of the bridge into the final chorus, with that driving, crawling bassline, menacing guitar, and Axl screaming 'you gonna diiiiiiiiiieeeeeeee".... all the way to the final notes -- Axl's angry grunt followed by the last chord. A song in which every element and every second is instantly classic comes along... oh, about once a decade, maybe?
I'll always consider it one of the greater sins or tragedies in rock history that GnR never got 15 or 20 years to lay down a box set's worth of classic greatest hits; drugs, alcohol, and Axl's being a selfish jerk who also happened to be borderline schizoid. I'll never forgive him for costing the world who knows how much great music. But before he lost it, GnR gave us five incredible years, capped by this, their crowning achievement: not only an all-time classic, but my favorite song of the 1980s.
Ladies and gentlemen, "Welcome To The Jungle."
Posted by Christopher at 04:01 PM | Comments (11)Mudge's Favorite 134 Songs of the 80s: No-Shows
Sorry about the bandwidth thing ... still trying to figure out exactly what went wrong there and why. As a result of not being able to access my control panel for the last 24 hours, I didn't get a chance to write about every act that didn't make the countdown... but here's a quick synopsis of 80s notables you didn't find on this list anywhere:
-- Madonna I didn't like anything of hers until the Ray Of Light album in 1998... have a ton of respect for her as a businesswoman, but never dug the music. Closest thing she did to making this list was "Like A Virgin," but that was for the role her image on the '84 Video Music Awards played in my pubescent years, not because I loved the song.
-- Hall & Oates You'd think that liking old soul and Motown like I do, I'd like the 80s most notable blue-eyed soul act. I never did. "You Make My Dreams Come True" was tolerable, but beynd that I'd be hard pressed to name a H&O song from the 80s that I liked. (Ironically, I dig two of their 70s hits, "Rich Girl" and "She's Gone")
-- Bon Jovi I wish I could playfully goad my readers who love the tri-state area by saying I didn't like them because they were from New Jersey, but a) I was born in New Jersey, and b) it didn't factor into the equation; I just never got into any of their songs. Odd, since I was so into hair pop, but this band just never did anything for me. "Wanted Dead Or Alive" was the closest they got to my countdown, but it never got all that close... didn't even make my initial list.
The Bangles Biggest claim to fame was that Susanna Hoffs had really pretty eyes, and married the dude who directed "Austin Powers." That's pretty weak claim to a place on this chart.
John Cougar Mellencamp He was a midwestern imitation of Springsteen, but at least that meant he was authentic. I respect his commitment he had and has to American farmers, and I think he's genuine, but in between 1980's "Ain't Even Done With The Night" and 1993's "Human Wheels," I just didn't dig his stuff.
Billy Joel I'm going to get in trouble for this one, but I have never seen myself as a big Billy Joel fan. Sure, there were some of his songs that I liked and that were in the running for this countdown -- 1980's "Still Rock And Roll To Me," 1983's "Pressure," 1989's "We Didn't Start The Fire" -- but for some reason, I've just never thought of myself as a fan. I see why others are, but I am just not. And that brings me to the omission that I know I will be excoriated over, but is omitted all the same...
Bruce Springsteen I sometimes think that if any editor or critic from any of the Northeastern publishing elite (Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, etc.) had ever lived in a house with a screen door, there wouldn't be Bruce Springsteen as we know him today. Because if they ever had been even middle-income instead of rich elite people, then a lyric about a screen door slamming would hardly have seemed so authentic, so rustic, so Woody Guthrie-like a representation of 'real' American life. And without that fawning over a lyric and its perceived brilliance (again... okay, so the screen door slammed... where's the brilliance in that?), we might not have had Jon Landau ranting about the future of rock being Bruce in 1974. And without the cult that built up around him in the 70s, we might not have had the absolute worship that evolved in the 80s.
It's not that I actively dislike Bruce; I don't. It's just that I am not a member of his cult. And since so many of my good friends are -- I know people who've gone to see him 30 times or more, including a couple of readers of this blog -- and more importantly, since I now live near New Jersey, and the extent to which the Cult Of Bruce owns that state and how much he gets jammed down your throat here rivals anything Chairman Mao ever did in China at his zenith ... well, you all know me well enough to know that the more urgently and pervasively I am told to like something, the less likely I am to like it.
(Anything that's uber-popular or whose devotees insist on me needing to like, the odds are that I will unconsciously reject it. I don't mean to, but I was born a contrarian and whether I mean it to happen or not, it just does. It's why I hated Gretzky when I was growing up, and one reason why I have a stubborn anti-tristate streak in me... if anyone around here ever realized that they could leave well enough alone and not insist that the world must love NY as much as they do, I probably wouldn't mind the place so much... but keep insisting to me that it's the greatest place in the world, and how I must be crazy to not like it here, and you've pretty much guaranteed that I will become even more entrenched in my disdain. I hated the LA Lakers, the Dallas Cowboys, and most popular television shows as a result of this admittedly petty streak.)
Anyway... all that aside and back to Bruce... I just never got into him. Which drives the Brucenites batty... but I just never thought he was the rock and roll messiah that he was anointed to be, is all. I can listen to some of his stuff and it's not bad, but it's not among my favorites either. Of his 80s work, the only song I could even think of that might have been in consideration was "My Hometown," but even that didn't take much or me to cut. (And yes, all you Brucenites, I know that "Hometown" is one example of how he 'speaks for blue-collar America,' and since I am so staunchly in the corner of the working class vs. the elite, I should love Bruce as one of my own... just let it go. The harder you argue, the less chance you give your boy.)
Anyway... those are a few 80s notables you didn't see on this list. Sorry if one or more of your favorites didn't make my list of top 134 songs; like I said at the beginning, these are just my favorites, every list would be different, and I both understand and respect that. Make your own list, and I'll be more than happy to watch yours counting down and respectfully offer comments and observations. My list isn't superior, it's just mine is all.)
So who's left? Who did make it -- and not just make it, but make it all the way to #1???
Posted by Christopher at 07:07 AM | Comments (3)August 29, 2006
Mudge's Favorite 134 Songs of the 80s: #2
We're really, really close... and as soon as I reveal #2, #1 is likely pretty easy to guess. So I want to thank all of you for hanging with me for more than a month while I amuse myself with old songs from when I was a kid. In a few more days, I am finally taking the computer in for servicing, and I'll be un-blogged for a little while. (I'm hoping against hope they can fix it in the store and not have to send it away.)
I'll do an entry tomorrow about all the music that's not on this list -- there's some 80s notables not even represented once here. And then Thursday night, I'll reveal #1... my very favorite song of the 1980s. But for now, we're at #2 -- and it shouldn't be overlooked in the rush to get to #1. It's by five guys from Sheffield, England, who are making their second appearance in the top ten.
2. Photograph, Def Leppard First of all, I have to admit it; I had a Union Jack sleeveless T, just like Joe Elliott did in this video. (Thus began an apparently decade-long fascination with wanting to look like Joe Elliott, I guess, since I was wearing my jeans all slashed up like his a few years later.) But enough about me, and the video... it's time to focus on a great song.
"Photograph" was some of the best power pop the decade produced, with a catchy hook, a great riff, and that fabulous moment at the end of the first verse and beginning of the second, when the bass and second guitar join in and the full power of the song kicks in. A great two part chorus that allowed an audience to shout along (Oh!!! Look what you've done...) and showed off Joe's considerable chops and range... memorable lyrics -- "You got some kind of hold on me/you're all wrapped up in mystery/So wild and free, so far from me/You're all I want, my fantasy" ain't poetry, but it's a great rock and roll lyric about one of rock's most reliable themes: wanting the one you can't have -- and an underrated solo from Phil Collen. And I'll argue that the bridge to the solo -- Joe singing "you've gone straight to my heeaaaaaaaaaaad" and holding the note while Steve Clark played the song's main riff behind him -- ranks as five of the greatest seconds of music in rock history.
As a side note, the video did more for the "Marilyn was mudered" crowd than six episodes of Unsolved Mysteries could ever have done.
"Photograph" is one of my favorite air guitar songs of all time, and is four minutes of virtually perfect power pop. I don't think Def Leppard get as much credit as they deserve for how good they were -- the 80s have a stigma much like the disco years did, and I think Leppard suffers from the same kind of dismissiveness that kept the Bee Gees out of the Rock Hall for 12 years. I'll never deny it: I was and still am a die-hard Def Leppard fan, and am proud of it. Photograph ranks as my #2 favorite song of the 80s.
Posted by Christopher at 11:45 PM | Comments (2)August 28, 2006
Mudge's Favorite 134 Songs of the 80s: #3
In my hosting company's defense, it's not the YouTube clips that are causing my bandwidth issues. Somewhere, someone seems to be downloading major amounts of files or something from my site -- if I only knew what they were downloading, I could either remove the problematic images or files, or put a copy-protect on it or something. Anyway, it's not the videos that are causing the problem here.
On to the #3 song on my top 134 list... from the greatest rock and roll band of the 80s, and the band that could have gone on to being the greatest ever if it wasn't for a selfish and disturbed lead singer.
3. Sweet Child O' Mine, Guns N Roses From the moment of the first note, this song was an instant classic. Slash came up with one of the most instantly recognizable lead guitar riffs in rock history (I'd put it up with the beginning of Stairway to Heaven and the opening of Satisfaction) to kick off the song... and in the video, his spead-legged, bent at the knees stance made him an instant icon. Add in the bass and the drums and you have a brilliant opening instrumental. Axl may have blatantly ripped off Davy Jones of the Monkees (watch their "Cuddly Toy" from 1968, and then the video for Sweet Child from 1988, and you'll see eerie similarities between the dance moves), but doing a vaudeville shuffle to what was undeniably a rocking anthem was unheard of, and it worked for him.
While "Appetite For Destruction" had come out in 1987, it wasn't until this single was released in the summer of 1988 that GnR became GunsN'Roses. The song was a paean to a girl, sure -- but this was no typical power ballad. He wasn't going to smooth talk her, he was gonna flat out rock her. The sensitive male lyrics -- breaking down and crying, her hair reminding him of the place he used to hide as a child -- became totally acceptable to even the hardest core rocker, surrounded by that amazing riff. And then Slash laid a solo down that simply kicked ass, whether attached to a ballad or not. This ballad out and out rocked -- attracting women and men alike. And Axl's voice fit with it perfectly. GnR had announced their presence atop the rock pantheon of the time with the release of Appetite For Destruction, but it was Sweet Child of Mine that cinched their reputation.
I always wished I could do that "chi-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-I-I-I-I-ild of mine" thing Axl does at the end in just one breath; I couldn't then and can't now. What a great band this was; their stuff -- every single bit of it -- stands up as well today as anything the Stones or Zeppelin ever did, and I'd argue that at their peak they were every bit as good. For about four years there, between 1988 and 1991, GnR was rock and roll, and everything else was just pretending. Sweet Child was their only number one, which is as criminal to me as Chuck Berry only getting there once. Great song, an absolute classic of this or any decade, and it is #3 on my list of my favorite 80s songs.
Posted by Christopher at 11:56 PM | Comments (2)Mudge's Favorite 134 Songs of the 80s: #4
A quick note - I'm getting hate mail from my hosts that I am about to exceed my bandwidth, and I am quite sure that all the embedded videos are what's doing it. So I'm going back and unembedding them after a few days... so once you've seen 'em, expect that they'll soon be gone. K?
We're in the home stretch this week... and since this little countdown is boosting my numbers a bit, I'd be a fool to get it over early, now wouldn't I? Let's see if I can't stretch it out for one more week. Here''s the #4 song on my list - from a bunch of guys from northern England in 1982.
4. You've Got Another Thing Coming, Judas Priest Total adrenaline rush, from the opening descending chords all the way until the end. It took me until the advent of the internet to be able to look up the actual complete lyrics, but who cares if I was singing it right or wrong? What a great crank-it-up-loud, shake your fist, bang your head song this is. Off the "Screaming For Vengeance" album in 1982, this was arguably Judas Priest's biggest song -- certainly got more airplay than any of their others, even "Rockin' After Midnight" or "Breaking The Law."
Best of all is "Another Thing Comng"s inclusion on the "Vulture" playist in the video game classic "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City." I think there's an actual point to that game... but it's soooo much more fun to just keep beating up homeless people and pedestrians with baseball bats, and jacking cars and cranking up the Vulture station for the best of 80s metal. I lost track of the number of hours that Tim and I spent (note well: not "wasted," just spent) 'playing' the game that way when it came out a few years ago.
The video is frankly pretty lame, so bad in fact that I'm going to have no problem deleting it at the end of this week. But what a great, great song. The burst of pure adrenaline from one of the hardest rocking bands of all time comes in at #4 on my list.
Posted by Christopher at 06:18 AM | Comments (4)August 25, 2006
Mudge's Favorite 134 Songs of the 80s: #6 and #5
This entry gives you some video history; the first video ever played on MTV, and the video that, scarily, inspired me as a front man and lead singer.
6. Pour Some Sugar On Me, Def Leppard You will be relieved to know that, despite it being in vogue at the time and despite the fact that I did have the AquaNetted hair, eyeliner, and other accoutrements required of lead singers of the day, I never wore spandex in the three years of the band. You will be frightened, however, to learn that I instead patterned my "look" after Joe Elliott's slashed-up jeans in the video for "Sugar." (True story: we played the lead guitarist's little brother's graduation party, and after it was over his mom remarked to him in horror about the deliberate slashes in my Levis that "I think you could see Chris's underwear!" -- to which Mic responded, "Actually, mom, I don't think he was wearing any." I wish I could have been there to see the look on her face.)
"Sugar" gets derided today by many as the embodiment of 80s cheese. Pish tosh, I say. First of all, the song has become a staple for strippers to use during their sets... I mean, someone told me that, anyway, and Bill Simmons writes about it in his latest ESPN column, so it must be true. (It's about halfway down the page in this looooooong column, but it's there.) And how can you dislike a song that so many coked out saline queens have denuded themselves to? (Or regular girls who're just caught up in the moment, for that matter.) What next - you're gonna tell me that you don't like "Girls On Film?"
Anti-80s bigots love to belittle the admittedly cartoonish lyrics ("you got the peaches, I got the cream..." what do you suppose he's talking about? I fail to grasp his meaning) and overt braggadocious sexuality, but come on... the entire decade was cheesy, cartoonish, and braggadocious -- look at the politicians who were prominent then! Strip away the anti-80s 'tude, and you get a rocking anthem that frankly holds up a lot better than most of the rest of the hair metal of that time (and in fact I've seen interviews with Elliott where he is visibily annoyed at being lumped in with glammy hair bands). The opening guitar chord riff (after the little intro in the video, once the curtain falls) is what I want playing when I come to the plate with two outs in the bottom of the ninth and bases loaded; for me, anyway, it's still an adrenaline pumper.
Not every song has to be profound, or aim to change the world; sometimes, music is just for fun -- and this song is pure fun. And few experiences were more fun than doing this song in front of a crowd when the song was popular and at its peak. A couple of weeks ago, I was having a conversation with some work friends who also happen to read this blog (hello David, Jennifer, and Lou), and they were asking what would be in the top five. One suggested that perhaps "I Melt With You" (not on my list, actually) was perhaps the best 'get the girl' song (to put it politely) of the decade. I told him the same thing that I assert now: being the singer in a band doing "Sugar" during the late 80s was better than Barry White, Marvin Gaye, and Enigma all at once. That's all I will say, but trust me.
"Pour Some Sugar On Me" may be something of a time capsule, but damn it's a fun one... and I'd argue that on the sheer ear candy rock and roll anthem meter, it still rates a ten. On this countdown, it rates #6.
5. Video Killed The Radio Star, The Buggles Okay, before anyone nails me on the technicality, let's just get it out there: this song was released in October 1979. Technically, it's not part of the 80s. I know that. In fact, that technicality might just be the only reason that "Video Star" isn't #1.
But as we all know, "Video Killed The Radio Star" was the first video ever played on MTV (Martha babe, call me, I'll still buy you a drink even though you're in your late 40s now), and as such it is as inexorable a piece of the 80s as leg warmers or big hair. And since it was re-recorded and re-released in Canada in 1984, it still counts as an 80s release somewhere in the world.
I don't just like the song for its video history, however; it's also my highest-rated non-hair/metal song in this decade and would likely make my top five list of favorite songs ever, from any decade. First of all, despite my reliance on videos here in this series on my blog, I agree wholeheartedly with its theme of how we were losing something in the transition to a video mentality. Not everything visual is good. (Don't even begin to get me started on speakers' modern-day reliance on Powerpoint; as a former speechwriter, I look upon Powerpoint as fingernails on a chalkboard, fork tines scraping on a plate, and Roseanne Barr/Arnold's voice all in one... it's a pathetic crutch of a tool, and if you really need cutesy little visual tricks to get your point across, you don't have anything interesting enough to say to warrant being on stage -- or, you're just a weak speaker who is afraid of his/her own ability to effectively reach an audience. There's a reason there is no such thing as a world-famous powerpoint presentation, but everyone remembers "Ask not what your country can do for you..." or "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" The day a US president introduces Powerpoint charts into a speech to the American people is the day I move permanently to England.)
But I digress. The point is just that I agree with the theme of the song... and besides, it's a pretty good example of new wave -- danceable, making good use of a synth-line, driven by a good bassline, and innovative use of the broadcast/grammaphone quality to the lead vocals. And it's just plain fun; if I ever do play in a band again, I will want to do a cover of this song. Just saying. So... okay, technically it's not 80s. But it helped usher in the era of 80s music, and I'd argue that it fits in the 80s a lot more neatly than the 70s. And besides, this is my list, so I get to make the rules. On the list "Video Killed The Radio Star" goes, at #5 -- the highest rated non-hair/metal song on the list, and one of my all-time favorites.
Posted by Christopher at 07:58 PM | Comments (3)Mudge's Favorite 134 Songs of the 80s: #8 and #7
Again, just a reminder: from #11 onward, the order becomes harder to fix, and really could have shaken out in any number of permutations; almost any of these songs could have ranked anywhere from 11 to 1. That caveat introduced once more, we're up to numbers 8 and 7.
8. One, Metallica Yes, Tim; I know it's a re-working of Sanitarium. I just wasn't an album cut kind of guy. And besides, I got sucked in by the mystery and hype of "One" being Metallica's first official video. The thing is, the video was so memorable that you can't separate the song from the video -- or I can't anyway. And the video messed with me, even though I was 21 when the song came out in 1989.
Just some words on the video, since this countdown is supposed to be about songs and not videos. But this one was like the "Snakes On A Plane" of music videos -- the one that preyed on a combination of intense fears (in this case: war, claustrophobia, being trapped, being unable to communicate) to create a visceral experience. The video borrowed heavily from Dalton Trumbo's 1971 war movie "Johnny Got His Gun" -- in which the hero is a US soldier in World War I who loses his arms, legs, sight, speech, and hearing in an attack... leaving him an uncommunicative stump of a human being -- limbless, senseless, but fully conscious and able to think... trapped for eternity in his own mind, while those around him are unaware that he is even scentient. The idea of being unable to see, hear, speak, or have even limbs to communicate with is one that both then and now ranks as my second greatest fear after bridges: being trapped inside my body with only my mind as company (I am not afraid of death, but am terrified of aging and having physical things break down on me, one by one).
Against the backdrop of scenes from this gripping movie, you get Metallica being Metallica -- all their best tricks. The opening verses feautring a level of musical sophistication that might surprise some who'd dismissed them as "just speed metal" musicians; the crunching lead-in to the powerful center of the song; Lars' staccato drumbeats to match the speed of Kirk and James on the guitars; the anger and volume of that middle bridge ("darkness! is visiting me! all that I see! absolute horror!") that you couldn't help but bang your head to... Metallica die-hards (like Tim, for example) will insist that "One" wasn't even one of the band's three best songs in the eighties, but dammit I loved it.
(And Tim, I haven't forgotten that when we went to see them three summers ago, you made us leave before they got to "One" in the encore. Just because you had an important meeting at 8 am the next day and it was already 12:30 in the morning. Wuss. So just for that, you're not allowed to give me any hell for picking this one over other of your Metallica faves.)
So, watch the video. It's sometimes hard to pick up the song behind the movie, and I could have put a live performance up here to really get across the song and its sound... but the video is gripping and holds on to you and is worth sharing here. And if you can think of having lost your sight, hearing, voice, and limbs -- and yet still being awake and conscious and unable to convey it to anyone doesn't make you claustrophobic and totally creeped out, you're a better person than I am. Great head-banging song behind the video, one of my favorite Metallica songs ever (along with "Master" and "Sandman"), and it comes in at #8 on this countdown.
7. In A Big Country, Big Country A unique song in so many ways. One of the only top ten hits ever to feature a guitar sound that resembled bagpipes, "In A Big Country" was also one of the only top ten hits whose video featured all-terrain videos. Scottish band Big Country appeared poised for a run of incredible success in the US when this was released as their first single in 1983; it rocketed up the charts to #9, made heavy rotation on MTV, and had a distinctive sound that couldn't be mistaken for anyone else out there at the time. Unfortunately, they would never again see the US charts. I guess that proves the theory that any band whose name also eatures prominently in their debut single is destined to never have another hit (are you listening, MorningWood?).
"In A Big Country" is a rollicking, charging burst of energy; hard not to dance to, fun to sing along with -- and at least for me impossible to resist; I start singing this song any time I hear it (and thankfully, the late Stuart Adamson sung in a range that closely matches my most comfortable one, so it's an easy one for me too). The band may have caught lightning in a bottle, but if you're only going to have one hit, it's not bad to have one so distinctive and that even 20 years later can't be mistaken for anyone else's song. "In A Big Country" comes in at #7 on my list of my favorite songs of the 1980s.
Posted by Christopher at 08:51 AM | Comments (3)August 24, 2006
Mudge's Favorite 134 Songs of the 80s: Into The Top Ten
This is where it got really, really hard -- ranking this list once the songs got this high up. Because pretty much from song #11 all the way up to #1, we're talking about songs that I absolutely love, and any one of which could easily have been top five, top three, or even #1. My criteria was, if they were both playing on the radio at the same time, which song would I listen to... if I could only listen to one of the two. Whichever one I chose got ranked a notch higher... and then the process repeated for the "winner" and the next song. But honestly, I love every one of these in the top ten, and for me, they're all in the pantheon. If I made the list over again, the order of these last eleven might change a bit. But, the way I made it this time, this is how they ended up... my ten favorite songs of the 1980s. We'll go two at a time now for the next couple of days... just because I am amusing myself, if no one else.
(By the way, rememeber that you have Hawk to blame for all of this. Got issue with an top 134 list? Or that I have not blogged about much else lately? Tell Hawk. Oh - um, sorry Hawk. ;-) )
10. The Boys Of Summer, Don Henley First of all, let's get one thing straight: you can throw the Ataris' atrocious 2004 cover of this song out the window and in the trash. It didn't count. Now then...
The first time I head Don Henley's "Boys Of Summer" in the summer of 1984, something told me it was a classic. When I saw the video for the first time, I thought it was an artistic statement and really good video making... but I had no real understanding of the sense of bittersweet memory and regret that the video evoked. No, it would not be until many years later, watching it again, that I understood the director's vision and the artist's emotion. But when I watch it today, the video packs a visceral punch.
The song itself is a classic first musically; it's one of the most quickly identifiable songs in rock, from the opening drum beats and single guitar note, to the synth rthythm track behind the verses. The lyrics, evoking remembrance of things past with the wistful eye that only age and regret can lend, add to the monument of the song. And when you add in the video, a supreme example of a director capturing an artist's vision and making it even stronger (it was MTV's Best Video of the Year for 1985, only the second winner of the award), this song hits the trifecta. I think I've grown up to become the guy in the suit spinning the pencil in this video, while images of summers past float maddeningly just out of reach behind him.
The whole song is an evocative expression of the passage of time, of aging, of regret, and of recalled joy. It's one of my all-time favorites, and it ranks as my #10 favorite song of the 1980s.
9. Bad, U2 When the EP "Wide Awake In America" came out in 1985, the senior who was the music writer for our school paper paraphrased the famous Jon Landau quote from Rolling Stone, and wrote "I have seen the future of rock and roll, and it is U2." With a showcase single like "Bad," there was really no arguing with him. I remember the first time I heard "Bad;" I walked into first period Honors English one morning, and a cute cheerleader who I was then sort of crushing on and would soon ask out was sitting in the desk next to mine, oblivious to the world with a set of headphones attached to her Walkman. After saying hi twice and getting no response, I waved my hand in front of her face to get her attention, and asked what she was listening to. She told me "U2's new song, and it's the best song I have ever heard in my life." She put the headphones on my ears, and I was blown away. By the song. Sheesh.
This is one of U2's masterpieces... the slow build from the sparse, vulnerable opening strains, the emotional and muscial crescendos building to the intense finale, with Bono howling about letting go of desperation, separation, isolation and desolation, before screaming that he was in fact wide awake... then bringing us all down gently again to emotional afterglow with the soft, welcoming ending refrain ("come on down"). This song is one that reached out to the listener and drew you in increasingly close to its heart as the song built to a zenith, then brought you home again. It's a masterful effort, truly a great song -- and 2005's "Vertigo" aside, it's probably still my favorite U2 song ever. In these eight minutes, you learn everything you need to know about the power and genius that collectively is U2.
"Bad" comes in as my 9th favorite song of the 1980s. Karen knew what she was talking about that winter morning in 1985 after all.
Posted by Christopher at 12:04 AM | Comments (10)August 22, 2006
Mudge's Favorite 134 Songs of the 80s: Last of the Teens
Here we go... the last three songs of the teens. After this, we've only got the top ten left. But that's no slight to songs 13 through 11 -- they're all classics and among my favorite songs of all time.
13. Come On Eileen, Dexy's Midnight Runners Except for my friend Eileen in DC, I have never known anyone who didn't like this song. (She was in 7th grade when it came out... do you wonder what kids in junior high must have done with that song to that poor kid?) But as for me... I loved this song when it first came out, even though I couldn't understand what the hell they were saying.
In the 90s, I have even more positive memories of Come On Eileen. When I was at Boston University from 1997-1999, it was the Thursday night tradition among the Rat Pack (Dave, Damian, Hamish, Steve, Stover, whichever girls wanted to come along, and a couple of other hangers-on) to go to T's Pub. From 9:00 to 10:30 was trivia night (and in the whole 16 months, I/we never lost a single time we played... winning table got $100, which we would promptly turn around and spend on more $5 pitchers and other assorted libations). Then, at 10:30 there would be dancing and a DJ until the wee hours of the morning. Virtually all the time, that meant that the girls danced while we boys stayed seated at our tables and held court like the kings of BU we imagined ourselves to be. But...
That would always change as soon as the opening violin strains for "Come On Eileen" would sound. The second this song would hit, every guy in our Rat Pack would rush the floor, grab a girl, and we'd have this goony circle and goofy dance we'd all do in our half-inebriation (okay, total inebriation). To this day, when I hear this song, I have the mental image of my grad school crew bouncing with hands in the air during the chorus. Why didn't we ever dance to any other song? Because we're boys and boys don't dance? I dunno. But for this song, we were all dancing fools. Those nights at T's Pub are among my favorite Boston memories, and Dexy's Midnight Runners were a fun part of them. So "Come On Eileen" makes #13 on my list, even if my reasons are based more in the 90s than the 80s.
12. Pride (In The Name Of Love), U2 U2's fourth appearance on my list is their powerful tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr., from 1984's "The Unforgettable Fire." From Edge's jangly and instantly recognizeable guitar intro, to Bono's impassioned delivery, to the driving rhythm line, everything about this song is classic. This single came out shortly after I saw the U2 Red Rocks concert, and if I hadn't been hooked before, I was hooked with this song. U2 made so many contributions to the 80s musical legacy (and the decades beyond, but who's counting?), and "Pride" was among the best. My second favorite U2 song of the decade, and still among my five favorite U2 songs ever, "Pride" comes in at #12 on this list.
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11. Welcome To The Boomtown, David and David Unbelievably, I almost forgot about this song when I made my list. Actually, I did forget about it... but one morning last month I gave Tim a ride to work while his car was in the shop, and I mentioned that I was planning this list... and the first song he asked about was "Welcome To The Boomtown." And I virtually kicked myself, because it was one of my favorites at the time, has held up incredibly well, and still is one of my absolute favorites of this or any other decade. So Tim - thanks for the memory jog, or else I might have never remembered to get this song on -- one that makes it all the way up to #11 on my list.
The song itself -- a visit to the ugly underbelly of the world of the beautiful people -- features a great synth backbeat, a really good sort of bluesy guitar lead, and knowingly cynical lyrics that cut through image and style to reveal the aching lack of substance behind so many of those lives we think we wish we led. In a decade of Reaganesque, yuppie-ish excess, it was a reminder we needed... not a social conscience a la Bono or the "I Ain't Gonna Play Sun City" effort, but rather just a stark rendering of the idea that not everything was as wonderful as it seemed... and that getting everything you always thought you wanted can be an emptier experience than we might expect.
"Welcome To The Boomtown" damn near made my top ten -- this was a particularly difficult choice, choosing the order of songs 9 through 11. It's still a great song, and finishes at #11 on my countdown.
Posted by Christopher at 10:59 PM | Comments (1)August 21, 2006
Mudge's Favorite 134 Songs of the 80s: 100 In Dog Years
We're up to numbers 16, 15 and 14 in my little list of my favorite 134 songs of the 1980s. 16, 15 and 14... that's 98-112 in dog years. What that has to do with anything, I don't know. But I have been milking this list for so long now that I have run out of witty intros to these entries. Moving on...
16. Rock You Like A Hurricane, Scorpions Its recent use in a Chili's commercial notwithstanding, this rocking anthem is one of metal's all time best. The guitar riff is one of the most classic and most adrenalized in rock history, 80s or otherwise. Sports teams still use it to rile up their crowds as they take the field or the ice. And it's one of those songs that just sounds increasingly better the louder you turn it up. I don't think it's possible for "Hurricane" to come on without setting off a twitch in the feet and adrenal glands of everyone within earshot. I defy you to listen without breaking into air guitar. You can't do it. I know; I've tried. The video is a prime example of mid-80s metal cheese, but that's okay... everyone needs a faux "steel" cage that bends as soon as you touch it in their lives, you know? Scorpions' biggest hit comes in at #16 on my list.
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15. Desire, U2 "Bo Diddley for the 80s" is how Edge once described what U2 was aiming for when they wrote this song. It does sound a bit like "Who Do You Love?" doesn't it? The lead single off Rattle and Hum, "Desire" was a three chord, rollicking good time with a great breakdown, and some classic Bono vocal work ("Aw, SISTER... I can't LETTTT you goooooo!"), and is one of those songs that's fun to play, fun to sing, fun to hear, fun to dance to... hell, it's just fun. U2 not only showed up 5 times in my list, they actually put three songs in the top 15. This is the first of those three. Less ponderous than much of their other songs of the time, "Desire" was just dedicated to rocking out and being fun. It still is one of my favorite rock out songs even today.
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14. 18 And Life, Skid Row Before he was VH1's de facto 80s program host... before he shook up Broadway as Dr.Jekylll/Mr. Hive, Sebastian Bach had himself a hell of a set of pipes, singing with Skid Row. And the cautionary tale of "Ricky" -- the young boy who came from the edge of town... who had a heart of stone, fought like a switchblade, and walked the streets a soldier -- well, I don't know if it actually kept anyone from getting into trouble, but who cares? It was one kick-ass song. I always loved the melodrama in the lyrics and the powerful guitar behind the chorus... unfortunately for Sebastian and his crew, I never liked another Skid Row song again. But this one was one hell of a great debut single... and Sebastian shows off a hell of a vocal range at the end, really reaching into the higher register. All in all, an 80s metal-pop classic, a great song, and #14 on my list.
Mudge's Favorite 134 Songs of the 80s: Teenage Wasteland
Well, it's actually not a wasteland, but I couldn't think of any other pithy references to teen numbers that didn't involve something that would get Doc and MU making smart-ass, exaggerated references to my dating history. So the Who it is. Anyway, we're getting into my most favorite 80s songs now -- and while I was tempted to slow things down even more and cut to two a day, my computer will not last that long. So we're back up to four.
20. 867-5309 (Jenny), Tommy Tutone You called it, didn't you? Admit it. Whatever unfortunate SOB had that phone number in your area code, they got a call from you asking for Jenny, didn't they? The call and respond phone number bit, and the one-hit wonder status of Tommy Tutone, get this song dismissed as 80s cheese by some, but if you listen to it, there's a really good guitar line to it. I wouldn't really call it "new wave" -- as members of the band have acknowledged, they were basically a bar band, and then one day the record label put skinny ties on them and they were new wave -- but whatever you call it, rock and roll, new wave, cheese, whatever... I still think this is an underrated song. Except for on my list, where it ranks at #20.
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19. Angel, Aerosmith You want a power ballad? How about the first big power ballad from the bad boys from Boston? The second hit off their comeback album "Permanent Vacation," Angel reached #3 and provided Aerosmith with what to that point was their highest appearance ever on the Billboard pop chart. And as for the band, let me just say that at one point, long ago, I could hit all the notes in this song... and girls liked this song, -- a lot! -- so I really don't care if you think it's one of Aerosmith's wussier efforts. Angel always treated me very, very well. And oh by the way? Surprisingly good three part harmony at the end of the song, when they're winding out of the song. No other power ballad ranked so high on my list... so if the quintessential 80s millieu or theme was the power ballad, then "Angel" by Aerosmith scores as my king of the genre: my favorite power ballad of the decade. Overall, it's ranked #19 (and since that was my basseball number and is still my favorite number, it's only fitting).
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18. Bark At The Moon, Ozzy Osbourne The Prince of Darkness scores his highest ranking on my countdown with this, the title track of his third solo album, from late 1983/early 1984. From its instantly recognizable opening guitar riff, to its horroristic/occultish theme (a werewolf-like thing that comes back from the dead -- "They cursed and buried him, alone with shame -- and thought his timeless soul had gone/in empty burning hell, unholy one... but he's returned to prove them wrong -- so wrong."), to the kick-ass guitar solo in the middle by Jake E. Lee, everything about this song appealed to my 15 year old self: it was loud, it rocked, it would freak out any adults who listened to it, parents or otherwise... I loved it then, and still love it now. (Oh, and by the way... how come when Bram Stoker writes about unholy things that return from the dead, it's a literary classic... but when Ozzy sings about them, he's a satanic bad influence on our youth? It was that kind of hypocritical and fearmongering rejection of Ozzy that just jacked up his appeal to teenagers... we could consider his reputation just one more example of adult hypocrisy -- or at least I did.) Ozzy, his werewolf, and Jake E.'s solo end up at #18.
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17. Peace Sells... But Who's Buying? Megadeth Perhaps the single best "f**k off" anthem from the metal generation, "Peace Sells" is an angry tell-off of everyone who judged metal kids without knowing them, of everyone who thought they knew what metal fans were all about without having ever made the effort to actually talk to anyone or find out. But Dave Mustaine did it in such a sneering, metal way that he didn't seem like he was kissing anyone's tail in trying to make up to them -- his tell-off had just enough metal style to be funny and real to his fans. "Whaddya mean I don't believe in God? I talk to him every day! Whaddya mean I don't support your system? I go to court when I have to!" And one of my favorite lyrics ever -- both for its defiance and the sneering way Mustaine delivered it: "Whaddya mean, I couldn't be the President... of the United States of America? Tell me somethin' -- it's still 'We... the People, rrright?" In other words, just because you don't approve of me or my life, doesn't mean that I'm not just as good as you are, and you can kiss off for your superiority complex. Heh, heh. I'd like to walk down the aisle of some southern evangelical congregation with this song blasting.
Musically, this album proved emphatically that Dave Mustaine wasn't just that guy who got kicked out of Metallica for drug abuse -- he kicked ass in his own right. And both the opening bass riff and the guitar line from the chorus got adopted by MTV as the theme for their "MTV News" segments. And let's face it... beyond the sneering, defiant tone of the lyrics, it's just a kick-ass head-banging song. End of sentence. "Peace Sells..." is my favorite kiss-off song ever, and makes #17 on my top 134 of the 1980s.
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Posted by Christopher at 07:23 AM | Comments (1)August 19, 2006
Mudge's Favorite 134 Songs of the 80s: The Last of the Pure Pop
Continuing on... getting down to the real nitty gritty here. And while much of the rest of this list will be on the metallic side (or the hair side), these four happen to be four of the highest purely pop songs left in my Top 134. Yep, there's not a single metal thing about any of these... they might not even have upset your parents. But dammit, I liked 'em anyway. And they happen to have fallen in order, 24 to 21 on this list. So....
24. Missing You, John Waite I can hear the howls of rage from MU Hoop and Tweety already for putting this slice of pure pop in front of AC/DC. But you know what? I just liked this song. A lot. From the reverse psychology chorus ("I ain't missin' you at all" -- even though the song is about how much he misses her) to the really catchy hook, this was just a really well crafted pop song. The whole 'shatter-the-pay-phone-receiver' trick in the video was also pretty cool. Great pop song from 1984, and it reaches #24 on my top 134 list.
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23. The Stroke, Billy Squier This song was about sleazy record company executives. No, really. What did you think it was about? You dirty little cheeky monkeys! Billy Squier's 1981 ode to the jerks and wankers he ran across in the music industry quickly picked up a more onanistic reputation in urban myth -- but whatever you thought it was about, there was no denying that it was a great song. There's a fantastic call-and-respond potential in the chorus; in fact, I would love to do this song with a band, if only for the ability to get a roomful of people to make vulgar hand gestures in public at my direction. But beyond that... the snare brushing to make the drumline sound like the oars moving in time to the call of coxswain Billy (oh stop it, I told you that the song was not about paying attention to your own coxswain!), to the catchy nature of the guitar riff, this is just a great song that's hard (stop it, I said!) not to sing along to. It comes in at number #23 on the countdown.
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22. Victory Line, Limited Warranty. Nope, you've never heard of this song or this band. (For the record, they were a Minneapolis band who won Star Search in 1985.) No one who wasn't within range of Minneapolis-St. Paul radio stations in the spring of 1986 would have ever heard of it. And if you watch/listen to it now, you're almost sure to ask "how did this song ever get in here?"
But our love of songs often comes as much from the memories we associate with them as from the songs themselves. And so it is for me with this song. After Limited Warranty won Star Search and got their record contract, their first album and first single came out in the spring of 1986. While it peaked out somewhere around #80 on the national charts, in Minnesota they were favorite sons who'd won big nationally, and Minneapolis radio played the spit out of this song; you literally could not ever go more than 15 minutes without hearing it on one of the pop stations. Local radio got way behind these guys, and for the spring-summer of 1986 they were as huge back home as Prince or the 'Mats.
And "Victory Line"s run -- April to July 1986 -- happened to coincide with my final two months of high school. There was and is no getting around it; this song was/is my "graduating from high school" song. Those last two months of school, when you're 17 or 18 and about to finish school and join the world, and you're on top of the world and indestructable and everything seems so optimistic and perfect and like you can't wait for the rest of your life to begin because you're going to take on the world and leave it crying uncle... that's the phase I was in when this song was all you could hear on the radio stations in our area. Those are the wonderful, wistful, innocent memories I associate with this song... it takes me back to when I was young, had the best body I'll ever have, had more naive confidence than I will ever have, was on top of the world and had not yet experienced enough of the world to even realize how naive I was. It was the most optimistic time of my life, and that's what this song is for me. Think of your own life, the most optimistic, indestructable, on top of it all time you ever experienced... and the song you associate with it. Don't you think you might overrank that song on your own list because of its association with that time for you?
So yeah... the song's not that great when I listen to it with a fresh ear in 2006. It doesn't matter. This is my graduating from high school song, and because of that it is #22 on my list -- and I don't care whether you've ever heard it or think it's cheesy 80s schlock. The memories and feelings it induces make this one of my all time favorites, and it always will be. Watch the video here.
21. What Does It Take, Honeymoon Suite Two hit wonders (remember "New Girl Now?") from Niagara Falls, Canada, Honeymoon Suite made a permanent entry into my pantheon with this 1985 hit which was huge in Canada (and thus also got significant radio airplay in "south Canada" -- i.e. Minnesota). I make no pretenses herel; it's pure pop. And it's one of my all time favorite examples of pure pop. I think it ended up on the soundtrack for one of the John Cusack movies of the 80s too. I can't think of anything else to write about this song, other than that it is one of my favorite "sing along in the car when you think no one can hear what you have on" songs. It comes in at #21 on this list, and could easily have gone even higher.
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Posted by Christopher at 07:23 PM | Comments (4)August 16, 2006
Mudge's Favorite 134 Songs of the 80s: Pop, Rock, and Classic TV
Kicking into the mid 20s here, we're now closing in on the real big hits; when we're done with this foursome, we'll be at #25. In this grouping, we find one of the 80s biggest pop bands, one of the pioneering combinations of music and video imagery, one of the all-time bad-ass rockingest bands ever, and the decade's most versatile musical genius.
28. Do You Believe In Love, Huey Lewis & the News Gotta admit, if you listed most of Huey & the News' big hits from the 80s, I wouldn't have even put them on the tentative list for consideration. I just wasn't a big fan. But their first hit out of the gate was always one of my favorites. "Do You Believe In Love" was written at virtually the completion of the recording of their second album for Chrysalis Records, "Picture This," because the record company thought the album needed a hit. Robert John "Mutt" Lange -- later famous for producing Def Leppard and reproducing with Shania Twain -- cranked out the song in short order, and a few months later Huey & the News had their first top ten hit. (I always thought that the chord progression and the call-and-respond lyrics in the verses sounded something like ELO's "Sweet Talkin' Woman," but that's just me.) Anyway, I loved "Do You..." and it makes it to #28 in my list.
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27. In The Air Tonight, Phil Collins I wasn't a huge Phil Collins fan (I know, that's sacrilege to Tweetypie). His style just wasn't mine. But I liked In The Air Tonight when it came out in 1981 because it sounded bad-ass. I liked it even more when the urban legend around the song grew, and Phil supposedly brought the guy who let the kid drown front row tickets for one of his concerts and then shone the spotlight on him... who cares that it's not true, it was a great urban legend!
But what cemented this song for me was the same thing that cemented it for many others... its inclusion in the pilot for Miami Vice. Miami Vice quickly dated and has become something of a running joke or parody of the 80s (witness the Glenn Guglia character in "The Wedding Singer"), but those jokes overlook just how stylish and groundbreaking that show was when it came on the air in 1985. And the use of "Air" in the pilot ranks as one of both television and music's more creative and more "that ... was... awesome" moments of the decade. In honor of that role, I give you below not the video for the song itself... but the classic scene from the first episode of Miami Vice. Pure gold, I tell you. One of the most memorable scenes in TV history, thanks to Phil Collins.
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26. Back In Black, AC/DC This. Band. Kicked. Your. Ass. And mine. And that cop's over there. And anyone else's that got in their way. One of the all-time rockingest, thrust-your-fist-in-the-air, bang-your-head, scream-it-out-loud bands ever, with what is arguably their greatest, loudest, fiercest song ever. The album "Back In Black" was recorded in tribute to recently departed Bon "Death By Misadventure" Scott, and featured the band's new singer, Brian Johnson. Johnson delivered some of the best vocals of the decade... but the only problem was, Johnson's high-pitched evilly socwling growl was impossible to replicate if you were singing along -- unless you did something painful to your testicles with a fork while trying. (Needless to say, I was never part of an attempt to cover this song.) But - this is one of the most kick-ass rocking songs of the 80s or any other decade. Crank it up... this is one of the songs I want playing when I enter the ring or come up to bat. Pure adrenaline.
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25. Little Red Corvette, Prince Sex on vinyl, this song was. From the use in the title of the pre-teen metaphor for, um, parts... to the pocket full of horses -- Trojans, all of them used.... to the way the synth line just sort of melted into the rest of the song, to Prince's sultry delivery. I don't know a whole lot of women who aren't all over this song. Which is just fine, since it's a great song and since good things usually follow when it's played. This was Prince's first top ten hit, was the song that opened him up to his widest audience yet, and gave the best indication of what was yet to come from this brilliant musical genius. "Little Red Corvette" is Prince's fourth and final appearance in my Top 134 list, and to this day stands as my favorite Prince song.
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Posted by Christopher at 07:03 PM | Comments (6)August 15, 2006
Mudge's Favorite 134 Songs of the 80s: 30 Is The New... I Don't Know
Moving on ... we break out of the 30s in today's grouping, and get into the 20s. Yep, we're talking about my favorite 30 songs of the decade in which I came of age -- went from being an 11 year old 6th grader on January 1, 1980, to being a 21 year old college 4th year junior on December 31, 1989. Hard to believe that we're talking 17 years now since the decade ended. Time flies so fast, huh? Anyway, on with the trip down memory lane.
32. Eyes Without A Face, Billy Idol Two of my favorite true stories about this song: when this song came out and I loved it, sitting in front of MTV waiting for the video, my mother -- ever on the lookout for influences in my corner of the world -- saw the part of the video where, in the bridge between the first chorus and second verse, the guy is tying a strip around his bicep. "Isn't that what they do to get their veins ready for drugs?" she asked. "No!" I told her. "I think he's just doing it to make his arm look bigger." The laugh in this story isn't that my mom fell for it. It's that my naive midwestern bumblefork 15 year old self really thought I was telling her the truth.
The second story: in the summer of 1984, my family took one of the only long vacations we ever took, driving from Minnesota to Washington DC for a two week trip to the nation's capital. Somewhere in Ohio (which is a looooong state to drive through), my younger brother and I took over the radio station decision making. "Eyes" came on. When the guitar solo started up, my father panicked, immediately hit the brakes, and began looking around wildly in the mirrors for the cop whose siren he could have sworn he just heard. As soon as we realized that he'd mistaken Stevie Vai for Officer Ponch, my brother and I erupted in hysterical giggling laughter, which just angered my father further... and I remember my poor mom trying not to laugh -- which couldn't have been easy, given my dad's Homer Simpsonesque explosion of frustration and my brother and I giggling like the little brother in "A Christmas Story."
Good times, good times. Anyway, here's Billy with his third and final appearance at #32.
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31. Running To Stand Still, U2 Never released as a single, but one of my favorites from U2's breakthrough "Joshua Tree" album. A haunting dirge about heroin addiction, the song features all of Bono's gifts for metaphor ("I see seven towers, but I only see one way out," referring to Dublin's poor public housing complex, Ballymun) and power ("you've gotta cry without weepin', talk without speakin', scream without rasin' your voice"). The song didn't judge; it just observed. That's always the better course in music, don't you think? A live performance of the song is below; and when Bono dedicates it to "the brave men and women of the United States military," it's enough to make me want to cry.
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30. The Bird, Morris Day and the Time Another Minneapolis band, kicking out the Minneapolis sound from the mid-80s. I always found it ironic that "the Minneapolis sound" was urban and R&B based -- given that the city was about 94% white, and the state about 98% white. Like saying the "Swedish sound" originated in Colombia or something. But - it was still some great music. And while Morris Day's persona irked me, there was no getting around how much the Time kicked ass. Others are partial to "Jungle Love," but I always loved The Bird -- the dance was funny -- not for everybody -- just the sexy people!. I always thought Day was a really good dancer, and when they all started doing their synched up little hip swivel dance, it looked really, really cool. I miss First Ave, too; sadly, Minneapolis' tie to cool from the 80s decade went the way of the dodo a couple of years ago... which was akin to New York City letting CBGB's go away. Said, I pledge allegiance... to The Time!
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29. Do They Know It's Christmas? Band Aid To this day, this is my favorite holiday song. To this day, it's my favorite charity song ever. And unlike USA For Africa's cloying, schmaltzy effort, "Do They Know It's Christmas" was actually a good song. We listened to "We Are The World" because we were supposed to, but we listened to "Christmas" because we wanted to. I have never forgotten this video, or the song. Absolute 80s classic. Questions that abound: Why was Paul Young -- Paul Freaking Young! -- given two lines, while neither Paul McCartney nor David Bowie got one? Why did Sting get no lines for himself, only harmonies with Simon LeBon and Bono? And just what did Bono's half-growled, half-screamed line "Well tonight, thank God it's them instead of you!" mean, exactly? Was I supposed to thank God that other people were starving?
Anyway, Bono's line and the way he delivered it stand as six of the grandest seconds in pop history. The video is the best 80s time capsule I can think of that captures the broadest range of pop music of the time (again, skip the self-congratulatory USA for Africa effort, which raised money in spite of itself and was kind of embarrassing). And Bob Geldof is the single best argument for waving that silly requirement that those given full knighthood with the Sir title have to be British (he's Irish, and his knighthood is merely honorary). And nothing against International Physicians Against Nuclear War, but Geldof not receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 ranks as among the prize's greatest embarrassments. This isn't just a great song, it's a great moment in time and represents pop music's better angels. I'm proud to rank it at #29.
Posted by Christopher at 07:57 PM | Comments (1)August 14, 2006
Mudge's Favorite 134 Songs of the 80s: Classics
Here we go, the next four in my Top 134 countdown of my favorite songs of the 1980s. For those wondering why I haven't done a whole lot of blogging on other subjects lately, it's because my laptop is still ready to catch fire and needs desperately to be taken in for servicing... but I hate leaving things undone. So I fire up the computer for a few minutes each day, just long enough to blog the next part of the countdown... then have to turn it off before I burn my place down. So, if you're wondering when I'll be back blogging my usual drivel, it'll be after I finish this countdown, then get the laptop fixed. So if the countdown's not doing anything for ya, I apologize. Be patient. Please. Anyway, moving on, this group of four includes some absolute classics.
36. Sunday Bloody Sunday, U2 The first time I ever heard of or saw U2, it was on TV; I think PBS was showing the entire Red Rocks concert or something. But the very first exposure I ever had to U2 was this legendary performance at Red Rocks, when US audiences were getting their first sense of just how electric a personality Bono was, and how powerful this band was. To this day, 23 years later, Bono chanting at the crowd "NO MORE" still brings me chills. Great performance, great song.... but this is not a rebel song!
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35. Tainted Love, Soft Cell An early 80s classic with some very serious masochistic undertones. And, it's guaranteed to get every woman in the room to get up and start dancing -- which makes it a fun song to have in your collection. Everything about this recording is campy classic - from the eerie minor key, to Marc Almond's slightly creepy delivery, to the bizarre grouping of this song into a medley with a Supremes cover, "Where Did Our Love Go?" Soft Cell was a one hit wonder in the US, but oh what a hit -- it stayed on the Hot 100 charts for a then-record 43 weeks. To this day, it's a surefire dance floor winner.
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34. Biko, Peter Gabriel As long as we're highlighting songs that represented my first exposure to things, it was Peter Gabriel's haunting anthem memorializing the martyred activist Stephen Biko that first made me aware of apartheid and what it was, and how violent and evil the South African regime at the time was. (The Reagan-era textbooks of the time didn't exactly highlight issues of conscience anywhere in the world, you know?) I didn't hear it until a few years after it came out, but at least I heard it, and it reached me, and I learned. The song still haunts me today, and even though South Africa has experienced a rebirth and has re-entered the community of civilized nations, I still wonder what more we could have done, how many more lives the US could have saved, and why we as a nation chose not to do more. The first glimmering of a social conscience I ever had came from this song, and I have not forgotten Stephen Biko or his sacrifice. Peter Gabriel makes his fifth and final appearance on this countdown with 1980's incredibly powerful "Biko" at #34.
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33. Sister Christian, Night Ranger The power ballad to end all power ballads, this is the one piano song that no male is ashamed to love -- the one that gets any guy into immediate air guitar or air piano or air drums mode. Immortalized even further by the scene in Boogie Nights in which the coked out producer and dealer tells Mark Walhberg and John C. Reilly to be quiet as the build to the chorus plays, "Sister Christian" is perhaps one of the 80s' most emblematic and quintessential tunes. It belongs in virtually any collection of the decade's best. Power ballads? Oh yeah. Pop hits? One of the biggest of 1983. Rock anthems? It was Night Ranger's biggest.
I may take some hell for some of these choices, but I think the only argument I might get on this one is that it's not high enough on the countdown. An absolute classic.
Posted by Christopher at 07:02 PM | Comments (4)August 13, 2006
Mudge's Favorite 134 Songs of the 80s: A-Mudge-ican Top 40
I shoulda had Casey Kasem recording the intros to these last 40 songs. But we're into the homestretch here, the final forty songs of my favorite 134 of the 1980s. And now that we're into the final 40, I'm going to slow down... we've been doing five per day, but now we'll shift to four each day. We'll start off today with #40-#37.
40. New Thing, Enuff Z'nuff The year was 1989, and to be a star in rock and roll, you had to wear enough rouge, eye shadow and lipstick to make a hooker blush. Such was the case -- obviously -- for the boys from Enuff Z'nuff. You know, when I made this list out originally, I had this one up at #40 because I loved it when it came out. Now that I have it here at 40, while I do still like it, I am kind of miffed at myself for putting it over Purple Rain. If I was allowing myself "re-thinks," this one'd be a bit further down. But I'm not, so here it stays where I originally put it -- #40. Check out our highly pancaked and lipsticked heroes performing this song here.
39. Ah! Leah, Donnie Iris Power chord heaven. As far as I count, there's like four chords through this whole song. Which is just fine, me being a simple, power chord kind of boy. And all of us, boy or girl, can relate to the theme of this song... because we all have or had that one person in our worlds who we knew we would never have a long, lasting relationshiip with; the one with whom things just did not click on any level except one... but the connection on that one level was so intense that you kept (keep?) going back and indulging that incredible chemistry "just one more time"... because when you got around that person, neither one of you could show any kind of restraint. The other thing about this minor hit from 1981 is that it shows why some artists had their careers whacked by the video revolution. Iris made a video for this song, but in hindsight it might have been a bigger hit if he hadn't shown people how he looked. If Lewis Skulnick from "Revenge of the Nerds" would ever have been a rock singer, this is how he would have looked. And this may stand out as an example of really, really bad early music video making.
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38. Master of Puppets, Metallica You didn't really think we were going to get all the way through this without Metallica, did you? I'll admit, I am still very upset with them -- especially Lars -- for their role in the Napster situation, and I'll never quite forgive them. But I always loved this song, then and now. Marquette Hoops and I went to see them a couple of years ago at Giants Stadium, and they still rocked as well as I remembered. Was a great afternoon, seeing them (and a bunch of here-today kinds of bands like Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park opening for them). As for the song... the video selection below isn't the original... but Metallica did a very interesting experiment a few years ago, performing a concert with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra -- the quintessential metal band playing a concert hall with one of the country's premier classical orchestras backing them with custom-written backing parts written especially for the show by composer Michael Kamen. I always thought it was a cool effort at being new and creatve, and so I'm borrwing the video from that performance.
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37. Life In A Northern Town, The Dream Academy Folkie-sixties commentary on family and memories is good. Folkie-sixties commentary on family and memories set within the context of a dying northern city during the rust belt years is better. Folkie-sixties commentary on family and memories set within the context of a dying northern city during the rust belt years that features a 12-string sound (even though it wasn't a 12 string) and a catchy singalong chorus is best of the three. This was the only major hit for the Dream Academy, but if I was gonna have just one hit, I wouldn't mind it being this one.
August 12, 2006
Mudge's Favorite 134 Songs of the 80s: Rushed version
So much to do today, so little time... and I was out playing cards until 3:00 am last night, so I ended up sleeping till 10. Ugh. Here's an abbreviated (for me) version of the next four on the list.
45. Good Times, INXS and Jimmy Barnes Oops, I goofed. I said INXS was done on the list, and overlooked that just two songs later, they're here again. This was a cover of an Easybeats song from like 1966. I guess Jimmy Barnes is pretty legendary in Austrailia, but this was his one appearance on the US charts, courtesy of INXS and the movie "The Lost Boys," on whose soundtrack this was the big single. It's a rollicking, bar-band kind of song -- in fact, if I were to have a band right now, I'd want to do this cover. "Good Times" made it into the top 5 in 1987, but it peaks out at #45 in my Top134. Check the video here.
44.Say It Isn't So, The Outfield For a pure pop album, I sure wore out my cassette of the Outfield's debut album "Play Deep." But while the big single off the album was the "what she doesn't know won't hurt her" classic, "Your Love," I always liked this one -- the first single off the album -- much better. Check the video here.
43. Let's Dance, David Bowie David Bowie had been absent from the US charts for more than five years by 1983... and then suddenly he was back, starting with this monster comeback hit, only his second #1 in the US. Great bass line, easy song to dance to, and a video that, while hard to connect to the actual song, reinforced Bowie's reputation as an artistic visionary. Check the video here.
42. Cult Of Personality, Living Colour A black metal band? What? That's crazy! Unfortunately, the novelty of actual diversity in the hard rock world sometimes overwhelmed how good these guys were; Vernon Reid could wail on guitar. And their biggest hit, "Cult of Personality" is one of the 80s songs that holds up the best 15-20 years on. From the classic opening riff, to the socially biting lyrics, to Reid's kick-ass solos in the middle... "Cult of Personality" remains an absolute classic of the time.
41. Big Time, Peter Gabriel There was a time when I hadn't yet fully grasped the irony and sarcasm dripping from this song... and I adopted it as my own. I mean, I knew it was a little self-deprecating and all, but I didn't quite get that Gabriel was hammering the overly ambitious, overly self-serious types. And to my late-teen self, the lyrics seemed to fit everything I wanted to believe about myself. "The place where I come from... is a small town. They think so small; they use small words. But not me -- I 'm smarter than that; I worked it out... I've had enough, I'm getting out -- to the city, the big big city. I'll be a big noise with all the big boys; so much stuff I will own!" Yeah... teenage selves can be embarrassing to revisit, huh? But combine those parody of materialism lyrics that I misinterpreted as self-deprecating ambition... with yet another video from Gabriel that was ahead of what anyone else was doing, and you have a song that I loved then, and that now makes me laugh at what a dork I was. (Shut up... I know I still am, but you didn't have to tell me!)
Mudge's Favorite 134 Songs of the 80s: Recap, #65-#41
As always, parentheses indicate how many times an artist or band has been on this countdown to date.
65. What You Need, INXS
64. Sledgehammer, Peter Gabriel (2)
63. Jessie’s Girl, Rick Springfield
62. Panama, Van Halen (3)
61. Too Late For Love, Def Leppard (2)
60. Shot In The Dark, Ozzy Osbourne
59. Too Drunk To F*ck, Dead Kennedys
58. I Want Your Sex, George Michael (2)
57. Shock The Monkey, Peter Gabriel (3)
56. Kiss Off, Violent Femmes (2)
55. Brothers In Arms, Dire Straits
54. Why Can’t This Be Love, Van Halen (4)
53. Paradise City, Guns N Roses (3)
52. I Don’t Mind At All, Bourgeois Tagg
51. Everybody Wants You, Billy Squier
50. Need You Tonight, INXS (2)
49. Purple Rain, Prince (3)
48. Radio Ga-Ga, Queen
47. New Sensation, INXS (3)
46. Round and Round, Ratt
45. Good Times, INXS/Jimmy Barnes (4)
44. Say It Isn’t So, The Outfield
43. Let’s Dance, David Bowie
42. Cult Of Personality, Living Color
41. Big Time, Peter Gabriel (4)
August 09, 2006
Mudge's Favorite 134 Songs of the 80s: The Great Front Man Group
In this grouping of five, you get a few of the best front men in the history of rock music.
50. Need You Tonight, INXS I've already raved about Michael Hutchence's power and charisma as a front man, so there's no need to revisit that meme. I'll just say that this song was the one that got me into INXS. And if we're ever out at a karaoke bar, I'll knock your socks (or more) off doing a version of this song. Hutchence manages to nail the seductive low growl and the full-voiced upper parts of the register in the same song; it's deceptively not an easy song to sing. As for the video... god, mullets were and remain awful things. Check it out here (and you even get "Mediate," with its Dylanesque sign flipping, at no extra cost).
49. Purple Rain, Prince I know that Marquette Hoops will argue that this one should have been in the top 10, and I might be inclined to agree with him on some days. If you haven't listened to Purple Rain in a while, you'll be amazed at how well it's held up, and what a great song this still is. Mournful, sad, and triumphant all at once, it is Prince at his absolute best, atop his game with the song that absolutely deserved to be the title song to the movie and album. His bluesy guitar solo at the end is one of the most majestic in the entire history of rock and roll. In short, there's nothing not to fall in love with in this song. And if I had this list to make over, or if I'd allowed myself "re-thinks" after making the initial compilation, I'd have put this one higher. Great song by one of the most incredibly talented artists of his generation... or any other -- and this song reminds you of just how great he was.Check the video here.
48. Radio Ga-Ga, Queen I liked this song when it came out. Liked, but didn't love. But that all changed on one day: July 13, 1985. Because at Live Aid, at Wembley Stadium in London, Freddie Mercury put on a clinic -- the most classic demostration of what it is to be a front man ever in rock history. I'm serious, I'm calling this one out: the single greatest live performance by a singer in the history of rock and roll was Freddie Mercury leading Queen and 90,000 other people in "Radio Ga-Ga." It's been written somewhere that Freddie could have ordered that crowd to march to Africa and feed the people in person, and they would have followed. I agree.
Watch him; watch how he owns his stage, the confidence, the god-ness of the man on the stage that day...the expert way that he plays them, plays to them, takes them from the palm of his hand to the depth of his heart to the soaring heights of their souls, all in five minutes... he had control of his body, his voice... and he reached out and took control of 90,000 more, all wanting to be part of the moment, part of him, it inspires at every viewing... and the image during the final chorus, with Freddie standing on stage, his right arm outstretched to the audience, almost massaging them and manipulating them to his will, and 90,000 sets of hands moving in unison at his feet, is one of the most iconic in all rock and roll. Not just of that day; I'm talking ever.
Every kid, and I mean every kid who ever wants to be a lead singer should have to watch this clip to see how it's supposed to be done -- and how none of us will ever do it ... because Freddie was one of a kind, and we'll not see his like again. Solely on the strength of the performance below, Radio Ga-Ga comes in at #48 on my countdown.
47. New Sensation, INXS Danceable rock and roll... the best of both 80s worlds. INXS in the opera house... Hutchence's voice is great again here, and the guitar riff is both catchy and fun. This is another one I'll rock you with at karaoke some night... INXS's last of three entries in this countdown, "New Sensation" comes in at #47. Check the video here.
46. Round and Round, Ratt Okay, back to the pop metal that I've been gravitating toward as the countdown goes on. I was never a huge fan of Ratt, but this -- their first single -- was a classic and one of the decade's best debut efforts. It didn't hurt that their manager's uncle was Milton Berle, and they managed to get him to do the video -- guaranteeing heavy MTV rotation -- but this song would have been a hit on its own, even without the hit video. Catchy hook, a great rocking rhythm riff, a head banging solo in the middle... and this song takes me back to 1984, and parties at a friend's friend's basement... amazing how songs that felt so rebellious and bad-ass when you were 15 or 16 now sound like power pop, huh? The video's here.... though I am sure that Steven Pearcy (the singer) is wishing to God he'd never worn that outfit.
Posted by Christopher at 11:25 PM | Comments (3)Mudge's Favorite 134 Songs of the 80s: #55-#51
Getting closer to the top... today, we're in the low 50s.
55. Brothers In Arms, Dire Straits Back then, I liked this song because the video, featuring similar rotoscope techniques that had worked so well for a-ha in "Take On Me," just seemed kick-ass. Today, while the rotoscope looks a bit dated, I still love the song, but for different reasons: the mourning, soulful, bluesy guitar lead is the main one. The general anti-war statement is another. And of course, the fact that Aaron Sorkin used this song for one of the best-ever episodes of "The West WIng" (the one when President Bartlet has announced that he has MS, Mrs. Van Landingham was just killed in the car accident, and he dramatically has to think about whether to run again for re-election... and just before he goes in front of the cameras, he shoves his hand in his pocket and Leo whispers to the staff, "watch this!" because he knows Bartlet's got his fire back... episode gave me chills, man). Check the video here.
54. Why Can't This Be Love, Van Halen Van Halen makes their 4th and final appearance in the Top 134 with the only Van Hagar song in this countdown. But it was a doozy -- their first song with a new lead singer had to be a great one in order to ease fans' minds... mission accomplished. Getting away from the synth-heavy sound they'd been into on 1984, "Why Can't This Be Love" announced to the world that VH was still around and was a lot more than that wacky Diamond Dave. Great song, one of the Van Hagar version of the band's best. Check the video here.
53. Paradise City, Guns N Roses The Guns are back for their third appearance in the Top 134 with the third single off of "Appetite For Destruction" (which still stands in my opinion as one of the top three albums o all time). Paradise City is a stadium anthem -- if you ever saw them in their prime and remember the crowd singing and clapping along to the chorus, then you know. Slash's riffs still hold up; I'll argue to anyone that GnR's s stuff sounds as good today as it did then, and aged far better than anything else of the era. And from the opening chords of this song, you're taken away to Paradise City right along with them. Damn you, Axl, for screwing up this great thing, man. But whatever... take me down to the Paradise City, where the grass is green and the girls are pretty.
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52. I Don't Mind At All, Bourgeois Tagg A few songs back I mentioned that I have a weakness for songs that sound like they have a 12-string in them. I also have a weakness, apparently, for songs with faux self-examination and a guy's BS "it's not you, it's me" breakup tactics. And so even though very few of you might ever have heard this song (it peaked at #39 back in 1987, and is so obscure that it is one of the few things I can't find on YouTube), it's not only on my countdown but places higher than mighty Van Halen, three GnR songs, Poison and AC/DC. Oh - and the song's last line, out of left field and not fitting with the rest of the song: "Several years ago I said goodbye to my own sanity... but I don't mind at all".... throwing that line into a breakup song was cool, man. Here's a 30 second clip of the song (if you have Windows Media Player).
51. Everybody Wants You, Billy Squier Come on, admit it: you changed the lyrics when you were singing along and sang "everybody wants me," didn't you? Before the video for Rock Me Tonite killed his credibility, Billy Squier actually was a cool rocker -- and "Everybody Wants You" was a prime example. Featuring a classic riff, the song is about getting caught up in being "in the scene" and having it overtake you. Are you listening, Lindsey Lohan? "You got your glory -- you pay for it all/you take your pension in loneliness and alcohol." The only bad thing about this song is that the video is a prime example of early 80s record company-doesn't-get-video-but-knows-they-need-to-have-one-so-they-schlopped-anything-together cheese. Awful video. Great song.
Posted by Christopher at 06:23 AM | Comments (0)August 06, 2006
Mudge's Favorite 134 Songs of the 80s: Don't Let Your Mom Hear These
It just so happens that this little gathering of five happens to include a couple that you might have had to hide from your parents when you were listening to them. Which is all good, because there's always a little bit of rebellion or danger in good music.
60. Shot In The Dark, Ozzy Osbourne Here's one where I wish I could be a little more revisionist in this list. 20 years later, I'd much rather be able to sit here and put "Crazy Train" here instead. But if I'm being honest, I have to admit that I really, really liked "A Shot In The Dark" when it came out my senior year. It's among Ozzy's poppier efforts, not nearly as 'dangerous' as most of his other stuf... and when you watch the video, I know you'll conclude as I do that glam does not suit Ozzy... he'd have been better off staying with his own look. In glam, he looks like a slightly more metallic Liberace. But poppy or not, glam-misstepped or not, I really liked it back then, and it's one of the guiltier pleasures in Ozzy's catalog. And given the befuddled, addled, drug-fried Ward Meat Cleaver that we know he turned into, this is kind of fun to look back on. The video's here.
59. Too Drunk To F*ck, The Dead Kennedys By about 1983-1984, punk had stopped being cool and had gone back underground a little bit, usurped by heavy metal as the rebel's music of choice. Among punk's proud practioners still perservering were the Dead Kennedys. And while they had other songs that I have since come to really like (Holiday In Cambodia, California Uber Alles, Nazi Punks F*ck Off), it was "Too Drunk" that -- for some reason that I just can't seem to put my finger on -- appealed to my teenage self. I first heard it in a lockerroom; the weird swim team guys, who all delighted in being non-conformists and different from the football and hockey types, had it cranked up one afternoon. I walked over to them, listened to it for a few seconds, grinned, and nodded at them... which would be about the only interaction they would choose to have with me or I with them. Loved it then, still love it today. The video listed with it here is not the Dead Kennedys, but I can't find any real video of the whole song, and this video at least does have the complete original version... so just close your eyes, take a listen... take out your f*ckin' retainer, put it in your purse... and enjoy.
58. I Want Your Sex, George Michael Remember when this was actually controversial? I mean, like really controversial? So much so that a lot of radio stations wouldn't even play it? And then just a few years later, we'd graduated to "poetry" like this sludge. But back in those quaint, Leave It To Beaver days of 1987, Michael was forced to issue statements and include them in the video that this song was about monogamy and all of its pleasures. Overlooked in all the fuss was that "Sex" was a funky, danceable, even slightly Latin-tinged record that was less a stunt for attention than a harbinger of bigger things to come from George Michael. (Yes, I just said "bigger things to come from George Michael. Get your snickering and lavatory jokes out of your systems now, kids.) Anyway, while the lyrics seem tamer with every passing year, the music still holds up. George Michael's second and final appearance on this countdown is dedicated to that wonderful thing we should all be dedicated to. Because after all, "sex is natural, sex is fun," -- I mean, um, "explore monogamy."
57. Shock The Monkey, Peter Gabriel Doesn't Peter Gabriel's 1981 haircut look like he was in 1966? But this was a very cool song, with a great rhythm line (as most Gabriel songs had), a memorable hook, and a great video. It had inexplicable imagery, a cute little animal, hand gestures (crossing one's arms at the wrist when saying "SHOCK!" in the brigde), and angry, attacking dwarves. I mean, who can't like a video with angry attacking dwarves? Gabriel shows up for the third time in the top 134 here at #57.
56. Kiss Off, Violent Femmes I know, the one everyone always talks about is Blister In The Sun. But "Kiss Off" was eminently more chant-along-able. "I hope you know that this will go down on your permanent record... oh yeah?" Or the unforgettable number count-up in the middle third... come on, everyone, sing it with me: "I take one, one, one 'cuz you left me; and two, two, two for my family; and three, three, three for my heartache; and four, four, four for my headaches; and five, five, five for for my lonely; and six, six, six for my sorrow; and seven, seven, n-n-n-no tomorrow; and eight, eight, I forget what eight was for; and nine, nine, nine for a lost God; and ten, ten, ten, for everything! everything! everything! everything!"
Best singalong song of the decade, quite possibly. Catch a non-Femmes video of the song here.
Posted by Christopher at 11:12 AM | Comments (2)August 05, 2006
Mudge's Favorite 134 Songs of the 80s: The Swingin' Sixties
I can't make myself want to give up my computer. I'm an addict in full shakes at even the prospect of not being online. Seriously, this is a problem. I will survive without it, I am sure -- but here I am risking fire rather than just release the laptop from my clutches. Is there such a thing as Internet addiction?
And of course, when one mentions addiction,one thinks of drugs -- which instantly brings the Sixties to mind. And fittingly, we've reached the sixties in my countdown of my 134 favorite songs of the '80s. So picture yourself in a boat on a river, with tangerine trees, marmalade skies, parachute pants and fringe jackets. Because here's the sixties of the 80s.
65. What You Need, INXS Long-time reader and Mudge-friend Jill has indicated her, er, fondness for the late Michael Hutchence. While I suspect her appreciation of him occurs on a different level than my own, I'm also a fan. I saw INXS on the KIck tour in 1987, and he was as electrifying a front man live in concert as I have seen in rock. The guy owned the audience. Whatever story you believe about his death, it's still a terrible shame that he's not with us anymore. "What You Need" was the monster single off the "Listen Like Thieves" album in 1986, and was the band's first US top ten hit. This is one that grew on me; I didn't like it when it first came out, but when Kick came out in 1987 and I started really liking the band, I went back and started listening to "What You Need" with fresh ears, and really got into it. INXS make their first of three appearances in this countdown here at #65. Check the video out here.
64. Sledgehammer, Peter Gabriel What would have been a really cool song anyway became kick-ass when it was supported by what was, at the time, probably the most creative and unique video in the genre's history -- or at the very least since the Michael Jackson Thriller video. The song had an almost Motown-like feel to it, with a great horn line behind the chugging rhythm line. And there were those pretty unsubtle lyrics: "Open up your fruit cage, where the fruit is as sweet as can be. I wanna be your sledgehammer." Gosh, Wally... what did he mean, 'fruit cage?' And why does he want to be her sledgehammer -- wouldn't that hurt?
True story about this groundbreaking video: the first time I saw it, it was about 3:30 in the morning on a Saturday night/Sunday morning... a bunch of us had been, uh... adding to the pension plan of the Stroh's brewing company, shall we say. I'd ended up crashing, slumped out on a couch in my buddy's basement while the party raged upstairs, a girl curled up in the crook of my (unfortunately still clothed) arm, her head on my chest, with the TV still on. I woke up in the middle of the night, probably because my arm was asleep or something, and as my party-impaired eyes strained to focus on the room around me and my brain tried to remember whose house I was in and which girl was nestling with me... the first thing I saw when my eyes cleared was two dancing forkin' turkeys (during the instrumental bridge of Slegdehammer). When you're half-awake, more-than-half inebriated, and not entirely sure of where you are... well, let's just say that spinning, dancing turkeys in front of your eyes does nothing to improve your state of mind or comfort level. Anyway - great song, and one of the all-time best videos ever done, and Peter Gabriel's second appearance on this countdown.
63. Jessie's Girl, Rick Springfield Guilty pleasure. I admit it. Yeah, Springfield was supposed to be the idol for teenage girls, not tough guy 13 year old boys. But I'll admit it: I really dug "Working Class Dog" when Springfield released it in 1981, and "Jessie's Girl" is still one of my more embarassing iTunes purchases. Oh, shut up... you have a bunch of them too, don't even pretend otherwise. Plus, he breaks a mirror with a guitar in the video... so that means he's at least a little bad-ass... doesn't it? Are you sure? (Worse yet, this is one of the songs that I still think would be fun to sing with a band in front of a crowd... geez, I'm freaking sick, aren't I?) Check the video here.
62. Panama, Van Halen The VH boys, DIamond Dave version, make their third appearance in just the last twelve songs, with what was pretty much David Lee Roth's swan song single with the band. From here, he went off to do his "Crazy From The Heat" EP, Eddie got sick of sharing the spotlight with another egocentric (only this one ten times more annoying), and the Van Hagar era was soon to be underway. Not that I minded; while the band's better songs came in the non-Hagar years, I frankly always found Roth to be someone you had to merely tolerate in order to get Eddie. Nothing special about this video, pretty much your standard performance video stuff, but it's a good, rocking, hard-driving song that's fun to sing along with, and even more fun if you're in a convertible with the top down on a sunny day. Check the video out here.
61. Too Late For Love, Def Leppard This song holds up, I think, as not an artifact of the 80s, but as purely a rocking, drum along on the steering wheel classic. The fourth single off of the monster "Pyromania" album, "Too Late For Love" has that menacing, E minor opening... the somewhat foreboding lyrics... it just sounds kind of bad-ass. (Maybe it's that howling wind effect that they threw in there.) The video was the weakest of the Pyromania videos, but who cares? Def Leppard kicked ass back then, and dammit, they still do. "Too Late For Love" is their second appearance on this countdown, and it clocks in at #61. Here's the video.
Posted by Christopher at 07:06 PM | Comments (1)August 03, 2006
Mudge's Favorite 134 Songs of the 80s: The Halfway Mark
Just so you know, I have put off taking my computer in until Saturday. It might be an electrical hazard, but it would appear that we're on a roll -- people are paying attention, I think in more ways than one and from places I didn't expect (check this out, for example... fifth bullet in the entry), and something tells me that now is not the time for a hiatus, no matter how hot my computer gets. So I'm gonna keep on keeping on.
And you know what's cool? With this entry, we're hitting the halfway mark. That's right ... in a top 134 list, the midpoint is between songs 68 and 67... so congratulations: after Hawk fired my imagination a couple of weeks back and I came up with this little list, you've made it halfway through with me. The lower the numbers, the deeper the nostalgia, the stronger the memories, and the um... funner the fun gets.
70. White Wedding, Billy Idol I actually heard White Wedding before I'd heard Billy's other songs off his eponymous 1982 album. I instantly dug it. And like so many of the songs from the early 80s, it featured a memorable video: the images of that barbed wire wedding ring going over the bride's finger (andI think I remember seeing on Behind The Music or something that this shot was not tricked ... she really took a barbed wire ring over her finger and had her knuckle split open for the video) and the motorcycle crashing through the stained glass window of the church? Classic. As for the song itself, it's one of my favorite Billy Idol songs, though he will show up again later in the countdown. Anyway, check the video here.
69. Let's Go Crazy, Prince Okay, I swear it's just a coincidence that a Prince song comes in at number 69. Really. Honest. Quite fitting though, don't you think? When "Purple Rain" was released in 1984, the Purple One took over the music world... especially in my neck of the woods, where he was a local kid made good and made huge. (I was lucky enough to still be in the Minneapolis area when his club, Glam Slam was still open... which was always a good place to go because there was a chance he'd show up on stage to just jam with the band. This song featured a kick-ass guitar solo at the end, some wonderfully obscure and odd Prince-ian lyrics, and a great video that I unfortunately can't find on YouTube anywhere. But damn, the man was at the top of his game with this album. A most deserving first ballot Rock Hall of Famer. Check out this live performance of the song from earlier this year.
68. Turning Japanese, The Vapors Why are there so many songs about, um, self-love on my countdown? Wait - don't answer that. Anywho, this new wave classic was another of the less embarrassing songs that we used to play -- which was fine with me since I'd always loved it. A highly danceable song with just enough of a cool guitar riff to make it 'okay' for a guy to dig dancing to, "Turning Japanese" was the sole hit for the Vapors, but if you're only going to have one hit, it might as well be a great one, right? (The title, in case you're incredibly thick, allegedly referred to the slightly racist slang term for the face a man would make when... well, you get the picture.) The video featured the impossibly rail thin lead singer swinging around a samuari sword in bizarre fashion -- which I suppose was supposed to be allegorical as well. Great new wave song, and a good way to end the first half of the countdown. The video's here if you want it.
67. Hot For Teacher, Van Halen. The single greatest video in the history of all video. Not just of music videos, mind you -- but of all things that human beings have ever captured in motion, from the old zoetropes all the way up until digital imagery. If I get one wish before I die, it's to find Miss Phys Ed someday for a private lesson. But beyond the teachers (man, why didn't any of mine look like that?), this video's classic in at least a couple of other ways. First of all, the kid versions of the band? Great concept and a lot of fun. The whole Waldo thing still makes me grin. And best of all? During the dance sequences, watching Alex Van Halen -- arguably one o the best rock drummers of the decade -- clearly having no rhythm whatsoever and being unable to keep in step with Michael and Eddie. Seriously, watch when they're all in those hideous pink tuxes; Alex might be able to drum like a legend, but he can't dance to save his forkin' life.
The song itself, separated from the video (pick me, Miss Phys Ed! pick me!) is still fabulous -- from the opening drum solo and Eddie's fast-fingered riff, to the great solo in the middle. MU Hoop and I were arguing on IM a while ago about when VH may have reached its zenith... for me it might have been this video.
66. Goodbye, Night Ranger I'll clue you in on two very embarrassing little secrets. First, the very first concert I ever went to was Night Ranger at the Minnesota State Fair some time in the mid-80s. And second, any song that features a 12-string guitar will likely make it into my playlist somewhere. I just like the sound of the instrument. Anyway, Night Ranger was running out of piano-driven big power ballads by late 1985, so they turned to the 12 string guitar sound to drive this one. And being the NR fan that I was, and the 12 string fan I still am, I not only liked it then, but I like it now. Plus, when they get to the end, after he's done singing, they kind of rock out a bit on this one. Cool tune, one of my favorites when it came out, and still enough to reach number 66 on my Top 134. Check the video here.
Posted by Christopher at 08:04 PM | Comments (1)Mudge's Favorite 134 Songs of the 80s: Recapping The First Third Of The Top 100
Parentheses indicate an act's multiple appearance on the countdown so far.
100. Russians, Sting
99. Burning Down The House, Talking Heads (2)
98. Sunglasses At Night, Corey Hart
97. How Soon Is Now, the Smiths
96. Don’t Come Around Here No More, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
95. Whisper To A Scream, Icicle Works
94. Beat It, Michael Jackson
93. Sharp Dressed Man, ZZ Top (2)
92. Love Removal Machine, The Cult
91. Ace Of Spades, Motorhead
90. Heat Of The Moment, Asia
89. Mr. Brownstone, Guns N Roses
88. Summertime Girls, Y&T
87. Dude (Looks Like A Lady), Aerosmith
86. Sexual Healing, Marvin Gaye
85. Patience, Guns N Roses (2)
84. Games Without Frontiers, Peter Gabriel
83. Every Rose Has Its Thorn, Poison (2)
82. I Know What Boys Like, The Waitresses*
81. They Don’t Know, Tracy Ullman
80. Cum On Feel The Noize, Quiet Riot
79. U Got The Look, Prince/Sheena Easton
78. (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party), The Beastie Boys
77. Careless Whisper, George Michael and Wham!
76. Our House, Madness
75. Hell’s Bells, AC/DC
74. Jump, Van Halen
73. Home Sweet Home, Motley Crue
72. Who Can It Be Now, Men at Work
71. Animal, Def Leppard
70. White Wedding, Billy Idol (2)
69. Let’s Go Crazy, Prince (2)
68. Turning Japanese, The Vapors
67. Hot For Teacher, Van Halen (2)
66. Goodbye, Night Ranger
August 02, 2006
Mudge's Favorite 134 Songs of the 80s: Short Hiatus Version
Found out it's gonna take three weeks to get my computer back. Three weeks??? What the heck am I going to do? Somehow, I gotta get that user name and password. Anyway, since it's gonna be a little while before I'm back on, I figured I'd get you as close to the halfway mark as I can before my computer explodes into flame. So without further ado...
75. Hell's Bells, AC/DC I love this one so much, it's my ringtone. Yep, that's right: if you're ever out somewhere and you hear that gong and that foreboding guitar riff, the odds are I'm somewhere right nearby, and someone's calling me. (Unintentional funny moment at work of last week: while I was down getting coffee, I apparently got a personal call on my cell... when I got back to my desk, a colleague said, "Hey Christopher, your heavy metal phone was ringing.") I love this song because Trevor Hoffman comes into baseball games with it playing; because it was the theme song for my fantasy baseball team in 2004, when I won the league championship; and because it's just flat-out bad-ass. But I'll say this about Brian Johnson: no post-pubescent human male should be able to hit the register he does without the use of a pair of pliers and some torque. The video's here.
74. Jump, Van Halen At some point between Diver Down and 1984, Eddie picked up the keyboards. The result was that VH went pop in 1984, vaulting "1984" to #2 on the album charts and scoring the second biggest hit of the year with the album's lead single, "Jump," which went to #1 on the pop charts for 5 weeks. This is another example of a video driving a song higher; while it's "just" a performance video and not a concept one, it's one of those quintessential early MTV classics. And that five second clip near the end when Eddie, Dave and Michael sort of hop in sync toward the camera? One of rock video's most enduring images.
73. Home Sweet Home, Motley Crue One of the things that shocked me when I made this list is that the Crue made only one appearance; I really thought I'd been more into them as a teenager. At least that's the way I remembered it. But as much as I liked their drive-your-parents-crazy rockers (Dr. Feelgood, Shout At The Devil, Too Young To Fall In Love), it would seem that the only one I liked so much that it ended up on my list was this -- their single effort at power balladry. How the hell did that happen? At least I can say that I saw them during the Theater of Pain tour; hopefully that brings back some of my Crue credibility. Here's the video.
72. Who Can It Be Now? Men at Work Remember when everyone said that these guys were leading an "Australian Invasion?" Apparently no one told the rest of Australia (unless you count Air Supply -- and if you do count them for anything, you need serious help, like as in hospitalization). But the Men had two huge albums, including their debut "Cargo," off of which the lead single was 1982's "Who Can It Be Now?" And you have to love any song about paranoia -- especially when it's sung by a guy who ended up providing musical interludes on "Scrubs" 20+ years later. Check the video here.
71. Animal, Def Leppard Their irst top ten single after returning with "Hysteria," "Animal" signaled that the boys from Sheffield were back -- one armed drummer and all. And boy was I glad to have them back; Def Leppard was right up there with my favorite acts of the decade. If we judge by this list, only two bands (U2 and Guns N Roses) will show up here more often than Def Leppard before it's all over, so I must have really dug them. You know what? Even if it makes me a dork, I still do. Check the video here.
Posted by Christopher at 07:03 PM | Comments (7)August 01, 2006
Mudge's Favorite 134 Songs of the 80s: MTV classics
In honor of MTV's turning 25 today, and totally by chance, this grouping of five happens to be comprised of some classic MTV heyday videos. They're songs 80-76 in the countdown.
80. Cum On Feel The Noize, Quiet Riot Ok, so Kevin DuBrow can't sing. Okay, so that coencentric circles shirt on the bass player is hideously bad. And so QR quickly faded from the scene, replaced by other metal bands. "Metal Health" is still the first metal album to ever reach #1, and "Noize" is still the first metal song to crack the Billboard Top Ten. It's one of the most sing-along-able choruses of the decade (and be honest... when you were riding the school bus home in the afternoon, didn't your whole bus start singing the song, but exchanging one word in the chorus -- no one said "girls rock your boys," did they? Okay, maybe that was just my bus. Man, we were only in 9th grade then. We were kind of a bunch of little pervs.) Great song, a real trailblazer. Check the video here...
And for some additional fun, check out Mudge-friend Ethan's acoustic folk waltz version of the same song. I almost like yours better, Ethan! (I hang in sickly talented circles, kids. I don't fit in with them, but my friends are pretty damned creative.)
79. U Got The Look, Prince/Sheena Easton I grew up in the 80s in Minnesota. All we heard on the radio from about 1982 through 1986 was Prince, with an occasional break for the Police or Wham!. Prince ruled 1984 all across the US, true -- but in Minnesota, he was the alpha and omega, man. We played hockey, we said "uff da" a lot (the Scandanavian version of "oy vey"), and we listened to Prince. He'll be back quite a few more times. As for his later 80s stuff, I could easily have gone with "Sign O' The Times" here, but that video doesn't feature the incredibly smokin' Sheena Easton (who manages to look absolutely scrumptious here even with that ridiculous 80s hair). Plus, the song was danceable and yet had enough of a guitar riff where, if you were a rocker, you still felt cool cranking it up to 11 while driving around somewhere. Great song from a great artist. Here's the video.
78. (You Gotta) FIght For Your Right (To Party), Beastie Boys. So how do you make rap accessible to white suburban kids? Pair it up with rock and a heavy guitar riff. And if you really want to make sure it catches on, write lyrics that basically point out all the hypocrisies that parents engage in (your pop caught you smokin', and he says no way!/That hypocrite smokes two packs a day!"). This song was the first exposure I ever had to rap; it came out just a little while before Run DMC & Aerosmith's "Walk This Way." And while I didn't know what to make of the whole rap thing, I knew I dug the guitar riff. The video's an all-time classic; the song's an all-time classic; and even today, this is still one of my 'crank-the-radio-as-loud-as-it-goes" songs. And the Beasties are locks for the Hall of Fame in Cleveland.
77. Careless Whisper, George Michael and Wham! You know how guitar players all respect the guitar greats, even if they don't like their style? Or drummers all respect a really good drummer, even if the band they're in is kind of weak? Well, I was a singer. And even though his style didn't always fit mine, George MIchael inarguably has an incredible voice, and I respect the hell out of what he did and what he's still capable of... to this day, I'll still give a listen to anything he releases just because it's his voice, so it might be incredible. While most of Michael's work with Wham! will not make this countdown, I defy anyone who says that "Careless Whisper" i's anything less than a damn well-crafted pop song, and one of the decade's best 'oh god, I totally messed up, please let me have a chance to fix this," pure despair songs. Maybe not just of the 80s, either. And that voice... amazing. The man is gifted. Check the video here.
76. Our House, Madness How many of you got your first taste of ska through a Madness song? How many of you played a tennis racket during the guitar solo like this guy did? Madness' "Our House" had one of those classic rhythym lines that was instantly recognizable and instantly seared its way into your memory. Add to it an amusing video that seemed to fit the song perfectly, and you had a classic that still sounds pretty fresh today. All the way up to #76 on my list. Check the video here.
Posted by Christopher at 08:39 PM | Comments (1)July 31, 2006
Mudge's Favorite 134 Songs of the 80s: The 80s of the 80s
Okay... I know I'm going to take grief for a lot of the ones in this fivesome. But here they are, songs 85-81 on my list -- the 80s of the 80s, if you will.
85. Patience, Guns N Roses GnR make their second appearance of many on this list, with the song that proved that they could do sensitive and acoustic just as well as they could rock out. How many of you out there ended up steaming up some car windows or making your roommate leave the dorm room for a while because of this song? I thought so. This is one of the 80s' best ballads -- and musically, it's as impressive as anything GnR ever did. Check the video here.
84. Games Without Frontiers, Peter Gabriel Okay, so it took me until basically when I star