RESCUED FROM OBSCURITY: 

"My mind was a mess before you brought happiness..."

Dredging up this song from the dark recesses of my brain reminded me how much I loved my Pandora stations back in the day. In the mid-aughts (2004 to 2006-ish) when I was still working mind-numbing office jobs in Minneapolis, Pandora saved my sanity. 

"Poodle Rockin'' was one of the suggested songs that frequently came up on my Pandora "Eclectic" station at the time, and I fell in love with the track in all its weirdness. I had no idea until recently that this awesome fucking video existed, and also that the name of the band is Gorky's Zygotic Mynci. Seriously, how do you not love a band with a moniker like that? 

 According to their Wikipedia page: 

Gorky's came from the word "gawky."

Zygotic was "hijacked from GCSE biology."

Mynci is a spelling of the word "monkey" using Welsh spelling rules, rather than a direct Welsh translation (the actual Welsh word is "mwnci") and is pronounced like "monkey."

The band also broke up in 2006, which totally bites.   

Also, did you know about my love of poodles? Although I was, am, and will always be a ride-or-die catwoman, I have a soft spot for certain dogs. Meet my Uncle Mike's standard poodle, Beau. 

Me and Beau, 1981

 

Damn, I loved that dog. When he passed away, my family nearly had to bury me along with him. I was so distraught. 

Don't tell my cats; I've hidden this particular aspect of my past from them.

RESCUED FROM OBSCURITY
"Dare to Fall in Love" 

A disclaimer: my inclusion of this entry in the RFO series does not constitute endorsement or approval, because, well...it's kind of shit.

In the midst of a recent insomnia-fueled Googling session, I was trying to find the name of a half-remembered song. I didn't even care for the song that much, but some of lyrics had become inexplicably lodged in my brain and that was enough to activate my OCD need for a definitive answer.

I'm a bit surprised that I was able to actually find the song, because the only lyrics I could recall went something like, "One kiss, it's a something something thing, I get what I deserve, if I something something thing." Well, it turns out the song is "Dare To Fall in Love" by someone called Brent Bourgeois, and it was released in 1990. 

According to Wikipedia, the song was only a modest hit but it received a fair bit of play on VH-1 back in the day. This puzzled me, because I was 16-17 years old in 1990 and I sure as shit wasn't watching VH-1. That changed later on in the '90s when the former soft rock music channel started producing fun shows like Pop-Up Video and the insanely addictive Behind the Music series, but in 1990 I was still very much a devotee of MTV, grooving on 120 Minutes, Post Modern, and--embarrassingly enough--Totally Pauly. You see kids, in 1990 I thought Pauly Shore was funny and irreverent with his stoner patois and oddball antics; this was before I learned that his bohemian hippie shtick was merely a gimmick and he was actually a privileged Hollywood brat who lucked into a standup career by an accident of birth (his parents owned The Comedy Store). I also thought Totally Pauly (I didn't yet know him as Pauly Shore) was kind of hunky, a view that some of my high school friends also shared, just so you know I wasn't the only freak who lusted after the future star of Jury Duty.

Give me a break, I was young and naive. We all were.

 

Oh hell, since I'm in confessional mode and we're being real, I also thought Married With Children was funny and irreverent. Yeah I know, but hey, at least I can proudly say I never watched Saved By the Bell. In fact, I didn't know anyone my age who watched that fetid turd of a show. I suspect SBTB was the type of pop culture ephemera purportedly aimed at high schoolers but really only watched by middle schoolers, kind of like how 13-year-olds read Seventeen magazine while actual 17-year-olds were reading Cosmo. 

True story: today whenever Saved By the Bell is mentioned as some sort 

of beloved Gen X touchstone....I die a little inside.   

Anyway, I don't know for sure where I heard this "Dare to Fall in Love" song, but I think I most likely encountered it through the piped-in music station at Milano's Pasta To Go, the Italian fast food joint in Broad Ripple where I began my illustrious, short-lived career in food service during the summer of 1990. The restaurant's sound system played a perpetual stream of the soulless adult contemporary dreck of the day; I swear I heard "Hold On" by Wilson Philips about 35 goddamned times during every one of my shifts. I still get PTSD flashbacks when I hear the opening chords of that syrupy song. There was also a shit ton of Gloria Estefan, Michael Bolton, Peter Cetera, Kenny G, and the like. It was hell. That's the reason I strongly suspect that this barely-one-hit wonder by Brett Bourgeois was foisted upon my tender psyche during the summer I was slinging pasta at Milano's and trying to remember why the hell I'd signed up for this shit.

Man I hated that job, but I guess that's sort of the point of having a fast food gig when you're a kid. It's important that you learn early how much working in fast food sucks so you can spend the rest of your life staying as far away from that career choice as you possibly can. To add insult to injury, I was the youngest employee there, so my dickhead manager Byron made me do like 90% of the grunt work. Whenever business was slow and Byron was around, I could be found mopping the floors, washing the windows, and (shudder) cleaning the toilets. I think since it was my first job, Byron felt the need to school me on having a strong work ethic. Either that, or he was just a prick. Probably a bit of both. 

There were a few high points though. One time I was working a late night shift with a skeleton crew that consisted of myself, Carl (the cool manager), and Doug the kitchen guy, when Don Hein--the sports anchor from the Indianapolis NBC affiliate WTHR--rolled up in the drive-thru. I remember this mostly because he ordered manicotti and when he got to the window, Carl informed me that, oops, we were out of manicotti, and when I had to break the news to Don Hein he got really pissed off. I think Carl offered him some free breadsticks or something, trying to smooth things over. It didn't seem to work because ol' Don just heaved a loud sigh and said, "Oh for Christ sake, just forget it," then peeled out of the drive-thru in a huff. Carl and Doug and I sort of looked at each other and we were like, hey, wasn't that Don Hein? And then we laughed. You had to be there I guess, but trust me. It was funny.

Do not come between this dude and his manicotti. Seriously, just don't.

Then there was Mike, one of the cooks that I used to goof off with whenever we were left unsupervised. Mike was one of those hip hop loving white guys who sported an early '90s "fade" hairstyle with complicated designs shaved into the side of his head. To be fair, I'm pretty sure he was one of the few white dudes who came by his urban trappings honestly since he was an incoming senior at Broad Ripple High School (David Letterman's alma mater!), which, yeah, it was in Broad Ripple but was also an IPS school, thus a lot rougher than other northside schools. Mike and I had a bit of a flirtation going on, but he was really only interested in ladies of color so I don't think he ever took me seriously as potential girlfriend material. We had a lot of fun, though. We used to hang out in the kitchen where he would crank up WTLC (the local rap/R&B radio station), and he would always go nuts when they played Bell Biv DeVoe's Poison, one of the big tracks of the summer. Personally I couldn't stand that song, but I enjoyed watching Mike dance around the kitchen to it. He could bust a move and was really good at the sort of hip hop/club style of dancing that I now associate with Bobby Brown--lots of running in place and throwing of elbows and such. 

BUT there did happen to be one hip hop tune that even I--the Depeche Mode-loving, 120 Minutes-watching, clove smoking fashion victim that I was--could not resist, and that song was Digital Underground's The Humpty Dance. I think Mike considered it a personal triumph when he got me to do The Humpty Hump with him, right there in the kitchen. (No, it wasn't a sex thing.)

"This is my dance y'all, Humpty Hump's my name!"

Then there were the various "older" (twentysomething) guys that came in on the weekends to line their stomachs with pasta and other carbs before a heavy night of barhopping in Broad Ripple. Yes, sometimes they were cute, and sure, oftentimes they didn't care how underage I looked, and of course, I'd be lying if I said my dumb ass wasn't flattered by their inappropriate attentions. Whenever they asked me where I went to high school, I'd dodge the question by saying, "I go to school in southern Indiana, I'm just here for the summer." (Which was TRUE! You couldn't say that wasn't true, dammit.) And they'd be like, "So you're in college? Where?" And I'd say "I go to a private school down near Evansville. Marian Heights? Yeah, it's really small, you probably haven't heard of it." And with no way to verify what the hell or where the hell Marian Heights was (ah, the joys of the pre-internet age!), they bought into my bullshit. Not that I ever benefited from this in any real way, but standing behind the cash register in my hideously dorky Milano's uniform, a bit of ego-fluffing now and then certainly didn't go amiss. What can I say? I was every inch the Stacy character from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. 

"You look like you could still be in high school."

"Ha. Yeah, everybody says that."

Unlike Stacy, however, I didn't have a Linda to fall back on. I was sadly Linda-less. That really sucked for me, because if ever there was an unsophisticated 16-year-old need of a hip, worldly-wise older girl to shepherd me through what would be an increasingly difficult year in my teenage existence, it was my awkward self.  

I did have a Gretchen, however, but she wasn't much help. Although she was friendly enough, my fellow cashier Gretchen was one of those girls who was convinced that any and every male who came within a one-mile radius must be madly in lust with her. I mean, Gretchen was girl-next-door cute in a preppy sort of way, but she wasn't exactly the teenage temptress she fancied herself to be. For instance, like some dude would wander up to the counter to ask for extra packets of parmesan cheese, and as soon as he was gone she'd be all, "Oh my God, did you see that? He was totally hitting on me! You mean you didn't notice? God he's being sooooo obvious, it's really annoying." She pretty much swore that every single male employee at Milano's, even sweet, laid-back, grandfatherly Carl (the aforementioned cool manager), was hopelessly obsessed with her. I didn't see it, but whatever. I wasn't going to be the one to burst her bubble.

I do remember a funny incident where Byron (the dickhead manager) called Gretchen, Mike, and me into his office for a Serious Talk. Apparently it had come to Byron's attention that certain members of "the team" were utilizing the Milano's store phone for personal calls, thus wasting the company's time while they were (GASP!) on the clock! (Yes, that's exactly how Byron spoke: he was your garden variety, cartoonishly sincere, middle management hack.) Anyway, Gretchen immediately piped up and was like, "Yeah, that was probably me. See, my dad called me here at work because he heard a rumor that I'm dating this older guy, and he's trying to keep tabs on me, and yada, yada, yada," and just gabbled on and on for like five minutes as Byron's eyes glazed over, and Mike bit his lip to keep from laughing, and my brain floated off somewhere into the stratosphere. Finally Byron--pissed off that his big Teachable Moment had been hijacked by Gretchen's inane prattle--just cut her off mid-sentence and he's like, "Right. Bottom line, no personal phone calls on the clock. Got it? Good. Back to work."

Besides Gretchen, there were a few other cashiers I worked with. One was Maggie, a pretty blonde Butler student. I was usually paired with Maggie on weekdays, and we would often reward ourselves for surviving the lunch rush by splitting an order of mozzarella sticks with marinara sauce. Milano's was the first place I'd ever encountered mozzarella sticks and I thought they were the greatest culinary invention ever. I mean, cheese--fried AND battered? Yes please! I never got to know Maggie all that well but I thought she was cool, although I remember Mike having some vague reason for not liking her. I think he claimed she was stuck up or something. Whatever. She shared her mozzarella sticks with me. She was a good egg.

Then there was a girl called Christy. She was hired a few weeks after I was, so she was the "new girl" for a while. She was quiet and a bit awkward, but nice enough. I remember us bonding over our shared dislike of Madonna's "Vogue," another song that was everywhere that summer. We both agreed that it was dumb and annoying. (I was a fan of Madonna's first three albums, but by 1990 she'd started in on that "I'm a serious artiste" bullshit, and I was over it.) Then one evening, I arrived to work the dinner shift to find that Christy had just up and quit earlier that day. Apparently, she had refused to wear the sandwich board.

For the uninitiated, this is an example of a sandwich board:

Of course, the purpose of the Milano's sandwich board was not to broadcast the wearer's desire to discuss male genitalia; it was meant to advertise the restaurant. The sandwich board was Byron's bright idea, of course, and he made it mandatory for every single one of us (excluding the managers) to do the sandwich board walk of shame up and down Broad Ripple Avenue. We all thought it was lame, but I didn't mind it too much because it was at least a chance to get outside and away from the store for a bit. I mean, I felt like a complete dork walking around wearing the stupid sign, but I considered it a small price to pay in exchange for an hour of freedom while still on the clock.

My coworker Christy, however, was not so chill about it. When she arrived at work that day to find it was her turn to do the sandwich board shuffle, she put her foot down and said no. Byron informed her that she could either comply or hang up her Milano's apron forever. Christy chose the latter. I remember Mike being livid--absolutely livid--about the whole situation. He was like--what--did this bitch think she was too good for sandwich board duty? I didn't get why he was so bothered about it. Actually, I was inclined to side with Christy. I mean, fuck Byron, and fuck his stupid sandwich board. Damn the man, fight the power, and all that jazz. Good for you, Christy. I hope you're still raging against the machine, wherever you are. 

Image source: Mississippi Mayhem on Etsy

Speaking of The Man, I got called on the carpet myself that summer for inadvertently charging an expired credit card. You see kids, back in the day when a customer wanted to pay with a card, we had to take the card and run it through this contraption that Google tells me is a "manual imprint." It was a pain in the ass, is what it was.

I should mention that credit card transactions were extremely rare, since 99% of our customers paid with cash, as was the norm; Milano's was considered ahead of its time since we were one of the few fast food restaurants that even accepted credit cards back then. It was so long ago that once in a while I'd even get people asking if we accepted personal checks as payment, and I was supposed to say brightly, "I'm sorry, we no longer take checks, but we do accept Visa and Mastercard." 

When we did get a customer paying with credit, we had to ask for a driver's license to check that the name on the card matched up with the ID, and--most importantly--we had to verify the credit card's expiration date. Guess what I forgot to do late one night when some jackass handed me a card that had (apparently) expired the month before? Yep.

Dude, Byron was pissed. When my oversight was discovered a few days later, he made a big production out of calling me into his office to show me a photocopy of the credit card imprint and asking if I saw anything wrong with it. (Can I just say that condescending bosses who treat their employees like they're first graders should be shot out of a cannon and into the sun?) I looked over the paper, and finally I was like, "Okay, I see it. The card was expired." Byron was like, "Yes, very good! Congratulations, you got yourself a written warning." (Oh, the bastard was loving this.) So he pulled out this official looking sheet of paper that basically stated that I'd fucked up, that it had been brought to my attention that I'd fucked up, that I understood the extent to which I'd fucked up, and would I please sign on the dotted line below to acknowledge that I'd fucked up? It probably also said I was a lawless degenerate who shouldn't be allowed to breed or vote. I don't know, I didn't really read it. I just signed the damn thing and got the hell out of there. 

I think Byron was expecting a bigger reaction, probably hoping that I'd burst into tears and grovel at his feet for forgiveness or something, but really I couldn't be arsed. Mostly because it was the beginning of August, I'd given my two weeks notice the previous week, and I had like four more shifts left before I said arrivederci to Byron and Milano's. 

At the end of my afternoon shift on the last day of work, I hugged Mike and Gretchen, promising to visit whenever I was back in town on school breaks (which I actually did a few times), then clocked out and quickly scooted my ass out the door in order to avoid bidding Byron a final farewell. It was real, it was fun, but it hadn't been real fun. As I said earlier, it was a summer job. You weren't really supposed to like it.  

As for Milano's, I'm sad to say that the restaurant folded around 1993 or so--about the time Fazoli's opened up a bunch of Indianapolis locations and swallowed up Milano's customer base. 

Fuck off, Fazoli's. Your spaghetti sucks.

The building (strip mall, actually) that housed Milano's is still standing, and although 1035 Broad Ripple Avenue has been home to various small businesses over the last few decades, it's now a Mexican cafe called Biscuits. I've never been there, but my sister tells me they serve a really good brunch. Looking at their Yelp page, it's changed a lot on the inside. The biggest difference (besides the Mexican-inspired decor) is that they've rearranged things to a diner-like setup where the kitchen is front and center and you can see the food being cooked right there, whereas with Milano's, the kitchen was hidden in the back where the cooks could goof off 80% of the time and the cashiers like me were at the counter on the frontlines.   

But I am happy to report that the storefront proudly sports 

the same green awnings from the Milano's era.

Oh hell, now see what I did? I got all carried away talking about my teenage years and summer jobs and fast food pasta joints that I completely forgot the reason I started writing this post in the first place. 

Anyway, yeah, Brent Bourgeois and "Dare To Fall in Love." There's not a lot to say about the song, it's just your typical soft-rock yuppie ballad. The video is nothing to write home about either; just some arty shots of bored-looking models floating around a hotel room while Bourgeois (apparently that's his real name) lounges around lip syncing moodily. One notable aspect is Brent's hair, which manages to combine two of the worst early '90s hairstyle trends: long, thin, 90210-inspired sideburns and a greasy, over-gelled mullet. 

According to his Wikipedia page he now records Christian music, which I can totally see because he looks a lot like the lead singer from Creed. 

Damn, I mean....he really looks like the guy from Creed. WOW. Are we sure he's not Scott Stapp's dad? (Apparently he's not, but holy shit, the resemblance is spooky!)

  

RESCUED FROM OBSCURITY 

"And I don't know which end to burn..."

I won't comment on any real world shit going on, because fuck it. We all know 2020 sucks. We all know everything sucks. 

So take a break from the bullshit and escape with me to 1985, a comparatively innocent, COVID-free time when Julian Lennon's debut album Valotte was riding high on the music charts in the US and UK and the first two singles, the title track and Too Late For Goodbyes, were in heavy rotation on MTV with videos directed by.....Sam Peckinpah. (Seriously!)

But the Julian Lennon track I'm most fond of is the less remembered and woefully underrated third single, "Say You're Wrong." It's not groundbreaking or anything, but it's a fun little song and video (this one directed by Tim Pope). The thing I love about this tune is that while Julian's vocals are of course very reminiscent of his father's, the song's melody is quite McCartney-esque, an observation duly noted by someone in the YouTube comments. Incidentally, another commentator remarked on Julian's "nice figure," like he's a contestant in a Star Search spokesmodel competition (hee!), but I kinda know what they mean. Julian is adorable in this and I'm digging the '80s northern English vibe with the hat, boots, and long black coat. What can I say? It's definitely working for him.

Aw hell, let's just stay in the mid-80s. Pretend like 2020 never happened. Sound good? Cool.

Here's "Valotte," my second fave and also a damn fine song.

And also, there's this:

Smash Hits could always be counted on to stick John Taylor on the cover.

Julian was a bonus.

RESCUED FROM OBSCURITY
"Don't let it get me, don't let it get me, don't let it get me...."

Perhaps this is a little-known symptom of memory loss in aging Gen Xers: you start mixing up your Martha Coolidge movies. Then before too long, you're confusing Amy Heckerling movies. And by the time you get to where you're mistaking Say Anything for Singles, you're well on your way to an early Alzheimer's diagnosis. But I'm probably over-thinking this.

At any rate, I woke up with this song in my head the other morning and now I'm kind of obsessed with it. For some reason, I was convinced that it was featured in a scene from the 1984 Martha Coolidge flick Joy of Sex, where a horny teenage boy is seen pedaling a 10-speed bike down the street to his girlfriend's house, psyching himself up to get laid for the first time. The thing is, I don't know why I thought the song was from Joy of Sex, a movie I only had vague recollections of from clandestine late night HBO viewings as a preteen. Plus, Joy of Sex was pretty lame, so it's not a film that I would've sought out all that much back in the day. It's definitely no Valley Girl, which is the movie that Martha Coolidge is (rightfully) remembered for, because Valley Girl kicks ass. Better story, better actors, and a KILLER soundtrack. I've also seen Valley Girl like, WAY more times than I ever saw Joy of Sex, for all the reasons mentioned above. And, it starred Nicolas Cage back when he was still badass. Yes children, long, long ago in another time, another place, another dimension known as the early '80s, Nic Cage was really fucking cool. 

via GIPHY

Be still my heart.

I love this movie. Love it. One of my favorite scenes is the one where Julie, the titular "valley girl," flips out at her hippie mom for refusing to yell at her after she stays out all night. "Like, why can't you guys just punish me like other parents do?" "Bad karma, dear." I love that line. The hippie mom was played by Colleen Camp, by the way. I only recently found out that she was the same actress who played the sexy French maid in Clue. Random bit of trivia there.

But back to the rather joyless Joy of Sex movie and the song I was so desperate to find. I had no idea what the song title was, so I couldn't Google it. I could only remember the familiar refrain: "Don't let it get me, don't let it get me," along with the image of that preppy kid riding his bike down the street. Like I said, I was somehow convinced that it was from JoS. Why? I have no idea. But I did manage to find the full movie on YouTube, and decided to watch it the other day while I got some unpacking done. I found out a few things:

• Colleen Camp (hippie mom/French maid) was also in JoS but she was truly awful in it, horribly miscast in a "comic relief" role as a narcotics officer going undercover trying to sniff out all the stoners at the high school. It was a really dumb subplot that, like most of the movie, fell totally flat.
• Christopher Lloyd played the main character's surly gym coach father, and he was actually pretty funny in it. One of the film's few bright spots.
• There was this one part in the movie that my brain had somehow retained after all these years, although I was beginning to think I'd imagined it. It was a scene at a drive-in with a carload of teenage boys sticking their asses in the air and lighting their farts on fire while screaming "Blue flame!" Their combustible flatulence finally succeeds in blowing out the car windows, causing mass pandemonium among the teenage couples making out in the surrounding vehicles. Okay I'll admit it, that made me laugh. I'm not made of stone, people.     

And the song. The song! It was nowhere to be found in Joy of Sex. Frustrated, I Googled "songs featured in Valley Girl," but there was nothing titled "Don't Let it Get Me." There was, however, a Sparks song called "Eaten By the Monster of Love." I found a recording on YouTube, and yep! That's it. And it WAS in the bike riding scene from Valley Girl, after all. Why did I think it was from Joy of Sex? Early onset Alzheimer's? I'll be 46 next week. Still a bit young for that, but who knows? 

No matter. Here is the full version of the song, and it's all kinds of awesome. 

The only reason I knew the name Sparks is because of "Cool Places," that song they recorded with Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Go's, which also happens to be the jam. (Jane Wiedlin can do no wrong in my book.) Bonus! Here it is:

RESCUED FROM OBSCURITY:

"LIGHTS OUT! UH HUH!"

It's too bad this song doesn't get more love. I remember it being a big hit on the radio and MTV, although according to Billboard it only peaked at #24 on the Hot 100. The problem may have been that "Dancing in the dark," (the song's refrain) happened to be the title of another song that was also in heavy rotation during the summer of '84. You know the one. I will say that Peter Wolf's dancing is--ahem--pretty much on par with Bruce's (i.e. not very good), but Peter gets points for at least throwing in a few spins.  

"Lights Out" has been on my mind a lot since John hooked up the Amazon Echo to our new living room lamp. See, now instead of reaching over to pull the chain, I have to say "Alexa, lights out" (or on) and the device complies. John loves it because it's all space age and he's a techie. I'm more of a tactile type, so I've had some trouble remembering to keep my hands off the chain in order for the lamp to stay in sync with the commands. But my learning curve has had the added bonus of reminding me of this song, because every time I talk to the lamp, I hear "Lights out! Uh huh! Blast, blast, blast!" playing in my head. Weirdly enough, when I try to get Alexa to play "Lights Out," she pleads ignorance, telling me she can't find it. Thankfully, YouTube usually comes through in situations like these.

   

Of course, Peter Wolf is better known as the lead singer of the J. Geils Band. I like their work, but it's a bummer that most people only seem to remember them for "Centerfold." Personally, I much prefer "Freeze Frame." It's way more fun, and I adore that wacky ass video, a shining example of early MTV at its finest. But most people only know "Centerfold." Tragic. 

During the past week that I've been listening to "Lights Out," I recalled a few odd facts about Peter Wolf that I had to Google to make sure I was remembering correctly. The first is that he was roommates with filmmaker David Lynch in college. David didn't care much for Peter, because he found him too weird. Seriously! I mean, what a freaky badge of honor to be too weird for David Lynch. 

  

Another awesome Peter Wolf factoid is that he was once married to Faye Dunaway. Yes, Peter Wolf and Mommie Dearest were married! 

Don't make her angry. You wouldn't like her when she's angry.

Actually, they looked surprisingly good together, like your typical kooky bohemian '70s celebrity couple. 

I'm kinda digging the facial hair.

But they were only married from 1974 to 1979, which means they'd split up by the time Faye starred in Mommie Dearest. However, that does mean they were together when Faye made the epic campfest The Eyes of Laura Mars in 1978. If you've never seen it, do yourself a favor, 'cause it's a real hoot. You got a bunch of generic disco-era fashion models getting all nekkid and murdered, you have Tommy Lee Jones sporting David Cassidy hair, Faye runs through a warehouse shrieking "Donaaaaaaaald!" about 75 times, and Raul Julia hams it up with lines like "Ah, but YOU! Instant star in the world of chic!"

No decade did camp quite like the '70s.

But this is about Peter, not his ex. And Peter's pretty awesome. This is another forgotten gem, the title track from his 1987 album, Come As You Are. The video is similar to Janet Jackson's "When I Think of You," made to look like one long continuous shot, peppered with a few disguised edits to maintain the flow. Also, Peter appears to be hopping through the set of The Truman Show, a film that wouldn't be released for another 11 years. He was ahead of his time, that Peter Wolf.

  

Ooh, Heaven is a.....Psychedelic Furs song

You know how sometimes a certain song--in some cases maybe a song you haven't heard in years--just pops into your head and then you have to play it 75 times a day and then you go on YouTube and find the video (whoa, you didn't even know this song had a video, cool!) and you get completely obsessed with the song and you find yourself singing it in your head and out loud everywhere you happen to be....around the house, in the car, at the gym, to your friends and spouse and everyone who comes in contact with you....?

This week, this is the song that's been doing that to me.  

Apparently it's a song about nuclear war. But wasn't every song in 1984 about nuclear war? All the best songs were, anyway. 

"It's about planes flying over ready to drop bombs, nuclear bombs."

Is it me, or is Richard Butler giving off some serious Bowie vibes in this video?
I'm digging it.

Rescued From Obscurity: That OTHER Mariah Carey Christmas song

Okay now, deep breath. You ready for this?

I'm coming out of the closet as a Mariah Carey fan. Not that I was keeping it a deep, dark secret, but I wasn't exactly shouting it from the rooftops either. And we're not talking about, like, huge fandom. I'm a pretty low-level Mariah enthusiast, in that I own a copy of her debut album, as well as her MTV Unplugged CD, (remember back in the nineties when every recording artist who ever cut a fart got their own MTV Unplugged special?) and I have a copy of Rainbow sitting in a box somewhere, but I only bought it for "Heartbreaker," because that song is one of my all-time jams--really, I'm not even being ironic--I adore it unashamedly. I even dig the Jay-Z rap interlude, and I normally can't stand that shit. I'll admit that the video is cringe-y, with all the dialogue and the, ahem, "acting". Mariah is not much of a thespian, as anyone who saw Glitter can attest. Seriously Mimi, when Da Brat out-acts you in your own movie, you might want to rethink your dramatic ambitions. (Although I have to say Glitter is quite an entertaining campfest, and I highly recommend the Rifftrax version, too.)

I forget sometimes how much our girl has changed since her 1990 debut. John and I were recently watching one of those flashback music video shows on VH-1 (a Sunday morning ritual) and I got nostalgic over Mariah's cover of the Jackson 5's "I'll Be There." Remember that one? I love, love, LOVE it.



I was getting all misty-eyed over the song, and I sighed and said to John,
"That was back when she still had her voice."

And John said, "I don't know who she is."

I was like, "Um, that's Mariah Carey."

John was taken aback. "Wow. She looks....different now."

Yep, she does.

I don't mind the plastic surgery--the nose and the implants and whatever else--I ain't mad at her, I think it looks good. But I so wish that she'd ditch the spray tan and the flat-ironed hair extensions and bring back her natural curls, dammit! Her hair circa 1990-1992 was fucking FABULOUS.

Work it, gurl.

And while I prefer her old look, I understand why she ditched the Mary Poppins squeaky-clean image and went all sex-pot in the mid-nineties. She'd just divorced old man Mottola, she was feeling her oats, and she probably saw herself in danger of becoming Celine Dion if she didn't give herself a complete career makeover. I get it. No one wants to be Celine Dion. 

But that's when she sort of lost me musically. I mean, although I love "Heartbreaker," most of Mariah's creative output post-1997 doesn't really speak to me. 

That said, I LOVE that she has fully embraced the inner bitchy drag-queen diva within, because her interviews and public appearances are often hilarious. 

There's that Jennifer Lopez "I don't know her" quote...

via GIPHY

Her batshit insane appearance on MTV around the time she was promoting Glitter, "If you don't have ice cream in your life, sometimes you might go a little bit crazy," which totally sounds like a Tommy Wiseau line....

Her (alleged) "Miss, with all due respect, I have my own problems," response to a fan letter from a little blind girl, which--calm down!--turned out to be a hoax, but it cracks me up because it totally sounds like something she would say. I'm probably a horrible person for finding that funny, but for the record, I'm pretty confident that Mariah didn't write that, number one because I seriously can't see her sitting at a computer, replying to fan emails, and two, I don't think she'd mention her sister's medical issues to a stranger on the internet. In the end she made it up to the little blind girl and called her on the phone and gave her free concert tickets, and all was right with the world again. Still, it makes me laugh. (I'm probably going to hell.)

And then there was that New Year's Eve kerfuffle, where she got "caught" lip-syncing during a supposedly live performance. (Was that really a year ago? Sheesh...)

via GIPHY

Although I wasn't at home watching the ball drop (heh) live on TV, I did see Mariah's lip syncing clips after the fact, and they were pretty embarrassing. If I remember right, I think she ended up blaming (New Year's Eve host) Ryan Seacrest for the whole fiasco. I'm not sure how it was his fault, but since Ryan Seacrest is the one responsible for putting the Kartrashian family on TV, I'm fine with him taking the fall for any and every major disaster that's happened in recent years. While we're at it, let's blame Ryan Seacrest for Hurricane Harvey, the California wildfires, the Trump presidency, and--hell--throw in 9/11 too. Fuck that guy. 

Yeah, Mariah's a bit difficult, but that's part of her charm. She's also an Aries, which makes so much sense. Aries people can be fun, but jeeeez, they're also exhausting.

Okay then, now that I've proclaimed my fondness for Mariah Carey and provided examples of both her awesomeness and her train-wreckery, it's time for the song, the whole reason for this rambling post.

It's called "Miss You Most (At Christmastime)." It's lovely and understated, sweet and heartfelt and sad, and it pretty well encapsulates my feelings for the people that I've lost over the years, particularly my Dad. 

Happy Holidays, y'all.

RESCUED FROM OBSCURITY 

Samantha Fox - "I Only Wanna Be With You"

Okay, I'm not even embarrassed by how much I love this one. 

Samantha Fox was more of a household name in the UK and Europe, but she managed a few Top 10 hits in the US during the late '80s. She started out as a topless Page 3 girl in 1983 at the age of 16 (okay, that's gross--but the age of consent in England is 16, so 16 in the UK = 18 in the US). At age 20 she "retired" from modeling and released her first record in 1986, Touch Me (I Want Your Body), an experimental, high-concept album that explored existential angst in the Reagan/Thatcher era (just kidding! It was bubblegum pop, of course). The title track shot to #3 in the UK charts and reached #4 in the US, which surprises me to learn--as I don't remember hearing it on the radio all that much--although MTV played the shit out of the video. 

Sam Fox in the "Touch Me (I Want Your Body)" video

I recall liking the song okay, but Sammy herself just didn't resonate with me at the time. Maybe because with her hair, the rhinestones, and all that denim, she looked more like a long-lost slutty Mandrell sister than a hip MTV starlet.

Who will get this reference?
Nobody born after 1980, that's for damn sure.

So then Sam came back in 1987 with a self-titled album and a new single, "Naughty Girls (Need Love Too)" (the girl liked parenthesis even more than I do). That song hit #3 in the US and the album itself was big in other markets--again, mostly in Europe and the UK, as well as Japan--they love blondes there, apparently. I had a French pen pal around that time and he and I would send each other mix tapes and magazine clippings; I remember he sent me a French fanzine and Samantha Fox was all over it, along with a cute 14-year-old gap-toothed pop singer called Vanessa Paradis, who became famous years later as the longtime paramour of Johnny Depp. Anyhoo, I found Sam's "Naughty Girls" song amusing, but not enough to buy the single or the album. I was happy to see that she'd hired a new stylist and was no longer dressing like a wayward Mandrell sister, though.

A subtle difference perhaps, but a big improvement.

Then in 1988, when I was 15 years old and entering my freshman year at boarding school, Samantha Fox came out with her third album. This time, I broke down and bought the thing because of this fucking song. It was a guilty pleasure and I couldn't get enough.

Not gonna lie, I still adore this.  

It wasn't an original, of course; Dusty Springfield recorded it first in 1963, then the Bay City Rollers did it in the '70s, along with a ton of other artists over the years (it's one of those old pop songs that tends to get covered a lot). But I have to say, I dig Sam's version the most.  

Looking at the video today, I'm struck by how, well, mature she appears. Samantha Fox was only 22 years old here, but in a lot of these shots she looks like someone's 40-year-old mom. She'd be the "cool" mom, though, the one who reads Jackie Collins novels and buys four-packs of Bartles and Jaymes wine coolers for her teen daughter and her friends, "as long as you drink it here at the house, girls. And don't get too tipsy, now--I don't want to get in trouble with your parents! Haha!"

Come on, I can't be the only one who sees it, right?

I also liked the title track, "I Wanna Have Some Fun," even though it hasn't aged as well as "IOWBWY". (In fact, it's a bit terrible.) Still, I have vivid memories of getting my groove on to that one at The Victory,* dancing in a circle with my friends, doing the white girl thing: feet planted, lots of hip swaying, elbow and shoulder action, along with the occasional hair toss. It's how we rolled in '88.

Samantha Fox is still a public figure, although she hasn't recorded an album in several years. Nowadays she mostly pops up as a guest host on Loose Women (basically a UK version of The View) and reality shows like Celebrity Big Brother and I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here. Although she was romantically linked to KISS's Paul Stanley (!) in the '80s, since 2003 she has been an out-and-proud lesbian and was in a long-term romantic relationship with her manager, Myra Stratton, who sadly passed away from cancer in 2015. Sam is apparently dating again, however, and has been pictured with new girlfriend Linda Olsen in recent months. 

Yay, I love a happy ending! :-)

*An under-21 nightclub in Evansville, IN. Do underage nightclubs still exist? I think they must be a relic of the '70s and '80s, since I can't imagine today's helicopter parents allowing their teens to shake their asses to raunchy club tunes til the wee hours of the night in a dark warehouse, with no adult supervision.    

RESCUED FROM OBSCURITY

Graham Parker and the Shot

"Wake Up (Next To You)"

Recently I watched the Judd Apatow flick This Is 40, his middle-aged crisis comedy from a few years back. It wasn't very good. I didn't have high expectations going in, as Apatow films are pretty hit or miss. He's partly responsible for Freaks and Geeks, a show that I absolutely adored (though I suspect the real brains behind that one was writer/director Paul Feig, who truly is awesome). But I also enjoyed Forgetting Sara Marshall and Pineapple Express, which I seem to recall were Apatow productions. And of course I love Girls, another show he's partly responsible for. But the rest of his cannon....meh. 

The main problem with This Is 40 are the film's central characters; an unlikable yuppie couple and their annoying kids. And I'm usually willing to give unlikable characters a shot, because they are often--if handled right--among the most compelling. But there's unlikable and then there's unwatchable, and the central family of This Is 40 straddles a dangerous line between the two. I had a similar problem with Friends With Kids, which boasted a stellar cast (Jon Hamm, Maya Rudolph, Jennifer Westfeldt, Chris O'Dowd, and Kristen Wiig, among others) but the characters were so grating I literally only got through the first ten minutes of that one before pulling the plug.

Anyhoo, is all leading up to the only positive thing about This Is 40 that stuck with me, and that is Graham Parker, who is the focus of one of the movie's subplots. You see, Paul Rudd's character runs a struggling record label and he's busting his balls trying to promote Parker's latest effort, with little success. It jogged my memory; I hadn't thought about Graham Parker in years, perhaps not since around 1985, when the one song I'm familiar with was a very minor hit. The song is called "Wake Up (Next To You)," and it's a charming, bittersweet tune with a strong Elvis Costello-y vibe, and enough of an earworm that it's stayed with me after thirty years (which is really saying something). 

The video is pretty cool, too. And like I said, the song is something of an earworm. Good luck getting it out of your head--although it's a great song, so as earworms go that's not a bad thing.  

Rescued From Obscurity:

"Can't Wait One Minute More" by CIV

Trashy talk shows were sort of the reality shows of the 1990's, in that they were ubiquitous and everyone and their mother bitched about how awful and staged they were and how stupid the whole phenomenon was, and yet...they were inexplicably popular.

The low point came sometime mid-decade, when some asshole TV producer--undoubtedly in the middle of a serious drug bender--dropped his crack pipe, slapped his forehead, and said "Hey, I know! Let's give EVERYONE a talk show!" Then he looked down at the intern he was riding and said, "Hey you, get me the phone numbers of every C-list actor who ever cut a fart on primetime TV. Start with Vanessa from Cosby, that red-headed sex offender from The Partridge Family, the chick who played the 40-year-old teenager on 90210, and just keep going from there. Damn, this is genius!"

Anyhoo, in 1995 (around the height of the talk show boom) NYC hardcore punk band CIV had a very minor hit with "Can't Wait One Minute More." It's a fun song, and the video is a great satire of the talk show format, with lead singer Anthony Civarelli playing the snarky "host," hopping through the audience members as they jeer at the parade of talk show guest staples: the requisite teen gang bangers, the gay love triangle, the trailer park couple, the male strippers, and even some Elvis impersonators.

Besides the CIV video, there was one other good thing that came out of the '90s crap talk show zeitgeist, and that was Night Stand with Dick Dietrick, a little-known talk show parody that aired at some absurd time like 2:00 am on Monday mornings and is probably only remembered by insomniacs like me. Dick Dietrick (played by comedian Timothy Stack) was a clueless Alan Partridge-type host who was forever shit-talking his "rival," Jerry Springer. Night Stand nailed every one of the sleazy talk show stereotypes: the faux-sympathetic host, the homophobic audience members, the delusional guests, the hilariously lurid topics (I remember one episode titled "Homicide in a Double Wide"). It was awesome.

Thank God for YouTube, ya know?

Rescued From Obscurity: A Rod Stewart Double Shot

How YOU doin'?

While Rod Stewart definitely isn't obscure--I think by now even his detractors would agree that he's reached "legend" status--the following two songs could definitely be categorized as such. And since I was going to post both videos on here anyway, I figured I might as well use the RFO tag, even though it's just the tracks themselves that are relatively unknown and not the artist.

I get a lot of flak for being a Rod Stewart fan. One reason is because, well, he's Rod Stewart. At best he's seen by non-fans as sort of a campy old relic from the seventies. At worst he's viewed as a musical whore who sold his soul several times over, first by abandoning his "respectable" rock roots and embracing pop in the mid-seventies ("Tonight's the Night"), then from pop to disco in the late seventies ("Do Ya Think I'm Sexy") then synthesizer-infused pop rock in the eighties, ("Young Turks," "Passion") and then from about 1990 on sliding steadily down the adult contemporary slope and straight into old fogey/Vegas territory with his Great American Songbook series. 

It makes me wish that some of Rod's "deep cuts" were in the public consciousness. "In a Broken Dream" is just one of many breathtakingly awesome songs that are pretty much known only to Rod's hardcore fans, and that's a shame. If "In a Broken Dream" had the fame it deserved, I don't see how anyone aware of its existence could sneer at anything else Rod recorded, no matter how cheesey. The song is truly sublime: it manages to be sad and angry and darkly funny all at the same time. It could be argued that while "In a Broken Dream" is great song on its own, the lyrics and music comprise only about 20% of its awesomeness. The remaining 80% is all ROD. It's in his voice and his delivery, and it makes my knees go weak.           

While it's hard to imagine "In A Broken Dream" being a commercial success in any decade, I feel like "Leave Virginia Alone" could have been a hit had it existed five years earlier. As luck would have it, Rod Stewart's seventeenth studio album A Spanner in the Works was launched into the world in May 1995, smack in the middle of a musical period where watered-down grunge and Top 40-approved gangsta rap ruled, leaving no room for anything that fell outside those two dismal categories. No surprise then that "Leave Virginia Alone" barely got any love at all, peaking at #52 in the US charts. It shouldn't have been that way, dammit, because it's an amazing song. It was written by Tom Petty, who (to my knowledge) never recorded it himself. I like Tom Petty, but there's no way his voice could do justice to the song's whimsical, melancholy lyrics. No one does whimsy or melancholy like Rod Stewart--see "Maggie May," "You Wear It Well," "Some Guys Have All the Luck," and pretty much every hit he's ever had. The video is beautifully shot, too (by director Zack Snyder, who I guess is a big deal these days) and it fits the track perfectly. I love the vintage shabby chic New Orleans-y feel of this clip, particularly the giant papier mache heads that look like something out of a Mardi Gras parade (and the throwaway shot of that one head breaking into dance at the 3:29 mark is fabulous). 



And because I'm such a fan of Rod the God, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention his new album--his first one of original material in several years--just dropped last month . I got my copy the day it was released, and it's fantastic. I'm so glad that Rod is back in the game and that he has (for now) gotten away from the old standard covers he kept cranking out over the last decade. I mean, I loved hearing his voice on songs like "My Funny Valentine" and "That's All," but seriously, it was time for him to move on from all that.

It was "time" for him to move on....get it?