April 2, 1983

The hoops season has ended.

Yeah, there’s still the remainder of the NBA season and the interminable playoff march, but that can’t match the tension of its high school or college equivilant.

I’ve gotten to see my alma mater win a national championship, but that wasn’t as memorable as the run our high school team had in ’83. Twenty-six wins, most of them in dominant fashion…

…two losses, both by one point, both on the opponent’s court to a school that went on to win the state title that season.

9our state didn’t divide schools into classes based on enrollment – it was one title, period)

The school that ended our season was about four times the size of ours.

Our team was loaded and led by an all-state small forward who was also a state champion high jumper during track season. Though he was entirely capable of dunking in games, one of the few times he did that season was on the last play in the regionals.

It left the margin of the loss to the eventual state champs as one, single point.

(at that time, there was no three-point shot that would have given us the chance to tie)

Twenty-nine years ago, a lot of us were still in the doldrums from that loss several weeks before. I helped muddle through it with music and I was well familiar – or would be – with the eight songs that were making their debut on Billboard‘s Hot 100…

U2 – New Year’s Day
from War (1983)
(debuted #90, peaked #53, 12 weeks on chart)

U2′s first hit single couldn’t even crack the Top 40 in the US and, at the time, I rarely heard New Year’s Day on the radio. I do know that I heard of U2 from my buddy Bosco who was continually turning us on to new music.

(of course, at the time we thought Bono was pronounced like Cher’s ex-partner)

But come that autumn, I discovered U2′s music for myself with the live Under A Blood Red Sky and the newly-minted 97X. And though War hasn’t aged as gracefully as some of the band’s catalog, the adrenaline rush of New Year’s Day is essential.

Saga – Wind Him Up
from Worlds Apart (1983)
(debuted #89, peaked #64, 8 weeks on chart)

I know that they’ve released a lot of albums during their career, but the Canadian band Saga didn’t have much success here in the US. No doubt best known for On The Loose, I much preferred the follow-up, Wind Him Up.

And, it was always fun for us to mimic lead singer Michael Sadler saying, “No luck today.”

Scandal – Love’s Got A Line On You
from Scandal (1982)
(debuted #87, peaked #59, 13 weeks on chart)

Sure, everyone could hum The Warrior (and picture its Kabuki-themed video) in 1984, but Scandal was well known to us a summer earlier when Goodbye To You and Love’s Got A Line On You were radio staples.

The former was not to be trifled with, a straight-ahead kiss-off with some New Wave sass, but Love’s Got A Line On You was a mid-tempo groove on which tough-chick singer Patty Smyth seemed slightly more vulnerable.

(neither song reinvented fire, but both were ridiculously catchy)

Modern English – Melt With You
from After The Snow (1982)
(debuted #85, peaked #78, 10 weeks on chart)

In 1983, I Melt With You was a minor pop hit with an undercurrent of Cold War fatalism.

Thirty years later, my mom would recognize the song from its use to sell Burger King and Hershey’s chocolate.

And though the music of the ’80s has been much maligned, the dizzingly romantic I Melt With You is as perfect a pop song as any that came before or after it.

Champaign – Try Again
from Modern Heart (1983)
(debuted #83, peaked #23, 20 weeks on chart)

There was only one R&B station available on the dial within reception and I didn’t spend much time tuned into it. But, I heard Champaign’s laid back Try Again a lot on the pop and soft rock stations. Its mellow groove wasn’t too different from their hit How ’bout Us from a couple years earlier.

ZZ Top – Gimme All Your Lovin’
from Eliminator (1983)
(debuted #79, peaked #37, 12 weeks on chart)

I knew little of ZZ Top when Eliminator was released aside from I Thank You, which I knew and loved from hearing it on the bowling alley jukebox. Though Gimme All You Lovin’ wasn’t a mammoth hit, it was all over the radio that spring and summer as Eliminator - propelled by a series of videos – became one of the biggest albums of the year.

Irene Cara – Flashdance…What A Feeling
from Flashdance soundtrack (1983)
(debuted #77, peaked #1, 25 weeks on chart)

I saw Flashdance at the drive-in with Footloose sometime during the summer of ’83. I thought that the movie – despite being a major hit – was uneventful and the song – despite being a major hit – to be equally uninspiring, but, as I was neither a dancer nor a welder, I might not have been the target demographic.

(more notable to me – as a fifteen year-old boy at the time – was Flashdance star Jennifer Beals)

Duran Duran – Rio
from Rio (1983)
(debuted #58, peaked #14, 13 weeks on chart)

Duran Duran hooked me the first time I heard Hungry Like The Wolf. The song seemed to be always on the radio during the first few months of 1983 and the song’s video a staple on the fledgling MTV.

(or so I’ve read as our small town wouldn’t get the channel ’til the following summer)

Q102, the station of choice for me and my friends, was playing Rio well before Hungry Like The Wolf had worn out its welcome. Though I much preferred the latter, Rio‘s manic charm proved to be irresistible as well and made its parent album one that most of us owned.

February 2, 1985

In early 1985, the shift in my musical interests, which had been evolving and changing in fits and starts for a couple years, was ongoing.

By ’85, my friends and I had our driver’s licenses, so there were more opportunities – if we could procure transportation – to make the trek into Cincinnati for music.

(of course, funding such purchases was an ongoing challenge)

Though MTV had finally made it into the homes of our small town the previous summer, not all of us had cable, so the channel was merely a piece of the puzzle in shaping our tastes.

The alternative rock of 97X – which had been broadcasting for a little more than a year – had captured my fancy, but reception of the station was often dodgy.

The stations that were available to us on the dial were mostly a mixture of Top 40 and album rock, not necessarily adventurous but far more eclectic than they would be by the time we left for college. As playlists hadn’t yet been completely whittled down, Top 40 was still a viable, if less captivating, option.

Casey Kasem’s weekly countdown of the most popular songs in the land was no longer appointment listening, but one of our town’s drugstores was now stocking Billboard magazine in the racks. I’d often peruse the latest issue.

And, twenty-six years ago this week, there were half a dozen songs that debuted on the Hot 100…

Jermaine Jackson & Pia Zadora – When The Rain Begins To Fall
from Voyage Of The Rock Aliens soundtrack (1984)
(debuted #95, peaked #54, 11 weeks on chart)

Jermaine is, of course, Tito’s brother and Pia Zadora was an ’80s b-movie actress who’d had a hit a couple years earlier with The Clapping Song which I had never heard outside of its time on American Top 40.

I seem to vaguely recall the movie Voyage Of The Rock Aliens being in theaters and I think I might have even stumbled across it late night on cable in college, but the synopsis on Wikipedia leads me to believe I’d have changed the channel swiftly.

As for the song, Tito likely shook his head over the generic dance/pop fluff of When The Rain Begins To Fall which featured lyrical puffery such as “When the rain begins to fall, you’ll ride my rainbow in the sky.”

The Manhattan Transfer – Baby Come Back To Me (The Morse Code Of Love)
from Bop Doo-Wopp (1985)
(debuted #87, peaked #83, 3 weeks on chart)

The jazz vocal quartet The Manhattan Transfer had notched a major hit several years before with the retro-styled The Boy From New York City. That song was catchy even if, at the time, it had the stink of something my parents might have listened to all over it.

The group failed to recapture that success with the similar Baby Come Back To Me, a song that I hadn’t heard before. It’s doo wop vibe still relegates it to being from my parents generation, but that’s a far more forgivable offense now and I kind of dig it.

Jermaine Stewart – The Word Is Out
from The Word Is Out (1984)
(debuted #82, peaked #41, 15 weeks on chart)

I don’t think I’ve ever heard The Word Is Out. Of course, I’ve heard it now and can’t remember it.

A year or so later, Jermaine Stewart would suggest that folks could stay dressed with the earworm We Don’t Have To Take Our Clothes Off, a song that, even having mostly abandoned Top 40, I was familiar.

David Bowie/Pat Metheney Group – This Is Not America
from The Falcon And The Snowman soundtrack (1985)
(debuted #66, peaked #32, 12 weeks on chart)

Unlike the previous three songs, I was quite familiar with This Is Not America, David Bowie’s collaboration with the Pat Metheney Group (even though I had no idea who Metheney or his group was or what David Bowie was doing mixed up with them).

Bowie had released Tonight, his follow-up to the massive Let’s Dance, six months or so earlier to considerable hype and subsequent disappointment. This Is Not America, taken from the soundtrack to The Falcon And The Snowman – a Cold War thriller starring Sean Penn and Timothy Hutton – wasn’t a big hit, but the moody, hypnotic song was far better than anything on Tonight (aside from Loving The Alien).

Bryan Adams – Somebody
from Reckless (1984)
(debuted #59, peaked #11, 17 weeks on chart)

Bryan Adams seems to get slagged quite a bit and perhaps it’s a bit deserved for Everything I Do (I Do It For You), but prior to gifting the world with that ubiquitous track from Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood flick, the Canadian singer had a string of hit albums.

Adams was hardly reinventing fire with his straight-forward, meat-and-potatoes rock, but the stuff sounded pretty great blaring from the radio on a summer day. And Reckless had a half-dozen tracks that made the album a fixture on the radio for a good year or so including the anthemic singalong Somebody, a song that Paloma is surprisingly fond of.

Duran Duran – Save A Prayer
from Arena (1984)
(debuted #53, peaked #16, 14 weeks on chart)

Duran Duran broke in America with their second album Rio and the hits Hungry Like The Wolf and the title track. Having dug the hits, I shelled out the money for a copy of Rio and felt it money well spent.

The British quintet’s subsequent string of hit singles were hit and miss for me, though, and nothing was compelling enough to make me purchase another Duran Duran album, certainly not The Wild Boys, a new studio track which heralded the arrival of the live set Arena.

As a follow-up, the band issued a live version of Save A Prayer. The shimmering ballad had been a favorite when it first appeared on Rio and, even now, it would absolutely make the cut as one of the five or six Duran Duran songs that I’d consider essential.

Scribblings

The Drunken Frenchman once told me that “if you’re good with your barkeep, you’re good.”

Earl was our barkeep and, with him, we couldn’t have been better.

And The Iguana, a local bar with a quasi-cantina vibe where he plied his trade, was a reliable place to find grist for my imagination

From one night’s worth of notes…

Dave sits nearby, a sodden sort who perpetually attempts to engage me in conversation. He’s not good with his barkeep, nursing his drink as though he intends to still be drinking it when The Rapture arrives.

Elizabeth Shue is sitting alone, sipping a Bud Light.

(it’s not really Elizabeth Shue but, rather, a reasonable facsimile)

Would Elizabeth Shue drink Bud Light?

There are snatches of conversation everywhere.

“I keep a place in the city, but I’m building a townhouse.”

“I think I’m a nympho.”

“Five grand and they’re all mine.”

Gina Zinnia is several seats down, perched at the corner of the bar; devouring a burrito as though she is performing origami with knives. I know her name because she has announced it in a shrill voice that has surely awakened the dead for George Romero’s next movie.

She has been babbling without pause for forty-five minutes about her opera singer father, a bad flight to Seattle, the time she was lost as a girl scout (I suspect she was abandoned), and numerous other traumas both small and smaller.

Her date sits slack-jawed and inert, certainly wishing for death or a stronger drink.

“To make a long story short…” says Gina.

I now know better. Gina Zinnia has never made a long story short. She has, however, made short stories into excruciatingly painful, long epics.

A blonde nearby – a model she claims – is lamenting for all to hear that she’s not in New York and nothing compares to New York and she should know because she just got back from Paris.

I want to write a bad country song and call it This Imperfect World Doesn’t Suit My Perfect Ass.

A smartly dressed young fellow is leaning against the bar, waiting for his drink and reeking of cologne. He waves to someone he obviously knows on the other side of the watering hole.

“I’ll be right back,” he tells his companion as she makes no effort to hold back a yawn.

“No,” she says. “Take your time.”

“Are you trying to get rid of me?”

He asks the question flirtatiously, but, in the most honest moment, in this particular bar, on this particular night, the girl replies, “Yeah.”

Here are the first four songs to catch my fancy on the iPod…

Phantom, Rocker & Slick – My Mistake
from Phantom, Rocker & Slick (1985)

Take two Stray Cats (Slim Jim Phantom and Lee Rocker) and add journeyman guitarist Earl Slick and you have the short-lived trio Phantom, Rocker & Slick.

The ferocious Men Without Shame got a lot of airplay when the self-titled debut arrived in late ’85 and though My Mistake apparently got some attention, too, I don’t ever recall hearing it.

The threesome hardly reinvents fire, but My Mistake is a loose, bluesy rocker that recalls The Stones.

Porno For Pyros – Pets
from Porno For Pyros (1993)

Perry Farrell’s post-Jane’s Addiction venture failed to capture the imagination or interest of his previous band, but there are some pretty cool tunes on both of Porno For Pyros’ albums.

On the atmospheric Pets, Farrell considers a world where humans have been supplanted as rulers of the planet, noting that “We’ll make great pets.”

(personally, I’d opt for a dog, cat, or howler monkey)

Lone Justice – Ways To Be Wicked
from Lone Justice (1985)

Lone Justice had quite a buzz surrounding them when they were burning down the clubs on the Sunset Strip of Hollywood.

(or so I was reading at the time in Rolling Stone)

Everything would have seemed to be in place for the band’s success, including a lead single written by Tom Petty in Ways To Be Wicked. Instead, Lone Justice remained a cult band and critical darling favored for their ramshankle country rock and the sultry vocals of lead singer Maria McKee.

Duran Duran – Rio
from Rio (1982)

Duran Duran hooked me the first time I heard Hungry Like The Wolf. The song seemed to be always on the radio during the first few months of 1983 (and the song’s video a staple on the fledgling MTV – though our small town wouldn’t get the channel ’til the following summer).

Q102, the station of choice for me and my friends, was playing Rio well before Hungry Like The Wolf had worn out its welcome. Though I much preferred the latter, Rio‘s manic charm proved to be irresistible as well and made its parent album one that most of us owned.