Classic Songs of My Youth Revisited #5

Public Enemy – Fight the Power

I realized too late that I put myself in a very small box when naming this series. The word “youth” imposes a time limit. For example, I would be hard pressed to include any Fountains of Wayne songs here, despite my love of the band, since I was close to 40 when I first heard them. But what should the cutoff be?

Wikipedia, as usual, is a great resource. Almost 40 turned out to not be too far off, as both Russia and Nigeria have definitions that stretch it to 35. Since I’m in neither country, let’s go with the United Nations, which caps youth at 24. Which means the last possible date for an eligible song to have been released is July 30, 1989, as I turned 25 the following day.

(BTW, if we went with 35, the cutoff of July 30, 2000 would open the floor to a few really amazing songs from 1999 – “I Want it That Way”, “Praise You”, “…Baby One More Time”, “The Bad Touch” (oh, I have so much to say about this last one) – and 2000 – “Goodbye Earl”, “All the Small Things”, “Bye Bye Bye” (with a fantastic “Ted Lasso” shoutout), “Thong Song”. (JK about that last one.))

I’m comfortable with that date. By the end of my 25th year, my heart had been broken at least once, I had dropped out of university, I still hadn’t figured out a career path, I was living in a rented room in a basement, I had twice walked away from my life with no real plan for what came next. Basically, I was pretty fucked up without actually realizing it. You know – a youth.

Weirdly, things did change a bit in my 26th year. I went back to university (I still didn’t finish, but that’s because other adult things like marriage and kids took priority), I entered into my first relationship of some permanence, I settled in the city where I still live. You know – an adult.

A few fine candidates got in just under the wire before my somewhat-arbitrary-but-UN-sanctioned cutoff point. In a very strange twist, two of them showed up on the same Spotify playlist earlier this week: Young MC’s still awesome “Bust a Move” (released May 22) got me rapping along in my car on Tuesday, and The B-52’s “Love Shack” (June 20) had me gliding down my street Wednesday afternoon. Finally, there was “Batdance” by Prince (June 8), a completely ridiculous song that is still pretty fantastic if for no other reason than it gave us the line “If a man is considered guilty for what goes on in his mind, then gimme the electric chair for all my future crimes, oh”.

But there could be only one winner, with a release date of July 4, 1989. “Fight the Power” is a song I still listen to often, and it has been on my 100 favourite songs playlist since it’s inception. I usually listen to the “Fear of a Black Planet” version, but the Branford Marsalis solo is a special treat from the “Do the Right Thing” version.

It can’t be an accident that the most radical Black hip hop group of that era released an anthem of empowerment on U.S. Independence Day. It’s propulsive, defiant, angry and, maybe most important for catching your attention, it gets you moving. Digs at Elvis Presley and John Wayne – symbols of White culture and authority – hit hard, together with the crushing follow-up point that “most of my heroes don’t appear on no stamps”. Playing over the opening credits of “Do the Right Thing”, with fireball Rosie Perez (unjustly denied a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination despite convincing us she was sexually attracted to scrawny Spike Lee) dancing and shadowboxing for the camera, it set the tone for a powerful and not at all subtle film.

I was nowhere close to the target audience for this in 1989, despite already being a sort-of fan based on “It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back”, which I owned on cassette, and my appreciation for Rosie (whose youth ended just five weeks after mine), Spike and company didn’t mean I appreciated the song, but over time it captured me. Sometimes, people need to mature in order to value things properly. On the other hand, maybe the song just aged a lot more gracefully than I did, allowing me to catch up.

Classic Songs of My Youth Revisited #4

The Vapors – Turning Japanese

If you had the good fortune to attend a Friday night dance at Memorial High School during the 1980-81 school year, you might have witnessed me having what could best be described as a spasm whenever “Turning Japanese” was played. I don’t remember if it was my favourite song of that year – though I’m pretty sure these trips down memory lane will inevitably answer that question – but it was definitely the song that gave me the most joy. Never the most graceful of dancers – ask my wife and children if you doubt the accuracy of that statement – this song somehow made me worse, all flailing arms, spastic legs and, oh regret, a racially insensitive bow or two. My friend Sandy Nicholson, who always had an air of chill about him, was definitely embarrassed for me for my gyrations. And I gave zero fucks, which might have been the only thing in my life then that made me feel that way. I wasn’t a good dancer, but I was a committed one, and giving in to a song and just moving was a source of immense joy.

I thought it might have been a Cape Breton novelty, a song that some local DJ fell in love with, but it was actually a pretty big hit across the country, getting to #6 on the RPM chart and ending up as one of the top 100 songs of the year in both 1980 and 1981. It barely made the top 40 in the U.S., but the Aussies loved it even more than we did, and it did well in other parts of the waning British Empire. There is a pretty cool video – David Fenton’s dancing isn’t much better than mine, and he also went on to become a lawyer, so maybe it’s a lawyer thing – and the critics at Pazz and Jop knew a good thing when they heard it, ranking it the 8th best single of 1980.

The band was confident this was going to be a hit, but were concerned it would doom them to be one-hit wonders because it was such a novelty. Which is rather unfortunate, because the album it came from, “New Clear Days”, is pretty fantastic, a great example of the New Wave of the era, bleeding into power pop, sounding often like The Jam on speed, which was probably not an accident, since Paul Weller’s dad was their manager.

The song is either (depending, it seems, on Fenton’s mood when you ask him) about masturbation or just regular teen boy angst, which, if we’re being honest here, is probably the source of more teen boy masturbation than actual lust is. It, of course, starts with that stereotypical Oriental riff, telling you this isn’t like anything you’ve heard before on pop radio, and it keeps coming back throughout. It is propulsive, a high energy rush from end to end, and if you don’t end up bouncing around your kitchen as it plays, I’m not sure I want to know you. It easily remains one of my all-time favourites. Kirsten Dunst loves it, too.

And The Vapors are back, baby! They released an album in 2020, and had a few songs on the lower end of this very British thing called the Heritage Chart. It’s more power pop than New Wave, and a pretty good listen, proving that lawyers can rock, even in their 60s. The bar thanks you, David Fenton.

Classic Songs of My Youth Revisited #3

Tom T. Hall – I Like Beer

Country music was a big part of my early listening. Children don’t have a lot of control over, well, pretty much anything in their lives, and music is no exception. My parents listened to country music, so that’s what I listened to. It wasn’t all I heard – my younger uncles played Beatles records when we saw them, and there was other music on the radio and television – but I mostly remember my parents’ records.

There was Merle Haggard, and Charley Pride, and the Statler Brothers, and Conway Twitty, and George Jones, and there must have been some women, too, but for the life of me I can’t remember who. Pride was my favourite (especially “Crystal Chandelier” and “The Snakes Crawl at Night” – also, fuck COVID), but I loved the gentle humour of the Statlers, and Jones’ “The Race is On” is an all-time favourite. And then there was Tom T. Hall.

I can’t say for certain that my parents had one of his records, but that’s my recollection. And if they did, it probably wasn’t 1975’s “I Wrote A Song About It”, which this song first appeared on. But when Hall died last month, there was one song and one song only that immediately came to mind. I pulled it up on Spotify and, a bit to my surprise since I probably hadn’t heard it in over 40 years, I dragged the chorus from the deepest recesses of memory and began singing along:

I like beer, it makes me a jolly good fellow

I like beer, it helps me unwind and sometimes it makes me feel mellow

Whiskey’s too rough, champagne costs too much, vodka puts my mouth in gear

This little refrain should help me explain as a matter of fact I like beer

If that isn’t four perfect lines, I don’t know what is.

It’s the second-most streamed Hall song on Spotify (we’re coming for you, “That’s How I Got to Memphis”!), but his biggest hit was one he wrote but didn’t sing, “Harper Valley P.T.A.”. That song earned him a Grammy nomination for best song in a field that included “Hey Jude” and “Mrs. Robinson”, all of them somehow losing to this. Yes, the Grammys have always sucked.

Anyway, Hall was a master. He could nail a song like “I Love”, with its simple statement of life’s little joys, building to the powerful declaration in the chorus. But give me the jaunty pleasures of “I Like Beer” every time.

Classic Songs of my Youth Revisited #2

Bay City Rollers – Saturday Night

I was always more than a little bit embarrassed by my love of the Bay City Rollers. Their outfits were ridiculous: not the respectable jeans and t-shirt of a real band. Much, much worse was the idea that there was something not very masculine about liking what was essentially a boy band, whose marketing, in Tiger Beat (which I read religiously) and elsewhere, was aimed at girls. I didn’t want to be the Rollers – again, those stupid tartans – and I sure didn’t want to sleep with them (I don’t recall wanting to sleep with anyone at that age – though Ian Mitchell was confusingly pretty in the first photo the magazine printed of him after he joined the band). I just loved their music.

In April 2021, after the death of the band’s lead singer Les McKeown, John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats wrote a lovely Twitter appreciation of the Rollers that hit home. I assume it was different for girls, but being a boy in a small community I don’t remember having anyone to share my love of the band with. John, it seems, had better luck.

“Saturday Night” was the way they first came to my/our attention, and I am happy to say it is still a perfectly-constructed pop song. The spelled-out chant at the top draws you in, followed by drums and fuzzy guitar, then Les’ gentle voice, with that accent that offers up the mystery of the foreign. The chant keeps coming back, firing you up, the “S-S-S-Saturday” of the chorus so fun to sing along with. Then, right before the end, the chant gets more intense, the S-S-Ss carry you out, and you’re calling the local radio station to ask them to play it again, or moving the needle back to the beginning.

It’s pure bubblegum: a boy has a big date and can’t wait to have fun with his girl and tell her how he feels about her. It’s mostly innocent (though I wonder now about those “little things I’m gonna do” in the second verse), and completely relatable to a pre-teen or early teen, thinking of sock-hops (Friday night at the local church hall for me) and first loves. Listening to it takes me back to a time that wasn’t even a little bit innocent – I’m saving those stories for my inevitable therapist (should probably get on with that) – but was maybe a lot more fun.

As Darnielle also pointed out, the story of how the Rollers were screwed over by their manager (read here for a pretty good accounting of his malfeasance in business and otherwise) is sad, but not atypical of business in general and the music industry specifically. Les was the third member from the glory years to pass on, but the band still seems to exist in some fashion. I still don’t much care for tartan – though, yes, I do own some plaid shirts (I contain multitudes within my contradictions) – and I still think the Rollers are pretty awesome. It’s nice to not have to feel awkward about that.

Classic Songs of My Youth Revisited – #1

Gilbert O’Sullivan – Alone Again (Naturally)

Before we leave 1972 (for now – I’m certain we’ll be coming back this way), it seems like a pretty good year to start a new series, with a song that I expect everyone knows, and should come to know if they don’t. (I’ll have to check if the Twinsthenewtrend guys have given it a spin – and you should look these guys up (start with the “In the Air Tonight” episode) if none of what you just read makes any sense.)

As I dig through the music of the past, I am also rewriting my own history somewhat to be more in accord with what actually happened, and not my age-addled version of events. This song is Exhibit “A”. I have long believed that the first time I heard it was on “The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour”. I remembered the set perfectly, remembered the staging, but somehow forgot the bloody song, which turned out to be his other big hit, “Clair”. Now I don’t know how I first came across it, so it most likely was on CJCB, the radio station that dominated my early listening once I had some choice in the matter.

It’s a fairly melodramatic song – feeling suicidal at being left at the altar, mourning the death of a parent – but I oddly always found it pretty hopeful. For though the narrator is, indeed, alone at the end of the song, he’s still standing, and sometimes that’s accomplishment enough. I love the simple sounding piano, the guitar picking, and even the strings aren’t overwrought, which is really saying something in a song about, you know, contemplating throwing yourself off a tower. A near-perfect pop song, and it never fails to get to me, despite having heard it time and time again over some 50 years.

I always thought of O’Sullivan as something of a one-hit wonder, despite knowing he actually had two hits in North America. (Don’t ask me to explain why I thought of him this way – I know it isn’t rational.) As it turns out, he actually had a third hit here called “Get Down”, which I had never heard before this week. It’s peppier than the other hits and a little creepy – he’s compares a woman’s behaviour to a dog’s – which shouldn’t be surprising coming from the man behind “Clair”, which is a super sweet song directed at a young girl who the narrator befriends, but your skin might crawl just a tiny bit if you don’t appreciate that fast enough.

O’Sullivan is still out there, releasing a new album every few years, most recently in 2018. Maybe he’s going to get another moment: that last album hit the British top 20, his first record of original material to chart since 1991, and his highest charting original since the tail end of his heyday in 1974. It is recognizably him, and I especially liked “Love How You Leave Me”, “What Is It About My Girl” and “No Head for Figures but Yours”. Pretty much every track would fit in just fine on any easy listening playlist.

He is active on Twitter, engages with fans and posts photos with his family. He looks happy, and that makes me happy, too.