Classic Songs of My Youth Revisited #50

Patrick Swayze – She’s Like the Wind

I’ve never seen “Dirty Dancing”. I have no plans to watch “Dirty Dancing” in the future. From what I know about “Dirty Dancing”, which is very little, but still far more than I should know for never having seen it, I am confident that my life is not less satisfying by its absence. I’m not judging those who love it: I just know there are a lot of things I would rather do with 100 minutes than spend them in the company of Baby, Johnny and the rest.

The music from the movie was a little more difficult to ignore, since it was all over the airwaves in 1987. There were three hit singles (four if you count the revival of Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs’ “Stay”), and not one of them sounds like it could have been in the air during the early 1960s when the film was set. It was obviously the right choice to get radio play and record sales, and I just as obviously have no idea how the songs were used in the film, but it just feels wrong. This isn’t anachronistically using rock music because it’s fun as in the awesome “A Knight’s Tale”: it is cynically rejecting the sounds of 1963 – which were, I must admit, pretty awful in a lot of cases – for a pure cash grab that would play well in 1987.

One of those hits – “She’s Like the Wind” – was sung by the film’s male lead, Patrick Swayze, who also co-wrote it. Though he was a beloved romantic hero in “Dirty Dancing” and “Ghost”, and a tough guy in “Point Break” and “Road House”, Swayze did some of his best work as an actor when he got weird. In “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar”, he was one of three drag queens (with John Leguizamo and (!) Wesley Snipes) stuck in a hick town for the weekend. Even better was his dark turn as a paedophile motivational speaker in the absolutely demented “Donnie Darko”. I don’t think I could bear to watch even five minutes of “Ghost” now, but would gladly rewatch those last two anytime. And let’s not forget his brilliant straight man work alongside Chris Farley as they both auditioned to become Chippendale’s dancers, while a less celebrated dancing moment comes when he gets very up close and personal with another male dancer at 4:24 of the video to Toto’s hit “Rosanna”.

What Swayze wasn’t, really, was a singer. As best I can tell, he only sang for the soundtracks of movies he starred in, which was probably for the best. (True fans lack any sort of objectivity about the artists they love, and this is no clearer than if you spend some time in the YouTube comments section of his tune “Raising Heaven (in Hell) Tonight” from “Road House”.) And yet, of the three hit songs from the movie, his was easily the one I liked best, and, yes, I owned the 45.

It’s a synth-heavy track – again, that lack of fealty to the sound of 1963 – with the same four notes repeated over and over, and frankly the whole thing could be synths and I doubt anyone would notice. Drums are an afterthought, the occasional rich bass notes are quickly forgotten, and while there are a few saxophone sections, they are blunt, not sensual. The lyrics are unbearably cheesy (“Can’t look in her eyes / She’s out of my league”) and clunky (can you be a “young old man”?), and the guitar, such as it is, is mostly a gummy mess, low in the mix. Swayze, so charismatic on the screen, offers none of that magnetism in his voice.

So, yes, I don’t think it’s a very good song. And yet, I still sort of like it, and that’s one of those weird alchemical things that happens with pop music, where the complete work is greater than the sum of its parts. There’s definitely nostalgia involved: we can easily convince ourselves that nothing beats the things we loved when we were younger, like your mom’s pot roast, even though we now know that the grey overcooked protein that she covered with a heavy handed amount of artery-clogging gravy is a culinary offence worthy of being banned from the kitchen. But it’s also good to be reminded that I was a lot more committed to my music back then. I might have been embarrassed by some of the things I loved – cough, Wham, cough – but I still went out, invested my limited income in those records, and played them. 23-year-old me loved “She’s Like the Wind” enough to choose it among all the possibilities to add to my curated record collection. It only took a toonie and a trip to the mall, but that is still worth celebrating in an era when finding a favourite song requires no more effort than a few clicks on your phone, and when there are millions of other readily accessible other songs competing to replace it in your heart.

Lesser (Known) Lights #3

The Bears – The Bears

In one of the mid-credits scenes from the third “Guardians of the Galaxy” film, the reconstituted titular heroes are discussing favourite musical artists. Adam Warlock has the most out-there choice with Adrian Belew, citing both his solo outings and his work with King Crimson. But why no love for The Bears? Their self-titled debut album from 1987 was a favourite of mine at the time, and when I looked it up again after the streaming era began, our reacquaintance was, for my part at least (I can’t speak for the band), a joyful one.

The Bears came together after former members of The Raisins joined up with Belew, who had produced the band’s one album, after King Crimson was, well, dissolved by leader Robert Fripp. The result is a sort of eccentric power pop: it has the power pop markers of hooky melodies, vocal harmonies and generally sunny-sounding tunes, but with the kind of weird little musical flourishes that one would expect from a band that included a guy who once co-wrote a song called “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic Part III”. (I also loved the stylized cover art – the chin on Rob Fetters is Tony Robbinsesque.) The album didn’t sell very well, and though CFNY played the song “Trust” for a time, the album didn’t make the station’s list of the year’s top 100 releases. Favourite tunes here include “Fear Is Never Boring”, “Man Behind The Curtain”, “Figure It Out” and, yes, “Trust”. I could live just fine without some tracks – it’s 36 years and counting of being mildly annoyed by “Wavelength” – but aren’t most records like that?

After 1988’s “Rise and Shine” also faltered commercially, they split up, but have twice reunited to release new albums and play some shows. And now they are largely overlooked, and not just by Adam Warlock: the band has roughly 1500 monthly listeners on Spotify, yet over 66 million people spent some time this past month listening to Ariana Grande smother drunk sparrows. “Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3” had the chance to help change this, but dropped the ball. For shame, James Gunn. For shame.

Classic Songs of My Youth Revisited #29

New Order – “True Faith”

In the mid 1980s, the place to be on a Friday or Saturday night in St. Catharines, Ontario (should fate have marooned you there) was Club Henley. It was a dark cavernous space completely without any artistically meritorious design elements, but it was easily accessible, could hold a lot of people, and never, to my knowledge, turned anyone away at the door for lack of space.

It was also where I found myself in March 1985 at the end of a labour dispute that had stopped beer distribution in Ontario. Club Henley’s owners had crossed the U.S.-Canada border and stocked up on Genesee, which was pretty awful but (marginally) better than nothing at all. Late in the evening, word came that the strike was at an end, and good ol’ Canadian beer would be flowing again in a few days. Knowing they would never be able to sell the Genesee once a better option was available, the bar announced at around 11:00 p.m. that it was now going for half price, and then, at last call at 12:45 a.m., took the bold step of violating a few laws by telling us that “no one goes home until the Genny is gone!” The roar of approval was overstated, since it only took another hour to finish off what was left, but it was still a pretty awesome night.

Club Henley had a large dance floor, which was its biggest selling point for me and my friends, and they played a pretty decent mix of indie and alternative music that was mostly familiar from CFNY in Toronto, with bands like The Cure, Depeche Mode and Pet Shop Boys, plus pop hits like Dead or Alive’s “You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)”. I remember in particular Melle Mel’s “White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It)” and Ministry’s “(Every Day Is) Halloween” getting lots of play, and the bar was still popular when Paul Lekakis’ “Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back to My Room)” (what was with all the brackets?) got to number 4 in Canada in June 1987. And, of course, they played a lot of New Order.

Most people weren’t taking New Order too seriously at that time: a guitar rock-loving friend renamed their 1987 double album “Substance” (which I owned on vinyl) by sticking “Lack of” at the beginning. They were a dance band, and generally seen as the lame descendant of the great Joy Division. It wasn’t the fault of New Order’s founding members that Ian Curtis had killed himself, and you certainly couldn’t blame them for pursuing a far less gloomy sound that would distinguish their new band from their old one. But dance music has always been treated as a lesser art by “serious” musicians, which is idiotic, because pretty much everyone loves to dance and helping people do that – while perhaps not as difficult to achieve as moving them to tears – is damned important, and brings a lot of joy into the world. And New Order were masters of that art.

Club Henley, over the 1984 to 1987 period when I was going there, had many New Order songs on its playlist: “Everything’s Gone Green”, “Temptation”, “Blue Monday” (easily the most acclaimed of their tunes), “ The Perfect Kiss”, “Shellshock”, “Bizarre Love Triangle”. I could be wrong about a few of these, but if Club Henley wasn’t playing them, they were definitely turning up at other bars I frequented in my early 20s. The band was at the top of a particular style of music aimed at a particular demographic at a particular moment in history, which I think is pretty impressive.

But none of those songs were my favourite. My top pick was “True Faith”, and it’s this New Order tune that is on my favourite songs of all-time playlist. Why is that? Well, it makes me want to dance, but then so do the other songs listed above. But, unlike those other songs, the lyrics grabbed hold of me and expressed something I was struggling to make sense of in my own life. I was trying to live in two worlds at the time. On one side were my friends and the life we had, going to bars and generally being fun-seeking young adults. On the other was a spiritual need that was being satisfied in a rather extreme way and in which I was beginning to question the choices I had made that got me there. The title alone made me feel subversive when I played it, given my tenuous footing in a religion that liked to believe it alone possessed the Truth about God and all things faith-related. There’s a pull between a sort of despair in the verses (“Now I fear you’ve left me standing / In a world that’s so demanding”) and a slightly hopeful turn in the chorus (“My morning sun is the drug that brings me near / To the childhood I lost, replaced by fear”). I think the title settles the argument: the narrator is choosing to believe, choosing a hopeful path. I was less confident about my path, and by the time I walked away from the religion, most of my Club Henley era friends had already moved on, tired of waiting for me to decide who I was. I didn’t blame them: I was self aware enough to know I was not always an easy person to be around back then.

So the song is both a declaration of my liberation from (self-imposed) religious tyranny, but also a reminder of what I lost. That I almost always forget the sad part and just start bouncing around is a measure of its power. All music can take us back through time, and as I write this, the sad part is what I’m feeling, but I’m remembering the happy part, too, the part where I’m sweaty and singing along at the top of my lungs and carrying way too much alcohol in my veins and just being 21 or 22 and feeling like the night is never going to end and that the friends who I love (and, of course, never said that to) are the best friends anyone could ever have. And I was right. And so were you at your own Club Henley dancing to your own version of “True Faith”. I hope you managed it better than I did.