Mar 11th, 2011
by Chris.
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I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired by what I’d come up with for 80s music this week, so I decided to go a different direction. There’s web site, http://surfguitar101.com. Every year around Christmas, they do a compilation album of surf music from different bands. I realized today, that I hadn’t checked out the 2010 album yet, so I decided to look it up. I like surf music a lot, so I usually like these albums. What surprised me this time was that one of my favorite surf music covers was included this time. It is The Backstreet Boys’ I Want It That Way done surf music style by The Surf Rockets. I usually like these compilation albums, but the there always a few tracks, that stand out among the rest. The Surf Rockets is one of the bands that stands out. Their rendition of I Want It That Way is no exception. I wasn’t able to figure out how to link directly to the one song, but if you go to this link:
Mar 3rd, 2011
by Chris.
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In honor of Dale Bozzio’s birthday, March 3, we have Missing Persons, Mental Hopscotch. This is one of those bands that you kind of think of as a one-hit wonder, but then you look at their catalog and realize that you know quite a few of their songs. I glanced at several of the music videos, and most of the others have better videos, I picked Mental Hopscotch mostly because it’s more of an in-your-face rock song. Also, given the choice between one song that was a monster hit and another that is just as good that wasn’t beat to death, I’ll take the other just about every time.
Feb 24th, 2011
by Chris.
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In honor of Howard Jones birthday, February 23, we have New Song. There are several of Howard Jones songs that I like a lot. I chose this one because the video was the cheesiest. Gotta love the primitive bondage mime spandex dancer in the background.
Feb 17th, 2011
by Chris.
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In honor of Mick Jagger releasing his first solo album “She’s The Boss” this week back in 1985, we have Lucky in Love. I always thought that the 80s were a low ebb for just plain Rock. Most of what would be considered Rock from the 80s was Heavy Metal, which I never really had a taste for, or worse, Hair Bands. A lot of the Punk/New Wave could be considered rock, but the way they were splitting music into subgenres back then allowed little room for mixing. Then you had some really great 70s bands selling way more records, with music way worse than what they had done just a few years earlier (think J. Geils Band, Centerfold, or anything from ZZ Top, Eliminator onward). Lucky in Love was one of the happy exceptions, just a good straight-ahead rock song done very well.
Feb 10th, 2011
by Chris.
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In honor of Valentine’s Day next week, I thought I would do a love song, a song most associated with John Cusack holding a boom box over his head. This is the original Peter Gabriel video. I honestly don’t remember seeing it, but I think that’s because it wasn’t as big a hit as Sledgehammer and Big Time, and the video’s not as interesting. Still a great song.
Feb 4th, 2011
by Chris.
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Just saw the most amazing thing. Green monitors. For you young folks, I’m not talking about the color of the case, but the words on the screen. It was at a Fastener place, sells nuts, bolts, screws, washers, and that sort of thing. It’s like they invested heavily in computers back in 1985 and never looked forward. They had three computers, two running green monitors, and another with a white monochromatic screen. They went to print my receipt, and it printed on a dot matrix printer. I had to check to make sure the date to make sure it didn’t say 1911. It just said 02/04/11, so maybe they just side-stepped the whole Y2K thing.
Feb 3rd, 2011
by Chris.
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For the last couple of days or so, a friend has been posting videos of 80s songs on facebook. I love 80s music, so I decided to start posting an 80s song of the week, mostly because I figured that this would be a fairly simple painless way to update my blog at least once a week. Just set a reminder on my phone, so hopefully I’ll follow through.
In honor of him playing in town this week, we have Stan Ridgway, the singer for Wall of Voodoo, who has been touring and releasing albums as a solo act since the early 80s. Here he is with Stewart Copeland of The Police doing, “Don’t Box Me In,” from the soundtrack of Rumble Fish.
Jan 31st, 2011
by Chris.
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The other day, I was leaving my house for work, and I saw a Triumph (British company) motorcycle parked across the street. It had kind of an old school style like the vintage Triumphs with a two-tone red and white tank. One of the guys who’d moved in across the street came out and got on it. I asked him what year it was, and he said it was a 2007. I mentioned that I had a friend at work, whose husband has a vintage Triumph.
Now, one of the the things about British cars, and I assume it holds true for British motorcycles as well, is that they are notorious for leaking oil. There’s joke that the reason the British don’t manufacture TVs is that they haven’t figured out how to get them to leak oil yet. Anyway, when I got to work, I mentioned it to the woman, whose husband owns the Triumph, and I made some crack about her husband’s leaking oil. She immediately said, “No, Joe’s Triumph doesn’t leak oil. When he first got, he took it all apart and completely restored it. So it doesn’t leak oil. It always starts. It never breaks down. But if you look in the Triumph catalog, you can order a fake oil spot to put under the bike.”
She then went on to tell a story about her husband’s vintage motorcycle club. Whenever a new guy shows up at one of the meetings for the first time, someone will inevitably break out the fake oil stain and put it under the newbie’s bike. That way when he comes out and sees the oil spot he starts looking under the bike trying to figure out where it’s leaking from. Then of course the other guys laugh their asses off about it.
Now I started thinking that this is a total guy thing. Guys are always doing crap like this. It’s sort of a bonding ritual. The guy would call them bastards and make disparaging comments about their mothers. And yeah, the guy would feel like an idiot, but only for a few minutes. He’d know that they’re just screwing with him, because he’s the new guy, and the next time he would be one of the guys laughing and having his mother disparaged.
Women don’t really do this. Well, they do things that are somewhat similar, but in a totally different way. If a group of women decided to mess with the newcomer. It would be 10 times crueler and a hundred times more devious. And it would be four years before she got over it.
Dec 30th, 2010
by Chris.
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I was out doing some last minute shopping last week when I ran into something kind strange. Now, I don’t know what is gayer, a little teeny tiny gay dog. Or a little teeny tiny gay dog being carried around Urban Outfitters in an outward-facing little teeny tiny gay dog baby carrier. Not sure, but I think it’s the latter. The strange part was that the guy with the little teeny tiny gay dog in the little teeny tiny gay dog baby carrier was with a girl. And they both looked young enough that I had to ask myself whether she knew she was a fag hag.
Nov 30th, 2010
by Chris.
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I’m a technical writer, and a while back at work someone came in to ask me a question, about how to edit something. The way it was brought up was, “What would Chris do.” But the way it was said it reminded me of, “What would Jesus do.”
So I thought to myself, “Hmm, what would Jesus do.” And when I looked at it and came up with my answer, I phrased it in the form of, “What would Jesus do here? How would Jesus edit this? Personally, I think Jesus would do blah blah blah.”
The thing is that although I love what I do, it’s pretty mundane, and when you have a job like this, you kind of fixate on stupid trivial things like How Would Jesus Edit (HWJE). So the next day, I overheard some people, talking about how to edit something, and again, my mind immediately went to HWJE. And while there, I start thinking about how Jesus really would edit. Would He edit on a computer or print it out and go Old Testament and use pencil and paper? Personally, I think He would do it telepathically. Just because He could. I think Jesus was a pragmatist. It would just be another miracle, like calming the sea or turning water into wine. Not to show off, but an expedient, because He has more important things to do. He has to save the world from sin, so He just use his Divine Will to make the words perfect.
… And in red type. And no matter what you did, you couldn’t change it to black because it was Divine.
