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The blog of Chicago-based freelance copywriter and author David Johnsen.
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
8-Track Memories - The Boomtown Rats
I always say I was a weird kid. For proof, look no further than this: one of my favorite songs at age nine was "I Don't Like Mondays" by the Boomtown Rats. It was the band's only single to chart in America, peaking at #73 in 1980. While I did not know the exact story that inspired this song, I knew it was about someone who shot some kids at a school and said she did it because she didn't like Mondays. Somehow I doubt that many of my fellow fifth-graders were listening to songs like this.
The Fine Art Of Surfacing was the Boomtown Rats' third album, and it peaked at #103 on the US charts in 1980. Too bad my 8-track is long gone; it might be worth something to collectors since there probably weren't that many sold. The band was huge in the UK at the time, though. By one account, "...only the Police and Blondie were close in terms of stature, but The Rats were seemingly on top."
I gave Surfacing another listen (on vinyl) before writing this, and I still love it. There's a lot going on in this music. The lyrics are a little odd at times, and the breaks can get strange, but it all fits into typical pop rock song structures. Many songs are brilliantly fun and upbeat, even when the subject matter is dark: insomnia, suicide, paranoia, et al.
"Someone's Looking At You" and "When The Night Comes" are great songs, but "I Don't Like Mondays" stands out from the rest. The lovely piano introduction builds suspense, then the melody is suddenly interrupted by a rapid series of hand claps (perhaps evoking gunshots?). In the chorus, others in the band ask, "Tell me why?" and lead singer Bob Geldof responds, "I don't like Mondays." A quarter century and countless school killings later, this song is especially chilling. I listen to the song differently now than when it came out, and not just because I am older. "Tell me why?" echoes the questions asked across America in the late 1990s during the epidemic of school shootings that climaxed at Columbine High School.
One of my fondest Boomtown Rats memories is from a few years after I had moved on to other music. I was a notorious late sleeper, and one Sunday morning my dad decided he was going to blast me out of bed with my stereo. He popped in the Surfacing 8-track and turned it up LOUD. The joke was on him, though. I hadn't listened to it in a long while, so I stayed in bed and reveled in it as the walls vibrated!
For some reason, I never bought another Boomtown Rats album. I'm sure they made other good music, but I never explored it. When Geldof organized Band Aid and Live Aid to raise money for starving Africans in the mid-eighties, I was one of very few kids at my high school who already knew who he was.
Surfacing was just reissued on CD last month in the UK with a few bonus tracks. I'll have to add it to my wishlist.
- posted by David Johnsen @ 8:07 PM 0 comments
Saturday, February 05, 2005
8-Track Memories - Lynyrd Skynyrd
In honor of the Super Bowl being played in Jacksonville this weekend, I'm writing about the most famous band to hail from that city, Lynyrd Skynyrd (no, they weren't from Alabama!).This legendary Southern-rock band featured the three-guitar attack of Gary Rossington, Allen Collins, and Ed King (later replaced by Steve Gaines). Ronnie Van Zant sang and co-wrote almost all of the group's songs.
When the band's plane crashed in a Mississippi swamp, killing Van Zant, Steve Gaines, and Cassie Gaines (a back-up singer, Steve's sister), I was only seven years old. A couple years later, my dad bought Gold & Platinum, a two-record collection of the band's best songs. He taped the LPs onto a 90-minute 8-track, filling up the extra time with several songs by faux-Southern Creedence Clearwater Revival (coincidentally, CCR frontman John Fogerty is going to perform at the Super Bowl Tailgate Party on Sunday). I liked that 8-track so much that I collected all of Skynyrd's albums, no easy feat for a nine-year-old kid.
Gold & Platinum was the first of many Skynyrd compilations, and it turned out to be a decent sampling of their career. The hits are all there, of course, as well as all of the good songs from their mediocre middle albums. The collection's most glaring flaw, however, is that Second Helping, one of their best albums, was represented solely by "Sweet Home Alabama." I suppose they were limited by what would fit on two records, and songs like "Free Bird" and "Tuesday's Gone" took up a lot of space. For a new fan, I would recommend The Essential Lynyrd Skynyrd (2 CDs) or the Lynyrd Skynyrd box set (3 CDs) instead.
I've never listened to the "new" Skynyrd with Ronnie's brother, Johnny, but I still enjoy the older stuff. In fact, this is the first "8-Track Memories" band that I actually went back and listened to before writing. Their first two albums were my favorites, even with all the cracks and pops of my old LPs. I reveled in every change in pace of the guitars on Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd's "Free Bird" (still a great song despite overexposure), and hearing "Call Me The Breeze" from Second Helping again was downright rapturous (perhaps the most egregious omission from Gold & Platinum).
The Drive-By Truckers put out a great concept album about Ronnie Van Zant and George Wallace, among other things, called Southern Rock Opera a few years ago. I was completely blown away the first time I listened to it.
- posted by David Johnsen @ 12:25 PM 0 comments
Saturday, January 29, 2005
8-Track Memories - REO Speedwagon
It was inevitable when I began this series that eventually I would have to admit to liking some music that I can't stand anymore. So here it is: I had an 8-track of A Decade Of Rock & Roll '70-'80 by REO Speedwagon, and I loved it.
REO started out in Champaign-Urbana, IL around the time I was born there. As a midwestern band, they probably got more airplay in the Chicago area (where I moved in 1973) than elsewhere. I have realized while writing this series that music was still somewhat regional in the late 1970s and early 1980s--Cheap Trick, Styx, and REO were all Illinois bands that I liked in those days, although I didn't know they were "local" until years later.
This best-of compilation covers REO's first nine albums, including the legendarily titled You Can Tune A Piano, But You Can't Tuna Fish. Although I listened to Decade a lot, I usually gravitated (i.e., changed tracks) toward a handful of songs: "Keep Pushin', "Roll With The Changes," "Time For My To Fly," and "Only The Strong Survive." And of course, there was the live version of "Ridin' The Storm Out," my favorite song on the tape. Reading the lyrics now, I think it was kind of a goofy song, but I liked the music.
Decade came just before their big commercial break-through, 1981's Hi Infidelity, which included "Take It On The Run" and "Keep On Lovin' You." I borrowed a friend's copy and liked it but somehow resisted buying it for myself. I don't like them anymore; I can't stand Kevin Cronin's voice. If I hear an REO song on the radio, I change the station, even if it's "Ridin' The Storm Out." I guess I'm not sentimental about all of my 8-track memories.
- posted by David Johnsen @ 2:08 PM 1 comments
Monday, January 24, 2005
8-Track Memories - Styx
In the late 1970s, I thought Styx was the greatest band in the world. My dad liked them, and he was a major influence on my pre-teen musical tastes. Twenty years passed before I discovered that critics often cite Styx as one of the cheesiest rock bands of the era.
I got hooked by The Grand Illusion, an album that I enjoyed so thoroughly that I couldn't pick a favorite song. "Come Sail Away" was its big hit. Pieces Of Eight followed with the hit single "Renegade." I still hear "Blue Collar Man (Long Nights)" on the radio, which was a topical song when it came out. Although I liked Cornerstone when it was released, it hasn't stood the test of time. One of the album's worst songs, "Babe" (not about the pig), was a popular single. The band even took a stab at politics with "Eddie," warning Ted Kennedy not to run for president lest he meet the fate of his brothers. Paradise Theater was a return to form, the last Styx album worth buying. I didn't care for "The Best Of Times," but I liked "Too Much Time On My Hands," "Half-Penny, Two Penny," and the cocaine lament, "Snowblind."
When I started building my own record collection in the mid-1980s, I still liked Styx enough to buy the four albums named above. I haven't listened to them in years, though. Kilroy Was Here was their last studio album that my dad bought. "Mr. Roboto" was a really goofy, overwrought single, and the rest of the album was forgettable at best. In 1990s parlance, they had jumped the shark.
- posted by David Johnsen @ 1:22 AM 0 comments
Thursday, January 20, 2005
8-Track Memories - Cheap Trick
When I was a kid, I stayed with my grandparents for a few weeks every summer. They moved into a new house just before my brother was born in 1979. My absolute favorite 8-track then was Cheap Trick's Live At Budokan. The day they moved, I lost my Cheap Trick tape. I think I threw some sort of tantrum until my parents replaced it.
Cheap Trick was a hot band in the late 1970s. This was years before the cheesy hit ballad "The Flame" and long before famous fans like Billy Corgan (of Smashing Pumpkins) made them "cool" again in the late 1990s (the bands played together memorably at the release concert for Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness). This album was also my introduction to Japan, which was pretty exotic to a nine-year-old. The way the fans were screaming, you would have thought these were the Beatles reunited, not a band from Rockford, IL with a couple of hit singles.
I don't remember why I got this tape in the first place, but it was probably from hearing "Surrender" and "I Want You To Want Me" on the radio. Looking back, the latter is just a lightweight pop song, but "Surrender" has stood the test of time. The lyrics are goofy but in a charming way. I also liked "Ain't That A Shame" and "Clock Strikes Ten," which had a guitar line that coincidentally sounded like the doorbell chimes in my grandparents' new house.
I just learned that in 1998, the entire concert was released on CD. The original had just ten songs. As a kid, I had wondered why a band would go all the way to Japan to play such a short concert (editing never occurred to me). Cheap Trick At Budokan: The Complete Concert sets the record straight with nineteen songs, including one of the band's classics, "Auf Wiedersehen," as well as their well-known cover of The Move's "California Man" (written by Jeff Lynne, better known from ELO).
I never bought another Cheap Trick album, and I stopped listening to Budokan sometime in junior high school. I heard a few songs from the album last year, though, and I remembered all the words. Impressively, they are still together with the same line-up (one member left for a while in the 1980s but came back).
- posted by David Johnsen @ 10:05 AM 0 comments
8-Track Memories - Introduction
Judging from the comments, my blog entries about music seem to be the most popular. With that in mind, I am starting a series about the music of my youth. These will be bands that I liked before high school, which means prior to 1984. My dad introduced me to a lot of this music. It's weird to think that back then my dad was younger than I am now. I'm calling this "8-Track Memories" in honor of my preferred musical format at the time (actually, my dad had a recording 8-track deck, so many of my "8-Track Memories" originated on vinyl).
I hardly ever listen to most of these bands anymore (I finally gave up on 8-tracks around 1985). For me, music evokes a certain period of my life. Once that period is gone, the music just isn't the same. I still like it in some way, but not enough to seek it out and play it. Of course, when I hear those songs, I still know all the words. Call it "comfort music." Stay tuned...
- posted by David Johnsen @ 2:47 AM 0 comments
