John C. Hughes: Puppets!  Well, marionettes.  Everything is better with puppets/marionettes.  Except for this.

Jon Cummings: In which the Dead pretended to be a mainstream rock band for, oh, 4:43, and the folks at corporate radio said, “What the heck, let’s play along.” Of course, it’s a damn catchy tune, and a fun and inventive video. I just noticed something in seeing this for the first time in years: Jerry’s voice, at times, sounds distinctly like late-period George Harrison, and the song’s ironic-oldster stance would have fit perfectly on the Traveling Wilburys’ records.

Dw. Dunphy: Twenty-plus years, a couple thousand shows and a couple thousand drugs, and it was 1987 when The Dead finally had a hit. The power of persistence, I guess. And while I never minded the band in passing, I was never a fan, not even of this, their poppiest tune. An injection of bounce in the song is about all that separates it from standard Dead. Listen carefully, and you recognize their sound owed a whole lot more to Chet Atkins than the Haight.

The Grateful Dead? Country pickers? Don’t act so shocked!

Zack Dennis: This is the only Grateful Dead song I can remember ever hearing on the radio. With my secret love of Phish, I was always predisposed to like the Dead, but when it comes down to brass tacks, I’ve never found their music particularly engaging. This is a nice, light song, nothing for me to complain about, but nothing to really get excited about, either. I remember finding it amusing to see Jerry Garcia described as a “skinny kid” in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and later there was an idiotic “dramatized” documentary about his death, which basically showed a faceless chubby guy rolling around a few times on a cot, apparently having a heart attack.

David Medsker: I am just not a Dead kind of guy. I can see why people like them, and even I love “Friend of the Devil.” Good for them that they finally cracked the Top 40. Now please leave. (more…)

When music journalist Martin Fry popped ’round a practice by the band Vice Versa in Sheffield, England, in 1980, it’s unlikely that he had any idea that he was embarking upon a journey that would, in 28 years time, find him playing dates alongside Belinda Carlisle, The Human League, Naked Eyes, and A Flock of Seagulls on an endeavor known as the Regeneration Tour. And, yet, that’s what’s keeping Fry’s band, ABC, hopping around the USA this summer. For the first time in many moons, ABC even has a new album to promote: Traffic, a record which harks back to…well, pretty much every single stage of the band’s musical evolution, really. Popdose had the opportunity to speak to Fry about the tour, and we took the opportunity to quiz him about not only the new record but also his entire back catalog, stopping along the way to have him explain a lyric, reflect on his VH-1 appearances, and discuss working with Trevor Horn.

Martin Fry: Hello! I was expecting your call. How are you doing?

Popdose: I’m doing well! We actually talked about two years ago…

MF: Oh, yeah?

PD: Yep. So it’s nice to have the opportunity to speak with you again.

MF: I’m still at it! We’re still out there touring!

PD: So you are! In fact, you’re going to be in my area in just under two weeks. So let’s start by talking about the new record, Traffic. How shocked were you when the first single, “The Very First Time,” was added to Radio 2’s “A” playlist?

MF: It was a good feeling. It was nice to walk back into the BBC. I walked back in, and I saw Doctor Who! Are you familiar with Doctor Who?

PD: Absolutely. I’m a big fan.

MF: He’s a big part of the BBC franchise. And Jonathan Ross, he’s another guy there. But it was nice to be welcomed back, yeah, and it was great hearing a brand new ABC tune on the radio.

PD: Were you pleasantly surprised?

MF: Yeah, I was, really. I’ve been touring a great deal, and I get associated with the 1980s, and I’m proud of that, but it’s good to be able to pepper the set with some new songs, yeah.

PD: Now, reports of the impending release of Traffic were exaggerated, to say the least. By, uh, years.

MF: Oh, yeah! I wrote a new song ten years ago, and I’ve been itching to make a new record for a long time, but what can you do? (Laughs) But having said that, with Traffic, in a way, it’s opened a lot of doors for me, so I’m hoping the next ABC album won’t take ten years to arrive. I don’t want it to be like a lunar eclipse; I’d rather it be a welcome friend you’ve not seen for a little while.

PD: You and David Palmer wrote most, if not all, of the album…

MF: Yeah, pretty much all of it, with Chuck Kentis.

PD: How quickly did you fall back into writing together? Because it had been quite a while.

MF: Well, we wrote in quick bursts. He’s playing drums with Rod Stewart…and still is. He’s in Cincinnati right now, I think. But I went over to L.A., Pacific Palisades, and we started just writing songs in his garage, and it took us right back to when we first started in the early ‘80s. It was just good to get back to doing it for the love of the music. We wrote “The Very First Time” and “Sixteen Seconds to Choose” and “Ride” and “One Way Traffic” together, and it just felt good again. In the meantime, I’ve been playing live with ABC on the circuit a lot, and, in a way, making a new record and 12 new songs just felt like a sort of added bonus.

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Naked Eyes, ABC, Belinda Carlisle, and the Human League are currently crisscrossing the country on the Regeneration Tour, an oldies-revival trek that thankfully isn’t entirely mired in nostalgia, since all the bands involved are performing more than just rote lists of hits. I caught the Regeneration Tour at the Gibson Amphitheater in Los Angeles a couple weeks ago, and I can say it’s definitely worth the time (three hours!) and money. Lost in the ’80s fans will appreciate the deep set lists that have liberal sprinklings of album cuts and even some new tracks.

For example, Naked Eyes not only played “Promises, Promises,” but also “Fortune and Fame.” ABC ran through a couple songs from their latest, Traffic. The Human League made my night by tearing through stellar renditions of “Seconds,” “The Lebanon,” and more songs I’d never dreamed of hearing live. The nicest surprise of the night, however, was Belinda, who, along with some predictable Go-Go’s numbers, had a sizable sense of humor about her standing as an Adult Contemporary solo artist. For example, before starting one tune, she winked to the audience, “You hear this next song these days in supermarkets and grocery stores everywhere.” Cue “Circle In The Sand.”

Another surprise was Carlisle beginning her set with the anthem “Live Your Life Be Free,” (download) the second single from her 1991 album of the same name. While a decent-sized hit overseas, “Live Your Life Be Free” was a complete and total stiff in the U.S., failing to chart. In fact, Belinda’s fourth album was a complete non-starter Stateside, the first single, “Do You Feel Like I Feel?” stalling out at a feeble #73, a sad showing for an artist whose first three albums featured several Top Ten hits.

A rockier than usual single in Carlisle’s solo career, “Live Your Live Be Free” probably didn’t deserve to flop so hard. Sure, Belinda does her usual Stevie Nicks-sitting-on-a-washer-during-the-spin-cycle vocal performance, but the chorus is soaring and sort of sounds like the type of thing Robbie Williams would record ten years later. However, it was hampered by a video that, while high-gloss and gorgeous, was a complete mismatch for the song. (more…)

The other day Metal Sucks introduced me to Firewind’s cover of Michael Sembello’s “Maniac.” That in turn took me to iTunes to search for other covers and yielded the interesting remake of “Super Freak” by Ricky Skaggs and Bruce Hornsby. As much as I loathe most of the covers that were made in the ’80s, I love when someone does a good cover of an ‘80s tune. And I’m not talking about someone adding a club beat behind a track and calling it a remake; it seems like almost every really popular song was remade into a dance track by some DJ within the past decade. I’m talking about cool covers with some different sounds or ideas incorporated into the original sound; since I like the Firewind track, a good example would be power-metal covers of pop tunes. (One of these days Manowar is going to cover “Who’s Johnny?” and I’m going to be all over it.) So, help me out and let me know some of your favorite covers of ‘80s tunes so I can make a mix of my own.

NEW MUSIC FOR THE COLLECTION:
Big Big Sun, Stop the World
David Drew, Safety Love
Nitzer Ebb, That Total Age
Nik Kershaw, Human Racing
Dave Edmunds, Riff Raff

We continue on with our look at the bottom 60 percent of the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the ‘80s with more “C” artists.

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