I was getting wistful for 45s the other day and went hunting through my old Grundorf cases that I used to lug from DJ gig to DJ gig back in the day. While flipping through those “back stacks of wax” it was somewhat shocking to see the vast amount of crappy singles I bought for God knows what reason. Some of the singles aren’t danceable, and some are so badly scratched and cue burned that I wonder why I didn’t toss the singles out years ago. But there they were: relics of an era in the music industry long since past, but also historical markers of the ’80s, when my brother and I trudged off to gig after gig with cases of 45s and LPs on the weekends.
Oh, and regarding the, um, preponderance of crappy 45s in my collection, I offer this defense: My brother had a 10-watt pirate radio station in his bedroom in the mid to late ’80s, and during the week we’d broadcast shows in the evening to mostly middle school kids listening at home. They would call, we would put them on the air, and often times they would request the most god-awful songs. The next day, one of us would drive down to Tower Records, plunk down a few dollars and bring home singles that would, more often than not, be stiffs on the charts. But for a brief moment, the pirate station sounded very current. It was all in good fun, and the FCC never came knocking on our door (probably because we broadcast so infrequently).
So, let me cue up the 45s and let’s have a listen to the good, the bad, and the ugly of it all.
“Rock You Like a Hurricane,” Scorpions (download)
My junior year of high school was the first time I had ever heard of the Scorpions. To me, they were a stoner band — only because the stoners at my school listened to them — but if there was such a category as “stoner pop” back in 1982, I think the Scorps, Def Leppard and bands of that ilk would fit that bill. With their infectious hooks in the chorus, the melodic guitars and Klaus Meine’s theatrical voice, it’s a recipe for a kind of hard rock that avoids a lot of dissonant chords. Plus, the lyrics in this tune are standard issue cock rock, or as Eddie Van Halen once explained it: “Boy meets girl. Boy inserts penis.” (more…)
