Over the next year Terje Fjelde has agreed to listen to nothing but David Foster on his iPod. He’s loaded the thing with over 1,200 songs produced, arranged, composed, and/or played by David Foster. A deal with the devil? He keeps wondering.

Lee Ritenour - “If I’m Dreaming (Don’t Wake Me),” from Earth Run, 1986. Vocals: Phil Perry. Foster played keyboards and synth bass.

I bring excellent news, good friends! After nearly a lifetime in the music business, David Foster has decided to call it quits to write his autobiography. It’s long overdue — we’re finally getting Foster’s take on his own reputation as an all-powerful, evil mastermind of popular music, not to mention juicy details from his collaborations with thousands of artists and musicians over the years. I can’t wait to get behind the scenes of all those magnificent recording sessions that he participated in during the early ’80s — this is the real story of “yacht rock.” Unless, God forbid, he decides to focus on his marriages, his kids or the later parts of his career.

It’s due November 11 - just in time for the Christmas season. And he’s so modest: It’s called “Hitman: Forty Years Making Music, Topping the Charts, and Winning Grammys” and comes with an accompanying double CD with, let’s face it, very little punch — among the contributors are Babyface, Eric Benet, Andrea Bocelli, Michael Bublé, Peter Cetera, Charice, Celine Dion, Kenny G and… well, you get the idea. Boz Scaggs is on it, though.

The good news (for me) is that there will be no need to go on writing about David Foster here on Popdose come November 2008. Yes! Christopher Cross can finally reclaim my iPod. Cross has never collaborated with Foster, at least not to my knowledge. Bomb! And for God’s sake, don’t hit me with some Google search proving me wrong. I can’t take it anymore! (more…)

Michael: I like this song a lot. I like “White Punks on Dope” even better. I still remain confused that the same band is responsible for both songs.

Zack: I can’t help but find the opening hook to be pretty interesting, but it doesn’t quite sustain itself beyond that. It’s certainly not bad, and Fee Waybill’s channeling of Roger Daltrey makes it interesting, but by the end I find myself just slightly on the positive side of indifference.

Jon: I always used to parse the lyrics of this song the way you parse a Clinton speech. I could never figure out the exact situation Fee was describing here, and the video didn’t help. If the pretty girl is “behind the glass,” how do you get to “talk to” her? If we’re objectifying the poor girl who’s being kept behind the glass, what’s the point in talking to her anyway? And why would you bother to “fall in love”? Of course, at age 17 I had no first-hand understanding of strip clubs, but Fee sure seemed to be setting up a complicated scenario for a place where I was pretty sure you just went to watch women take their clothes off. Call me naive. Really, go ahead.

David: Being of an impressionable age when MTV first hit, I was unsurprisingly a big fan of the Tubes, thanks to MTV’s near-nonstop playing of “Talk to Ya Later,” “Prime Time,” and “Don’t Want to Wait Anymore.” By the time “She’s a Beauty” dropped, it could have been any old piece of nonsense — and as it turns out, it was — and I would have rubber-stamped it. But shhhhhh … I was a much bigger fan of “Out of the Business.”

Will: Given that I didn’t know the first thing about music in 1983, let alone the Tubes, this was another case where MTV was directly responsible for my introduction to both a song and the band who sang it in one fell swoop. I still think this video’s pretty creepy, but damn, what a chorus.

Mike: Fantastic hook. Sad to say, before I saw the video, that was all I remembered of “She’s a Beauty.” Very strange (but entertaining) video. And who the hell thought Fee Waybill would be a good stage name?

(more…)

In a recent smackdown bitch slap Chartburn discussion that will be published tomorrow, we had cause to discuss the merits of “She’s a Beauty” by the Tubes. I won’t disclose the consensus, because we’d rather all of you read the post and not rely on my Dose-opedia version. Suffice it to say that I suddenly had an urge to revisit the band’s work. I avoided the earlier and — some would rightly say — weirder stuff like “White Punks on Dope,” and aside from a solitary spin of my vinyl version of The Completion Backward Principle (1981), I didn’t swim too far into the dangerous waters where the deadly David Fosters lurk (even though that’s where all their best material is floating).

First up was the Todd Rundgren-produced Love Bomb, a recording that is wildly uneven, even for a band that prided itself on unevenness. (”Wild Women of Wongo”? “Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman”? Issues, anyone?) There wasn’t much to say about the album. I liked the tune “Piece by Piece,” but you could get that on the Tubes’ 1992 best-of compilation, so memory lane tends to be awfully unkind to ol’ Love Bomb.

(more…)