Everyone seemed to have so much fun jumping into the wayback machine with Nicolette Larson – and really, who wouldn’t want to jump into a wayback machine with Nicolette Larson? – that I thought I’d write up another song from the same era, though from a completely different universe than the one that birthed “Lotta Love.” I bring you, Sir Cliff Richard.

Cliff Richard was the Kylie Minogue of his time – and a lot of other people’s times – in that he racked up hit after hit after hit in his native UK (born in India to British parents, technically), while scratching and clawing his way into the American Top 40 a mere nine times. Nine times, compared to…wait for it…one hundred and twenty-five Top 40 hits on the UK charts (number spelled out for dramatic effect), including a staggering 70 Top 10 hits. Wow. Just…wow. That’s insane. And it will never happen again.

By the time “We Don’t Talk Anymore” reared its mellow disco head in late 1979, Richard had already cracked the UK Top 40 sixty-seven times. To establish a point of reference, the Beatles have notched 52 Top 40 hits in the States to date. No wonder he was knighted in 1995. The man is a national treasure, and not even a 1985 remake of his 1959 hit “Living Doll,” performed with the cast of BBC cult show “The Young Ones” (resident douchebag Rick, “spelled with a silent ‘P’,” was a big fan of the Cliff), would change that. If he were an X-Man, he’d be Juggernaut. Unstoppable, that Harry Rodger Webb.

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I’ve never been a big fan of Neil Young — I’ll just say it, it’s that pinched voice of his — but I will admit to liking several of his songs once they were covered by other artists whose voices I found slightly less irritating. I love the Pixies’ take on “I’ve Been Waiting for You,” and I even find Duran Duran’s version of “The Needle and the Damage Done” preferable to the original. Let me guess: you just said something snarky about Duran’s 1995 covers album, Thank You. You’re right, it sucks. Perhaps that’s why they left this off the album; it was too good to make the cut. (It appeared on one of the CD singles of their cover of Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day.” Lou allegedly loved Duran’s version of his song, for what it’s worth.)

However, Nicolette Larson’s version of “Lotta Love,” 30-some years after she recorded it, has forever changed the way I feel about Neil Young and his approach to songwriting.

The Web has not been very forthcoming when it comes to confirming this, but I recently stumbled upon an awesome quote associated to Neil Young about how songs should be treated like houses that anyone can live in. If only the songwriter can relate to a song, then how can anyone else enjoy the experience of listening to it? Songs are for everyone, and the more universal the theme, the more relatable, and homey, it is. Larson, the Jim Keltner of session singers in the ‘70s and runner-up in the Crystal Gayle Hair-Off, allegedly found “Lotta Love” on a cassette while riding in Young’s car. He said, “You want it?” He apparently didn’t have much use for it, but Larson thought it would be perfect for her 1978 debut solo album, the succinctly titled Nicolette. She was right; the song climbed to #8 on the Top 40 and #1 on the AC chart. “Lotta Love,” as sung by Larson, is one of the coziest houses you’ll ever set foot in.

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“Awwwww, yeah! I see a real woman, I need to grab her, she busts out yodelin’…”

There is just no better way to open a song than that.

In 1988, after hitting #1 with the Gary Glitter/”Dr. Who” mash-up “Doctorin’ the Tardis,” Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty – you might remember him from such WLW posts as “Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu, ‘It’s Grim Up North’” – wrote a book called The Manual. The book’s subtitle explains its purpose: “How to Have a Number One the Easy Way.” It don’t take money, it don’t take fame, and it sure as hell don’t take musical skill, Drummond and Cauty explain, and they use their “song” “Tardis” as the case study. If you have a job, forget it; you won’t be dedicated enough to see it through. Are you a musician? Quit playing your instrument. “Even better, sell the junk,” they say.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Austria, three remixers read The Manual, and it hits them: ABBA + Indeep’s “Last Night a DJ Saved My Life” = gold, baby! Edelweiss was born, and five million records were about to be sold. Drummond and Cauty may have had their tongues firmly planted in cheek when they wrote this, but they weren’t joking; The Manual worked, and Edelweiss were the first of many bands to prove it. Even the Pipettes and Klaxons were allegedly inspired by The Manual. Who knew?

Less a song than a collection of bits from other songs – the assembly of the track owes more to “Pump Up the Volume” and Bomb the Bass’ “Beat ‘Dis” than “Tardis” – Edelweiss swiped the first half of the chorus to ABBA’s “SOS” and changed the words to “So if you really love me, you should bring me Edelweiss,” referring to the pretty flower that grows in the alpine region. If a man wanted to impress a woman, he would get her one of those flowers, even though it meant quite possibly falling to his death in the process. Those Austrians, they’re a hardcore bunch. (more…)

Imagine my surprise when I visited my then-girlfriend – anyone who read my Valentine’s Day piece knows her well – over Christmas break in 1992, and in her car was the soundtrack for Cool World. Her taste in music…well, let’s put it this way: she needed lots and lots of guidance. Before we met, her CD collection consisted of Milli Vanilli and Debbie Gibson. After we broke up, she dedicated her musical life to country. Basically, she was a chameleon with music, adapting to her surroundings. But while she was with me, she liked what I liked, or to a point, anyway. Still, if the idea of her buying a soundtrack that featured Ministry, the Cult, a pre-Play Moby and My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult was amusing to me then, it’s downright hilarious now. But buy it she did…and steal it I did. I assure you, she doesn’t miss it.

My original interest in the soundtrack was due to the title track from David Bowie – reunited with Nile Rodgers, and it feels so good – the instrumental track from the Thompson Twins, and “Disappointed,” the third collaboration between Electronic and Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant. Then I heard “Papua New Guinea,” and tossed the other three songs aside. There was something in the octave-jumping keyboard riff combined with the ethereal vocal (more on that later), minimalist bass line and staccato synth line, that simply mesmerized me. The song was an Indian guy playing a punji, and I was the cobra. That’s a fitting analogy, considering that my then-girlfriend and I got along in the same way a cobra gets along with a mongoose.

Of course, I think there was another reason why I found the song so appealing: it sounded like sex. Hot, steamy, wildly passionate sex. I’ve never seen the movie that shares the soundtrack’s name– though the Wiki page dedicated to it is loaded with juicy stories – but I always assumed that this song appeared in a sex scene. Which could have been all kinds of kinky, given that Kim Basinger played a “doodle” (read: all your impure thoughts about Jessica Rabbit come screaming to life), but I’m sure that whatever I came up with in my head is far more erotic than anything that wound up on the screen. (more…)

Hope you’re not wearing anything too fancy, because we’re about to get dirty.

Bill Drummond and Jimmy Caulty have about as many aliases as Alain Jourgenson. As the Timelords, they cribbed Gary Glitter and the “Doctor Who” theme song. As the KLF, they created gonzo but fluffy techno house tracks, even bringing Tammy Wynette along for the ride on one of them. And while there is a clear connection between “Tardis” and tracks like “Last Train to Trancentral” (which the Blue Man Group made their unofficial anthem), there is absolutely no way that anyone could have predicted what they’d do a mere six months after the massive success of their 1991 album The White Room. The cute, bouncy house songs like “3 A.M. Eternal”? Dead, gone. In their place: the meanest, grimiest rave track to ever crack the Top 10.

“Bolton, Barnsley, Nelson, Colne, Burnley, Bradford, Buxton, Crewe…”

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Boing-ga-boing-ga-boing-boing, snap! Now that is a hook, bitches.

For a long time, the name Stephen Duffy was nothing more to me than the answer to a trivia question about who was the original lead singer of Duran Duran. That all changed in 1987, when I heard “Kiss Me” for the first time. I would later discover that “Kiss Me” had actually been recorded three times, the last of which peaked at #4 on the UK charts in 1985. But my heart belongs to the 1983 original, released under the name Tin Tin. This is bouncy, Erasure-before-there-was-Erasure synth pop at its absolute best.

The song has too many hooks to count, but here is a quick rundown of my favorite parts:

- The galloping drum beats in the chorus
- The slight flange on the drums
- The octave-jumping keyboard
- Boing-ga-boing-ga-boing-boing, snap! Damn, how do you resist that?

The chorus is a “Dune”-sized earworm as well, as Duffy tells the object of his desire that “Your love is better than wine / But wine is all I have / Will your love ever be mine?” It appears to be lost on him that he could use the wine to get the girl to love him (for a night, anyway), but oh well.

Following the eventual chart success of “Kiss Me,” Duffy would go on to launch one of the most striking about-faces in music history by forming the Lilac Time, a pastoral folk pop band that continues to record today. (I’m particularly fond of their 1999 album Looking for a Day in the Night.) The closest he would come to his pop past would be as songwriting partner for Barenaked Ladies’ Steven Page and Robbie Williams. I’m guessing that last collaboration could bankroll a dozen more Lilac Time albums by itself.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, I present you with a video for the, ahem, vastly inferior 1985 version of “Kiss Me,” which actually begins with 20 bonus seconds of the end of the video for “Kiss You When It’s Dangerous” by 8 Seconds. Remember 8 Seconds? No? Don’t worry, Dave Steed will tell you all about them and that song before you know it in his Bottom Feeders column. See you in two weeks, danceteria types.

Tin Tin – Kiss Me (Extended Version)

Are you ready to rock?! Wait, no, that’s not right, let me try that again…are you ready for some melodic rock?!

The whole reclassification of early ‘80s arena rock as “melodic rock” – there is even a Melodic Rock web site, which is rather popular – is really rather amusing. The implication, of course, is that the category exists in order to separate the melodic rockers of that era from the non-melodic bands…of which there were none. Basically, unless you were a thrash band (Metallica, Anthrax) or an SST band (Husker Du, Minutemen), you were playing melodic rock. Perhaps the fans prefer to call it melodic rock – and make no mistake, the phrase is a fan-driven phenomenon – because they felt that the previous nicknames for the genre, like arena rock, or, God forbid, classic rock, carried a negative connotation with them. They’re not wrong, but rechristening an entire decade’s worth of music as melodic rock doesn’t really change the way any of it sounds.

The new label, however, has proven to be more forgiving than mid-‘80s AOR program directors were in terms of whom is allowed into the secret club. Only now will like-minded rock fans dare to discuss Purple Rainbow – Joe Lynn Turner and Tony Carey in the same band, yo! – and Los Angeles studio rats Mr. Mister in the same breath. Mr. Mister certainly had the chops that their more hard-rocking contemporaries possessed, but the soft rock one-two punch of “Broken Wings” and “Kyrie,” from their 1985 album Welcome to the Real World, sealed their CHR fate. When the band decided to show off those chops on their 1987 album Go On…, the public were even less forgiving than the AOR program directors. Poof, Mr. Mister is finished, and the studio rats scattered to various projects ranging from XTC to the Rembrandts to King Crimson. And that’s just the drummer. (more…)

Scout’s honor, I had no idea this mix even existed until a few months ago, when it popped up on an ‘80s remix message board I frequent. Always a big fan of the song – and sporting a mild crush in my early teens on Tracey Ullman in that ‘50s school girl outfit in the video – I downloaded this mix post haste…

…and couldn’t have been more disappointed. Well, I suppose I could have been more disappointed, but I’m not sure how. Nearly everything I liked about the single version was undermined in one way or another. The only thing that survives is the memory of my crush on Tracey Ullman in that long skirt and knee socks. She changes outfits a few times in the clip, even donning a super-leggy, sparkly dress, but isn’t it funny how she looks sexier when she shows less skin? Millions of young girls could learn a thing or two from that example.

But I am not here to lecture young women on their tendency to dress like unattractive strippers. I am here to talk about “Breakaway,” the follow-up single to Ullman’s only American Top 40 hit – and ultimately Top Ten hit – “They Don’t Know.” For those who, um, don’t know, “They Don’t Know” was written by the late, great Kirsty MacColl, who inspires frequent debates amongst the Popdose staff about who loves her more. (Seriously.) Anyway, the 1983 album from which both singles were spawned, You Broke My Heart in Seventeen Places – MacColl also penned the title track, along with the title track of Ullman’s 1984 album You Caught Me Out, with the help of Boomtown Rats rhythm section Pete Briquette and Simon Crowe – was a ‘60s girl group album released at the tail end of the ‘50s nostalgia trend. That sounds like perfect timing on paper, but both sides of the pond were apparently too dazzled by New Wave and synth pop to give Ullman more than three minutes and two seconds of their time.

Pity, because “Breakaway,” written by folk-rock pioneer-turned Bacharach muse Jackie DeShannon – she also wrote “Needles and Pins” and, holy shit, “Bette Davis Eyes”! – is sixteen different flavors of awesome. Unfortunately, it’s not much of a dance track. With a BPM roughly in the 220’s, which is about 100 beats per minute faster than your typical ‘80s dance track – the only song that a DJ had a chance of blending into this song in a beat mix was the Isley Brothers’ “Shout.” (more…)

Let’s just ask the obvious question: how the hell did this song become a hit?

This is not to say that the song is awful so much as it’s really, really lucky. In the spring of 1986, with America still in the throes of Duranmania, bassist John Taylor – who had admitted that he had not so much as burped on a record before – teamed up with Jonathan Elias (he would go on to co-produce the band’s 1988 album Big Thing) to deliver the sexy for Adrian Lyne’s 9 ½ Weeks. The song, “I Do What I Do,” is an odd little tune – sounding nothing like Duran or the side projects Arcadia and the Power Station – but it had two huge things working in its favor: it was the work of a member of Duran Duran, and it was the work of a member of Duran Duran. Simply put, if “I Do What I Do” had been recorded by any other singer, and released at that or any other time, it would have sunk like a stone.

Again, this is not to say that the song itself is awful (the writer doth protest too much, methinks), but let’s be frank – there ain’t much to it. The vocal covers about six notes, the lyrics’ attempts to be steamy are unintentionally funny (“Is my body heat the right intensity,” gawd), and while it possesses the components of a song – verse, chorus, bridge, solo, etc. – it’s not much of a song. But it’s from a member of Duran Duran! The cute one that plays the bass thingy! Eeeeeeeeeee!

And there you have it. The song becomes a Top 25 single, and an obligatory 12” single is issued to relieve teenage girls around the world of the last of their babysitting money. The direction for the extended mix appears to have been: make the song even less danceable than it already is. John doesn’t get to the first verse until after the four-and-a-half minute mark. What happens up until that point? A whole lot of stop-starting with a sax riff, some vocal snippets – and I do mean snippets – and a wall of electronic percussion. You might, might, be able to dance dirty (or have sex) to the album version. Try to seduce a girl with this mix, and she’ll suffer a grand mal seizure. (more…)

I will not pretend to know more about the Screaming Blue Messiahs than I actually do. All I know is that their singer was bald and the people who liked this band fucking loved them. Take a look at what their first two albums for Elektra are going for on Amazon. Yowza.

As for this, their big “hit,” well, it’s “Walk Like an Egyptian” peppered with “Flintstones” dialogue. That’s it. Still, it’s pretty fun in a dance-around-the-house- with-your-kids kind of way. Yabba- dabba-doo time, kids. Dig in.

Screaming Blue Messiahs – I Wanna Be a Flintstone (Extended Version)