Old Enough to Forget

I was never really what you'd call a big fan of Talking Heads. I was a casual, and I knew more than a few songs. They were kind of cool, but also irritating. I think part of my active ambivalence stemmed from when I was a kid watching them back in '79 on Saturday Night Live . It was their performance of "Artists Only," with the childlike lullaby, that I found befuddling. This was '79, and art rock was pretentious and stupid - at least to me. I wanted to hear the big guitars and rock out. Why I still remember a performance I saw on TV a grand total of one time is a mystery. This was the cornerstone of my reaction to Talking Heads for a long time, and while I'd freely admit to enjoying a lot of what I heard, on balance my opinion was primarily dismissive. Then came the summer of '83, and I'm driving down the freeway in my little blue Nissan Pulsar. I've taken the sunroof out, and the top of my head is poking out of the hole in the roof. I have the ra...

I remember this album, or at least the two songs I most closely associated with the album: "Looking For Clues" and "Johnny and Mary." The first was quirky and the second was very new wave. I love the second, and was perplexed by the first. Over the years Robert Palmer would come to exude cool, but to me he would forever be the geeky guy holding up a magnifying glass who was looking for clues. Of course that's not entirely accurate either.  When I found a copy of Clues I was pretty stoked to go back and hear what was going on back in 1980. The album opens with "Looking for Clues" and it's hard to imagine that it's been over four decades since the song came out. It's still so good. Chris Frantz from Talking Heads played bass drum on the track. The next song "Sulky Girl" was a straight ahead rock song in the same sort of vein as "Bad Case of Loving You" which sort of made sense, and I suspect this is what people were expect...

This was the kind of music that more or less defined the '80s, at least the first half of the decade before the big guitars and hairspray took over. It was techno world infused new wave that was a mashup of styles all wrapped up in video friendly faces. The videos were infectious, and seemed to be everywhere. Smack in the middle of the frame was a photogenic Tom Bailey with his feet firmly planted while he twisted his body and waved his arms. Whenever I drive by a used car lot and see those inflatable dancing tube men, I think of Thompson Twins. While I was never a big fan, there were some earworms that I really liked, although I never picked up anything by the band until '88 when I picked up The Best of Thompson Twins: Greatest Mixes , and discovered they weren't the radio singles ... the phrase greatest mixes should have been a giveaway. There are times I'm not the sharpest knife in the fork drawer. Into the Gap pretty much scratches my itch with respect to the ban...

Once upon a time, the cool boys would trash Duran Duran, and the cool girls the boys wanted to get to know had Duran Duran posters on their walls. They were the best of times, they were the worst of times. Begrudgingly, I had to admit they had a few decent earworms, and their videos were like cool mini movies. It wasn't easy to keep shitting on them, but I tried. I remember going to the mall back in 1984 with my buddy Mike - not that one, the other one - who used to date my wife (that's a story for another day). We were talking about new music as we walked into a record store, and there on the wall was a Duran Duran poster for Seven and the Ragged Tiger. I launched into my whole "Duran Duran sucks" thing, and he looked me in the eye as if he was about to reveal a secret. "That's a pretty good album, you know." I can't remember my response, but it was probably really caustic. I think that was the trip I bought the new solo albums by Dennis DeYoung an...