1980s – Page 29 – PowerPop… An Eclectic Collection of Pop Culture

Rick James – Super Freak

NOT to be confused with the MC Hammer song U Can’t Touch This…who sampled this classic intro. MC Hammer sampled the famous bass line for his biggest hit, U Can’t Touch This. James filed suit against Hammer, which ended in an out-of-court settlement giving James a songwriting credit on the track.

This resulted in Rick James only Grammy Award when “U Can’t Touch This” won in 1991 for Best R&B Song….Life just isn’t fair.

Super Freak peaked at #16 in the Billboard 100, #40 in Canada, and #4 in New Zealand in 1981.

When James exclaims, “Blow, Danny!,” he’s talking to his sax player Daniel LeMelle just before his solo.

The song featured backup vocals by The Temptations. You will hear James point it out in the song when he says: “Tempations sing.” Temptation member Melvin Franklin was Rick James’ uncle.

One story bout Rick James… He dodged the Vietnam War draft by heading across the Canadian border from his hometown of Buffalo. But as soon as he got into Toronto, three drunk guys tried to beat him up for going AWOL. Some other guys came over to help Rick out… Two of those guys were Garth Hudson and Levon Helm, then playing backup for Ronnie Hawkins…later The Band. He also became friendly with Joni Mitchell and she introduced him to Neil Young…Rick and Neil would soon form a band called the Mynah Birds.

Rick James: “I wanted to write a silly song. I was in the studio and everything else for the album (Street Songs) was done. I just put ‘Super Freak’ together really quickly. I wanted a silly song that had a bit of new wave texture to it. So I just came up with this silly little lick and expounded on it. I came up with the bass part first. Then I put a guitar on it and keyboards, doing the ‘ehh ehh,’ silly keyboard part. Then I found a tuning on my Oberheim OB-Xa that I’d been wanting to use for a long time – it sounds like ghosts. And I put a very operatic vocal structure on it ’cause I’m really into opera and classical music. You probably hear a lot of that in my music. So I put (sings in a deep voice) ‘She’s all right’; very operatic, sort of funny, stuff.”

From Songfacts

This song is about a girl who is very adventurous sexually, especially with members of a band. A “freak” is slang for someone willing to try various fetishes, thus a “Super Freak” will try just about anything. James was famous for his penchant toward “freakish” behavior, which got him in trouble with the law when he and his girlfriend were arrested for kidnapping another girl for sex.

Explaining how he came up with this song, James he told Musician magazine in 1983:

“Super Freak” was the biggest pop hit for Rick James, reaching #16 in the US. He had just modest success on the Hot 100 but had four #1 R&B hits and secured a legend as a prolific producer and innovator of funk. The big R&B hit from the album was “Give It to Me Baby”; “Super Freak” made #3.

This was released in the summer of 1981, around the time MTV went on the air. With director Nick Saxton, James made videos for “Give It To Me Baby” and “Super Freak,” hoping to get them on the network. At the time, however, MTV refused to play videos by black artists, and they rejected them, continuing to feed America a steady stream of rock and EuroPop. This refusal to play black music was a holdover from radio station programming, where conventional wisdom was that you would lose your white listeners if you played black music. The first black artist to make MTV with a new song was Musical Youth, who despite adapting a song about smoking marijuana, was a lot less scary to network executives than the glitter-vested James singing about kinky sex. This color barrier was shattered by Michael Jackson, who brought a new sound and sophistication to the network with the videos for his Thriller album.

Even though the network didn’t play this video, Rick James eventually made peace with MTV and put their co-founder, Les Garland, in the video for Eddie Murphy’s song “Party All the Time,” which James produced. As for exactly why MTV passed on “Super Freak,” their director of acquisitions, Carolyn Baker, explained in the book I Want My MTV: “It wasn’t MTV that turned down ‘Super Freak.’ It was me. I tuned it down. You know why? Because there were half-naked women in it, and it was a piece of crap. As a black woman, I did not want that representing my people as the first black video on MTV.”

Over the years, the word “freak” became very popular in hip-hop and R&B lyrics. It’s a versatile word that can be used as both a verb (“Freak Me”) and a noun (“The Freaks Come Out At Night”). Use of the word peaked in the mid-’90s with the phrase, “Get your freak on.”

The Dutch dance duo The Beatfreakz covered this in 2006. Their version reached #7 in the UK, the first time this song charted in Britain as Rick James original version wasn’t a hit there.

In the movie Little Miss Sunshine, the little girl Olive does a wonderfully inappropriate dance to this song in the Little Miss Sunshine pageant.

It also shows up in these movies:

A Madea Family Funeral (2019)
Love, Simon (2018)
Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)
Suicide Squad (2016)
Diary of a Wimpy Kid (2010)
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)
Welcome Home, Roscoe Jenkins (2008)
Norbit (2007)
American Dreamz (2006)
Biggie and Tupac (2002)
Batman Returns (1992)
Doctor Detroit (1983)

And in these TV shows:

Scandal (“It’s Handled” – 2013)
The Simpsons (Treehouse of Horror XXIV – 2013; Treehouse of Horror X – 1999)
Ugly Betty (“Derailed” – 2007)
Two and a Half Men (“Squab, Squab, Squab, Squab, Squab” – 2005)
Gilmore Girls (“We Got Us a Pippi Virgin” – 2004)
King of the Hill (“Returning Japanese” – 2002)
Boy Meets World (“Shallow Boy” – 1996)
In Living Color (“The Black Man’s Guide to Understanding the Black Woman” – 1990)
The A-Team (“The Heart of Rock N’ Roll” – 1985)

A Los Angeles DJ named Alonzo Miller is credited as a writer on this track along with James. Miller worked on the lyrics with James, helping tone them down so the song had a better chance of getting airplay and crossing over to a white audience. Miller was able to get the song played at the station where he worked, KACE.

Super Freak

She’s a very kinky girl,
The kind you don’t take home to mother;
She will never let your spirits down,
Once you get her off the street.

She likes the boys in the band,
She says that I’m her all time fav’rite;
When I make my move to her room,
It’s the right time; she’s never hard to please.

That girl is pretty wild now;
The girl’s a super freak;
The kind of girl you read about
In the new wave magazines.
That girl is pretty kinky;
The girl’s a super freak;
I’d really like to taste her
Ev’ry time we meet.
She’s all right; she’s all right;
That girl’s all right with me yeah.
She’s a super freak, super freak,
She’s super freaky; super freak, super freak.

She’s a very special girl,
From her head down to her toenails;
Yet she’ll wait for me at backstage with her girlfriends,
In a limousine.

Three’s not a crowd to her, she said;
“Room 714, I’ll be waiting.”
When I get there she’s got incense, wine and candles;
It’s such a freaky scene.

She’s a very kinky girl,
The kind you don’t take home to mother;
She will never let your spirits down,
Once you get her off the street.

Donnie Iris – Ah! Leah!

This song I first heard and viewed on MTV. I didn’t hear it on radio a lot but I liked it. It was in a heavy rotation on MTV and the song was undeniably catchy.

Donnie Iris (Dominic Ierace) was a member of The Jaggerz, who had a hit in 1970 with “The Rapper.” He later became a member of Wild Cherry, where he met keyboard player Mark Avsec, and the two formed a musical partnership.

Donnie Iris and Mark Avsec wrote this song. It peaked at #29 in the Billboard 100 and #6 in Canada in 1981.

One way Iris got his sound was vocal stacking. The backups was overdubbed close to 60 times. They spent days in the studio just working on the backup vocals.

Iris and Avsec released their last studio album in 2010.

Donny Iris: “Mark and I wrote that together in my basement, around the piano, and originally Mark had the idea of an anti-war song. It started out just as a chant – it’s not a chick’s name, it’s not a certain person or individual, in particular. We wanted to have a hook, or a chorus, to the tune, that sounded almost like a Gregorian chant, and somehow Mark came up with the ‘Ah, Leah’ just like a chant. I said, ‘You know what, Mark, that’s a chick’s name,’ so that’s how we named it ‘Ah, Leah.’ It just so happens that there was a girl by the name of Leah who had dated one of the guys in The Jaggerz years ago, and I always loved that name. She was a very pretty girl, and I always loved her name. So instead of a war tune, which we messed around with and messed around with and didn’t have anything in there that we liked to make it an anti-war song, it just turned out as being a love song. It was a total change in direction, and that happened with several of our songs. We were coming up with stuff and, you know, sometimes you just do something and in the end you hate it. That’s what happened. We hated that… the way it was coming out as an anti-war song, and when we finally figured it was a nice way to do a love song, then we were happy with it.”

From Songfacts

Iris: “It sounds kind of passionate, when you talk about not being able to be with a chick, and every time you see this girl, you just go nuts, but it ain’t right, you know, something’s wrong with it. We thought that it was a passionate kind of tune.”

Iris credits the songwriting of Mark Avsec as key to their success. He explains how they come up with their songs: “We’ll go into the studio and put down rhythm tracks, and sometimes we’ll get together for 3 or 4 days and put down 15-20 different tracks of musical pieces. Then the group goes home, and Mark will take the songs home, write the lyrics, and we’ll check it out. If we like it, we’ll keep it if we think it’s good. If not, we’ll maybe go for another lyric, or a different track, but he’s unbelievable that way – just a brilliant songwriter, it’s like he does it in his sleep. And he brings them into the studio, and I’ll sit down, I’ll go over it with him, and together we’ll work out the melodies and stuff.” (Thanks to Donnie Iris for speaking with us about this song. In 2006, he released Ellwood City, which is available on donnieiris.com. Check out our interview with Donnie Iris.)

Ah! Leah!

Leah
It’s been a long, long time
You’re such a sight
You’re looking better than a body has a right to
Don’t you know we’re playing with the fire
But we can stop this burning desire
Leah

Ah! Leah!
Here we go again
Ah! Leah!
Is it ever gonna end?
Ah! Leah!
Here we go again
Ah! Leah!

I see your lips
And I wonder who’s been kissing them
I never knew how badly I was missing them
We both know we’re never going to make it
But when we touch
We never have to fake it
Leah

Ah! Leah!
Here we go again
Ah! Leah!
Is it ever gonna end?
Ah! Leah!
Here we go again
Ah! Leah!
We ain’t learned our lesson yet

Baby, it’s no good
We’re just asking for trouble
I can touch you
But I don’t know how to love you

It ain’t no use
We’re headed for disaster
Our minds said no
But our hearts were talking faster
Leah

Ah! Leah!
Here we go again
Ah! Leah!
Here we go again
Ah! Leah!
Leah, Leah, Leah
Ah! Leah!
Here we go again

Ah! Leah!
Leah
We’re never, ever, ever gonna make it, yeah
Ah! Leah!
Here we go again
Ah! Leah!
We’re never gonna make it
Ah! Leah!

REM – Orange Crush

This song is for Song Lyric Sunday for Jim Adams’s blog. This week’s prompt is Apple/Banana/Cherry/Olive/Orange/Strawberry… I hope all of you have a wonderful Sunday!

I really liked REM when this came out but with this album I became a huge fan. The song was off of their album Green. Orange Crush peaked at #1 in the Billboard Alternative Charts and Mainstream Rock Hits, #28 in the UK, and #5 in New Zealand in 1989. (sorry I could not find Canada)

Orange Crush was my favorite soda growing up but this one is not about that. They got this name from Agent Orange…an awful chemical used in the Vietnam war.

Agent Orange was used to devastating effect during the Vietnam war. A toxic mix of herbicides and defoliants, nearly 20 million gallons of the it was sprayed over forested areas by the US military over a nine-year period up to 1971.

The idea was to root out guerrillas from rural communities and force people into American-controlled urban cities. It’s estimated that 400,000 were killed or maimed and it caused 500,000 children to be born with severe defects. Veterans on both sides of the conflict, meanwhile, have shown increased rates of cancer and nerve disorders. Returning US soldiers were also subject to accelerated instances of their wives having miscarriages or infants born with abnormalities.

The song was credited to all members of REM as were their other songs. The drill sergeant heard in the background during the middle is an imitation by Stipe.

Michael Stipe: “The song is a composite and fictional narrative in the first person, drawn from different stories I heard growing up around Army bases. This song is about the Vietnam War and the impact on soldiers returning to a country that wrongly blamed them for the war.”

Guitar Player Peter Buck: “I must have played this song onstage over three hundred times, and I still don’t know what the f*** it’s about. The funny thing is, every time I play it, it means something different to me, and I find myself moved emotionally. [Playwright/composer] Noel Coward made some remark about the potency of cheap music, and while I wouldn’t describe the song as cheap in any way, sometimes great songwriting isn’t the point. A couple of chords, a good melody and some words can mean more than a seven-hundred-page novel, mind you. Not a good seven-hundred-page novel mind you, but more say, a long Jacqueline Susann novel. Well alright, I really liked Valley of the Dolls.”

From Songfacts

Orange Crush was an orange flavored soft drink. In this case, though, it was meant to refer to Agent Orange, a chemical used by the US to defoliate the Vietnamese jungle during the Vietnam War. US military personnel exposed to it developed cancer years later and some of their children had birth defects. The extreme lyrical dissonance in the song meant that most people completely misinterpreted the song, including Top Of The Pops host Simon Parkin, who remarked on camera after R.E.M. performed the song on the British TV show, “Mmm, great on a summer’s day. That’s Orange Crush.”

Stipe’s father served in Vietnam in the helicopter corps.

Stipe sometimes introduced this in concert by singing the US Army jingle, “Be all that you can be, in the Army.”

This was not the first R.E.M. song to deal with the Vietnam War. That distinction goes to “Body Count,” an early unreleased song that they played live many times.

This was used in the 2007 drama Towelhead, starring Maria Bello, Chris Messina and Summer Bishil.

The song’s meaning keeps changing for Peter Buck. He wrote in the In Time liner notes:

Orange Crush

(Follow me, don’t follow me)
I’ve got my spine, I’ve got my orange crush
(Collar me, don’t collar me)
I’ve got my spine, I’ve got my orange crush
(We are agents of the free)
I’ve had my fun and now it’s time
To serve your conscience overseas (over me, not over me)
Coming in fast, over me

Famous Rock Guitars Part 3

Now we continue our quest of famous guitars and the artists cherish them… Here was Part 1 and Part 2.

Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young’s guitars

Bruce Springsteen’s Guitar

Bruce has stuck with this guitar from the first album until now. You see this guitar on his Born to Run album. When I saw him in 2000 he was playing it. Bruce bought this in 1972 in Phil Petillo’s Neptune New Jersey guitar shop for $185. Now the guitar is said to be worth between $1 million and $5 million…pretty good investment Bruce!

The guitar is a composite assembled from parts from at least two other Fender guitars. The bolt-on neck dates from a 1950s Fender Esquire guitar. The Esquire decal on the headstock indicates that the neck came from the single-pickup variant of Fender’s more-popular two-pickup Telecaster. The body is a 1950’s Telecaster

The guitar had been originally owned by a record company and was part of the payola scams of the 1960s. It was rigged with four pickups wired into extra jacks that would each plug into a separate channel on the recording console.

Petillo removed the extra pickups and returned the guitar to original Telecaster shape before he sold it Springsteen, but a huge side effect of the routing was that the Tele was now really light, giving it a sound a feel unlike any other.

Bruce had Peillo modify it over the years. He added his triangular Precision Frets, a six saddle titanium bridge, and custom hot-wound waterproofed pickups and electronics so they could better survive a sweat-soaked 4 hour show.

Bruce has now retired the Esquire from road duty, so these days Springsteen plays clones on stage, but still records with the original.

Neil Young’s “Old Black”

Neil Young is known mostly as a singer songwriter but he is a hell of a guitar player. He is one of my favorite rock guitarists. He doesn’t play lightning quick and that is a good thing…it’s playing with feel that many guitar players forget about.

Neil Young acquired Old Black in 1968 through a trade with Buffalo Springfield member Jim Messina, who traded Old Black for one of Young’s orange Gretsch guitars (Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins).

The guitar made a humming sound so he dropped it off at a guitar shop in LA. When he came back, the shop had closed for good and lost one of the pickups. To replace the lost pickup, Neil added a Gretsh pickup that didn’t quite sound the way he wanted, but it stayed that way until Larry Cragg found an old Firebird pickup and installed it. Then Old Black was restored to its former glory and that Firebird pickup is still installed on the guitar today. It was roughly resprayed to jet black, and received a new Tune-o-matic bridge (not available when the guitar was produced) and a B-7 model Bigsby vibrato tailpiece.

The neck pickup has always been the original P-90 pickup, but it is covered by a metal P-90 cover. Neil is still playing Old Black to this day and he said he will until he dies.

…

Billy Squier – Christmas Is The Time To Say I Love You

If there ever was ever a year I was looking forward to Christmas…this is the one…This Christmas song that doesn’t get played a bunch here. I’ve always liked it since is was released. It was written by Billy Squier and was the B side to the single “My Kinda Lover.”

In 1981 MTV made it’s debut and Billy Squier’s career was going strong with the 1981 release of the Don’t Say No album. MTV at the beginning had a more family atmosphere. The crowd in this sing-a-long included technicians, the secretaries, the executives, the production assistants.

The video was filmed at the Teletronics MTV studio.

VJ Nina Blackwood: “It was taped at our original Teletronics Studio on West 33rd Street and featured our original studio crew, who we all loved and were very close to, along with all the people from the MTV offices,” “Everybody traipsed down to the studio from 44th Street & 6th Ave for the taping. Billy Squier’s career was on fire at this time, and since he lived in NYC, he was a frequent guest at the studio, so it was appropriate that he was chosen for the video.”

“Pretty much what you see on camera is an accurate representation of the celebratory and fun feeling that was happening,” Blackwood said. “It was like one big happy family, which sums up the entire vibe of the early days of MTV. One of a kind experience. When I watch all of these early MTV Christmas videos, the overwhelming sensation I come away with is that of joyous love.”

Christmas Is The Time To Say I Love You

Christmas is the time to say “I love you”
Share the joys of laughter and good cheer
Christmas is the time to say “I love you”
And a feeling that will last all through the year

On the corner carolers are singing
There’s a touch of magic in the air
From grownup to minor no one could be finer
Times are hard but no one seems to care
Christmas Eve and all the world is watching
Santa guides his reindeer through the dark
From rooftop to chimney, from Harlem to Bimini
They will find a way into your heart

Christmas is the time to say “I love you”
Share the joys of laughter and good cheer
Christmas is the time to say “I love you”
And a feeling that will last all through the year

Just outside the window snow is falling
But here beside the fire we share the glow
Of moonlight and brandy, sweet talk and candy
Sentiments that everyone should know
Memories of the year that lays behind us
Wishes for the year that’s yet to come
And it stands to reason that good friends in season
Make you feel that life has just begun

Christmas is the time to say “I love you”
Share the joys of laughter and good cheer
Christmas is the time to say “I love you”
And a feeling that will last all through the year

So when spirits grow lighter
And hopes are shinin’ brighter
Then you know that Christmas time is here

John Mellencamp – Jack and Diane

Anyone who grew up in the eighties is going to know this one. This was a big MTV and radio song in 1982. It was on the American Fool album which was his breakthrough. This song helped Mellencamp forge his identity, which was a struggle for him. John was still going by stage name John Cougar at this time. He would use Mellencamp for the follow up album Uh-Huh in 1983.

Mellencamp was inspired by the drum break in Phil Collins In The Air Tonight and asked his drummer Kenny Aronoff to come up with a drum break for this song.

The American Fool album produced two top 5 hits. It peaked at #1 in the Billboard Album Charts and Canada…and #35 in the UK. The song peaked at #1 in the Billboard 100, #1 in Canada, and #25 in the UK.

Mick Ronson played guitar, provided backup vocals, and helped arrange this song.

John Mellencamp: “The image that was given to me by the record company was so far off base of who I was and what I wanted to do,” he said in his Plain Spoken DVD. “I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I knew what I didn’t want to do. I did not want to be Johnny Cougar, I did not want to sing love songs, I did not want to be the next Neil Diamond, which is what they wanted.”

“I had to figure out what my image was, and I had a girl say to me, ‘John, just be a pair of blue jeans. That’s what you are.’ And the great thing about blue jeans is, you can dress them up, or you can dress them down.”

From Songfacts

A song about a high school couple falling in love, Mellencamp wrote “Jack & Diane” as a tribute to life in the rural working class. The inspiration was his hometown of Seymour, Indiana, which had a population of about 13,000 when it was released. The song has a very nostalgic feel, but paints a picture of a couple whose best years will soon be behind them. In a 1982 interview with The LA Herald Examiner, Mellencamp explained: “Most people don’t ever reach their goals, but that’s cool, too. Failure’s a part of what you’re all about anyway. Coming to terms with failed expectations is what counts. I try to write about the most insignificant things, really. I mean, someone who picks up a copy of Newsweek, then sits down and writes a song about the troubles in South America – who cares? What’s that song telling us that we don’t already know? Write about something that matters to people, man.”

In Campbell Devine’s authorized biography of Ian Hunter and Mott The Hoople it is revealed that this song was heavily influenced by Mick Ronson. The multi-talented Ronson (1946-1993), who was best known as a guitarist, recorded as a solo artist as well as playing lead guitar for both David Bowie and Ian Hunter (as Hunter-Ronson). In the book, Mellencamp says he’d thrown the song on the junk heap, adding: “I owe Mick Ronson the song… Mick was very instrumental in helping me arrange that.”

Some of Mellencamp’s high school photos and home movies were used to make the video, which was pretty much an afterthought. His record company hired Jon Roseman Productions to make videos for the songs “Hurts So Good” and “Hand To Hold On To.”

Paul Flattery, who worked for that production company, explained in the book I Want My MTV that Mellencamp made a special request after those videos were completed: “He said, ‘Look, there’s a song on the album the label doesn’t believe in. But I do. Can you do me a favor and save one roll of film, shoot me singing the song, I’ll give you some old photos and stuff and then you cobble it together for me?

The song was ‘Jack & Diane.’ So we stole some editing time in LA. We projected slides on the edit room wall, and we had the tape-op wear white gloves to do the clapping. We didn’t charge John a cent.”

Mellencamp spent a long time crafting this song in an effort to make it a hit. This was part of his plan to become so successful he could ignore critics and tell his record company to stick it. But first, he had to make some concessions, like changing his name.

His manager named him “Johnny Cougar,” and he went along with it, scoring an Australian hit with “I Need A Lover” in 1978. A year later, he altered his moniker to “John Cougar,” which is how he was billed on the American Fool album. The first single, “Hurts So Good” became a huge hit and got him on MTV, and when “Jack & Diane” followed, it accomplished his mission of autonomy through hits.

When he released Uh-Huh in 1983, it was as John Cougar Mellencamp, with songs that were less crafted and more inspired, especially “Pink Houses.” He lived up to his reputation of being difficult, but it didn’t matter because he could call the shots.

Jack and Diane were a interracial couple in the first version of this song, inspired by the blended couples Mellencamp saw during his live performances (Jack was black, Diane was white). He took the race part out of it and made Jack a football star after an executive from his record company heard what he was working on and asked him to do so in an effort to make the song more relatable and therefore boost its hit potential. With race removed from the equation, a broader swath of Mellencamp’s audience identified with the song, especially in the Midwest. He says that lots of folks have told him that the characters are just like them.

Following Phil Collins’ template from the 1981 hit “In The Air Tonight,” Mellencamp ordered a drum break in the middle of this song. His drummer, Kenny Aronoff, had to come up with it on the spot, proving his mettle when he did so. In a Songfacts interview with Aronoff, he told the story:

“I walk into the studio and the co-producer has a Linn LM-1 drum machine. I’d never seen a drum machine before. I’m being told that they’re using this on the song ‘Jack & Diane’ that we were having trouble coming up with an arrangement for. I’m devastated that I’m going to be replaced by a drum machine. I grab the drum machine, I get the manual, and I program the drum part. I’m in the lounge, really bummed out and wondering, ‘What’s the future of the drummer?’ This is 1981. I’m wondering, ‘Will that machine replace us?’

Two hours later, I’m summoned into the control room, where John tells me, ‘I need you to come up with a drum solo or something after the second chorus.’ At that moment, I was absolutely terrified and excited. Excited because I’m now going to be playing on the record. Terrified because I knew that I had to save the song in order to save my career. Because if I didn’t come up with it, they’d replace me. Two people had already been fired in the band and when I joined two years prior, I was fired from playing on the record. So, this was a scary moment for me.

The long and short of it is, I come up with this part on the spot and it becomes a #1 hit – John’s biggest hit ever. That and ‘In The Air Tonight’ by Phil Collins are probably the two most air-drummed solos on pop radio, ever [even Mellencamp air drums it in the video]. It’s not technically hard, but I was forced to create that on the spot.”

Up until the big drum break, a drum machine was used on this song, but drummer Kenny Aronoff gave it a human touch not just for the break, but also the section that immediately follows. “When I got into the groove after the drum solo, the drummer that influenced me to hit the floor tom on beat four was Steve Gadd from a recording he did on a Chick Corea album, and the song was called ‘Lenore,'” Aronoff told Songfacts. “Steve Gadd would always hit the beat on beat four. I thought that was cool, so even though I don’t sound anything like Steve Gadd and nothing like he was playing on the Chick Corea record, that track influenced me to hit the floor tom, which made my hi-hats open.”

The only musical couple song that can rival this one for popularity is the standard “Frankie And Johnny. Most other hit songs of this nature were cribbed from literature or film, like “Romeo And Juliet” and Bonnie And Clyde. In 1978, Raydio had a hit with “Jack And Jill.”

Weird Al Yankovic planned to parody this song on his 1983 debut album as “Chuck And Diane,” making fun of the royal couple Prince Charles and Lady Diana. Yankovic couldn’t get Mellencamp’s permission to do the parody (which he asks as a courtesy, as anyone can parody a song as long as proper royalties are paid), so he used the lyrical content for an original song called “Buckingham Blues” instead. Yankovic did parody the song on the 2003 Simpsons episode “Three Gays Of The Condo,” where he sang it in animated form as “Homer And Marge.”

This is the only #1 Hot 100 hit in Mellencamp’s career, and based on streams and downloads, his most popular song.

The Sun October 10, 2008 asked Mellencamp if it bothered him being best known for this little ditty. He replied: “That song is 30 or so years old and it gets played more today in the United States than it did when it came out. As much as I am a little weary of those two, I don’t know any other two people in rock and roll who are more popular than Jack and Diane. Some people probably think there’s a place in hell for me because of those two people! But it gave me the keys to do what I want. I’m 57 today. I’ve lived the way I wanted to live, sometimes recklessly and stupidly, but still been able to do that. I’ve been able to live on my whims, that’s what Jack and Diane gave me, so I can’t hate them too much.”

In 2012, a film was released called Jack & Diane, but Mellencamp had nothing to do with it, and the song is not used in the movie. In the film, Jack (played by Riley Keough) is a girl, and she and Diane have a lesbian relationship. Mellencamp said in a statement: “You don’t hear my song in the film, and I played no part in suggesting or offering this title. It’s most apparent that the lead characters were named with the hope that the familiar title might resonate in some people’s minds. I guess that’s OK to do, strictly from a legal perspective, but riding on someone else’s coattails and having a moral compass is left up to each individual.”

Mellencamp mentioned the title characters again in his 1998 song “Eden Is Burning.” The first line is, “Diane and Jack went to the movies.”

Jack and Diane

A little ditty ’bout Jack & Diane
Two American kids growing up in the heart land
Jack he’s gonna be a football star
Diane debutante in the back seat of Jacky’s car
Suckin’ on chilli dog outside the Tastee Freez
Diane sitting on Jacky’s lap
Got his hands between her knees
Jack he says:
“Hey, Diane, let’s run off behind a shady tree
Dribble off those Bobby Brooks
Let me do what I please”
Saying oh yeah
Life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone
Sayin’ oh yeah
Life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone
Now walk on
Jack he sits back, collects his thoughts for a moment
Scratches his head, and does his best James Dean
Well, now then, there, Diane, we ought to run off to the city
Diane says:
“Baby, you ain’t missing nothing”
But Jack he says:
“Oh yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone”
Oh yeah
He says: “life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone”
Oh, let it rock, let it roll
Let the bible belt come and save my soul
Holdin’ on to sixteen as long as you can
Change is coming ’round real soon
Make us woman and man
Oh yeah, life goes on
A little ditty ’bout Jack and Diane
Two American kids doin’ the best they can

Fleetwood Mac – Hold Me

Stevie Nicks always got more attention in Fleetwood Mac but I’ve always favored Christine’s songs. McVie has written some superb pop songs. This video I saw many times on the still new MTV.

Fleetwood Mac singer/keyboard player Christine McVie wrote this song with Robbie Patton, a singer who had a US hit in 1981 with “Don’t Give It Up,” which features guitar by Lindsey Buckingham.

This song was inspired by Christine McVie’s relationship with Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson. After she split with Fleetwood Mac bass player John McVie, Christine dated Wilson for several years before they broke up in 1981. Wilson died in 1983 in a drunk-drowning accident.

Hold Me was on the Mirage album released in 1982. The band recorded the album at the Château d’Hérouville outside of Paris… they filmed the video for this song in the Mojave Desert outside of Palm Springs. The album peaked at #1 in the Billboard Album Charts, #5 in the UK, and #4 in Canada in 1982.

The song peaked at #4 in the Billboard 100, #7 in Canada, and #94 in the UK.

Christine McVie on Mirage getting overlooked: “It does, and I don’t know why,” she says. But, she adds, “As it stands today, a lot of people know every track on it. Which is quite unbelievable. So I just take it for what it is.”

I suppose we all felt in a way that what we were doing was kind of an homage to Rumours, in the sense that, obviously, after Rumours we went completely the opposite way and made a double album of an entirely different nature with Tusk. And for Tusk we had done this hugely long tour. Two world tours, I believe. Then we all disappeared for a few years. But we have a habit of doing that, Fleetwood Mac. Just kind of taking quite long hiatuses. And as we got together again, I think it was Mick who had this idea that perhaps we should enter another bubble-like situation, which was similar to what we had done for the Rumours album, when we recorded in Sausalito. Just taking us away from familiar things, like our families. There was the idea that maybe something would emerge from there that was completely different. Maybe it would make us more creative. And I think it worked, to an extent. It was definitely an unusual experience.

From Songfacts

Robbie Patton toured as an opening act with Fleetwood Mac in 1979 and McVie produced his albums Distant Shores (1981) and Orders From Headquarters (1982).

The video for this song was inspired in large part by the works of the Belgian painter Magritte, whose paintings appear in the clip. It was directed by Steve Barron and shot in the Mojave Desert. The combination of extreme heat and band tension made for a very difficult shoot. Christine McVie, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks had all started solo projects, and getting the band to collaborate was a lesson in futility. The video’s producer Simon Fields said in I Want My MTV by Craig Marks, “John McVie was drunk and tried to punch me. Stevie Nicks didn’t want to walk on the sand with her platforms. Christine McVie was fed up with all of them. They were a fractious bunch.”

The video was subpar, but it was a fresh Fleetwood Mac video, which was good enough for MTV, which in 1982 was desperate for new clips by rock artists, especially established ones. Fleetwood Mac’s video for “Tusk” was one of the few they had available when they launched on August 1, 1981.

Christine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham share the lead vocals on this track.

Hold Me

Can you understand me
Baby don’t you hand me a line
Although it doesn’t matter
You and me got plenty of time

There’s nobody in the future
So baby let me hand you my love
Oh, there’s no step for you to dance to
So slip your hand inside of my glove

Hold me, hold me, hold me
Hold me, hold me, hold me

I don’t want no damage
But how am I gonna manage with you
You hold the percentage
But I’m the fool payin’ the dues

I’m just around the corner
If you got a minute to spare
I’ll be waitin’ for ya’
If you ever want to be there

Hold me, hold me, hold me
Hold me, hold me, hold me
Hold me, hold me, hold me
Hold me, hold me, hold me

Hold me, hold me, hold me
Hold me, hold me, hold me
Hold me, hold me, hold me
Hold me, hold me, hold me
Hold me, hold me, hold me
Hold me, hold me, hold me
Hold me, hold me, hold me
Hold me, hold me, hold me

Madness – Our House

At the start of MTV my small town I lived in had yet to get cable…but it wouldn’t take too long. At that time I had to travel to relatives in Nashville before I got a chance to see it. I would spend the weekend and we would watch MTV for hours at a time. Binge watching before binge watching was a saying. We would wake up the next day bleary eyed and turn on more MTV.

I did find some music I never heard before. This band and song caught my attention. The song was released in 1982. It peaked at #7 in the Billboard 100, #1 in Canada, and #5 in the UK.

The song was on the The Rise & Fall album. They were different…they have been described as a British ska and pop band.

This was Madness only top 10 hit in the US. Much of the song’s success in America was helped out by the clever music video that was in heavy rotation early days of MTV.

The producers were Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley

Alan Winstanley: “At the time of doing Madness we were kind of flying along together,” adds Langer. “Alan’s very precise and very particular, and I’m more slapdash and in a hurry and probably tend to like rougher-sounding records. That’s a generalization, because in the end we do like the same records, but sometimes the whole process with Alan can be laborious for me. He normally does the vocal comps whereas I’ll do a lot more work in the rehearsal room on the arrangements, deciding what instruments should play what where, how long the chorus should be and things like that. Still, we’ve got on fine considering how long we’ve worked together.”

Graham “Suggs” McPherson lead singer : “This was the first time we worked with the string arranger David Bedford. It was clear to him what our records needed and he did great things for us. It’s strange now to think we were so philosophical about such everyday things.”

From Songfacts

This won the Best Song award at the 1983 Ivor Novello Awards.

This was played in a 2007 TV commercial shown in the UK for Bird’s Eye Fish Fingers, which featured Suggs. In the advert the Madness frontman is sitting with a family at tea time. The daughter is studying for her school exams and asks Suggs where Omega 3 can be found. He offers the answer of Birds Eye Fish Fingers.

The song’s video featured the band as a cloth-cap wearing family squashed into a terraced house. Drummer Dan “Woody” Woodgate recalled to Q Magazine August 2008: “The knocking-on-the-door bit where somebody comes out, goes, ‘Where are they?’ and the others sneak in and close the door… That’s The Flintstones. We stole lots of ideas from the Keystone Kops and Benny Hill.”

Our House

Father wears his Sunday best
Mother’s tired, she needs a rest
The kids are playing up downstairs
Sister’s sighing in her sleep (ah)
Brother’s got a date to keep, he can’t hang around

Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, in the middle of our

Our house, it has a crowd
There’s always something happening
And it’s usually quite loud
Our mum she’s so house-proud
Nothing ever slows her down and a mess is not allowed

Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, in the middle of our
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, in the middle of our (something tells you that you’ve got to move away from it)

Father gets up late for work
Mother has to iron his shirt
Then she sends the kids to school
Sees them off with a small kiss (ah)
She’s the one they’re going to miss in lots of ways

Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, in the middle of our

I remember way back then when everything was true and when
We would have such a very good time, such a fine time
Such a happy time
And I remember how we’d play, simply waste the day away
Then we’d say nothing would come between us
Two dreamers

Father wears his Sunday best
Mother’s tired, she needs a rest
The kids are playing up downstairs
Sister’s sighing in her sleep
Brother’s got a date to keep, he can’t hang around

Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, in the middle of our

Our house, was our castle and our keep
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, that was where we used to sleep
Our house, in the middle of our street
Our house, in the middle of our street, our house

Replacements – Bastards Of Young

The ones, love us best are the ones we’ll lay to rest
And visit their graves on holidays at best
The ones, love us least are the ones we’ll die to please
If it’s any consolation, I don’t begin to understand them

This song starts with a raw cool riff and a scream…how much more rock and roll can you get? The lyrics above is what got me into this song in the 80s.

The song was on the album Tim released in 1985. The album was produced by Tommy Ramone. Alex Chilton also helped out with the album.

Why was the album called Tim? There was no reference to the name on the album. The bands manager said that he asked Paul Westerberg what the name of the album would be. Paul told him “Tim” and the manager asked why? Paul said “because it’s such a nice name. “

It was placed 136th on Rolling Stone’s 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, and 137 in a 2012 revised list. The album peaked at #186 in the Billboard Album Chart in 1986.

“Bastards of Young” was used in the 2020 film The New Mutants during the “party” scene where they are relaxing even though they are still confined.

Paul Westerberg working on the album: “”Writing songs like ‘Androgynous’ and ‘Answering Machine’ wasn’t difficult – presenting them to the group was. I’d been tinkering with stuff like that early on… It was hard getting across the idea we should just put the best songs on the record, even if there wasn’t always a place for Bob to have a hot lead. Bob was the hard one to get to acquiesce. So [Tim] ended up putting the chink in the armor of the idea of us as a four-piece rock band.”

From Songfacts

Fitting with the rebellious nature of The Replacements, this song is about a lost generation. The references to “Elvis” and the “Baby Boom” imply their parents, who see them as nothing more than tax deductions. “Bastard” is a derogatory term for a child born out of wedlock.

Some have speculated that the chorus is actually, “We are the sons of Norway” (somewhat fitting, given the Minnesota birthplace of all members) but, (famously) as no lyric sheet was ever provided by the band, it remains speculation.

The video is a black-and-white, single shot of a stereo system playing the song. He see a guy enter the frame, lie on the couch and smoke a cigarette, but we never see his face. At the end of the clip, he kicks over a speaker and leaves.

Bastards of Young

God, what a mess, on the ladder of success
Where you take one step and miss the whole first rung
Dreams unfulfilled, graduate unskilled
It beats pickin’ cotton and waitin’ to be forgotten

We are the sons of no one, bastards of young
We are the sons of no one, bastards of young
The daughters and the sons

Clean your baby womb, trash that baby boom
Elvis in the ground, there’ll ain’t no beer tonight
Income tax deduction, what a hell of a function
It beats pickin’ cotton or waitin’ to be forgotten

We are the sons of no one, bastards of young
We are the sons of no one, bastards of young
Now the daughters and the sons

Unwillingness to claim us, ya got no war to name us

The ones, love us best are the ones we’ll lay to rest
And visit their graves on holidays at best
The ones, love us least are the ones we’ll die to please
If it’s any consolation, I don’t begin to understand them

We are the sons of no one, bastards of young
We are the sons of no one, bastards of young
Daughters and the sons

Young, young, young, young

Take it, it’s yours
Take it, it’s yours
Take it, it’s yours
Take it, it’s yours
Take it, it’s yours
Take it, it’s yours
Take it, it’s yours
Take it, it’s yours
Take it, it’s yours

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_(The_Replacements_album)#:~:text=Tim%20is%20the%20fourth%20studio,towards%20the%20end%20of%201986.

Teenage Head – Somethin’ On My Mind

Deke and Dave my Canadian friends both have mentioned them in their blogs. I like what I’ve heard from the band…I remember this band by the name Teenage Heads in the 1980s in America… but never heard much of their music then. They had some rock, punk, and power pop thrown in…what’s not to like about that?

They are from Hamilton, Ontario in Hamilton Weston High school… friends Frankie (Venom) Kerr and Gordon Lewis formed the group in 1975 with bassist Steve Mahon and Nick Stipinitz on drums.

They took their name from a Flaming Groovies song title and album. They quickly gained a loyal following on the Ontario club circuit for their shows, highlighted by Lewis’ guitar work and front man Venom’s on stage presence.

Their self-titled debut album was released in 1979, and it was distributed by Epic Records Canada. A year later, the group signed to Attic Records and released this album Frantic City, the album that put them on the international radar. The hit singles, “Something On My Mind” and “Let’s Shake” helped propel the album to platinum sales (100,000) in Canada.

Somethin On My Mind peaked at #20 in Canada in 1980.

After a couple of years Teenage Head was finally recognized by M.C.A. Records for their international potential and signed to a U.S. deal… but the deal came with conditions. The band was forced to change their name to “Teenage Heads” and that is the name I remember them by in the 80s.

***Updating this…the band has a new documentary out…Picture My Face***

Somethin’ On My Mind

If you go, ah well, you know I just won’t mind
‘Cause they say, a love like ours takes time
Have to say, uh, that there’s something on my mind
She’s a friend and I knew you wouldn’t mind

But if you, well, have to go
That’s OK
But if you decide to stay
Please don’t go
Please don’t go

If you stay, ah well, I won’t care anyway
If you’re bad, well it’s the last chance that you have
Can I say, uh, that a love is sometimes blind
Now I see, all the things that went behind

But if you decide to go
That’s OK
But if you, well, plan to stay
Please don’t go
No no no

But if you, well, plan to go
Please don’t go
But if you decide to stay
No no no
Please don’t go

You don’t have to please me
‘Cause baby, you know I’m easy
The last time that you went
You burned all the cards I sent

But if this time it’s for good
Uh, so it’s understood
So, if you leave once more
You’ll find out what’s in store

Have to say, uh, that there’s something on my mind
She’s a friend and I knew you wouldn’t mind
Have to say, uh, that there’s something on my mind
She’s a friend and I knew you wouldn’t mind
Have to say, uh, that there’s something on my mind

Led Zeppelin – Hot Dog

This song is for Song Lyric Sunday for Jim Adams’s blog. This week’s prompt…Bird/Cat/Dog/Fish/Pet…I hope everyone has a good Sunday and turns up Hot Dog!

I know some Zeppelin fans that don’t like this song. I guess it’s a guilty pleasure of mine. I love playing that intro on guitar. The intro sounds like a square dance riff from hell. Robert Plant does a great rockabilly vocal and they have the echo set perfectly.

This one is a fun song that Zeppelin sounds like they had a good time recording. Led Zeppelin played this live at the 1979 appearance at Knebworth and 1980 tour in Europe.

The song was on the album In Through The Out Door and it peaked at #1 in the Billboard Album Charts, Canada, The UK, and New Zealand. The song was the B side to Fool In The Rain. The song was written by Robert Plant and Jimmy Page.

A promotional video was shot. This was the closest Led Zeppelin came to a music video.

From Songfacts

This was influenced by American rockabilly music, which Robert Plant enjoyed. A hot dog is distinctly American cuisine.

Led Zeppelin had some heavy songs, but this was a fun, rollicking tune at a tough time for the band. Plant’s 5-year-old son, Karac, died in 1977 and they were all worn out from constant touring and recording.

The lyrics about a girl in Texas who “Took my heart” may have been based on a real woman in Plant’s life, but he called this a tribute to Texas and the state of mind of the people in Texas.

On a particularly cold day at a turn of the 20th century New York baseball game, no one was buying concessionaire Harry Stevens’ ice cream, so he begun selling sausages and rolls. He started calling out, “Red hot dachshund sausages!” and found they were very popular. Thomas “Tad” Dorgan, a sports cartoonist for The New York Journal, was in the press box and seeing this he attempted to draw a cartoon of a barking sausage steaming in its stretched out roll. He didn’t know how to spell “Dachshund,” so he wrote “hot dog” instead, a name which immediately caught on. (from the book Food for Thought: Extraordinary Little Chronicles of the World by Ed Pearce)

Hot Dog

(Oh, hot dog)
Well, I just got into town today
To find my girl who’s gone away
She took the Greyhound at the general store
I searched myself I searched the town
When I finally did sit down
I find myself no wiser than before

She said we couldn’t do no wrong
No other love could be so strong
She locked up my heart in her bottom drawer
Now she took my heart she took my keys
From in my old blue dungarees
And I’ll never go to Texas anymore

Now my baby’s gone I don’t know what to do
She took my love and walked right out the door
And if I ever find that girl I know one thing for sure
I’m gonna give her something like she never had before

I took her love at seventeen
A little late these days it seems
But they said heaven is well worth waiting for
I took her word I took it all
Beneath the sign that said “you-haul”
She left angels hangin’ round for more

I thought I had it all sewn up
Our love, a plot, a pick-up truck
But folks said she was after something more
I never did quite understand
All that talk about rockin’ bands
But they just rolled my doll right out the door
Oh yeah, they just rolled my doll right out the door
But they just rolled my doll right out the door

Rolling Stones – Emotional Rescue

Good morning everyone… hope you have a great Monday.

I bought the Emotional Rescue single when it was released. I also bought the album and it was a let down to me after the great Some Girls album. The title track is heavily leaning toward disco and I do like it. What attracted me to the song is the superb bass line in the intro.

Ronnie Wood played bass on the song and Bill Wyman played synthesizer. Ronnie is a great bass player. He played bass on Rod Stewart’s Maggie May. The song peaked at #3 in the Billboard 100, #9 in the UK, and #1 in Canada.

The Stones played this for the very first time in concert on May 3, 2013, 33 years after they recorded the song. Keith Richards was not a fan of the song and it never made a Stones setlist until the first show of their 50 and Counting tour at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

Mick Jagger: ‘We were just doing dance music, you know. It was just a dance music lick I was just playing on the keyboard. Charlie has a really nice groove for that.”

From Songfacts

This alienated many Stones fans who thought it was a sell out to disco, but it was still a Top 10 hit in the US and UK.

Mick Jagger sang much of this in a falsetto, which was the thing to do with disco songs. The Bee Gees did the same thing, but unlike The Stones, were never able to get back the fans they lost to disco.

Bobby Keys’ sax solo and Mick Jagger’s vocals were added almost a year after the rhythm track was recorded.

Jagger wrote this on an electric piano.

The video for this used the same thermal imagery effect as the album cover. It was cutting-edge visual stuff in 1980.

Emotional Rescue

Is there nothing I can say, nothing I can do to change your mind?
I’m so in love with you, you’re too deep in, you can’t get out
You’re just a poor girl in a rich man’s house
Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh
Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh
Yeah, baby, I’m crying over you

Don’t you know promises were never meant to keep?
Just like the night, they dissolve off in sleep
I’ll be your savior, steadfast and true
I’ll come to your emotional rescue
I’ll come to your emotional rescue
Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh
Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh
Yeah, the other night, cryin’, cryin’ baby yeah I’m cryin
Yeah I’m cryin, I’m your child baby, child,
Yeah I’m a child, I’m a child, I’m a child

You think you’re one of a special breed
You think that you’re his pet Pekinese
I’ll be your savior, steadfast and true
I’ll come to your emotional rescue
I’ll come to your emotional rescue
Ooh ah ah ah ah ah ah ah
Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah
Yeah, I was dreamin’ last night baby
Last night I was dreamin’ that you’d be mine
But I was cryin’ like a child
Yeah I was cryin’, cryin’ like a child
Could be mine, mine, mine, mine, mine all mine
You could be mine, could be mine, could be mine all mine

I come to you, so silent in the night
So stealthy, so animal quiet
I’ll be your savior, steadfast and true
I’ll come to your emotional rescue
I’ll come to your emotional rescue
Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah
Yeah, you should be mine, mine, ooh!

Mmm yes, you could be mine, tonight and every night
I will be your knight in shining armor
Coming to your emotional rescue
You will be mine, you will be mine, all mine
You will be mine, you will be mine, all mine

I will be your knight in shining armor
Riding across the desert on a fine Arab charger

John Mellencamp – Ain’t Even Done With The Night

This is John in his “Cougar” days. It was right before the floodgates opened for him with the album American Fool that would come in 1982.

This song came off of his 4th studio album Nothing Matters and What If It Did released in 1980. Ain’t Even Done With The Night peaked at #17 in the Billboard 100 and #15 in Canada. Mellencamp wrote the song.

He has been asked what is the worse thing he ever did for success. He replied that would be changing his name to Johnny Cougar but the record company had him in a corner.

In 1983 after the hugely successful American Fool album John had enough leverage to force his record company to use his real name. It would now be John Cougar Mellencamp.

Steve Cropper produced this album…he produced many artists for Stax records.

John Mellencamp: “I have probably never gotten along with any record company executive ever, except maybe one,” “And if they were such good businessmen, why aren’t they running Coca-Cola or other major corporations now?”

John Mellencamp: “I see things that other people don’t see,” he said in his Plain Spoken DVD. “I pay attention to detail. That’s where my songs come from. They’re not about me.”

From Songfacts

John Mellencamp got married at 18 and had his first child a short time later. He knew the vagaries of young romance and fear of commitment quite well, which certainly qualified him to write this song about a couple deeply in love, with the guy unsure what to do and the girl reassuring him.

This method of songwriting proved very successful and comes into play on this song: There was probably a time when your heart was beating like thunder, etching a memory so powerful you can remember the song that was playing on the radio.

This song came during a transitional period for Mellencamp, after his first hit but before his star turn. In 1978, “I Need A Lover,” a song from his second album, took off in Australia, giving him a leg up on the other young rockers he was competing against. From there, he set out to create hits, which he felt was essential to his survival – he was a strong-willed, hard-headed country boy who didn’t get along with his record label and most industry folks, so unless he could become invaluable, he wasn’t going to make it.

“Ain’t Even Done with the Night” came from his quest to make hit pop songs, and even thought he has shown no affinity for it, the song became one of his most enduring, showing up on playlists decades after it was first released.

It helped keep him on the charts until his breakthrough fifth album, American Fool, with the hits “Hurts So Good” and “Jack & Diane.” After that, he no longer had to care even a little what people think. His songs that followed are the ones he considers his best work.

This song falls smack in the middle of the “John Cougar” years – the name he used from 1979-1983; before that he was “Johnny Cougar.” In 1983 he started using “John Cougar Mellencamp,” then in 1990 just John Mellencamp.

Steve Cropper, who produced Otis Redding and many other acts at Stax Records, produced the Nothin’ Matters And What If It Did album.

Ain’t Even Done With The Night

Well our hearts beat like thunder
I don’t know why they don’t explode
You got your hands in my back pockets
And Sam Cooke’s singin’ on the radio
You say that I’m the boy who can make it all come true
Well I’m tellin’ ya that I don’t know if I know what to do

You say that’s all right, hold tight
Well I don’t even know if I’m doin’ this right
Well all right, hold tight
We can stay out all day or we can run around all night
Well all night, all night
Well it’s time to go home
And I ain’t even done with the night

Well I don’t know no good come-ons
And I don’t know no cool lines
I feel the heat of your frustration
I know it’s burnin you up deep down inside
You say that I’m the boy who can make it all come true
Well I’m tellin ya that I don’t know if I know what to do

…

Green On Red – Time Ain’t Nothing

Another blogger turned me on to this band and I’ve enjoyed them.

Green On Red were made up of Dan Stuart (vocals/guitar), Jack Waterson (bass), Van Christian (drums, later of Naked Prey) and Chris Cacavas (organ). They part of a California musical scene called Paisley Underground…it basically marriage of classic rock, punk, psychedelia, and garage rock…Green on Red brings in a Country element and more in their mixture.

This band is hard to describe because over their 7 studio albums and 3 EPs they changed and ended up more toward a rock/country feel. This song was released in 1985 on the EP No Free Lunch.

Time Ain’t Nothing

Walking down dusty roads
Looking for horny toads
With the sun on my back
Thinking about people past
Memories that never last
When you’re young and naive

Chorus

Time ain’t nothing
When you’re young at heart
And your soul still burns
I’ve seen rainy days
Sunshine that never fades
All through the night

Had a motorcycle at 10
Never got into heroin
I guess I want to live
Maybe get a house someday
Find a wife raise a family
That don’t mean you have to die

Chorus

Kinks – Working At The Factory

I first heard this song at Tower Records in 1986 while shopping for a Van Morrison album.

The song was on their twenty second studio album Think Visual released in 1986. The album peaked #81 in the Billboard Album Charts in 1986.

In America, the song “How Are You” was released and the B side was Working at the Factory. In the U.S., AOR disc jockeys flipped the single over and played Working At The Factory as though it was the second single. The song ended up peaking at #16 in the Billboard Mainstream Rock Songs chart. The song got a lot of airplay in Nashville at the time.

The Kinks never was as popular as some of their peers as The Beatles, Stones, and The Who. One of the reasons is because during the sixties the Kinks were banned from touring the US for 4 years due to their on stage antics. Promoters complained to the American Federation of Musicians. The union had the power to withhold work permits for British musicians if they misbehaved on stage or refused to perform without good reason. That’s exactly what happened.

The Kinks have sold over 50 million records worldwide and have been cited as a big influence on a number of bands and a key reference point for many Britpop bands. The Kinks were awarded an Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Service to British Music, and singer Ray Davies received a CBE in 2004, and was knighted in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to the arts.

Working At The Factory

All my life, I’ve been a workin’ man
When I was at school they said that’s all you’ll ever understand
No profession, I didn’t figure in their plans
So they sent me down the factory to be a workin’ man

All I lived for, all I lived for
All I lived for was to get out of the factory
Now I’m here seemingly free, but working at the factory

Then music came along and gave new life to me
And gave me hope back in 1963
The music came and set me free
From working at the factory

All I lived for, all I lived for
Was to get out of the factory
All I lived for, all I lived for
Was to get out of the factory

Never wanted to be like everybody else
But now there are so many like me sitting on the shelf
They sold us a dream but in reality
It was just another factory
I made the music, thought that it was mine
It made me free, but that was in another time
But then the corporations and the big combines
Turned musicians into factory workers on assembly lines

All we live for, all we live for
All we live for is to get out of the factory
We made the music to set ourselves free
From working at the factory

All my life I’ve put in a working day
Now it’s sign the contract, get production on the way

Take the money, make the music pay
Working at the factory
All I lived for was to get out of the factory

Never wanted to be like everybody else
But now there are so many like me sitting on the shelf
They sold us a dream that in reality
Was just another factory

Working at the factory