American Catholic has a post up about a movie about the 1980s. Being a 1980s kid myself, that got me nostalgic so I went on a long cruise around You Tube last night looking for great 1980s tunes.
And the sad truth is that there aren't many. I remember the tunes fondly but that was because we danced to them not because they had much merit. The 1980s, my 1980s, were all about clubs and dancing and nostalgia.
Before I go on, an important qualification. Ten years is a long time. The Serpentine One also came of age in the 1980s but her 1980s are the last half and mine are the first half. I'm sure a good argument can be made for the second half but I'm not the one to make it.
So let's go back to the early 1980s. Let em set the scene. You are in a trendy dance club. This club had three to six months trendiness before the hungry men found it like they found all the trendy clubs and ruined it. That happened over and over again in the early 1980s. For you see, and this is really important if you are going to understand the early 1980s, the people who made it in the early 1980s didn't need to pursue sex. That was what set them apart. They danced to songs about sex but they didn't ever strain themselves in pursuit of it. They didn't have to be interested in love because love was interested in them.
The song that follows, you may not want to listen to more than a short bit of it, ought to be raunchy but it isn't. It's called "Pull up to the Bumper" and the double entendre is obvious to the point of being self parody but the delivery is so cool you might never clue into what the lyrics are about. So let's read some of them before we listen.
But watch the video past the jump and you'll be amazed at how antiseptic it is. This is no raunchy blues song with hints and winks. This delivery is so cool you might think it really is about driving in traffic.
As I say, you may want to stop it as it it's real purpose is to give you something to dance to and not to stand as a work of art.
The thing was done over and over again. Find a woman who delivers a song as if she doesn't really care, who never strains for effect or affect. Here are a whole bunch in a row.
Probably the best, Sade:
The group that made the most money out of the sound was either Blondie:
Or Eurythmics:
Of course, it takes a particular sort of man to love detached ice queens like that:
And here is Split Enz singing what might be the most non-committal love song ever written. The more he insists he really means it, the clearer it becomes that he doesn't. Neil Finn is a great songwriter but not much of a voice.
And then there is the theme from Body Heat. There are no visuals with this one but that is okay, in the movie it plays over the credits so all you are are words in a lovely modernist font that evokes the 1940s with out of focus flames wavering in the background.
I have my own images to go with it. I walked into an air-conditioned theatre on a hot afternoon to get away from the heat and sat down in the dark and let this wash over me.
Anyway, listen to this one all the way through. For the first two minutes or so it does variations on the same thing over and over again. We have a foreboding little theme played by the orchestra while the alto sax tries to comfort us but keeps failing. Listen for the way the sax seems to falter as it hits the higher notes, for example at 1:34. Then at 2:20 you need to start to brace yourself for a sudden shift to a theme that suggests disaster (Barry draws heavily on Debussy here). He puts us through 30 seconds or so of that and we start to get what feels like relief at 2:50. Except that, if you can listen carefully, there is a building bass-line that says, no you haven't dodged fate after all. And it keeps building and building until it all dissolves at 3:46 or so into complete and total ... ambiguity. Well, it is the opening credits of the movie so you wouldn't want the music to give away everything.
Except that the movie itself ends ... well, rent it and watch it yourself. For my money, this movie is one of two that define the early 1980s. Here is the other one:
I said nostalgia was part of it and you can see it all the way through the videos above. They all evoke the past and they all evoke eras on the cusp of change: London in the 1920s, New York in the late 1940s and early 1950s. These are periods immediately after wars when people wondered if life could ever be the same again. The end of the 1970s was a horrible time. People couldn't wait to leave it behind fast enough. And we couldn't wait to leave the "authenticity" of the 1960s and 1970s behind.
And the sad truth is that there aren't many. I remember the tunes fondly but that was because we danced to them not because they had much merit. The 1980s, my 1980s, were all about clubs and dancing and nostalgia.
Before I go on, an important qualification. Ten years is a long time. The Serpentine One also came of age in the 1980s but her 1980s are the last half and mine are the first half. I'm sure a good argument can be made for the second half but I'm not the one to make it.
So let's go back to the early 1980s. Let em set the scene. You are in a trendy dance club. This club had three to six months trendiness before the hungry men found it like they found all the trendy clubs and ruined it. That happened over and over again in the early 1980s. For you see, and this is really important if you are going to understand the early 1980s, the people who made it in the early 1980s didn't need to pursue sex. That was what set them apart. They danced to songs about sex but they didn't ever strain themselves in pursuit of it. They didn't have to be interested in love because love was interested in them.
The song that follows, you may not want to listen to more than a short bit of it, ought to be raunchy but it isn't. It's called "Pull up to the Bumper" and the double entendre is obvious to the point of being self parody but the delivery is so cool you might never clue into what the lyrics are about. So let's read some of them before we listen.
Pull up to my bumper baby,I don't have to explain that do I?
In your long black limousine,
Pull up to my bumper baby,
And drive it in between.
Pull up, to it, don't drive, through it,
Back it, up twice, now that, fit's nice.
But watch the video past the jump and you'll be amazed at how antiseptic it is. This is no raunchy blues song with hints and winks. This delivery is so cool you might think it really is about driving in traffic.
As I say, you may want to stop it as it it's real purpose is to give you something to dance to and not to stand as a work of art.
The thing was done over and over again. Find a woman who delivers a song as if she doesn't really care, who never strains for effect or affect. Here are a whole bunch in a row.
Probably the best, Sade:
The group that made the most money out of the sound was either Blondie:
Or Eurythmics:
Of course, it takes a particular sort of man to love detached ice queens like that:
And here is Split Enz singing what might be the most non-committal love song ever written. The more he insists he really means it, the clearer it becomes that he doesn't. Neil Finn is a great songwriter but not much of a voice.
And then there is the theme from Body Heat. There are no visuals with this one but that is okay, in the movie it plays over the credits so all you are are words in a lovely modernist font that evokes the 1940s with out of focus flames wavering in the background.
I have my own images to go with it. I walked into an air-conditioned theatre on a hot afternoon to get away from the heat and sat down in the dark and let this wash over me.
Anyway, listen to this one all the way through. For the first two minutes or so it does variations on the same thing over and over again. We have a foreboding little theme played by the orchestra while the alto sax tries to comfort us but keeps failing. Listen for the way the sax seems to falter as it hits the higher notes, for example at 1:34. Then at 2:20 you need to start to brace yourself for a sudden shift to a theme that suggests disaster (Barry draws heavily on Debussy here). He puts us through 30 seconds or so of that and we start to get what feels like relief at 2:50. Except that, if you can listen carefully, there is a building bass-line that says, no you haven't dodged fate after all. And it keeps building and building until it all dissolves at 3:46 or so into complete and total ... ambiguity. Well, it is the opening credits of the movie so you wouldn't want the music to give away everything.
Except that the movie itself ends ... well, rent it and watch it yourself. For my money, this movie is one of two that define the early 1980s. Here is the other one:
I said nostalgia was part of it and you can see it all the way through the videos above. They all evoke the past and they all evoke eras on the cusp of change: London in the 1920s, New York in the late 1940s and early 1950s. These are periods immediately after wars when people wondered if life could ever be the same again. The end of the 1970s was a horrible time. People couldn't wait to leave it behind fast enough. And we couldn't wait to leave the "authenticity" of the 1960s and 1970s behind.
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