"Sowing The Seeds" Of The '60s Nostalgia That Would Eat '90s Rock Alive?

Question: What happens when two depressed British synth-pop sourpusses cheer up just a teeny tiny bit?

Answer: They put away their Joy Division 12-inches and pull out their imported copy of Magical Mystery Tour.

Given that their very band name was a term originated by psychologist Arthur Janov, the creator of Primal Scream therapy whose brief stint treating John Lennon greatly inspired John's first post-Beatles album (John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band), it shouldn't be a surprise that Tears for Fears were gargantuan Beatle freaks, but when "Sowing the Seeds of Love" came out in 1989, I think it was viewed as, shall we say, a departure.

"Sowing the Seeds of Love" wins my vote for greatest Beatles homage of the '80s. It's like the "Beatles" of '80s Beatles homages, if you will. Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith stole an entire jar of Beatles moonshine from the country market and they chugged the whole gallon. A touch of "Rain" here, a smattering of "All You Need is Love" there ... you name it, they nicked it. A dash of McCartney's toenail clippings, a splinter of Ringo's drumstick, a lock of George Martin's hair, a drop of Yoko's urine ... they took it all and went to town.

What Tears for Fears did with their Beatles homage that, in my opinion, even ELO or Oasis never quite managed to do, was turn it into its own little six-minute Abbey Road medley. "Sowing the Seeds of Love" has enough mini-sections and unexpected digressions to sow the seeds of eight separate Beatles rip-offs. Let's start at the top:

0:13 - The verse melody, which lifts its lyrical rhythm, and siren-like organ riff, from "I am the Walrus" (?)
0:40 - I'm fairly certain they simply flipped over the "Walrus" single, played "Hello Goodbye," looked at each other knowingly and declared, "There's our chorus!"
1:48 - Dreamy Interlude #1, complete with faint choral singing right out of the Let It Be version of "Across the Universe," topped off by what I'm fairly certain are R2D2 farts
2:22 - Roland and his vocoder take center stage ("Feel the pain/Talk about it") in a section that, in a typical '80s pop song, would essentially be the bridge that immediately precedes the final chorus, but whoa-ho-ho my friends, this song isn't even halfway over yet.
3:12 - Dreamy Interlude #2, set to the chorus melody, sporting trumpets flown in from the "Penny Lane" Express
3:28 - Someone shouts "OK!" in his raunchiest James Brown voice and the track takes a quick detour to Memphis (or perhaps that's Billy Preston on keys?)
3:55 - With a hard-panned guitar lick straight out of Harrison's worst meditation-induced nightmares, and a drum fill doctored to the teeth with what sounds like backward masking (?), the adventure swiftly returns to where it all began - the "Walrus"-like verse melody.
4:48 - Finally, at nearly the five-minute mark, the last chorus, and the "Hey Jude"-style fade-out. Rejoice, for Odysseus has been reunited with his Penelope.

But if the music of "Sowing the Seeds of Love" could be described as delightfully '67, I would describe the lyrics as intensely '89. Seriously, no one could create hummable radio hits that somehow sported stealthily barbed political overtones quite like those '80s British synth-pop groups, I tell ya:

High time we made a stand

And shook up the views of the common man

And the love train rides from coast to coast

DJ is the man we love the most

Could you be, could you be squeaky clean

And smash any hope of democracy?

As the headline says you're free to choose

There's an egg on your face and mud on your shoes

One of these days they're gonna call it the blues, yeah

Sowing the seeds of love

(Anything is possible)

Seeds of love

(When you're sowing the seeds of love)

Sowing the seeds

I spy tears in their eyes

They look to the skies for some kind of divine

Intervention, food goes to waste

So nice to eat, so nice to taste

Politician grannie with your high ideals

Have you no idea how the majority feels?

So without love and a promised land

We're fools to the rules of a government plan

Kick out the style, bring back the jam

The bitter phrases Orzabal peppers the song with are so oblique that I doubt anyone out in Main Street USA would even understand which aspects of world affairs, precisely, he was genuinely objecting to, but at least he sounds like he's got stuff on his mind. "As the headline says you're free to choose/There's egg on your face and mud on your shoes"? "So without love and a promised land/We're fools to the rules of a government plan"? He's talking about somebody else's country, right? "An end to need/And the politics of greed"? I mean hey, who's against that? I'm pretty sure the "Politician grannie with your high ideals" would have been a reference to a certain Iron Lady, who ... my God, was she still in office in 1989? What the hell was wrong with those people? And finally, what's with the implied diss of Paul Weller's Style Council ("Kick out the style, bring back the Jam")? Guess Roland wasn't digging the non-threatening Yuppie affectations of sophisti-pop? Or perhaps Weller forgot to call him on his birthday, I don't know.

Although he occasionally inches toward dopiness ("I love a sunflower"?), what I admire about Orzabal's outlook here is that, in the face of relentlessly gloomy news, he is a man who nevertheless advocates positivity. While not suggesting indifference, I wouldn't say he suggests anger either. Could it really be possible to tackle injustice without succumbing to snotty self-righteousness (AKA becoming Jello Biafra)? Perhaps many on the political left today might want to give this 33-year-old chestnut another spin.

And they should give the video another spin while they're at it, only after ingesting the substance of their choice. You know what the video for "Sowing the Seeds of Love" makes me think of? You know the end of Yellow Submarine, where the Blue Meanies suddenly find themselves covered in flowers, and they finally release all the love they'd been repressing inside themselves for thousands upon thousands of years, and they hold hands with Jeremy the Boob and "It's All Too Much" starts blaring out of the speakers and the movie virtually explodes with drug-induced pheromones of peace and sunshine? This video is like that. These two sad sack wallflowers who hardly even seemed capable of getting up in the morning without a healthy dose of antidepressants (see: "World, Mad" and "Shelter, Pale") had finally busted out of their funk and were letting the whole human race know it. The word this song and video bring to mind is "opulent." Tears for Fears didn't worry about going too colorful, too dreamy, too silly on this one. They let their imagination run rampant. It's what the moment called for.

Also: I've heard it said that, once upon a time, effects in videos weren't made with computers. This means that they look like effects, but that also means those effects still have a tactile weight and movement to them that later effects arguably would not. I can feel that box spinning in the sky. I can feel that stalk shooting up out of the ground. I can feel that giant stone face opening its doors (which are placed on its forehead?). I can feel that golden orb smashing into the eye of the illuminati. Then there's the part where a flaming ring opens up a portal inside a newspaper, and we find ourselves being sucked into a vortex of spinning fish, Buddha statues, doves, and ... Egyptian ankhs? Then, once an abalone shell gets the hell out of the way, Roland and Curt start marching through a field of ... those see-sawing bird paperweights? Look out for flying violins, umbrellas, and a gravity-defying Brunhilde! Suddenly Roland tosses a book our way, and the video quickly transforms into the video for Tom Tom Club's "Genius of Love." Then Roland finds himself literally sowing seeds in what appears to be ... Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World? The final blossoming of the sunflower in outer space (how would it survive in space?) feels appropriately orgiastic. In hindsight, perhaps these two should have saved up at least a couple of drops of all that positive energy for the follow-up album.

The Go-Go's' 1990 "One-Off" Reunion That Refused To Die AKA Belinda Slides Back Into Her Cozy, Chaotic Cocoon

The Rock and Roll Hall of Whuh?

Whenever I hear someone complain about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I'm inclined to recycle the line I typically use regarding the Oscars: "Whenever I'm tempted to complain about the Oscars, I just look at the Grammys."

Because for me, at least the other two are somewhere in the ballpark, whereas the Grammys have always just seemed inscrutably random. But not everyone's so sanguine about the situation. About fifteen years ago, the comments section of every single article on Rolling Stone's website that even tangentially mentioned the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was littered with statements along the lines of "The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a complete joke!!! Look at all the great acts that aren't in!!" And I'd think to myself, "Yeah!" And then these anonymous internet arbiters of taste would go on to explain that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was a "joke" due to its not yet having inducted ... Rush, Kiss, Chicago, Yes, or Journey. Uh ... not exactly the big exclusions I'd had in mind. I'd been thinking more along the lines of, say, Tom Waits, Roxy Music, T. Rex, or Todd Rundgren. Well, those four are all in now (as are the other five I mentioned), so ... thanks a lot, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, you've robbed me of my God-given right to complain about you.

The thing is, people like to call the Hall of Fame a "joke," but everyone has had their own separate reasons as to why it is a joke. You've got your "classic rock" fans perturbed by the absence of Styx, Kansas, Toto, and REO Speedwagon, and then you've got your '80s alternative scenesters griping about the absence of Black Flag, the Replacements, the Pixies, and Sonic Youth, and each cluster would surely refer to the other cluster's preferences as a "joke." So which joke is it? It can't be a joke both ways, eh? Then you've got the people whose biggest problem with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is simply its name. "Why are Madonna and Whitney Houston in while Iron Maiden and Judas Priest aren't? What a joke!" Come on guys, we all understand it's basically the Pop Music Hall of Fame, but with a cooler name. Go back to your Magic: The Gathering tournament.

But while I caught the Go-Go's bug around ten years ago, and would now defend their greatness even at the risk of lethal harm, I never quite felt they were an egregious exclusion from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. To put it simply, their discography is a little brief. Three albums from the original run, plus a reunion album from 2001, and a few other stray tracks here and there? I mean, bands like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest have accrued these monolithic, bottomless discographies of, you know, 20 to 30 albums, and sure, most people probably couldn't name any of the albums they've released since the '80s, but what I'm saying is, there are groups out there that have left behind some serious recording catalogs. I'm just not sure the Go-Go's' peak was long enough to merit that same level of outrage.

Oh sure, but what about the Stooges (three albums), or the Sex Pistols (one measly album)? Uh huh. Not that I myself prefer those acts to the Go-Go's, but I don't think I'm going out on a limb here by stating that the Stooges and the Sex Pistols, despite their equally truncated discographies, were more musically influential (and certainly more threatening to the status quo) than the Go-Go's were. In fact, putting on my All Music Guide hat for a moment, I feel like I could rattle off the names of at least ten more acts from the punk/new wave era whom I would say, as a more impartial observer, have proven to be more "musically influential" than the Go-Go's were, and yet have hardly even been mentioned as potential Hall of Fame inductees: the Jam, the Buzzcocks, Wire, the Fall, the Specials, Madness, Joe Jackson, Squeeze, the Soft Boys, XTC ... am I at ten yet? Of course, all of these bands were British, and none of them had a massive US #1 album. I'm not saying that I personally like any one of those artists more than I like the Go-Go's. That's not the point. I am someone who is able to differentiate between my own affection for a band and my sense of where that band might rank in the "I can't believe they're not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!" outrage hierarchy. Long story short: I was not appalled by the Go-Go's' exclusion.

However, the Go-Go's themselves apparently were. They kept mentioning it in interviews. They kept talking about how it was so freaking obvious that they should have already been inducted that there must have been a secret Skull-and-Bones style conspiracy to keep them out. The All Music Guide had this to say about their recent Showtime documentary: "There's a recent subcategory of music documentary best described as 'Our case for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,' and this dash through the history of the Go-Go's clearly falls into that bucket." I guess the Broadway musical wasn't enough of an honor? As a fan of the highest order, I wasn't eager to say it, but ... I'm not sure this was the best look. I might have suggested they gain a little more outside perspective, or perhaps simply not care so ... transparently. (A quick message from Little Earl to every band that's eligible for the Hall of Fame but is not yet in it: as far as I can tell, whether you're in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or not has absolutely no bearing on the quality, value, or importance of your music.) I also began to wonder if they were playing up the "feminism" angle of their story a little too heavily, now that "the kids these days" are more into that sort of thing. Some of the band members had even suggested they were being kept out of the Hall due to sexism. Yeah, I dunno, I think it probably had more to do with their meager three-album discography, and the fact that only one of the albums within it is generally considered "classic," and not their gender, but hey, that's just me.

I also have yet to be convinced that the lack of female artists in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ranks terribly high on the list of modern society's civil rights injustices, just as I could never get too wrapped up in the whole #OscarsSoWhite debate. I mean ... it's the Oscars. Who thinks the Oscars are actually important? (I guess #GrammysSoWhite could have never gained much traction because nobody thinks the Grammys are important.) When I would read articles stating that the Go-Go's should be inducted into the Hall of Fame because, that way, the Hall could instantly add five more women into the Hall of Fame ... like, isn't that a little patronizing? Isn't the whole point that they shouldn't be inducted because of their gender per se, but because they made passionate, heartfelt, playful, well-crafted music and didn't give a fuck about what other people thought of them? Frankly, what I personally love about the Go-Go's isn't so much that they were the first all-female band to suddenly score a #1 album, but that they were the first trash-bag-and-safety-pin-festooned L.A. punk band to suddenly score a #1 album. To me, that's the story. And the Go-Go's are only half the story anyway, because you've got to factor in the unfettered Yuppie zaniness of Belinda's late '80s solo career. Of course, the other four members of the band ... uh ... don't really see that as part of the story.

Well, at any rate, they're in now! What, you expected me to complain? The nice thing is, they're all still alive - something of a minor miracle, given their various substance abuse "adventures," the general unpredictability of human health after the age of 60, and the fact that they are a band of five, and that many bands of their generation, such as the Pretenders, the Cars, Devo, or the B-52's, can no longer perform as their original lineup. Not to mention, the five of them are currently getting along well enough to attend the damn ceremony together (something that was not true even four years ago). I just hope this means they can finally spend their time talking about something else.

But the thing is, the Go-Go's have already spent 30 years talking about the same old things anyway, which I suppose is what happens when a group's heyday only consisted of a blindingly bright four-year supernova, when only the lead singer ever managed to genuinely establish an identity for herself outside the group, and when the other not-so-famous members all need to make a living somehow and yet don't feel like releasing too much more new music under the Go-Go's umbrella. This is probably something only an obsessive fan who has watched way too many post-1980s Go-Go's YouTube clips would even gripe about, but after a while, every interview starts to sound the same and every version of "We Got the Beat" simply bleeds into the others. And given that, aside from "Head Over Heels," they've essentially retired Talk Show from their concert setlist, that's two albums of material they've been milking dry for 30 years now. Just imagine what life must be like for a one hit wonder.

Perhaps the most amusing aspect, then, of revisiting the Go-Go's' 1990 reunion (ostensibly the intended subject of this post), is to observe how much of a big freaking deal both the band themselves and the media in general made of it, without anyone involved knowing, of course, that this "reunion" would last five times longer than their original recording career did.

So. While Belinda had been busy running around indulging in mermaid cosplay with the Beach Boys, convincing George Harrison to play on her album almost as a dare, unexpectedly flirting with Sammy Davis, Jr. and Dave Mustaine, and generally ascending to her throne as the undisputed Queen of Yuppie Rock, what the hell had the other former Go-Go's been up to? It's sort of like asking what Michael Collins was up to while the other two astronauts were busy walking on the moon: far from your first question, but at some point, it probably crosses your mind.

In addition to hitching her wagon to the Belinda solo train, Charlotte formed the Graces, which included a young Meredith Brooks (of future "Bitch" fame - and I mean that in the nicest way), although their lone 1989 album didn't set the charts on fire. At some point, she also married Jeff McDonald of Redd Kross. But basically, yeah, she hitched her wagon to the Belinda solo train.

Jane, whom astute readers may recall, actually left the Go-Go's to try her hand at a solo career before the band even officially broke up and stuff, released Jane Wiedlin in 1985 and Fur in 1988, which didn't exactly do Belinda-type numbers either, but her single "Rush Hour" certainly did, hitting #9 in the U.S. and #12 in the U.K. Many are the internet comments I've read expressing great fondness for "Rush Hour," but I don't recall hearing it back in 1988, and it hasn't quite grown on me much since I first heard it roughly ten years ago. Although AMG's Stewart Mason writes that "Jane Wiedlin's 1985 solo debut is probably the best solo album by any ex-member of the Go-Go's" and that "the singles 'Modern Romance' and 'Blue Kiss' really should have been hits (they're certainly better than most of Belinda Carlisle's solo work)," I mean ... I dunno ... I guess I'm just a Carlisle-ophile. For me, listening to Jane Wiedlin solo material is like eating roasted garlic all by itself. Roasted garlic is good in stuff. Adding roasted garlic to a soup? Mmmmm. But eating roasted garlic all by itself? Sure, some people might enjoy that. Probably not most people.

Kathy attempted to form a band called the World's Cutest Killers with Kelly Johnson, former guitarist of Girlschool (AKA "the Go-Go's' New Wave of British Heavy Metal counterparts"), but sadly neither it, nor a few other fledgling bands, ever got off the ground.

Gina formed the gloriously-named House of Schock with Vance DeGeneres, older brother of Ellen (!), but if you're wondering how well their lone album did, all I need to tell you is that House of Schock doesn't even have its own Wikipedia page. Hey, not every band has a Phil Collins in them, all right?

In summary: Charlotte was doing fine, Jane wasn't doing as well as she'd hoped to be doing but could have been doing worse (and let's not forget Clue and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure), and Kathy and Gina, who were adamantly against the band breaking up to begin with, found their concerns solidly confirmed. I feel like this should put Belinda's griping about stuff like Runaway Horses "only" going gold into a little perspective.

But alas, as we all know, despite radiating a surface aura of nonstop success, Belinda felt like shit virtually the entire time, and she definitely felt like shit at the dawn of the '90s, particularly after becoming reacquainted with her old powdery friend in Ibiza. For the first time in five years, perhaps Belinda wasn't quite feeling the solo "magic." Funny how, back in 1985, the band must have seemed like a stifling, suffocating force, but now, given the pressures of maintaining her worldwide solo stardom, a resurgent coke habit, an eating disorder or two, and her marriage to her ever-loyal husband now revolving around a certain degree of untruth ... perhaps reverting back to the warm and protective cocoon of the Go-Go's didn't seem quite so stifling and suffocating after all! From Lips Unsealed:

On the bright side, I crossed paths with Gina one day. After a fun catch-up, the two of us on a whim arranged for a reunion with the other Go-Go's. Without telling anyone, we met for dinner at an Italian restaurant in West Hollywood. It was the first time the five of us had been together since Jane left and our subsequent breakup. All of us were nervous. Jane held up her palms and said, "They're sweaty!"

We agreed to one ground rule: none of us would say anything that would piss off someone else. Then we had a great time. We reminisced about the crazy times we'd had in the early days, offered apologies for things said in the latter days, worked through some hard feelings, and, as we told a local reporter who got wind of the reunion, we realized "even the bad times we've gone through didn't seem so bad."

I left dinner appreciating the special camaraderie the five of us shared - and that it had survived. But all was not rosy. As I later confessed to Morgan, I felt uncomfortable about having a successful solo career when some of the other girls were struggling in their endeavors. While Jane and Charlotte were both working on albums, Gina's label had dropped her and Kathy didn't have a deal.

I realized everyone might benefit from a Go-Go's reunion. I mentioned it to my manager, Danny Goldberg, who had a lengthy background as a political activist ... He loved the idea of a Go-Go's reunion. But it sat a few months until Danny found the right event, a fund-raiser Jane Fonda was spearheading for California's environmental ballot initiative. It sounded good to me. I called the girls. Everyone was game.

In January, we announced our reunion show at a press conference with Jane Fonda.

"I think we have about ten years, and if we don't do it in ten years, we're in big trouble," she says? Well. Good thing we solved the world's environmental crisis back in 2000, eh?

Somehow environmentalism morphed into anti-fur activism, an issue one certainly doesn't hear quite as much about these days, possibly because most furry animals are nearing extinction anyway. The band posed "naked" with a poster declaring "I'd rather Go-Go naked than wear fur!" Funny funny.

Sadly, those expecting actual nudity would have to wait another 10 years for Belinda's appearance in Playboy.

Two and a half months later, we got together for rehearsals at SIR, where I was also in rehearsals for my Runaway Horses tour. I felt self-conscious running back and forth between rehearsals and maybe some resentment from the other girls, who I sensed - and it could have been me being overly sensitive - looked at me as Miss High and Mighty with her rock band, getting ready for her world tour. At the end of the day, I was feeling like I should apologize.

You owe them nothing, Belinda, nothing!

But I was able to set that aside and enjoy stepping back into the Go-Go's. It wasn't hard for me to switch gears. The band was part of my DNA. On March 27, we played a surprise warm-up show as the KLAMMS at the Whiskey, a stage that was like a second home in our punk days. We still looked like an odd collection: Jane wore short-shorts, Kathy was in a polka-dot negligee, Charlotte radiated laid-back L.A. rock chic in a long, embroidered shirt, Gina had on her trademark jeans and T-shirt, and I was in a fancy black gown that a girlfriend of mine laughingly said made me look like I had dressed to go to Harry's Bar in London.

If the dress she's describing is the one that she appears to be wearing in almost every single Go-Go's clip from 1990, I'm inclined to describe it more as her "Disney princess" look, but fair enough.

The fun we had carried over into the next night at the Universal Amphitheater when we performed a set of the band's hits to a crowd of L.A. politicos and celebrities that included Jodie Foster, Rob Lowe, John McEnroe and Tatum O'Neal, and Sandra Bernhard. Afterward, all of us were agreeable to doing more shows and maybe even a tour later in the year when IRS released a greatest hits package.

Since the tales of drug abuse and acrimony had already been told in at least part of the press, the Go-Go's two-month reunion tour in November and December 1990 gave us a chance to focus on the thing that mattered most: the impressive collection of music we had put together before calling it quits six years earlier. With a new greatest-hits package that included a snappy remix of "Cool Jerk," plus a video featuring the five of us looking like a million bucks, everyone agreed we could make a point about our contribution to the eighties. If we also made a profit, no one would complain.

Another version of "Cool Jerk"? Hey, why not? As Belinda hints at, I.R.S. decided to take advantage of the reunion to put out a Go-Go's greatest hits album, whether the band wanted one out or not, so a remake of "Cool Jerk" was included as the *cough* new product. Of all the Go-Go's' 438 different versions of "Cool Jerk" (the early demo featured on Return to the Valley of the Go-Go's, the proper studio version released on Vacation, various live versions), I think I'm into this one the most, despite it sounding like their attempt to be the B-52's circa Cosmic Thing. The issue I've always had with the Go-Go's' perennial obsession with covering "Cool Jerk" is that, while it certainly stems from the right era (the Capitols' original came out in 1966), it lacks the angst and turmoil of, say, "Remember (Walking in the Sand)." It's the kind of song a casual Go-Go's fan might think the Go-Go's would cover. Like John Lennon with "Across the Universe," apparently the group kept hoping that just one more version would finally be the "right" one.

At any rate, the band milked their 1990 reunion for all it was worth, and trying to view every YouTube clip from this period kind of feels like swatting at flies in a swamp, but allow me to share a few highlights. Notice how, at the 2:00 mark during this interview for E!, while Kathy observes, with touching sincerity, that "the songs really held up over all this time, you know, it wasn't like I felt like we were doing something old, it felt just as current today," Belinda blatantly fiddles with the neckline of her dress for at least ten consecutive seconds, sneakily letting the world know that, yes indeed, "bad" Belinda was back. And get a load of this line: "Their very public break-up and subsequent solo careers have given them a very grounded perspective for this 'Go-Go' a-round." Oy.

Plus, every time Belinda tries to say something serious during one of these interviews, someone else in the band quickly makes fun of her. For example:

Belinda: Gandhi said, um ...

Gina: [giggles]

Belinda: I know, I'm just saying I thought it was a really good quote ...

Kathy: She can quote Gandhi if she wants.

Gina: [continues to giggle]

Belinda: I know, I'm not trying to be intellectual but he said, "The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way it treats its animals" ...

Also, who can forget this Bugle Boy commercial that apparently aired during Super Bowl XXV?

Sorry Bills, the Go-Go's must have jinxed you.

More important, having already come to terms on past disagreements, we felt like we could get along, and for the most part we did. We preceded a kickoff appearance on David Letterman's late-night talk show with a heavy-duty shopping spree in New York City that reminded me of the fun we used to have together. Onstage, I had a blast singing the old songs and looking to either side and seeing Gina and Kathy in sync and watching Jane and Charlotte trade riffs.

Belinda also apparently had a blast indulging in the kind of naughty stage banter that probably wouldn't have flown at her solo concerts, particularly when introducing the band's re-worked acoustic version of Talk Show's somewhat overlooked closing track "Mercenary," one riveting version of which appears on Return to the Valley of the Go-Go's. "This next song ... is about a girl who likes to be mean ... I know I like to be mean," she proclaims to immediate applause (sadly the version on Return to the Valley doesn't feature the comment added at other shows, "Charlotte likes to spank her boyfriend"). It should also be mentioned that, whether the band liked it or not, by December of 1990, Belinda's voice was kind of hoarse and shredded and she'd probably had one gin and tonic too many, which might either add or detract a little something, depending on your point of view. Toward the end of "Mercenary," for instance, she really lets it rip like she rarely has before or since, perhaps the cover of being in her "old" band providing her the freedom to let her sound as fucked up as she probably felt.

Occasionally the old jealousies reared their head. The girls didn't like it when we pulled up to one venue and the marquee read "Belinda Carlisle and the Go-Go's." Several hotels also gave me a larger room than the others even after we made sure to tell them everyone in the band was equal. I even forced a couple of the girls to see my room before they checked into theirs so they knew I wasn't creating the problem. After a few more times, though, I got fed up with the carping and complaining and had a Neely O'Hara-type moment when I snapped, "I can't help it if I'm a bigger star than you!"

That's the spirit. (I guess if I'd seen Valley of the Dolls instead of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, I would have picked up on Belinda's "Neely O'Hara" reference, but I had to look it up.)

Ironically, I kept myself on the road as much as possible. Without consciously realizing it, I was running from my life. In mid-December, though, the Go-Go's tour ended and I returned home, which meant either facing hard truths about my behavior or lying to Morgan.

I chose the latter.

Did we expect anything less?

Debbie Gibson Collaborated With The Circle Jerks (?!)

Let's go back, shall we, to January 2012, toward the tail end of my "Fun New Wave Surprises" series, where loyal readers may remember my post titled "Belinda Carlisle Was In The Germs (?!)," prompted by my discovery of perhaps the most notorious tidbit of rock and roll trivia that has ever come to pass and shall ever come to pass - that Belinda Carlisle, Queen of Yuppie Rock, had (briefly) been a member of seminal LA punk band the Germs. To explain my amazement and bemusement, I wrote the following words: "It would be like someone coming up to me and telling me, 'Hey, did you know that Debbie Gibson used to be in the Circle Jerks?' Why no. No I did not."

Well, about that. Some time later, I found myself, on an otherwise perfectly normal day, reading Debbie Gibson's otherwise perfectly normal Wikipedia page, only to come across this section:

In 1995, she signed with EMI's SBK Records division and recorded her only album for the label, Think With Your Heart. It was an Adult contemporary-heavy album consisting of piano and keyboard ballads recorded predominantly with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The album's producer, Niko Bolas, who was usually Neil Young's co-producer, was producing the reunion album for Circle Jerks (a veteran punk band) and invited Gibson to a recording session for that band's album. She sang background vocals on the song "I Wanna Destroy You", as well as appearing at and participating in the Circle Jerks' performance [at] the punk venue CBGB, wearing one of the band's T-shirts and sharing a microphone with frontman Keith Morris.

OK. All right. Let's get one thing clear.

When I wrote about Debbie Gibson being in the Circle Jerks ... I was joking.

It was a joke.

As in, "This is obviously something that would have never happened."

And I could have picked any offensive punk band name! I could have picked, say, the Dickies, or the Butthole Surfers, or the Crucifucks. I guess the Circle Jerks just seemed to have the right je ne sais quoa. It was supposed to be funny because it was supposed to be implausible. I had not read about this collaboration before I made the joke. I did not possess some secret insider information.

What we might have on our hands here ... is the most incredible coincidence in American history.

Yes, even more incredible than John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both dying on July 4, 1826, precisely fifty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I mean, that one is pretty incredible, but me making a joke about Debbie Gibson and the Circle Jerks, only to learn that Debbie Gibson had actually collaborated with the Circle Jerks?

That isn't just funny. That's scary.

This is some supernatural voodoo mysticism right here. Granted, Debbie Gibson was never actually "in" the Circle Jerks, but come on, that's just splitting hairs. She easily could have never been within the same time zone as the Circle Jerks. This is way too close for comfort. The universe must have decided, "What is the most ridiculous, most unlikely musical collaboration that could have ever possibly existed?" And then BAM! It was so ridiculous, and so unlikely, that the universe willed it into being. Think I'm making this up, like the mysterious, unnamed scribe of a certain Phil Collins memoir? We have video:

Most surreal exchanges:

Circle Jerks: I think it was a natural progression for us. We did it to increase our mall sales.

Debbie Gibson: Now that's Tiffany.

Buuuurn.

Circle Jerks: How would you like to stage dive this evening for the first time?

Debbie Gibson: Ugh. Ugh. Thank God my mother didn't come. I knew there was a reason I told her to stay home.

But while you're busy processing the impossible, I guess I might as well talk about Debbie Gibson's two big hits from 1989, in that final, delicate moment before teen pop underwent an immediate, dramatic, and well-earned (?) ten year hibernation. After revisiting "Lost In Your Eyes," another US #1 smash for the Notorious Debbie G., I have come to an obvious realization. A couple of years back, I remarked that Martika's "Toy Soldiers" might have been the best Belinda Carlisle solo hit that Belinda never made, but now I might have to eat those words, because as I listen to "Lost In Your Eyes," you know who I think Debbie Gibson's biggest musical influence was? Not Madonna, not Whitney Houston, not George Michael. I think it was Belinda Carlisle! "Lost in your eyes" is totally a lyric from the chorus of "Mad About You," right? And "I get weak" is totally a lyric from the chorus of "I Get Weak," right?

My God, everybody.

Debbie Gibson was just pilfering Belinda Carlisle's solo hits for her lyrics and tossing them all into one big Belinda lyrical salad. I mean hell, why not just throw in references to "heaven on earth" and "circles in the sand" and call it a day? The funniest thing about all this borrowing, of course, is that Gibson, who actually wrote her own material, was so heavily inspired by the music of a singer who almost exclusively relied on other writers for her material. Hey look, if you're Belinda Carlisle, you'll take your musical legacy wherever you can find it. Be proud, my yuppie queen, be very, very proud.

Yes Belinda, we see you there with Debbie Gibson (and Donna Summer)

Frankly, it's hard for me listen to "Lost In Your Eyes" without feeling a slight resentment toward it, as I get the sense that it desperately wants to serve as the soundtrack to an idyllic teenage romance I never actually, you know, had, but setting that aside for a moment, for what it's trying to be (a shamelessly grand, sentimental, Disney-style ballad), could it realistically be any better? How many songwriters have been attempting to write this sort of cheese over the past 30 years, dreaming of their masterpiece being belted by a horde of Mariah wannabes on American Idol? How many of them ever managed to make their chord progressions sturdy enough, their bridges hauntingly modulated enough, their vocal melodies varied enough? Sure, the opening piano motif lifts a bit from "Imagine," the drums predictably enter at the start of the second verse, the hard-rocking guitar comes in at the halfway point to keep the energy level from flagging, and pointing out the key change here would be like pointing out the pimple on an adolescent's face, but when you watch a horror movie, you expect a few zombies to get their throats slit, do you not? (Video highlight: Debbie deking out mutant blue-eyed but otherwise black and white Zombie Boyfriend on the court before sinking in a perfect shot [at 3:23] - I hear the Knicks have an opening.)

Side note: although my Bangles series petered out after 'Walk Like An Egyptian," I should mention that, for a good many years, I used to mistake "Eternal Flame" for a Debbie Gibson song, which, if you're the Bangles, probably isn't the kind of mental mix-up you'd want people to be making. (They probably also wouldn't want to know that [whispers] I might prefer "Lost In Your Eyes"!)

And finally, we come to "Electric Youth," which, as a song, may be no "Lost In Your Eyes," but as a video, is practically an '80s blogger's wet dream. I'm assuming they filmed it inside a "still under construction" ride at Disneyland, complete with fake castle backdrop and imitation bushes. Debbie gets out there and struts her stuff in a light blue button-up blouse that's tied in a knot at the bottom (premonitions of Britney?), a black vest, and jeans that are cut off ... immediately below the knee? Why there? Then during the bridge, she's suddenly swallowed by a cage of neon laser beams (but somehow escapes!). Then, during the synth solo, Debbie, her keytar player, and her other cohorts float awkwardly in front of a green screen, a special effect that, since it serves no clear purpose, I assume was probably stipulated in her contract. I also love the brief shots of A) a little girl turning into a slightly older girl turning into ... Debbie? (at 1:40 and 4:30); B) what appears to be a group of elderly Irish gravediggers in a field attempting to dance to the song (at 2:55); C) Michael Jordan ... in 1989! (oh yes, the '90s were on their way) (at 4:03); D) a fortune teller gazing into a crystal ball, and seeing ... what could it be? Why it's ... it's ... Debbie Gibson! Whose image then turns into the words "Electric Youth" (at 4:16)! "Don't underestimate the power of a lifetime ahead," eh? To paraphrase Jon Landau's infamous statement on Bruce Springsteen, I have seen the future, and, unbeknownst to the participants of this video, its name is not Debbie Gibson.

Unless she's singing back-up for the Circle Jerks, that is.

One Last Post On Madonna (Before I Get Carried Away)

Oh, fine, I guess I better do one more post on Madonna.

You know what? It's OK. I've achieved what I set out to achieve. I've managed to avoid the temptation to embark upon a painstakingly elaborate 26-part series in which I microscopically dissect each and every Madonna single (and video) from the '80s (all of which have been microscopically dissected by myriad others), accompanied by borderline impenetrable analysis (heh heh ... "borderline") culled from an obscure Australian academic journal. Maybe in my next life.

Loyal readers may recall that I wrote a pair of blog posts on Madonna's first album because, well, I was doing a series on Aerobic Rock, and given that Madonna's first album is the very primal, crystalline essence of Aerobic Rock ground up and stuffed in tiny vials of pure aerobic goodness, I didn't want to leave myself vulnerable to accusations of '80s blogger negligence. Believe me, the urge was there to continue on and cover her second album with the same degree of thoroughness; shortly afterward, I re-visited Like a Virgin and, frankly, although I went on and on about how "Madonna never topped her first album!," I must admit that I enjoy Like a Virgin only slightly less than the debut. Let me put it this way: I'm pretty "meh" on "Pretender" and "Stay," but those are the very last two songs on the album, and I love everything else, so ... eight great songs out of ten, with the other two tucked neatly away at the end where I can ignore them? Pretty much a five-star listening experience, as far as I'm concerned. True Blue, on the other hand, I wouldn't necessarily call a five-star listening experience: I love me some "Open Your Heart," "La Isla Bonita," and "True Blue," generally love me some "Papa Don't Preach," have always been a bit lukewarm on "Live to Tell" (but it doesn't bother me much), and ... I couldn't even hum any of the non-singles, aside from "Where's the Party" (only due to its inclusion on You Can Dance, a frequent presence in my family's automobile cassette player).

My point is this: how could I possibly do a series called Herbert Walker Memories without talking, at least a little teeny tiny bit, about Madonna? Madonna was THE star of the era. Covering the pop music of 1989-1990 without talking about Madonna would be like covering American football from 1989-1990 without talking about the 49ers. I might not have anything new to say, but I'd look stupid if I didn't at least say something. I just wasn't cool with it. So ... here's my half-assed post about Madonna during the Like a Prayer era.

Like millions of other square, unadventurous, asexual Americans whose lives bore not the slightest passing resemblance to Madonna's, my parents purchased Like a Prayer on cassette. What those of you raised in the streaming and downloading era might not realize is that the physical album package was doused with an extremely potent perfume or chemical of some kind. From Wikipedia:

"The packaging on the first pressings of the CD, cassette, and LP were scented with patchouli oils to simulate church incense. A publicist for Warner Bros. Records revealed this had been the singer's idea; 'She wanted to create a flavor of the 60's and the church. She wanted to create a sensual feeling you could hear and smell'."

Well, fun gimmick and all, but let me tell ya, that scent never faded. I remember opening the cassette ten years later and, man, it still stank to high heaven. At least when the Stones did silly album cover gimmicks (the 3-D photo for Their Satanic Majesties Request, the real-life zipper for Sticky Fingers, the cardboard cut-out for Some Girls), they didn't do it in Smell-O-Vision. Also: Is that what it smells like in a Catholic church? No wonder the attendance numbers have gone down.

Funny thing but, "Like a Prayer," although the most well-known song on Like a Prayer, is also the song I enjoy the most on Like a Prayer. Sometimes you've got to hand it to the cultural consensus, folks. I don't know if it would make my Madonna Top 10, but it would probably make my Madonna Top 20. Also: I get that she was trying to make a wry, self-referential commentary on her own catalogue by choosing a song and album title so similar to Like a Virgin, but ... I dunno, I kind of wished she'd picked something else. It would be like if Pink Floyd released an album called Dark Side of the Asteroid Belt.

I was totally into "Express Yourself" back in the day, but I'm not as fond of it now, for reasons unknown. I guess I wouldn't say that it possesses the effortless grace of the best Madonna singles. Too many horns, not enough salsa-flavored piano solos (also, once upon a time, I was unfamiliar with the Staple Singers' "Respect Yourself.") "Love Song" is a Prince collaboration, and sounds like one too; I might have enjoyed a Sinead O'Connor cover version of it a little better. "Cherish" falls somewhere in between "Like a Prayer" and "Express Yourself" for me: it's sort of the album's attempt at an "early Madonna, cute cyber-girl next door" track, but I still detect more than a hint of artifice and calculation to it. Whereas Madonna used to poop out these kinds of songs once a morning without even breaking a sweat, here it sounds like she's taken a laxative and she's huffing and squeezing and twenty minutes later it finally plops into the bowl. Sure, in the end, it landed in the bowl, but not like in the olden days. I always get "Keep It Together" mixed up with "Causing a Commotion" from the Who's That Girl soundtrack; if someone played me a copy of Like a Prayer and literally swapped the tracks, I probably wouldn't even do a double-take.

One day, back when my family would cruise around listening to the album in the car, we suddenly and unanimously decided that "Dear Jessie" was the greatest thing since sliced bread. It was loopy and odd and didn't seem to owe much to dance-pop at all. For exactly one week, we played it on repeat incessantly. Suffice to say, at that age I was not the least bit familiar with late '60s psychedelic pop. Having become a little more familiar with psychedelic pop in the intervening years, I can see that "Dear Jessie" is what one might call a psychedelic "pastiche." Now that I know what Madonna was up to, I can't say I dislike it, but these days I'd just prefer the real thing (or the Dukes of Stratosphear). The spell hath been broken.

Then one day in the late '90s, my current co-blogger Zrbo confessed to me that he was suddenly in a Madonna-listening mood, and so I made him a Madonna mixtape out of all the long-since-untouched Madonna cassettes that we had lying around the house. For whatever reason, when I revisited Like a Prayer, I thought "You know what? 'Dear Jessie' isn't the sleeper cut on this album - 'Oh Father' is the sleeper cut!" And so, I added "Oh Father" to his "Best of Madonna" mixtape. As I recall, Zrbo commented that it was an "interesting" and "unexpected" selection, pressing me on my thought process in picking that song as opposed to a number of other potential candidates. It was just a split-second decision! Yeesh. (In my defense, it was a hit single, peaking at #20). Well, I wouldn't put it on a "Best of Madonna" mix now, but I will say that my late '90s instincts with "Oh Father" were sharper than my late '80s instincts were with "Dear Jessie." Here Madonna whines about her daddy issues over a disorienting time signature and a soaring orchestral arrangement. If every song on the album were about how much her old man stank, that would be one thing, but a quick little jab? Go for it.

For decades, AMG has rated Like a Prayer five stars. In a brief review published in my 1997 print edition, and one that the site hasn't expanded on or updated in 25 years, Stephen Thomas Erlewine writes:

Out of all of Madonna's albums, Like a Prayer is her most explicit attempt at a major artistic statement. Even though it is apparent that she is trying to make a "serious" album, the kaleidoscopic variety of pop styles on Like a Prayer is quite dazzling. Ranging from the deep funk of "Express Yourself" and "Keep It Together" to the haunting "Oh Father" and "Like a Prayer," Madonna displays a commanding sense of songcraft, making this her best and most consistent album.

In that old book edition, Like a Prayer and The Immaculate Collection were the only Madonna "albums" to receive five stars, but AMG has since bumped up her debut to five stars, and Erlewine's much lengthier and seemingly more enthusiastic review of that album suggests that he would no longer consider Like a Prayer to be her "best" album. You know what I think.

In the summer of 1990, few movie releases were treated like a bigger "event" than the release of Dick Tracy, and 10-year-old me bought the hype hook, line, and sinker; I remember drawing sketches of strange characters like Flattop, Pruneface, and Mumbles in a little scrapbook - before I even saw the damn thing! Haven't watched it since, of course. Todd in the Shadows does a superlative job of discussing the manner in which, only months after it came out, the mere existence of Dick Tracy was swiftly and collectively erased from the minds of all humanity, Men In Black-style, in his peerless series "CINEMADONNA." That said, while technically released on I'm Breathless: Music from and Inspired by the Film Dick Tracy, I've always considered "Vogue" to be almost a Like a Prayer bonus track. And I have always taken great pride in being able to recite Madonna's infamous litany of golden age Hollywood stars word for word. Back in 1990, I don't think I had seen a single movie starring any one of these actors, but now I'm proud to say that I have seen at least one movie starring all of them, if not more than one (except .... uh ... Joe DiMaggio?). Wait, have I seen more than one movie starring Lana Turner? Wasn't she in both The Postman Always Rings Twice and Imitation of Life? Never mind. What I really want to know is this: How did Madonna transition so quickly from the positivity and inclusivity of a song like "Vogue" to ... whatever the hell "Justify My Love" is?

In my mind, Like a Prayer and "Vogue" represented the last time that Madonna was really the Head Honcho, the Big Cheese, Grand Poohbah of Pop Music. Which is funny, because, looking at her singles discography on Wikipedia, I'm a bit surprised to notice that she really didn't have any sort of chart slump after 1991 at all. "This Used to Be My Playground" came out in 1992 and hit #1, then Erotica came out, peaked at #2, featured several high-charting singles, then Bedtime Stories came out and essentially kept the train rolling. I think two things happened here. One: as I mentioned in my intro to this series, in early 1991, I lost virtually all interest in contemporary pop music for about two years or more. This might be why, in the summer of 1993, I suddenly heard "Rain" and "Deeper and Deeper" on the radio and thought, "Oh yeahhhhh. Ma-donnnnn-a. She's back." Back? Back?! Two: after 1991, I think dance-pop, while still riding high on the Billboard Hot 100, lost its cultural potency to alternative rock and hip-hop. I mean, when the most popular rock band in the world is releasing a song titled "Rape Me," and the most popular hip-hop artist of the day is gleefully rapping about fucking his enemies up the ass ("Fuck wit Dre Day"), singing about plain old vanilla consensual sex just ain't that shocking anymore.

"Vision Of Love": All The Mariah I Ever Needed (But If I Want More, I Know Where To Find It)

Perhaps a year or so ago, my former co-blogger Yoggoth posed a quick pop music game to me, via random text:

"Name a song you really like which is the only song by that artist you actually like."

His choice, Dire Straits' "Sultans of Swing," left me scratching my head a bit, I have to say. I promptly asked him if he'd ever heard the album Making Movies, to which he said no, to which I said, "You can't claim you don't like any other Dire Straits songs if you've never heard Making Movies." Whether he eventually gave that album a spin is unknown to me, but he did tell me that later on he gave Dire Straits' debut album (the one with "Sultans of Swing" on it) a spin: "Actually, the whole album is pretty good. Sure, he's kind of just doing a Dylan imitation ... but it's a pretty good Dylan imitation!"

At any rate. My choice? It was a bit of a toss-up between A) Echo & the Bunnymen's "The Killing Moon"; B) Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun"; or C) Mariah Carey's "Vision of Love."

She sure ain't lacking for hits, I can tell you that. If Mariah ever ends up breaking the Beatles' record for most US Billboard #1 hits (she currently sits one song behind), I feel like that record should carry a nice, thick Roger Maris-style asterisk next to it. I'm sorry, but having a #1 hit in the 2010's does not mean the same thing as having a #1 hit in the '60s. Didn't that freaking 25-year-old Christmas song recently become a "new" #1 hit? Balderdash and malarkey, I say. Frankly, I wish her well in every other career endeavor she decides to undertake, but I hope she never breaks that record. Or how about this: maybe the Beatles could simply top the charts again with some random album track that never topped the charts before? Maybe some hip new TV show features "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill" in a climactic, meme-worthy scene, and suddenly it sets streaming services on fire? Ah-hah. There may be hope yet.

Hard to say why I haven't taken the Mariah Carey catalog to heart. I don't have an intense dislike for Mariah Carey. That "Fantasy" song ain't bad, but wasn't that mostly built around a sample of the Tom Tom Club's "Genius of Love"? I always chuckle when I think about how insanely popular "One Sweet Day" became. Take the insanely popular Mariah Carey, team her up with the insanely popular Boyz II Men, and what do you get? The super double extra insanely popular "One Sweet Day." It was like Coke and Pepsi teaming up to make a new soft drink, or Nike and Adidas teaming up to make a shoe. You couldn't lose. But I thought it was ... I dunno, Mariah's just not my style. I'm the kind of guy who prefers Brenda K. Starr's version of "I Still Believe" to Mariah Carey's. But I'll tell you what. Sometimes, there's nothing quite like your first.

When I revisited "Vision of Love" a few years ago, I heard the opening seconds and thought, "Hmm, why did I used to like this song again?" It sports the questionable one-two punch of synthesized gong followed by several seconds of sparkly keyboard dust and ambient vocal droning, placing it squarely in the realm of late '80s MJ/Quincy Jones production snafus that, in my opinion, probably didn't help improve "Man in the Mirror," "I Just Can't Stop Loving You," or "We Are the World." Well let me say this about "Vision of Love": what it lacks at its opening, it sure as hell makes up for with its ending.

See, when Mariah Carey made "Vision of Love," she didn't yet know she was "Mariah Carey." She was unformed, raw, inchoate. And although the song introduced her unparalleled set of pipes to the masses, in retrospect, it hardly set the template for the overall musical style she would generally follow. Despite launching the career of the most popular singer of the '90s,  I feel like "Vision of Love" is actually a stylistic throwback to a more gospel-influenced type of R&B. Cheesy production aside, in its bones "Vision of Love" resembles the kind of church-heavy number that could have been recorded by, say, Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Irma Thomas, or Candi Staton. The finger snaps give it a street corner doo-wop quality. No one thinks of early Mariah Carey as being "retro," but "Vision of Love" is ... retro?

Based on the use of past tense ("I had a vision of love") and given that the melody and arrangement isn't particularly upbeat, I used to assume the song was a "My man dumped me" type of ballad, but instead, it's more like an "I had a vision of love, and that vision came true!" type of ballad, which I don't find quite as interesting, although Wikipedia does a nice job of making it seem potentially more interesting:

Some have noted the relationship between Carey and God, while others point out one with a lover. Carey has yielded to both, while claiming them to have a connection to her childhood and to obstacles encountered while growing up. Michael Slezak wrote "Though it's not clear if she's celebrating a secular love or her relationship with a higher power, this exuberant ballad is a near-religious listening experience."

Amen sister! I'll take the religious interpretation. "Prayed through the nights/Felt so alone/Suffered from alienation/Carried the weight on my own/Had to be strong/So I believed/And now I know I've succeeded/In finding the place I conceived"? "Feel so alive/I'm so thankful that I've received/The answer that heaven/Has sent down to me"? I mean, if it smells like God, and if it tastes like God, then it's a song about God. "Vision of Love" is like the "Let It Be" of the '90s - with melisma!

OK. So. The song doesn't get too crazy until the third verse, where Mariah's "You treated me kind" is answered by Mariah's evil twin, who chimes in with a lusty "Yeahhhh," and thus commences the Attack of the Multiple Mariahs. She duets a fiery duet with her bad self for about 30 seconds, until suddenly, after the first line of the chorus, the Evil Twin Mariah transforms into ... a bird? A dolphin? A smoke detector? Jesus Christ, what is that sound? Just as you're trying to wrap your head around that, she belts out an "all," and then holds it, and holds it, and holds it, and then all the other instruments fade out, and then ... well, personally, I like to imagine Mariah tip-toeing along the roof of a 40-story building in high heels, and then suddenly losing her balance, waving her arms frantically, as if in an old silent movie, while she sings "Alll-uhh-allllllll-uh-oh-uh-ah-oh-uh-ahhhh-l-l-l-oh-all that you..." Somebody call the fire department! A big breath, and then ... "turned out to beeeeeeeee." Phew, she made it back to safety.

Right then and there, apparently every female singer on Earth decided they needed to sound exactly like Mariah's roof ledge balancing act, and I guess that's when Little Earl checked out, but I doubt I was the only one who wasn't too excited about it. I'm sure Whitney Houston was quite complimentary to Mariah Carey in the press, but in private, I've always imagined her, in June 1990, sitting on her couch, perhaps in a ratty old bathrobe, remote control in hand, Bobby slicing up some sausages or perhaps grounding up hamburger meat in the kitchen, feeling like the queen of the R&B universe, suddenly catching this video on MTV, making it all the way to its conclusion, turning to Bobby and shouting, "Who the hell does that little canary-imitating bitch think she is?"

"I've Got The Power" To Guffaw At Three Anonymous Early '90s Jock Jams

Ner-Nn ... Nn ... Nn ... Nn-Nn-Ner-Nn ... Nn ... Nn ... I've got the powah! (-owah, -owah ...)

And so, at the dawn of the '90s, a strange new genre arose: Eurodance songs featuring American R&B singers and American rappers where nobody knew who the hell any of these people were and nobody really cared, with the odds that the singers appearing in the music videos had anything to do with the sounds being generated on the recordings standing at about 17.5%. Wikipedia attempts to call it "hip house," but I'm skeptical. The official artist credits gave little indication as to who were the genuine brains behind the operations, or even which countries the artists originated from. The producers of these singles could have been international spies, for all we know. "Snap!" "Technotronic." "C+C Music Factory." Even a name like The Beach Boys, unrevealing as it was, at least hinted that young males were somehow involved in the creation of the music one was purchasing. These group names conjured up images of kitchen appliance brands.

Let me say this about "The Power," by Snap!: I love the synthesizer riff that sounds like an extremely shy and hesitant table saw. Credit must also go to the guy in the background continuously smacking the hell out of the wind chime he probably lifted off his neighbor's porch that morning. And kudos to the brains behind Snap! for recognizing that they could not showcase the lyric "I've got the power!" without using a vocalist who truly demonstrated said power. According to Wikipedia, the singer on the recording is Penny Ford, the singer in the video is Jackie Harris, and ... honestly I stopped caring about five seconds ago. She's got the power! Who gives a fuck who the real singer is?

I wonder how much street cred rapper Turbo B generated for himself back in his hometown of Pittsburgh with his appearance on "The Power." I want to make fun of his rap, but hell, he's probably got better flow than MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice combined. (His moment of crowning glory: "Of the mic... rophone ... that I ... am holdin/Copywritten-lyrics-so-they-can't-be-stolen.'") I mean, for 1990, he sounds pretty tough! He is, after all, the lyrical "Jesse James," which means that he, a black man from Pittsburgh, is the lyrical "unrepentant ex-Confederate train-robber," but whatever, it sounds menacing. Another nice touch: the trilling saxophone that calls to mind the opening of the Mission: Impossible Theme. What I'm trying to say is that "The Power" is one of those seemingly tossed-off dance singles where any of the individual elements, taken in isolation, would sound kind of stupid, but when put together, do they not add up to an unstoppable jock jam of the highest order? I mean, this song has really got the ... energy? No, that's not the right word. Wattage? No, not quite it. Centrifugal force? It'll come to me.

The video apparently takes place in a terrifying post-modern future where black people give press conferences. Admit it, breakdancers with flat-top haircuts gyrating in the background is exactly the kind of choreographic touch our new VP's speeches need.

A couple of elements of Technotronic's "Pump Up the Jam" that I've always found mildly annoying: 1) The rapper sounds like the second cousin once removed of either Salt or Pepa (sorry, I never figured out which was which), with a grotesquely thick New York accent and a delivery that lags more egregiously behind the beat than the lead singer of Cake's; 2) The opening lyrics of the chorus. What the hell is she singing? It sounds like "Ow-oh-wah, a place to stay." It's irritated me for years. According to various YouTube comments, she is singing "I don't want a place to stay." Come on now, does it really sound like "I don't want" to you? Look, I don't need Cary Grant-level pronunciation here, but when the lyrics are this repetitive, it wouldn't hurt. Some of the vocalist's awkward affectations might be explained by the fact that, according to Wikipedia, she was Congolese-Belgian recording artist Ya Kid K (birth name Manuela Barbara Kamosi Moaso Djogi), and probably grew up on a street corner in Kinshasa, not Brooklyn. Could've fooled me. Those who watched the video were also fooled, but in a different way: they were fooled into believing that the vocalist was actually Congolese model Felly Kilingi instead. I can see what the producers were thinking here: "Well, as long as the girl in the video is also Congolese, it's all good, right?" Here's what I'm thinking: "Pump Up the Jam"? How about "Pump Up the Video Budget"? This thing looks like it was filmed inside a Game Boy.

Surprisingly, the powers-that-be behind C+C Music Factory were more or less American, although, unsurprisingly, they were not actually a factory. Talk about things that make me go "hmmmm." At least they got one key piece of the formula right: the rather heavy-set Martha Wash's vocals for "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)" were mimed in the video by strikingly less heavy-set Liberian "model-turned-singer" Zelma Davis. Apparently Zelma could sing, and she did perform on the aforementioned "Things" and "Here We Go (Let's Rock & Rock)," but after Martha raised such a fuss about "Gonna Make You Sweat," everyone assumed Zelma was just another Milli Vanilla and was promptly stigmatized accordingly, so, it's hard to say who the biggest victims in this terrible saga truly were.

In retrospect, it's funny how much "Gonna Make You Sweat" comes across to my ears as "The Power" Lite. If Turbo B and Frederick Brandon "Freedom" Williams ever faced off in the street, my bet would be on Turbo B. "Make the twirl, it's your world, and I'm just a squirrel/Tryin' to get a nut to move your butt"? "I paid the price to control the dice/I'm all precise, to the point, I'm nice"? Oh Snap!

Runaway Belinda Interviews From The Runaway Horses Era

Like a novice equestrian riding an untamed stallion, any interviewer of Belinda Carlisle circa 1989/1990 might have found themselves treading a thin line between galloping majestically through the unspoiled countryside and being violently catapulted into the gooey mud. Maybe she'd stay the course, maybe she'd end up kicking the jockey in the balls - who could say?

I've always been familiar with USA Today as a newspaper (one which ... still exists?), but I've been unaware of its existence as any sort of television entity; until being asked to do this interview, my guess is that Belinda would have been equally ignorant. Regardless, just prior to the release of Runaway Horses in late 1989, here she finds herself reclining in the passenger seat of an old Cadillac across from a Universal City Nissan dealership, alongside an interviewer armed with a camcorder, a boom box, and hokey narration. I have to say, somehow this ends up being more substantial than it had any right to be. Highlights:

Interviewer: When you went out on the road with the Go-Go's, you had this clean-cut, wholesome image. Did that bother you at the time?

Belinda: Yeah, it was sort of, you know, I think people feel comfortable with labels, and they just happened to slap the "cute, bubbly, and effervescent" label on us, which was fine, it was really annoying, and uh ...

Interviewer: At the time, were you rebelling against that?

Belinda: Oh yeah, definitely. Definitely privately, not publicly, but privately we were definitely rebelling.

Details? Not safe for USA Today? Saving those up for the book, I suppose. The interviewer plays "Leave a Light On" from a tiny little boom box and asks Belinda if she likes it. "Oh yeah, I love it," she responds between giggles. "It's good. I better like it, I did it!"

Interviewer: Is it hard for you to listen to your own music?

Belinda: Yes it is. Especially after I just got through singing that song at least 200 times. Yeah, it is. You know, I love hearing it on the radio though, I remember the very first time I heard my voice on the radio, it was really ... thrilling and it still is, I have to admit when my song comes on I do turn it up.

Interviewer [in voiceover]: When she goes this long between performances, does the thought of a live audience make Belinda nervous?

Belinda: Even when I'm used to it, it freaks me out if I think about it, so I just try not to think about it, and I pretend that they're there to see somebody else. 'Cause it is kind of ... a couple times I've been on stage and I've sort of looked out and you could see profiles from way in the back going like this [waves arms] and you start thinking about, well they've actually paid money to see me, and then it starts, uh, playing tricks on your mind a little bit.

Impostor Syndrome, thy name is Belinda Carlisle.

Here we have a solid performance of "Summer Rain" from the Arsenio Hall Show (featuring at least a few live strings?), followed by a typically amusing interview. (Apologies for the audio that only plays on the left channel; there is a clip of simply the interview portion that features better audio, but I wanted include the performance as well, so, deal with it.) The surely neon-and-spandex-clad audience appears to approve of both the song and Belinda's majestically lengthy fake eyelashes, as I detect a few patented "Whoot! Whoot!" chants among the gathered throng.

I've forgotten how nice Arsenio's couches were. He really didn't skimp on the couches. I've also forgotten how perceptive and empathetic of an interviewer he could be. After Belinda confirms an upcoming Go-Go's reunion (to be discussed by yours truly in a future post?), Arsenio remarks, "You look good. And when I say 'good' I mean, not, yeah, you know..." The audience inevitably hollers. "I mean not in the sense of 'Why don't you come on back to my place later' ... I don't mean it like that, I mean, I'm looking into your eyes and I know you did have some problems and you've gotten 'em together and you look real healthy and happy and I'm happy for you." Belinda smiles, nods, and responds "Thank you, I am happy." Yeahhhh. According to Lips Unsealed, she was just keeping things together at this point and was merely a few months away from hitting an even rougher patch, but, you know ... it was probably wisest just to smile, nod, and say "Thank you, I am happy." The next exchange is a keeper:

Arsenio: Let's talk music. AMA's this past week?

Belinda: (giggles)

Arsenio: What'd you think, did you go?

Belinda: No. Uh-uh. I was in Vegas.

Arsenio: What do you think about, like, the direction of music, Milli Vanilli being the hottest thing in music? (laughs gleefully)

Belinda: (mangles her words but essentially says, "Mother always taught me, 'If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.'") They're not my favorite. But I know they're not your favorite either.

Arsenio: I'm just amazed by it.

Belinda: I am too. I am too! What can I say?

Arsenio: I mean, some place, Tom Petty, and Paul McCartney, and great writers like Luther Vandross and Elton John, they're sittin' around and sayin' "What the hell is goin' on?!"

Well how 'bout them apples? I guess even at the time, before their terrible "secret" trickled out, many in the entertainment business were already rather unimpressed with Milli Vanilli. Catchy tunes though. Later, Belinda goes into detail about her process for picking her material, something she hardly ever talked about:

Arsenio: How do you choose your material, I mean, what do you look for? 'Cause I think, people sing your songs constantly.

Belinda: Well I know lyrically, you know, by looking at it, whether it's right for me or not and, um, I have a good sense of what I do, and uh, I just know really basically within 30 seconds whether the song is right for me or not, doesn't really take me that long to figure it out.

This might help explain her glorious demo of "Waiting For a Star to Fall," although it certainly lasted longer than 30 seconds. He asks her if she writes a lot, and she replies, without too much exaggeration, "I'm starting to write, I have a credit on the Graces album [one of Charlotte Caffey's projects] and I have a half-a-credit on my album, so I'm tryin'." When Arsenio repeats, "Half a credit," she responds, playfully, "That's better than no credit." He asks her which song she co-wrote, she answers "Shades of Michaelangelo," and when she hears crickets, Belinda raises her arms and shouts, "Yeah!" like a girl in school who just ran for class president, failed to receive a single vote, and is attempting to laugh it off.

Just when I thought I'd seen it all, here's Belinda on what appears to be a UK children's TV show called Going Live! The host begins by handing Belinda a Platinum award for Runaway Horses (or rather, forcing young Hayden and Genevieve to do the dirty work), which she pretends to appreciate but ultimately seems to understand she has no real use for. Then, upon being prompted, she shares the following story: "I was jogging in the park in Australia, and I love dogs, and I stopped to pet a great dane, and he liked me a lot and he attacked me in the park." She proceeds to raise her eyebrows with sardonic glee.

Next comes a segment in which children across the British Isles call in and ask Belinda questions, which she is supposed to be able to hear through a giant 1990-era cell phone, but her phone seems to malfunction and she can't make out a damn thing. Utilizing that quick British problem-solving know-how of his, the host simply repeats the questions for Belinda, but she is obviously wondering why the program doesn't just pipe the caller audio into large studio speakers like a normal TV program would. A technician speedily pops up and hands Belinda a new cell phone, but this doesn't necessarily make the cell phone gimmick seem any more justifiable. After a pair of softball questions from Claire Chisholm and Zoe Lawrence about fear of live performance and animal rights activism, respectively, Nicholas Payne asks what should be a softball question, but gives Belinda the chance to puncture the magical veneer of pop stardom:

Nicholas Payne: Why did you choose the ... musical career?

Belinda: Why did I? Umm ... well I sort of fell into it accidentally. I was with a bunch of friends one night at a party, four of the girls, and everybody we knew was in a band and they were terrible, so we thought, that we could be in a band and be terrible too.

Host: This is the Go-Go's.

Belinda: Yeah, uh-huh. But that was the great thing about the punk days, you know, you didn't really have to know how to play your instruments.

Host: Would you say that you've now changed, and maybe changed your singing and vocals?

Belinda: Oh I've since, about four or five years into my, you know, singing career, I started taking vocal lessons.

Host: Right, right, did they make any difference? I mean, did you think halfway through, "Oh this is a waste of time"?

Belinda: Oh it makes a big difference, I still go to vocal lessons, yeah, yeah.

Host: And what is that, stretching your ...

Belinda: It's learning how to sing properly and not singing through your throat, singing through your diaphragm, your stomach, and it's, umm, you know, they sort of stretch your vocal abilities out a little bit.

Host: Sounds very painful to me.

So there you go Nicholas, you could be a pop star too - with or without vocal lessons. James Gilbert then asks Belinda if she has ever been to Marseilles, given that the town is mentioned in the lyrics to "La Luna," and Belinda spends about thirty seconds uninformatively repeating that her time in Marseilles was "interesting," leading one to conclude that whatever did happen to Belinda in Marseilles was probably very interesting indeed, and probably NSF-Going Live! She and the host then show off the glorious package of Runaway Horses paraphernalia that lucky viewers could win if they correctly answer the question, "What is the term used to describe the height of a horse?"

The show finally switches to an awkward segment where the host and Belinda grab postcards out of a giant basket, read out questions and answers, and then announce the winners of various prizes, with Belinda essentially acting as Vannah White. She attempts to be a good sport (and she somehow knows how many colors there are in a rainbow!), but clearly has a look on her face that all but says, "When I finally get out of here, I'm going to have a talk with my agent about this."

Last but not least, here's another interview from, I presume, only a short while later during the same tour of Britain, and this poor UK TV station appears to have caught Belinda on a ... less-than-optimal day. If Belinda isn't high on coke here, she certainly appears to be high on something (in Lips Unsealed she mentions lugging around a tasty cocktail of Valium, Halcion, and Rohypnol at this time). Either she'd been singing herself hoarse the entire week prior, or she'd been drinking one pint of lighter fluid too many, but her speaking voice has been reduced to a craggy ball of razors. Notice, also, how her speech is extremely rushed and tense, with hardly any pauses. She barely looks at the interviewer, and she only laughs when she recounts the depressing details of her drug use. The answers all sound slightly rehearsed and canned. Basically, she looks kind of ... fucked up. Which makes this clip utterly mesmerizing and turns all the talk about her "past struggles with addiction" into something alternately sad and hilarious. It's as if the station had prepared a segment based on a bunch of marketing info they'd received from Belinda's record label, and then Belinda walked into the studio almost certainly under the influence of one chemical or another and completely undercut the narrative, but the anchors pretended not to notice and simply stuck to the script. It's gold, baby! Best segment:

Interviewer: Well how did you decide to stop then?

Belinda: I met my husband, and I knew that I couldn't carry on with a relationship with him, um, if I continued the way I was going. He had no idea that I was a drug addict when he got involved with me. And, um, he didn't give me any ultimatum, I just decided that, if I was to, you know, I wanted to marry him.

Interviewer: When did you tell him that you had this problem, when did he guess?

Belinda: No, I think he figured it out when he found all the coke underneath the sofa. (Laughs uncontrollably.) I think that's ... I think that's ... (can't seem to stop laughing) when he figured out, "I've gotten involved with a drug addict." Um, but, I mean, I could hide it pretty well. You know. I'll never forget that morning when he found ... (bursts into uncontrollable laughter again) ... he dumps it over the balcony and I was like, "Oh no! My drugs!" But um, I realized then that I had a choice, that I had to either get my act together or, you know, I wouldn't be where I am now.

And where, exactly, are you now, Belinda? Props for her skillful re-enactment of Morgan tossing her coke; I feel like she really took us into the moment. The zaniness continues:

Interviewer: So what did you do then, Belinda, what route did you go then to stop it?

Belinda: I had a friend that just got clean, and I called her and she took me to a meeting. I'm not a program person because I still drink occasionally, it was never a problem with me, um, you know, drugs were a problem with me. Um, so, for a while I was going to support groups, and now I'm in, um, sort of an offspring of a support group that deals with a different addiction which is food. And so now I'm working my steps through the drugs too. Um, but if it's not one thing it's the other.

Interviewer: Can I talk to you a bit about your music?

Oh that's right, her music. I'd forgotten about that. Once it's all over, the camera cuts back to the studio set, where the two unflappable anchors do their best to ignore what they'd seen and mostly focus on what they'd heard. "She's been very honest about all that." "But it's brilliant what she's been through, to come out of it like that, and to have a wonderful career." Oh yes, to "come out of it" like that. Totally the impression I got.

Blogging Without Prejudice, Vol. 1,483

Listen ... without extreme prejudice. (Any Apocalypse Now fans in the house?)

Toward the tail end of high school, back in the dark ages of human existence (AKA before the internet), I used to spend long, desperate nights staring at my computer screen perusing a CD-ROM created by Microsoft called Music Central, which featured, among other bits of rock journalism, several reviews from Q magazine (a UK publication, I believe?). Let me just say that it's always amusing to read album reviews that were written immediately upon those albums' release, without the benefit of even the slightest hindsight. For instance, Q magazine gave five stars to Dire Straits' long-awaited On Every Street, which currently sports a cool two stars from AMG, and they also had a hilarious habit of giving five stars to every single new Lou Reed and Van Morrison album of the '80s.

At any rate. I was only dimly aware of George Michael's Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1 at the time, but when I read Q magazine's five star rave review, I admit it: I got pumped. I glanced at my recently-purchased print edition of the All Music Guide, which merely gave Listen Without Prejudice four stars to Faith's five, but ... man, you should have read this review. It really whetted my appetite. So, long before I ever experienced the majesty known as "I Want Your Sex, Parts I, II, & III," I checked out a copy of Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1 from my local library. Upon listening (without prejudice, I assure you), I concluded that ... this particular Q magazine reviewer might have gotten a little too excited.

The tendency for arguable over-excitement can work in the opposite direction as well, such as when a performer passes on and it's suddenly "hip" and "trendy" to re-evaluate his work, as this BBC Culture article by Nick Levine titled "How George Michael Transformed Pop" demonstrates. The blurb at the top reads "Thirty years ago, the star released the commercially disappointing Listen Without Prejudice Vol 1. Now, it is rightly recognised as a groundbreaking masterpiece..." Well, maybe it's deserving of a second look, but "groundbreaking masterpiece" is one of those phrases that music journalists should only whip out on birthdays and anniversaries. "... It is seen in retrospect as the album that successfully cemented his position as a pop maestro, not a mere pop puppet." Yeah, uh, wouldn't you say that Faith is generally seen as that album? "[Paul] Flynn calls the album Michael’s 'grand apologia for being in the closet' as well as 'the album where he turns his back on fame'. 'It’s the album where he realises where his hollow ambitions have led him to, and the compromises they have involved, which have so much to do with his sexuality,' Flynn says." Well, cool story bro, but I'm not sure if George himself ever described the album in that way, even after he came out. Levine continues:

Written by a closeted gay man at the height of the epidemic, Listen without Prejudice Vol. 1 is an album steeped in the grief and confusion of the HIV/Aids era. Michael acknowledged in a 2007 Desert Island Discs interview that “Aids was the predominant feature of being gay in the 1980s and early 90s as far as any parent was concerned” and a major factor in his decision not to come out to his own family sooner. It’s little wonder that, as he became more emotionally honest in his music, he no longer sounded ready to party.

Wouldn't argue with that too much, I guess. I do like this narrative that the Q magazine and BBC Culture writers were aiming for, sort of suggesting that Faith was George Michael's Revolver and Listen Without Prejudice was his Sgt. Pepper; I'd like it more if I didn't think it was just a bit off. Let's try this one instead, using a different British George: Faith was his All Things Must Pass and Listen Without Prejudice was his Living in the Material World. In other words, the follow-up album would have been seen as a huge success, if not for the even larger success of its predecessor. Looking back, that "disappointing" follow-up album can sound pretty damn good - but would you recommend it as a starting point for the curious instead of recommending the previous album? Questionable.

I've never listened to George Michael's third solo album, Older, but I have read Stephen Thomas Erlewine's AMG review of it, which basically amounts to the same thing, and a couple of lines of his have always stuck with me: "It is one thing to be mature and another to be boring. Too often, Michael mistakes slight melodies for mature craftsmanship and Older never quite recovers." This more or less sums up how I feel about roughly 50% of Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1. Look, I'm completely on board with George "getting himself happy" and "taking these lies and making them true" and all that self-actualizing mumbo-jumbo; I just wished I felt the songs did all that while employing instantly hummable melodies and energetic production flourishes. "Something To Save," "Waiting For That Day," "Mother's Pride," "Heal The Pain" ... I find them pleasant, pretty, sincere, somber ... and a bit flavorless. Where the hooks, G.?

Now, I wouldn't normally get my knickers in a twist over an album that contains some tracks I love and some tracks I meh, but what gets me about Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1 is that I can imagine there being a version of this album that I like as much as I think George intended me to. You know what the ballads on that imaginary album all sound like? They all sound like ... "Praying For Time"! That song was serious, yeah, but seriously catchy. I feel like "Praying For Time" demonstrated that George could pull off the impossible, ie. shift his lyrical concerns while still making melodically gripping pop music. But what about the follow-through? It's like he caught the ball at the five yard line, but only scored a field goal. Sure, field goals are still points, but after the one-two punch of "Praying For Time" and "Freedom '90," I was kind of expecting a touchdown.

If there is one style George Michael thought he could pull off that Little Earl would say he really could not, that would be acoustic-based rock. I've read reviews that call "Heal the Pain" "McCartney-esque," probably because, with its synthesized conga percussion, it somewhat resembles The White Album's "I Will." But even '80s-era McCartney doesn't sound as dry and stilted to me as "Heal the Pain" does. To these ears, "Heal the Pain" is stiffer than piece of matzoh. Remember when I wrote that "Faith" didn't really rock enough? This song is like "Faith" after being left out in the sun for two weeks. Then there's "Something To Save," which I'm tempted to dub "proto-Lilith Fair." I'm convinced George found these chord changes in the back of a Sears catalog. "Waiting For the Day" comes a little closer to dance-pop by utilizing a then-ubiquitous "Funky Drummer" sample, but too bad the rest of the arrangement only utilizes two chords! I mean, "Freedom '90" also utilized a "Funky Drummer" sample, but it altered and contorted that sample so creatively that I didn't even realize the track had utilized "Funky Drummer" until a few months ago, when I wrote my blog post about "Freedom '90." Finally, "Mother's Pride" utilizes an "Asian flute" synth sound that, personally speaking, reeks of Dire Straits circa 1985. What I'm saying is that there are oodles of songs in George's catalog where I feel like he really made all the right moves and all the smartest choices. I wouldn't say that these are those songs.

Caught somewhat in between is his cover of Stevie Wonder's "They Won't Go When I Go." I remember playing the album, arriving at this track, and thinking, "Wow, what a great undiscovered George Michael song!" And then I looked at the songwriting credits and realized, "Oh, hold on a minute, it's a Stevie Wonder cover." Granted, it's an enjoyable Stevie Wonder cover. But eventually I heard the Stevie Wonder version, and, well, I don't think I'm going out on a limb by stating that improving on a Stevie Wonder track is a tall order. I give George points for picking a relatively obscure Stevie Wonder track to cover, and not screwing it up. But Faith didn't have any covers on it. Faith didn't need any covers on it. I think George simultaneously thought he could demonstrate his newfound artistic credibility and add another top-drawer composition to the album in one fell swoop. These days, I'm slightly resentful of George's cover, because, however strong it is, I simply wish I'd heard Stevie's version first. I find myself unable to listen to George's version without being ... prejudiced.

However. There are two tracks on the album that I've never tired of and would place right up there with "Praying For Time" and "Freedom '90" as Giorgios essentials. In other words, if I had found at least a couple of the other tracks discussed above as enjoyable as I find these two, I might be more inclined to support the views expressed by my friends at Q magazine and BBC Culture.

"Cowboys and Angels" is like the smoky prog rock sequel to "Kissing a Fool" (sophisti-prog?). It's supper club George, but this time with an evil film noir breeze blowing in through the slightly ajar window. Despite being seven minutes long, I find it hypnotic instead of boring, because I'm fairly certain that, wherever the hell George found these tasty chord changes, he did not find them in the back of a Sears catalog. "Cowboys and Angels" is a black and white crime film starring George Bogart, who saunters into a dimly-lit bar wearing a fedora and trench coat (and probably nothing else), sits down at the counter, and barks, "Gimme the hardest stuff ya got." And do I detect the haunted ghost of "Careless Whisper" in the sax outro? Someone decidedly, wisely I think, that the song was single material, and yet it only made it to #45 in the UK, and didn't do squat in the US. Hogwash, I say. At least George managed to sneak it onto Ladies and Gentlemen: The Best Of, which hopefully gave it the wider exposure I would say it deserved the first time around.

Finally, for those hoping that Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1 would offer at least one more irresistibly hook-tastic butt shaker aside from "Freedom '90," I give you "Soul Free." "Soul Free" is like the Miami Sound Machine-influenced sequel to "Monkey." It's a sultry stew of flute, congas, horns, and lusty falsetto come-ons. Maybe it's just me, but I need my Serious George leavened with campy cries like "When ya touch me bay-uh-bayyyy/Ahh don't have no choice, ooooh!" Leave that acoustic guitar in the den, George. Your head may be saying, "I'm a folksy balladeer!," but your groin is saying, "I need to hit the gay clubs, pronto."

Professor Higglediggle writes, somewhat incomprehensibly (even for him):

The lapsed modernity within the twin axes of expression presented by "Heal the Pain" and "Waiting for the Day" is only mediated by the invocation and realization of disjunctions and cohesions expressed by an interpretation of a Stevie Wonder composition, which essentializes and racializes Michael's grab-bag primitivism under a rubric of co-optation and Africanist reification. The Latin groove of "Soul Free" doubles as an amatory assemblage of tonic-dominant sonorities and a neologistic re-reading of Cuban revolutionary rhetoric, which is only undercut by the static harmonic polysemy of "Cowboys and Angels," Michael's declaration "You're not the same/Everyone's to blame" forcing us to interpret his semiotic slippage through the lens of queer theory and ethnomusicological nihilism.