Watch “Tears For Fears – Shout (Official Video)” on YouTube

1980’s music review continued:

It becomes apparent my heart has quite a soft spot for Tears for Fears.

According to Pop-up Video (VH1 circa 1990’s) this song relates to the idea of scream therapy. Yes, it is exactly what it sounds like.


Further, we the audience, receive bass and guitar solos.

An effing innocuously delicate percussive intro.

He tells us he is talking to us.

To you.

Can you list the things you could “do without?”


“In violent times, you shouldn’t have to sell your soul.

In black and white, they really, really ought to know,

Those one track minds.

They gave you life and in return you gave them hell.

I hope we live to tell the tale.”

/ Insert surprisingly painless synth jam. It grooves proper for pop /

Decent sax?!

If I could change your mind, I’d really love to break your heart.

An almost seven minute radio release?

Yes, please.

Thank you, kindly.

Much, obliged.

Watch “The Folk Implosion – Insinuation ( Album Version )” on YouTube

A slick little number from a favorite of my mine.

I sat awake all night listening to this album at age 17.

Working my tail off to prepare Girl State campaign propaganda. It is a rather eerie patriotic program. Two gals picked from each public and private school in the state.

To this day, I do not know how I was selected. A bit clandestine. I returned from my lunch period (the effing latest one of all— major drag) to find a printed invitation on my desk. I’d ask the Randall family: publishing impresarios. Highest of royalty that I have ever met in the South.

Underdog was my theme. My goal: Sanitation Engineer (garbage pick up, yo).

Hotly uncontested. Responsibilities included: making sure the dorm rooms, where us Girl’s State occupants stayed, received regular trash pick up.

That’s right. I didn’t even pick up. A paid grown up did. So, I spent the days unencumbered. Bored until night fall. A swarm of white moths would descend upon the light outside my window. Dizzying numbers. Vertigo.

My 17 year old self did not micromanage the paid adult. I did put a big black garbage bag, sloppy outside the door of my and dorm mate’s (she was not impressed) suite.

It has a formal sign next to it, bearing Underdog’s image.

It read:

1. Please do not remove; this is not trash.

2. Please file complaints about your garbage service on paper and put in trash bag.

it gained me friends and foes.
we ended up overthrowing the elections through a write-in campaign,
instead of voting for the winners of the primaries, like good gals.

the most qualified candidate for a top position did not make it thru the primaries.
so, we waged a covert campaign. messages were passed through the obnoxious, yet seemingly innocuous garbage bag.

one must not underestimate the aversion most southern ladies experience when it comes to the idea of poking about in a trash bag. even if they knew it is clean. this was a big, industrial bag. you had to shove your head and arms into it to get the paper notes. it sat loose on the ground. no supportive structures to help hold it up while you lean in.

underdogs and insinuations. make change happen.
giggle

Watch “Marvin Gaye – Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)” on YouTube

Top ten daydream involves being able to sing this well.

Hot damn.

What a man.

This song in particular. The harmonies, the percussive vocals.

Such a gorgeous song for such a serious subject matter.

Absolutely includes Gaye giving a scream to rival any rocker.

Watch “This Night” on YouTube

https://youtu.be/66lvVTRXlMY

A dreamy, precious little Monday song.

Cheers.

Watch “Jump Little Children – Say Goodnight” on YouTube

A lullaby

Watch “INXS – Never Tear Us Apart” on YouTube

A recent conversation left me reexamining my mental (re)collection of the 1980’s music scene. I came from an acoustic, Martin, early 1960’s to gritty 1970’s household, ya see.

Now, I was a young `un during the `80s, not even alive for the full decade. I write from sloppy memory & unresearched timelines.


To wit. viz. My first memories of favorite songs (years before-gasp-receiving my first cd/tape player boombox) include:

1. Phil Collins (solo, post Genesis); Groovy Kind of Love

2. The Beach Boys (see Surf’s Up not Pet Sounds. Giggle); Kokomo

3. Don Henley (solo, stag de La Eagles); All She Wants to do is Dance


My radio cassette player allowed me to record radio to cassette tape. I took great advantage of such a Tape OP.


The draped-on drum production kinda kills me.

Insta-musical carbon dating.

Not necessarily standing the test of time.

Remaining revolutionary.

But hindsight blahblahblah.


I know I’ll take Tears for Fears, INXS, and George Michael (see also The New Radicals 1990’s) most days.

But I thought real hard about what song with which to start a Pressed review.

The 1980’s have some spectacular introductory pieces (ala Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain).

Songs that mesmerize you before they truly begin.

Donnie Darko previously re-popularized Tears for Fears Head Over Heels. Same band, Sowing the Seeds of Love continued a pop sentiment that trickled down to Oasis, Space Hog. REM.


But, as far as knock out 1980’s intros that I can immediately recall, I had to land here with INXS. Vaguely Antish?


P.s. an exemplar par excellence of the use of a 1980’s sax. Too often wrecking a track.

.

Watch “No Quarter – Led Zeppelin HD (with lyrics)” on YouTube

Let’s get heavy.

Sort of Stairway’s secret sister song.

Shivers.

Appropriate. It snowed five inches yesterday.

Watch “David Bowie – The Width of a Circle” on YouTube

Eternal fascinations.

Measuring circles & David Bowie.

I wanna high kick like that. Geez.

Watch “I’m Only Sleeping (Remastered 2009)” on YouTube

It is a sunny day in the Pacific NW.

I watch it through windows while I work.

I day dream about dreams from last night.

Watch “The Isley Brothers-Ohio Machine Gun” on YouTube

Back to back hits from The Isley Brothers.
For decades, white rock acts covered the most famed material of The Isley Brothers, particularly, “Shout” and “Twist and Shout“.

The Isleys decided turn about was more than fair play and decided to do the same to music made famous by white artists such as Stephen Stills, Eric Burdon and Neil Young.
The artists they chose to cover were not musicians that were apt to cover a song by the The Isley Brothers. In fact they were contemporary artists with unique voices and sounds they developed themselves. I like that these were the artists covered on Givin it Back. So many ways to interpret Giving it Back as an album title.

Slyly, titling this album Givin It Back, the Isleys prove they can re-enliven the music of others, thoughtfully. Distinguishing “a cover” and “a reinterpretation”.

Ohio/Machine Gun is my favorite gem.

CSNY might as well have written Ohio for the The Isley Brothers to perform.

And, I like CSNY’s version but when it is stood aside The Isley’s version, a certain, subtle social commentary forms. The songs speak to one another. The Isley’s version casts a subtle irony on the earnestly enthusiastic tradition of white protest music. Now, a naïveté tints the original.

The original release of Ohio, topical to the very hostile American political climate of the time, intended to make a statement, to shine light on injustice in order to produce change. It purports righteousness that slides toward self-righteousness when considered with The Isley Brothers rendition.

Among the songs they covered were “Spill the Wine”, “Love the One You’re With”, the social commentary medley of “Ohio” and “Machine Gun” (from Jimi Hendrix), “Fire and Rain” by James Taylor and Bob Dylan‘s “Lay Lady Lay“.

Their covers of “Love the One You’re With”, “Lay Lady Lay” and “Spill the Wine” became charted hits. Bill Withers plays guitar on the Isleys’ version of his “Cold Bologna”.

In 2015, Givin It Back was remastered and expanded for inclusion in the 2015 CD box set The RCA Victor & T-Neck Album Masters 1959-1983.

Watch “The Isley Brothers – I Turned You On” on YouTube

A good man first introduced me to this jam, and I wanna pass on the soul power!

Turned you on now I cant turn you off.

What a good, good feeling

A great sensation.

Oh you and me, baby, a good combination.

Watch “America- Tin Man (w/ lyrics)” on YouTube

From the album In the Country, please find 3:30 of loveliness.

Cause never was the reason for the evening.

Drop you cynicism and dig it.

…..when I say I’m spinning round, round.

Prettification per Parcigal

Parcigal learned the powers of personal appearance, nearly two decades past. She learned its ability to exploit and/or to be exploited, nearly a decade ago. Hell, all gals did where she was from, Alabam, the Dirty South. Personal appearance stood as the primary source of feminine efficacy (next to blood kin).

The place where they raised her never addressed that which she regularly pondered: the long game for pretty lady face.

This type of prettification during youth resulted in an aged-self prettifying to remain relevant, as a new generation of beautiful gals arose.

The true Tao seemed to be finding Beauty unmasked.

Bare face.

No jewelry.

Unadorned.


She started to let her face be as it is. Washed it, moisturized it, but that was all.

She became the appearance of the female she was.

She did this, going about daily public interactions, until she knew her face,

Became the female she is.

Then she wields the power of makeup’s masking properly. Not defensively.


Parcigal lived her dream of Art. She reinterpreted Myshkin anew, unbound to previous ties made.

Allegory.

Of course now, books are more often quoted than read.

The once enumerable is now innumerable.

Hypertextuality.


Parcigal recoils from monastic traditions. It is being one a crowd, faceless.

Initiation required heavy control over the individual’s entire life. Gives very little free will. They seperate sexes, assuming gals are even allowed at all. It imparts a tacit intent to shame the sexual nature of the h. sapien mammal. She does not doubt the resiliency of these traditions. But, her energy does not run properly in their circuits.

She recoils from secret societies and erudite traditions, because she distrusts agendas she agrees to but cannot fully see. It feels, in her mind, like blindly giving away power.

But she is wary. She is also extremely lovesome.

A lovesome nature required diligence.

What was the use of sensualism with a resonant partner?

Why was this primal magic so hidden?

Magnetism and electricity.

Conductors.

Conductive bodies are conducive to utilizing each resonant body.

By nature.



So, in her Fool way, she left her Ewer the note below.

The morning after she spent her first night in the handmade.

Before she snuck out (after two minutes of hard doting on his sky-eyes) without rousing him.

If these Rings Spoke & Salmon Sang Electric

The sun begins to make cameo appearances.

The trail crew came through.

Cutting back.

Below is tribute to felled ones.

Ready to be reabsorbed into the ecosystem.

No waste.


The water rose.

See the fish (salmon) ladder flow from both sides

Watch “Badly Drawn Boy – Everybody’s Stalking” on YouTube

https://youtu.be/D15NOlKyh-A

Watch “Kevin Morby – Harlem River” on YouTube

Kevin Morby.

A freaking gem.

This song recalls a sound you know you’ve heard before. If only you could remember.

Diabolically hypnotic like the gloaming.

Jeff Buckley and Tom Waits nostalgia rises.

But like great music masters. Kevin Morby conjures a sound immediately recognisable as his own yet somehow leaving me hard pressed to describe in any words except: Impeccable in Simplicity and Timing.

High Praise.

Consider “R.E.M. Crush with Eyeliner”: Southern punk

Keep in mind these boys was outta Georgia (pronounced gee-or-ja).

Slick ass song. Knowledge of the band’s backstory qualifies this song for punk status.

Impressively apt, sardonic, and nonchalantly bold given the socio-cultural setting from which they emerged.

The Dirty South (american) ain’t so famously hospitable to its own if they don’t act right.

REM helped begin to open minds.

~

In areas with strong currents of cultural homogeneity…

(places where like-minded people have political control, religious influence, and both the financial and social currency to back these up), places like all places, places were regular, good people generally try and think that they are doing their best. like you. and me.)

…outliers are not well-tolerated.

Much like the way statistics may choose to formulate its treatment of those non-standard members of any given data set (sic. matrix).

If you record the result of the same experiment being repeated over and over a statistically significant number of times (iteration/Law of Large Numbers), and then note that on one occasion the result the experiment yielded was way, way dissimilar to the other results, you may then designate it as a statistical anmoly.

Termed an outlier: A member of the set that qualitatively and quantitatively appears alien when viewed in contrast to the uniformity of the character (standard distributions about a bell curve) of all other set members.

It is not uncommon to simply dismiss outliers from your analysis of the data. Just pretend their correlative relationship to the other data points insignicant.

Not affective. Like not even there. Incapable of producing change. To Unaffect.

To alienate the affection/loyalty of ; to fill with discontent & unrest. To Disaffect.

Unaffected.

Disaffected.

Perhaps the issue is that the mathematical formulae chosen and applied to the data set (in order to yield analysis and enable analyization of that object we study) are improper.

e.g. trying to explain a nonlinear system using linear mathematics: results will (always) be yielded when math is applied, but how useful are they and what do they ignore?

The phrase is “the outlier’s effect on our object of inquiry is statistically insignificant (aka mathematically negligable) so we will not include it when we analyze our data with math formulas.”

Statistical Insignificance.

Watch “Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key – Billy Bragg & Wilco” on YouTube

Cool album. A Wilco and Billy Bragg joint collaboration of some old-timey songs.

Natalie Merchant’s vocals (formerly of 10,000 Maniacs and with solo work to her credit) sit beautifully in the mix.

Watch “Saturn’s Rings Are Disappearing” on YouTube

Watch “Into the Mystic | Van Morrison | Lyrics ☾☀” on YouTube

Hot griddle cakes and flank shakes.

Just discovered this delight.

Homage. No rights.