Category: Music

What? Did I miss yesterday? Sheesh? I was completely prepared too. The day just kind of slipped by. Oh well, back on track now.

Most of the songs that remind me of a particular place have to do with concerts. I hear Over My Head by Fleetwood Mac and I’m immediately back in the Boston Garden seeing them live for the first time on the Tusk Tour. ‘Til Tuesday’s Maybe Monday puts me at the UNH show nursing my not-so-secret crush on keyboard player Joey Pesce.

When I think of the band Spider, and this song in particular, I think of a time, a place, and specific people. Spider’s 1980 debut album, featuring the minor Top 40 hit, New Romance (It’s a Mystery) was a defining collection of songs for me. I loved Spider, featuring Amanda Blue on lead vocals, future hit-making songwriter Holly Knight on keyboard, Keith Lentin on guitar, Jimmy Lowell on bass, and future David Letterman session player Anton Fig on drums. I turned my friends on to Spider. Sue, Becki, Anne… they all loved Spider nearly as much as I did. We each had our favorites on that first album.

When, a little over a year later, their second album, Between the Lines, was released, we were momentarily taken aback. There were some real dance grooves there… almost disco! It took us a couple of listens to accept songs like Going By, although Change, later covered by John Waite, was an instant hit with us. I have such a distinct memory of having my three friends pile into my 1974 Pontiac Ventura and driving down to Lake Quannapowitt in Wakefield, parking by the banks, and instead of making out (what, I was gay, and there were three of them!) we listened to the new Spider album over and over again. One song in particular resonated. It’s a song you all know as performed by a different artist, but Spider performed it first, and Amanda Blue’s commanding vocals were certainly the template for the much more popular artist who eventually turned it into a hit. I still ahve a very vivid image of Sue sarcastically spitting out the lines, “But did you think I’d just accept you, in blind faith? Oh, sure baby! anything to please you, but you better be good to me!”

This is not the complete kickass song. Much of the amazing instrumental break is edited out unfortunately. Even the CD version doesn’t include the full-length song, which is why I still own the vinyl.

Once again, there are dozens of songs I could list here, because many different songs remind me of many different people. I decided not to go with the obvious, like Chatnal Kreviazuk’s Before You reminding me of my wonderful husband, Scot, or the difficult, like Face to Face’s Wreckless Heart, which I couldn’t find on YouTube, that reminded me of Diane, and old roommate of mine. Instead I picked a song that reminds me of someone who was a very good friend through high school, college and years after, and always makes me laugh because of it.

You Sold the Cottage by Martha & the Muffins is a funny enough song without it making me immediately thinking of my friend Anne. I was always playing new music for my friends, especially Anne. I’d transfer my new vinyl albums to cassette, then we’d go out in my car, drive around and I’d play the new music for them. Sometimes we would go down to the lake and just listen to songs. It was a lot of fun, and kept us busy in a suburb where there wasn’t all that much to do. Anne liked Martha & the Muffins well enough but she always listened to new music critically. What Anne loved to do is smile and laugh. She has a great sense of humor and loved to make other laugh. What sticks to strongly in my mind is during the opening instrumental riff after Martha says, “We’re entering getaway country!” Anne would do this crazy little dance. Every. Time. I. Played. The. Song. It was hilarious. It still makes me laugh today, nearly 30 years later. She probably doesn’t even remember this, but sometime I should play this song for her again and see what she does.

For Day 02 I am supposed to talk about my least favorite song. I thought about this for a while, and I found that I couldn’t really thing of my least favorite song. Honestly, if I don’t like a song, I tend to put it out of my head. There are plenty of songs that I would change the radio station on, but I don’t feel passionate enough about the songs I dislike to keep them in my memory.

So I thought about genres that I don’t like. I wasn’t a big fan of 80’s metal bands, and was going to pick a song by Poison, because I really didn’t like Poison, but honestly, I just couldn’t work up enough ire toward Every Rose Has It’s Thorn or Talk Dirty To Me (although that one was pretty close).

Rap was the next genre that I really dislike, but the rap songs I don’t like, I don’t know, so I that didn’t work.

Then, yesterday morning as I was walking to work it hit me. I knew what my least favorite song is. It’s Ice, Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice. Besides the fact that it’s a stupid song, it adds insult to injury by taking a brilliant song and co-opting it into a really bad song. Therefore, since I don’t want to post the video for a song I don’t like, I’m going to post the video for Under Pressure (which also happens to be my and Scot’s big Karaoke number) by Queen and David Bowie, which is the brilliant song that Vanilla Ice bastardizes to get his big hit.