2006-07-01 - 3:05 p.m.
Let's see...I'm losing weight and have managed to stick with it, check...so far, I've been pretty good at establishing the habit of going to the gym right after work, even if "I don't feel like it", check...after my incident of experiencing "the blissful zen of housework", I've become amazingly good at making sure I wash all my dishes after each and every meal, check...now I realize there is yet another area I need to work on: GOING TO BED AT A DECENT HOUR AND GETTING A GOOD NIGHT'S SLEEP!
Who would think that after diet, exercise, and housework, I would need to develop the habit of going to bed! Seems like I could do THAT, no problem, but NO, I'm still stuck in what I guess is a childish "but I'm having too much fun, I don't WANT to!" Waaaaah!
So I planned to spend all day yesterday (Friday, a day we have off in the summer) rewriting the Employee Manual (which I just can't seem to work on at school--too many interruptions, so I am sacrificing some of this holiday), but did I do it? No, I wasted all day yesterday by getting stuck on the Internet Thursday night and I didn't go to bed until 8:30 A.M. Of course, that completely shot Friday, and here it is now Saturday and I still have that Employee Manual lying here, untouched. I don't want to be saying this same thing on Sunday, Monday, TUESDAY! (Be a good boy now and get your work done, THEN you can play.)
What on Earth could I have been doing on the Internet until 8:30 in the morning? Well, not tracking down how we are going to hell in a handbasket, thank God, not this time. Instead, one of my news services that I subscribe to had a link to YouTube, which is a video-posting website I had never visited before. Well, I wasn't attracted to the bouncing cats or skateboarding bulldog or crazy baby shenanigans that most people post (their own amateur version of "bloopers" or "The Gong Show"), but instead, what interested me was that people have posted music videos from the heyday of music videos, only a mere blip of time back in the past, from the 80s and 90s, when pop music was amazingly good and when performers looked good or at least unusual. Obviously, this was before the emergence of hip hop as a sound form (I won't say "music form"), tattoos, piercings, and thug clothing as a standard appearance, and the death of MTV as something a human being would watch. Such nostalgia I have for those times, and it all wasn't so long ago that it wasn't part of my childhood or college youth days, I was a middle aged person then, as I still am now. Who would think that nostalgia would be for something only a decade or two ago? But from a glance at current club listings (in L.A. at least), one will see that this kind of nostalgia is socially very broad; just LOOK at how many 80s nights or 90s nights there are. Plus the fact that an Internet feature (I hestitate to say "phenomenon", but maybe so) suddenly provides to a hungry public a compendium of so many well-remembered and loved music videos. I, myself, in just that one long session garnered 59 "favorites" for my playlist. I tried to figure out how to save them on my hard drive, but failed to figure out how. I know from past experience that one can't count on the longevity of Internet archives. Why, maybe in the year 2008, people will be nostalgic for YouTube. But at least for the time being, I have them.
Okay, so what sort of stuff am I notalgic for? Well, right off the bat going through this stuff, I found myself loving Tears For Fears as much as I ever did, if not even more. In fact, after watching several of their videos, I ordered from amazon.com a couple of their CDs that I didn't already have. How could anybody watch Head Over Heels, Shout, or Everyone Wants To Rule The World without feeling REALLY good! (Please actually click on all these links and enjoy! Make a whole night of it.) I think my favorite Tears For Fears video is Sowing the Seeds of Love which starts out sounding very "Beatlesesque" and then turns into something so beautiful and holy it is almost "Gospel". Also recommended by them are Change, Pale Shelter, and Mad World.
I was blown away by the beauty of Johnny Hates Jazz, especially their Turn Back the Clock which makes me so sad (but in a good way), but also their I Don't Want To Be A Hero. Why aren't there musical groups making songs as great as this today?
I think in those days, singing in a clear beautiful voice was important such as shown in Holding Back the Years by Simply Red (although from today's eyes I wish that guy would cut off that shock of hair), or Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley, or People Are People by Depeche Mode. I'm not sure if I understood it at the time, but now I can see that the main point of that song was anti-homophobia. I don't know if for sure the singers in Depeche Mode are gay, but they sure were liked by gay fans.
Being beautiful was also a plus in videos from that period, such as shown in the classic video by A-Ha, Take On Me (of course, being Scandinavian helps), and for a tougher image, Billy Idol in Rebel Yell and Eyes Without A Face, not to mention having a great, driving energy.
Few groups would combine as well all the good pop elements as the Pet Shop Boys, who could write unbelievably gorgeous songs with the best of them such as West End Girls, King's Cross, Love Comes Quickly, Being Boring (featuring a mini-movie by Bruce Weber populated with the most beautiful "A&F types" imaginable), It's A Sin, (right off the bat I'd say this one is about masturbation and homosexuality, and, of course, so much more), and Paninaro.
The Pet Shop Boys songs were also brilliant lyrically, and another example of a brilliant song is Murray Head's One Night In Bangkok.
A list of brilliant videos would be empty if I did not include anything by Annie Lenox and Eurythmics, such as Here Comes The Rain Again. Regarding hot females, I also enjoyed anything by Stevie Nicks, such as Stand Back. Of course, THE classic music video female is Madonna, shown here in MY personal favorite, Vogue. I guess this makes a good transition into what I call "the big dance production numbers", such as En Vogue's Free Your Mind (the woman knows how to MOVE) and Chaka Kahn's I Feel For You (is it possible to not like Chaka Kahn, and I have to say it, I really miss seeing black women and men being so beautiful, all that smooth skin and lean, muscular bodies dressed well and shown to perfect prideful effect, no longer seen in the hip hop culture that Bill Cosby, for one, justifiably decries). And who more exemplifies this kind of video than the dominatrix herself, Janet Jackson, such as in If, or perhaps the very best and most powerful of all, Rhythm Nation, which could chill to the bone any white supremist, the sight of all those black dancers in socialistic military uniforms rising up in the factories of the world and singing about erasing the color lines, except their precision and power is so infectious that they could get even the Ku Klux Klan up and dancing with them. This is one of my favorite videos, I can't tell you how much it energizes me.
Yes, I guess by now everybody knows that Bobby Brown is a wife-beater, but boy do I like his videos, such as Every Little Step and the hard-driving My Perogative.
Not all black videos were rebellious, angry, or racial power plays, some of them were sweet, loving, and very mature (but still powerful), such as anything by the hugely talented Ashford & Simpson, as shown in Solid and Found A Cure.
Which takes me to one of my favorites from that era, who went from being a hugely promising Quincy Jones discovery to an unfortunate sudden failure in one quick decade, Tevin Campbell. Here he is as the sweet little boy that Quincy Jones was so hopeful over, Tomorrow, followed by an initial offering from his first album (which was amazingly wonderful and under the masterful helm of Quincy Jones, himself), Round and Round, a song written by Prince, but who doesn't seem too excited in this video to be stepping into the background for this young upstart who is stepping into the limelight. Also from the period is Strawberry Letter 23, although I am afraid they have matched Tevin with a love interest who is clearly too old for him.
Tevin then grew into a very beautiful young man and did several romantic songs, such as Could You Learn To Love and I'm Ready where he was shown in beautiful, private settings (a small town in Mexico or a snowy field) which were not the usual black video staple locations. I didn't like it as well when he was shown in the post-apocalyptic wasteland that is the ghetto (which is not where Tevin was from), such as shown in Confused.
It seemed that Tevin tried to grow up too fast (or else his producers pushed him too fast), trying to get his image out of the sweet little boy and into a sexually hardened young man. I don't think his talents required that. Always In My Heart, had too many noticeably artificial "hells and damns" in the lyrics coming out of that beautiful face and always wonderful singing voice.
The song For Your Love was from Tevin's last album which wasn't very good. As much of a fan as I was, I never managed to listen to it any more than twice all the way through. However, from this video, there is no denying Tevin's voice and physical beauty. It's possible, then, that he could have gone on for a few more years, maybe become, at least, another El DeBarge, but unfortunately Tevin was caught with a male hustler or was with someone he picked up in a restroom, I don't remember the exact details, but anyway, he was uncovered as gay and his career completely died in one second flat. Too bad. I await his possible come-back. I mean, if R. Kelly can move through a child porn conviction and marry a 15-year old girl, surely Tevin Campbell can be gay and still have people buy his music?
On the subject of talented singers growing up, I can't forget Immature (here shown with rapid-rapper Bizzy Bone), later to grow older and re-emerge as the "not quite so good" IMX, which I thought sounded too much like a copy of Boys 2 Men, and then finally breaking into the solo career of the fully grown Romeo. But before all the growing up, I thought Immature were so much more clever and innovative when they were youths, such as might be perceived in Lovers Groove, featuring yet another rapper, Shyheim. At first blush, this song, which seems to be a reworking of an Earth, Wind, and Fire hit, sounds like a confused mess with disconnected elements, and yet I detect in there the compilation of amazing genius and complexity. Unfortunately, I now also detect in there the seeds of the destruction of black pop music, because out of the complication and intermixing, what ended up emerging in hip hop as a background for the rap was just the mess, confusion, and meaningless noise, not the ingenious intermixing of rhythms and melody lines that shone in earlier efforts.
Other than hip hop, which I obviously don't like (or maybe simply don't understand or can't relate to), music also came out of the 80s and 90s and went into another direction that I did like, and that was electronica dance music. Here are some good examples: 2 Unlimited's Tribal Dance and Get Ready For This, Mr. Vain's Culture Beat, and the absolute classic (in my opinion), the incomparable Faithless's Insomnia (God, I love this one). The latter 90s saw me weekly on the dance floor in a club or at a rave, losing my mind and finding ecstacy in intense movement. I can't get no sleep? Yeah, ain't that what this whole essay was about? Well, in my case, it's I WON'T get no sleep, and this kind of thing is why!
Let me end this with a few more "classics" from the era that were not otherwise classified: Animotion's Obsession (surely this one brings back memories, right?), Round and Round by Ratt for the heavier rockers among us, and Rosanna by Toto (I LOVE the drivin' jazzy sound of this one).
My denouement will come in from out of left field, but I have been wanting this song ever since I got back from my Caribbean cruise two summers ago (I heard it EVERYWHERE!)--the perfect "summer vacation at the beach" song, Bob Marley's Jammin'. I discovered from the YouTube site that Bob Marley had the same birthday I do (but he was born three years earlier, and I am still alive).
Pun intended...I am "jammin'" on out of here. I hope you enjoyed this walk down musical memory lane.
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