Michael Crichton, who passed away yesterday at the age of 66, was not someone who had an impact on my interests until the ’90s but I felt compelled to offer my condolences in these quarters anyway, perhaps because he exemplified interests of mine that defined the next phase of my life after the ’80s and High School.
Crichton’s seminal book Jurassic Park was released in 1990 and made into a movie in 1993. The movie was probably the first great popcorn flick after Eightiesology ended. It was a perfect transition flick, helmed by Steven Spielberg with all the glorious wonder you’d expect from one of his films. There are elements of it that would make you think it DID come out in the ’80s. But alas, the thing that helped establish this movie (and story) as ahead of its time was its special effects. As good as they may have been in films in the ’80s…this film presented a quantum leap in storytelling that upped the ante for films of its ilk. And despite being one of the first to utilize certain technologies, the movie even today looks remarkably more realistic than some of the dime-store crap that’s put out today.
Around this time, the film also helped nudge me in the direction of novels. Up until this point, I hadn’t enjoyed reading. For school or my own entertainment. But during my first year of college, I discovered the works of Crichton, Tom Clancy and John Grisham. From that day forward, there haven’t been many nights that I’ve gone to sleep without first reading a chapter from a book. Sure, some will scoff at my presumptions of literature but it’s my personal philosophy that if you can get anyone reading books, you’ve already made the world a better place. This helped pique my imagination in new ways and led me to establish my dream of becoming a writer myself. This was my new sand box, my new toy box. The ’80s were over and I was anxious to develop.
Crichton also created the television show ER, which arrived in the mid ’90s. This was one of the first real dramas that I regularly watched. Up until this point it had been mostly sitcoms and escapist fictional dramas like Quantum Leap. But with ER and The X-Files, my interest was elevated into more serious fare, both of the realistic and the alien kind. The latter paved the way for my absolute affinity for serial mythological dramas like Lost and 24. But ER was my first grown-up show, the first episodic fiction that caught my curiosity without flash and wonderment but with the often brutal reality of life in the emergency room. (As well as the lives of the doctors and nurses working the ER.) This was another facet of maturing in the ’90s
I still watch ER and have read most of Crichton’s books. Jurassic Park remains one of my favorite stories. I didn’t know the author was even sick until I read that he’d already died. It’s shocking to lose such an imaginative intellectual. Eightiesology offers its condolences to Crichton’s family and friends. But first, I offer my heartfelt appreciation for telling me such wonderful stories and helping an Eightiesologist grow into a Ninetiesologist. Rest in Peace.
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Duff, Slash, Axl, Izzy and the uncleverly-monikered Steve
It was announced this week that Guns n’ Roses’ new album will finally be released by the end of November. Chinese Democracy is now legendary for its 14-year birth and its many rumored release dates. What it will be is the first new studio album from the band since Use Your Illusion I and II were released in 1991. For all intents and purposes, Guns N’ Roses is now an Axl Rose solo venture since the original band all departed by the mid 90s. It remains to be seen how relevant the band will be 15 years after its last recorded product and 17 years after its last original albums. The band’s fans have grown from angry young teenagers into middle-aged mothers, husbands, managers, and maybe even a stray grandfather. And in that time we didn’t watch Gn’R grow up with us. But for some of us, all we ever really needed was Appetite for Destruction.
The stars of Pirates of the Caribbean!
Released in 1987, Appetite for Destruction is an absolutely essential album on so many levels. It is a turning point for rock n’ roll in the ’80s. In retrospect, it ranks as a great album in the pantheon of all-time hard rock. And for Eightiesology, it ushered in a new era and nudged this Eightiesologist into new musical realms. Make no mistake, I still found a way to balance the pop and R&B with hard rock. And many of Guns n’ Roses supposed contemporaries became crossover artists dabbling in power balladry, a genre I indulged in to its very end. But in ‘87, I started thinking about the rougher edges, oddly enough when a band called Guns n’ Roses skyrocketed up the chart…with a ballad.
“Sweet Child O’ Mine” is no ordinary ballad. It may very well be my generation’s greatest contribution to the Billboard charts. And it was an easy song for the band. The opening riff was a Slash joke that the band quickly fleshed out and turned into a melody. Axl wrote lyrics that read aloud would sound like a rather pedestrian poem but his voice helped transcend those lyrics into something immortal. (Don’t believe me? Try listening to the dozens of crap covers of the song, including Sheryl Crow.) Lastly, the band essentially throws in an improv breakdown at the end as a response to the producer’s request and yet it ends up not only working as a bridge between Slash’s killer solo and the empowered finale, but also helped give the song its unique identity as an antidote to the types of ballads we’d been listening to since the late ’70s. A gem almost entirely created by accident.
And that was just the beginning. “Welcome to the Jungle” had already been released months earlier to some acclaim but it only reentered the atmosphere after “Sweet Child” brightened the spotlight on Guns n’ Roses. With interest piqued, I had a newfound respect for this harder edged side of the band. And with album soon in hand, I wandered down a road that was often a lot more like the Jungle and less like a warm safe place.
To fully understand the magnitude of my appreciation for the music on Appetite for Destruction, you need only go back through this blog’s archives and read all posts about The Bangles, Ghostbusters, Disney World, Star Wars, and the song lists of my mixes and Friday Night Dances. Now scroll down to last week and watch me singing Wham! karaoke. I was the antithesis of hardcore. Growing up, I watched my brother indulge in Iron Maiden and Judas Priest and I couldn’t stand that music. So for this Eightiesologist to take a shining to “It’s So Easy” and “Nighttrain” on the heels of the opening “Jungle” was a revelation that was baffling to me. This shit had groove, man. It was heavy, drunk and dirty but underneath it all was a mischievous melody. And as a 13-year-old, I got it.
That was never better represented than by “Mr. Brownstone.” This tale of heroin and the heroin addicts who wrote it could not be further from my reality than it was and yet I could be seen bouncing around with this playing in my headphones, often as I headed off to buy baseball cards. It had an almost supersonic riff to it, overlapping its dirty groove. We used it to come out to during some basketball games in high school. I still remember the mischievous glee I had looking over at Mr. Weber during the “that old man, he’s a real motherfucker” line. Heh.
The album never ran out of songs. “Paradise City” and “My Michele” continued the sturm and drang of Sunset Boulevard life. “Think about You” and “Rocket Queen” showed the influence of classic rock on the band that would be more fully fleshed out on Use Your Illusions. And the album stayed in rotation for years never growing old or stale. In fact, it is one of those gems of the decade that I can’t say I’ve ever gone too much time without having listened to. In fact, many of the aforementioned songs have been parked on my iPod for a long time, essential for nudging me along a workout, especially after a brutal work day.
For all its sordid tales, I think the album represents an argument against censorship and influence as I never went on to a life of drugs, debauchery or prostitution. And I was hyper aware of the lyrical content I was singing along to. I recognized that it was grungey and corrupt, but it was entertainment to me. It didn’t make me want to aspire to become the protagonist of the songs. It only made me want to be in a rock n’ roll band. I enjoyed listening to the lifestyle but never came close to living it or wanting to.
There is something about rebellion that helps connect young listeners to artists and their art. At some point in our lives we all have an appetite for destruction, whether it is literal or metaphoric. We grow up from that but not away from it. We like to put these things into perspective and the music that perhaps once meant something to us on one level, now takes on a nostalgic presence. That’s a lot for some bands to stomach because the good ones abhor becoming nostalgia acts to punk kids who grew up to become lawyers or bankers. But the reality is that some of us still need those sounds because it makes us feel like we’re young and full of piss and vinegar. And maybe sometimes we wish we could be irresponsible and go punk on our bosses, unleashing a profanity-laced diatribe of truth with “It’s So Easy” playing in our heads.
“You get nothing for nothing, if that’s what you do…”
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Halloween is the first significant holiday since Eightiesology launched and I thought it would be interesting to put the holiday into the context of the decade. Christmas was a more memorable holiday for me during the ’80s while Halloween tended to be a, ahem, haunting memory. It’s ironic then that when the ’90s rolled around, Halloween started to take its place as my favorite holiday while Christmas moved to the backburner.
Why? Christmas was a holiday for receiving the types of gifts that inform this website, whether it was a G.I. Joe action figure or a Transformer, perhaps a cassette or CD, or even a new bike to patrol the local neighborhood. It was also a break from school that everyone strived for. Halloween was nice because of the candy and the costumes but it also etched two childhood “tramas” into my brain forever.
One of the first Halloweens I remember I dressed up as Superman. Now mind you, this is probably 1980 or thereabouts so a Superman costume was all tights. And I got teased incessantly for it. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I’ve done my own personal psychological analysis and determined that this has to be why I came to detest Superman in the years since. Sure, I have philosophical reasons: I don’t like true blue superheroes, I like ‘em rough around the edges and dark. Like Batman. But I think when you get down to the core of it, when I think about Superman, I still think of that little kid getting teased for wearing tights. And I’m going to admit, I’m kinda there teasing the kid, too.
A few years later, I was Rocky for Halloween. Simple and creative costume. Boxing gloves and shorts, and some costume makeup to add faux blood. As usual, the children of Wood-Ridge marched in the Ragamuffin parade, leaving C.E. Doyle on one end of town and parading across town to and down the Boulevard. I would just be one amongst a sea of costumed children. Except for the fact that the high school marching band leading the way happened to be adept at playing the theme from Rocky. Thus, I was asked to LEAD the parade. Look, I know I was a cute kid, inasmuch as most kids at this age are cute. (My awkward years began in the late ’80s when I sprouted upward and got hairier.) But I was not ready for the spotlight. I work best amongst smaller groups and typically not in front of entire towns.
I don’t have many recollections of other Halloweens in the ’80s. There were masks and simple costumes. I was probably a soldier at least one of those times, given my penchant for playing Army with the neighbors. I remember one year Mike and I got a late start on trick or treating, trekked down Hillcrest and at the very end of the street stopped to inventory our minimal swag for the night. A woman emerged from her house and offered us the rest of the candy. Suddenly a slim night became a bonanza of Peanut Butter Cups and Kit-Kats.
The early ’90s brought a new spin to Halloween when I started venturing out with groups of friends that included a female quota. I can remember the feeling of going house to house, hunting the elusive larger-sized chocolate bar, cracking jokes with youthful exuberance. And having a girl laugh with me and flirt. (In my head, there are trumpets blaring and a shot of a volcano erupting.) I had a great time with my classmates in school and had already become a bit of a wiseass earlier than one could suggest. (Much credit to both my father and ALF.) But this started bringing me around to a new level. This felt accessible. I inevitably squandered every opportunity I was ever presented with flirtation back then but I’m secure in my current station in life to recall those hormone-addled days with whimsy and glee. Who knew back then that the simple act of Trick-or-treating was layering new memories onto an old holiday?
Of most importance, the holiday makes me remember my hometown and my neighborhood. This was a territorial holiday, one that immersed you into the culture and landscape of the place we lived. I can see Hillcrest Avenue at night, lined with pumpkins, orange leaves and toilet paper, patrolled by ghosts, ghouls, hoboes, aliens, army men and superheroes. I’m walking with all of my friends, having a good time and goofing around. When we got older, eggs and shaving cream became weapons of choice for some but I didn’t begrudge them for it. It only sent young girls behind me as some sort of protector to guard them from any onslaught. I can see all the houses decorated and even the ones that skipped Halloween; and I can still remember which ones gave us good candy and which ones had to be combed over for razor blades. I can still smell the dead leaves on the dirty ground, the hint of wood-burning stoves and the autumn air wafting through a nice little town on All Hallow’s Eve.
Happy Halloween!
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In my exploration of the media that forms the foundation of Eightiesology, I’ve come to realize that each medium has carried much of its enthusiasm into the current era. A band can still incite intense emotion during a concert and their music still soundtracks essential memories-in-progress. Television shows have very clearly never been as well-crafted as they are now. I just saw the Giants win a Super Bowl and it was as proud and exciting a moment as any sporting event I witnessed in my youth.
Movies on the other hand have evolved into a different sort of beast. I’m no less a film geek than I ever was, in fact my sensibilities have expanded to respect the higher quality movies of both the present and the past. But the core cinema of Eightiesology were the event pictures, those that have come to weave their way into the tapestry of both that particular decade as well as film history. And for a child of the ‘80s, they entered our eyes and filled our brains with wonderment and stupefaction, creating an obsessive need to relive the adventures of a time-traveling high schooler, a scruffy-looking nerf herder, a millionaire in a bat suit or an adventuring archaeologist. The images of these films branded not only our minds but also our imagination and spirit, forming the foundation of future memories we would simply never escape.
Indiana Jones, American Idol
This year we saw three films that referenced this age of cinema: The Dark Knight, Iron Man, and the latest Indiana Jones film. Do we know if these films will impact the youth like Star Wars, Back to the Future and Batman once did? Unfortunately the answer to this is going to take some time to acquire. But more importantly, can we as adults pick up that old viewfinder and see these newer movies with the same astonishment we had as kids or has the magic of cinema dissipated along with our natural hair color and unbridled optimism? To find that answer, perhaps the best route is through Indiana Jones himself who returned this summer in a franchise born in the ‘80s.
What has become an iconic sequence in film history.
The archaeologist’s first venture, Raiders of the Lost Ark, is a virtually flawless movie, to a child or an adult. It’s also an iconic masterpiece, developed and at its height of popularity in the ‘80s, but timeless in its appeal. As a kid, you wanted to reenact that type of adventure in your backyard. But then you got to grow up with the Indiana Jones films and that’s when something odd happened…they never quite went away. Adolescence and puberty were never going to stop you from still enjoying these films on a Saturday afternoon. A lot of this had to do with the movies’ skewing more to adults than other top ‘80s films had. But it also helped that the franchise never seemed to go into hibernation.
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Posted in Adventure, Film & Video, Travel | 2 Comments »
The Eightiesologist ventured into the city with his wife to celebrate a friend’s birthday and was able to utilize our camera’s video feature to capture some of the karaoke fun. It’s not pretty but part of the beauty of the ’80s and the total lack of shame we can now have in retrospect is our ability to belt out a good tune and totally feel the spirit move you. Forgive the semi-drunken camera work. And enjoy “Everything She Wants” by someone who was not in Wham!
done
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I have a confession to make. I actually purchased Milli Vanilli’s Girl You Know It’s True album AFTER it was revealed that the two dreadlocked males we’d come to believe were singing, were actually lip synching frauds. Much of the music on the album had been everpresent in the late ‘80s but as I hit upon my first dose of ‘80s nostalgia in college, I wanted a copy of that album. However much of a fraud the guys in the video were, that doesn’t take away the enjoyment of the music. Sure it’s a bit overwrought, even by ‘80s standards, but if that many people were buying into the popularity, than they were hitting some notes right.
I think the bigger issue is that the real Milli couldn’t even find guys who could dance to put in his videos. While some could laugh at many of our Friday Night Dances, they were mostly delivered by people with groove (or, in Paula Abdul’s case, outright skill). I’m not quite sure the flying chest bump became something anyone ever embraced, at least outside of the NBA. Or the side-by-side, shoulder-enhanced-blazer-wearing shimmy, for that matter. (Axl Rose had better rhythm than these guys.) That all said, girl…you know it’s true.
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The third in a virtual glossary of terms either specific to the 1980s or to our staff’s own upbringing in said decade. This time around we focus on a term that isn’t specific to the culture of the Eightiesologist’s upbringing.
“Hoops”
- 1. Circular figures or objects
- 2. The game of basketball, the act of shooting baskets, or simply loitering around a basketball court with only minor intent to play the sport and major intent to be social
The simple term of “shooting hoops” or “going to shoot hoops” invokes the basic act of playing the sport of basketball or practicing the art of shooting the basketball into the net, or hoop. However, this came to take on a more significant meaning in my world towards the end of the ‘80s and early ‘90s.
It’s important to note that playing basketball and shooting hoops were not technically the same thing. I played basketball in high school for four years. This entailed attending practices everyday except Sunday, grueling practices that included a wind spring so psychotic that they were called “suicides.” The practices were in preparation for games which took us all over Bergen County and sometimes into dreaded Hudson County. Junior year, as my classmates took over the starting positions on the Varsity team, the Wood-Ridge Blue Devils went into an awful losing spell that lasted until our Senior year. This was basketball for us. Miserable losses and ridiculous practices. The best part of a basketball game was going to Amore afterwards for cheese steak sandwiches and hanging out with our friends.
Shooting hoops was an altogether different experience. Stripped of the stigma of a losing team or of being a benchwarmer, this was a freelance experience, a freeform experience. While I played basketball with my high school classmates, I shot hoops with my friends from town who went to various different Catholic high schools. We all played basketball for our different HS teams but came together on common ground during in-season off-days and pretty much every other time imaginable to shoot hoops at the Assumption. For many of us, it was a walk across the street or a few blocks away. On a school day, it was the first thing you did upon your return home. On the weekend, it was pretty much what we did from late morning until it was too dark to play anymore. Sometimes even that couldn’t stop us as we let our eyes adjust and the nearby street lamps to give us just enough vision to shoot hoops.
What is Hoops? It’s not complicated. The weather had to be disastrous to prevent us from shooting hoops. With that cooperation, we individually made our ways to the Assumption parking lot. Sometimes a phone call or a ringed doorbell induced a scheduled arrival but more times than not, it was simply an instinctual gathering. I had the advantage of being able to see the court and hear a bouncing basketball from my house which gave me an edge to be timely and ever-present. Lace up your high-tops, put on sweats or shorts, grab a ball and head over.
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The sign that for so many years welcomed guests to take a look over our Horizons. (Picture courtesy of WDWMagic.com)
October 1st marks the 25th anniversary of the opening of Horizons, a much revered attraction at EPCOT Center in Walt Disney World. This Future World exhibit was one of the best representations of Walt Disney’s original concept for EPCOT-that of an actual community utilizing progressive technologies and ideas for better living. While it’s brethren in Future World focused on future concepts in transportation, energy, agriculture, communication and imagination, Horizons focused on a futuristic setting that utilizes all of these concepts, showing how a family might live with all of these progressions as an accepted aspect of society. While these concepts were already over 15 years ahead of what Walt had envisioned before his death, they were an entertaining depiction of the type of living he had hoped people would actually have in his Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow.
Horizons opened a year after EPCOT opened to the public. My family and I had gone to Disney World for the first time in 1982, just missing EPCOT’s launch that following Fall, so by the time we visited EPCOT for the first time in 1984, Horizons was an existing part of Future World. It instantly became a favorite for not only my family but apparently other families as well. I was 10 years old at the time, just old enough to enjoy the wonder of the attraction yet too young to grasp the technicality of it all. However, we’d return to Disney World and EPCOT in ‘86 and ‘88 (as well as ‘91 and ‘92) which allowed me to grow up with extractions like Horizons around me, connecting with the concept of it more each time.
The Horizons building was cleverly built to emulate the perspective of looking towards the horizon. It also looked like a spaceship! (Courtesy of WDWMagic.com)
This is a large part of why I appreciate so much of the Disney aesthetic because I was fortunate enough to have spent the formative years of my childhood vacationing there and thus allowing so much of what I saw to imprint on my growing mind. In many cases, this was just for shear entertainment value. However, it had a large influence on areas of creativity for me, including design, architecture, conceptualizing and storytelling.
Horizons was essentially a sequel to Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress, which details the large steps in progress mankind-and particularly one audio-animatronic family—had made throughout the 20th century, including the ever-shifting future. Horizons took the futuristic aspect and ran with it into the 21st century, expanding this idea to not only include entertaining visions of the future but also practical, relevant advances in technology. The dark ride started with a look back to the future, showcasing perceptions of the future through the eyes of Jules Verne and up through the 1950s. Then you’re shuttled past two Omnimax screens depicting the ongoing advancement of technologies (at the time). (Of note, you now know Omnimax as IMAX, but at the time, very few had seen something like this.)
At this point, you now witness these technologies being applied in futuristic settings in cities, out in the desert, underwater and in space, quite literally around the world. Disney utilized it’s a combination of audio-animatronic and real film to depict these settings. At the time, concepts such as voice-activation or videophones seemed truly futuristic and yet many of these concepts are either a reality today or are very clearly on their way there. There’s a memorable part of the ride where you pass through an orange grove scene and you actually can smell oranges. This really underlines how successfully Disney displayed a fully immersive experience. My memory can still smell those oranges. The finale of the ride allowed each omnimover vehicle to choose their method of transportation back to the fictional FuturePort. Buttons lit up on the dashboard on the doors of the vehicle, allowing the riders to choose a half-minute ending film that took you through space-colonization, arid-zone agriculture and ocean colonization. All the more reason to go on the ride 2 or 3 more times! (And I distinctly recall doing just that with this attraction, particularly when we saw there wasn’t a long line to get back on!)
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The second Eightiesology iMix focuses on hard rock and glam metal from the dubiously designated hair bands of the era. I thought it was important to take a hard left turn after the first mix since these are pretty much the polar opposite images of the time: pop stars abiding my fashion trends versus hair bands decked out in leather and denim. For me, I lived comfortably in both worlds but leaned more towards the hair bands once we entered high school. And much like a hat could not have enough space to contain this much hair, 80 minutes was not enough to capture the best sounds of the time so I’ve kept with the mostly upbeat, edgier tunes of the genre here while the planned sequel will focus on the more powerful ballads of these bands. There are exceptions to change the tempo but these are mostly songs to passionately air guitar to with fists shaking in the air.
Click the button below to go to the iMix on iTunes. Again, I don’t make any money off of this, it’s just a way for me to further promote the site. Feel free to download the whole mix, individual songs or use it as a guide for you to create your own mix. Download the artwork here and print it out for a mix CD. But most of all, enjoy the ride on a crazy train!
“Crazy Train,” Ozzy
I wasn’t a big Ozzy fan in the ‘80s but always dug this song. It’s one of the strongest, rawest metal tunes on this compilation and thus made for a great opening track. It’s one of the rare times that Ozzy was able to cross over into many different markets and genres with a song, one that put the melody and vocals on par with the guitar muscle of Randy Rhodes. This also happens to be one of the earliest songs (of any genre) in the ‘80s that ranks in Eightiesology lore.
“Round & Round,” Ratt
Ratt didn’t do much for me as I tended to be more of a fan of cleaner, glammier metal sounds at the time (at least until Guns ‘n Roses entered the scene). In fact, I don’t even recall being a huge fan of this song at the time but in nostalgic mode, it’s gained significant relevance and appreciation for me.
“Runaway,” Bon Jovi
We’re now 3 for 3 on songs by artists I wasn’t crazy about. It’s almost sacrilege to have ill-conceived criticisms of Bon Jovi but they were just never a band that captured my interest. For the most part, I find them to be a little too ordinary and vanilla to me, even though they’ve created a lot of cool tunes. To me, though, those tunes were never as good as their first real hit. Despite the pulsating piano riff, the song had an otherwise raw aesthetic to it that seemed to go away as the band progressed into hair-spray infused rock.
“Dreams,” Van Halen
And now a band that to me ranks as one of the top hard rock bands of the decade and remained relevant into the ‘90s. I’m an unabashed fan of the Van Hagar era. I think Sammy Hagar’s a far superior singer to David Lee Roth, capable of reaching incredible octaves with his voice. I also happened to prefer the band’s more melodic approach in this era over the bluesier tones of its earlier phase. “Dreams” wasn’t even the biggest hit of this lineup’s output but it was a popular song in my circle, assisted by a cool video featuring the Blue Angels. It still pumps me up today.
“Tell Me,” White Lion
White Lion’s third single from Pride. (Their first? You’ll have to “wait” for it.) The band made quite a splash on the scene with an album full of accessible songs. I always dug this one, particularly the fist-pump-invoking opening, and appreciated how it snuck onto the scene but got lost in much of the nostalgia of the time. I think it’s important to respect how rare it is for some of these bands to chart three worthy songs from one album in hair metal lore.
“Talk Dirty to Me,” Poison
What a way to burst onto the scene? One of the main proprietors of metal’s glam phase, Poison was also one of the first bands I remember “arriving” (whereas many bands seemed to have already been there when I discovered them). A band that provided many highlights for this genre of music, making it harder to edit their input on this compilation. The song remains a sing-along highlight for my friends and I today.
“Up All Night,” Slaughter
Slaughter was big for about a week but it was quite a week. Actually a ‘90s hit, the song reminds me of hanging out at my friend Tom’s house. Now in high school, the music of the time was a backdrop to our own attempts at more rowdy endeavors. (Tom was always successful; me, not so much.) The song is actually one of hair metal’s last gasps but those last gasps also had added poignancy with their place in the hormone-raging high school years. And yeah, I had a habit of sleeping all day.
“Don’t Close Your Eyes,” Kix
To me this song was representative of tunes from bands you knew little about, and cared less when you heard what else they had to offer, and yet compelled you in that moment. I don’t need to know much about the band Kix, just that this song was pretty friggin’ killer. As you’ll see by the end of this compilation, I tended to favor those songs sung by high-octave-reaching singers.
“Kiss Me Deadly,” Lita Ford
The first relevant metal chick, Lita Ford was scary and sexy at the same time. She also introduced me to the more scandalous meaning of the word “laid.” (Though I may not have entirely understood it for the first few listens.) And while Lita and I could relate on going to a party but not getting laid, our evenings differ because I didn’t get into fights. It ain’t no big thing.
Posted in Musicology, Ninetiesology, iMixology | 1 Comment »
Many thanks for visiting Eightiesology 1,000 times. (Of note, the counter doesn’t track my own visits!) I appreciate the 10 of you for visiting 100 times each and reading my whimsical musings of the ‘80s. I’ve only just scratched the service and still have a lot of tricks up my sleeve. I also hope to add some new sleeves as well. I want to keep this thing moving and never let it become dig the bottom of the barrel or become a retread of itself.
Please spread the word and don’t just be a silent viewer. Comments are appreciated (and will make this thing look like it’s read and enjoyed by others). Here’s to 100,000 more hits.
Now, on with the countdown…
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