Chart Week: October 4, 1980
Song: “I’m Alright” – Kenny Loggins
Chart Position: #8, 13th week on the chart. Peaked at #7 the next two weeks.
Every successful career has a turning point, a moment that elevates it from being run-of-the-mill into something special and lasting. This song, for example, recorded as a favor to a friend for a movie that initially was a bit of a flop, helped turned Kenny Loggins into one of the best known artists of the Eighties.
After a decent run in the Seventies – first with The Nitty Gritty Dirty Band, then in Loggins and Messina, and finally as a solo artist – Loggins hit the Top 40 six times in the 1980s with songs that appeared on movie soundtracks. Four of those would crack the Top 10. His title track for the movie Footloose would become the only #1 of his career.
It’s funny for me to think of him in just that way. That’s primarily because my mom really liked his music and had many of his solo albums. I can go deep on some early ‘80s Kenny! Really, only three of his movie songs had staying power beyond their chart runs. “Footloose,”“Danger Zone,” from Top Gun, and “I’m Alright” were so big, they are what people remember him for, not the eight other Top 40 hits from his solo albums, or for co-writing the Doobie Brothers’ #1 hit “What A Fool Believes.” But it seemed like every summer would bring another Loggins song (or two) that was tied to a movie.
He started on the path to his honorary royalty thanks to another movie connection.
In 1976 he wrote the song “I Believe In Love,” which Barbra Streisand sang in that year’s version of A Star Is Born. Through that project he became friends with the movie’s producer, Jon Peters. A few years later Peters called Loggins and said he was working on a new movie, Caddyshack, and needed a song for the title sequence. Loggins saw an early cut of the movie – one that did not yet include the animatronic gopher tearing up the golf course – and was struck by Michael O’Keefe’s character Danny Noonan.
“… I got the idea they wanted to portray him as a bit of a rebel, even though he had not yet achieved that particular character,” said Loggins. “(He) was trying to figure out where he fit. But at the same time he wanted people to leave him alone and let him find his own way. So I wanted to grab him and summarize that character, and that’s what ‘I’m Alright’ is doing."
I’m not sure I ever got much of that. Probably because I was nine years old when the single was released and didn’t bother to consider the lyrics much then. Or since, to be honest. It was just a really good song that I heard often before, during, and after our move from southeast Missouri to Kansas City in the summer of 1980. I heard it often on the AM radios in my parents’ cars and on the transister radio I received for my birthday that I carried around everywhere.
It also fit Peters’ title sequence perfectly. It followed Noonan as he rode his bike from his chaotic, overfilled, over-the-top stereotypically Irish home to the assumed relaxed and refined environment of Bushwood Country Club. The song is fun, engages the listener, and has some momentum to it that gets you amped for what you’re about to see on the screen. I also hear the rumble of the road in our multiple trips between Southeast Missouri and KC that summer.
When re-listening to “I’m Alright” this week, I thought for a moment that Lindsey Buckingham might have co-wrote it with Loggins. There are so many elements to it that sound like a Buckingham song. The structure, the instrumentation, the layering of the vocals, that hint of country-rock. Hell, the drums, with their floppy, heaviness recall Mick Fleetwood’s work behind the kit, so I guess this sounds more like a Fleetwood Mac song without the female vocalists than a Buckingham solo effort. There might be some common threads in there, but neither Buckingham nor Fleetwood had any involvement in the track’s writing and recording.
Casey Kasem’s introduction for the record on this week’s countdown blew my mind a little. He said sometimes a song will be a hit no matter what gets in its way. In this case, he noted, Caddyshack had not done well at the box office, and the soundtrack wasn’t selling well either. But “I’m Alright” was doing just fine on its own, still climbing in its fourth month on the Hot 100.
It’s wild to hear a transmission from the fall of 1980 claiming that Caddyshack was a commercial disappointment. I didn’t see it then, but it seemed like every kid I knew with an older sibling had seen it. There was much talk about it at the bus stop. Weird that Caddyshack didn’t really become a huge hit until a few years later, when it landed on cable and our generation could watch it over-and-over, memorizing every line, and boring bystanders with horrible immitations of Carl Spackler’s “Gunga galunga” speech.
The song holds up. It’s not just nostalgia for the movie that keeps it in high rotation on ‘80s stations. It’s a genuinely good song, by an artist who knew better than anyone else how to craft a pop tune that pulled in vibes from the film it was attached to.8/10
One more note: when Loggins was recording “I’m Alright,” Eddie Money was working on his own album in a nearby studio. Loggins invited him over to lay down some background vocals. You can hear Money most distinctly when he sings the line “You make me feel good!” in the bridge.
Well, Loggins did not give Money an official credit for his contribution. That started a grudge that lasted at least 34 years.
“I’m not a fan of Kenny Loggins to tell you the truth,” he told Cincinnati morning show host Kidd Chris of WEBN in 2014. “I sang the bridge in that. We were label mates, you know.”
I wonder if they made up before Money passed in 2019.
“Perfect Me” – Blossoms
First off, these dudes don’t sound like your typical Manchester band. I would have guessed Southern California first. Then, they said this song is a homage to their love of Abba, Bruce Springsteen, and The Killers. I hear some Killers, the other two? Not so much.
“Drop Me Out” – High Vis
If it doesn’t work because I’m not smart enough to make it work, there should be a GIF of Beavis and Butthead headbanging and yelling “YES!!!!” here.
“Under A Cloud” – Susanna Hoffs
Ms. Hoffs is releasing an album called The Lost Record that features tracks she recorded in her garage 25 years ago. This one eventually landed on the Bangles 2011 reunion album Sweetheart of the Sun. There isn’t a ton of difference between the songs. This one is a little funkier. The Bangles’ version has slightly more dreamy harmonies. Oh, and Susanna is a national treasure that should be protected by an act of Congress.
“On The Floor” – THUS LOVE
I don’t know much about the Vermont post-punk scene. I do know, though, that when I want to listen to post-punk music from Vermont, this is the first band I think of. Like all good post-punk, this song could be from 1984, 1994, 2004, 2014, or 2024. It is brand new, for the record.
“Dangerous” – Liz Stringer
I’ve been down on Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist lately. However, a few weeks it spit out this remarkable track and it kind of makes up for all the other crap. Stringer is a bit of a cult artist in Australia. Other artists love her, but she hasn’t had a ton of commercial success. Musically, this could be a Ryan Adams song from 10 years ago. Her lyrics are fantastic. I need to dig into her music more, as I’ve read a couple interviews with her and it seems like she’s had quite a life and has written a lot about what she’s been through.
“Edge of Town” – Middle Kids
Speaking of Aussies, my current favorites released a surprise live album last week. I’m not normally crazy about live albums, but I found this one to be quite good.
“Out of Touch” – Daryl Hall and John Oates
I told you there were some big songs left, and some weeks where it was going to be tough to choose what song to share. This week I could have selected Wham’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go,” or Tina Turner’s “Better Be Good To Me,” which both cracked the Top 40 at #32 and #34 respectively. However, I couldn’t ignore one of my all-time favs. In just its second week in the Hot 100, it landed at #38. In December it would spend two weeks at #1, the duo’s sixth and final US #1. I will never, ever change the station or hit the skip button when it comes on. Dance on your knees!
We are bracing for the remnants of Helene in Indiana this morning. It is already raining and windy. By this afternoon heavy rain and gusts over 50 MPH are expected. Should make high school football interesting. CHS picked a good week to not have a game scheduled.
“Pop Seeds” – The Jesus and Mary Chain
More completely enjoyable music from the Reid brothers.
“whirling sad” – Mo Dotti
LA shoegaze FTW.
“Sometimes, I Swear” – The Vaccines
File this one under Songs That Came Out A Year Ago That I Just Now Found. Hate when that happens.
“Somewhere” – Mates of State
Kori Gardner’s and Jason Hammel’s first new music in nine years. I don’t think they have lived in Lawrence, KS in a long time, but that’s where they started, so I’ll always claim them as LFK locals.
“Wildflowers” – Jim Nothing
Oh man, so much wonderfulness wrapped up in one song. Equal parts Eighties, indie jangle and classic Down Under pop vibes. Nothing is from New Zealand, so there has to be some Neil Finn DNA in there somewhere, too.
“The Great Divide” – Wussy
It’s been six years since we got new music from Wussy. During that gap guitarist John Erhardt died. They will make up for that absence by releasing a full-length album, Cincinnati, Ohio, and two EPs on the same day in November. This was a late addition to the album. Thank goodness they discovered this little piece of magic, which draws a lot from Erhardt’s death, floating in the studio air.
“Rain” – The Cult
You should have known something like this was coming given the forecast.
“Habits” – Gary Clark, Jr.
I debated whether to include this. It’s a terrific song, for sure. But at over nine minutes, I would imagine it sets some kind of record for length of song in these playlists. And there are several other really good songs on Clark’s new album. There’s something extra special about this one, though, that demanded I select it.
“I Feel For You” – Chaka Khan
Back to the timeless, mega hits of Eighty-Four! One of the most fun and unique songs of that fantastic year. It is also part of Prince’s takeover of the pop charts for a solid chunk of the decade. First written for Patrice Rushen (along with “I Wanna Be Your Lover”), she turned it down, so Prince recorded it for his self-titled, 1979 album. Chaka Khan got a hold of it a few years later, added rapping from early hip-hop icon Melle Mel, harmonica and sampled vocals from Stevie Wonder, and took it to #3. Melle Mel’s repetition of Chaka’s name at the beginning was not planned. Producer Arif Mardin accidentally hit a button while mixing the song that caused the stutter. He liked the way it sounded and kept it on the final mix. You can argue that was the element that made the track unforgettable.
Three songs kept it from reaching #1: Wham’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go,” which was #1 for two weeks and #2 for another week, then Hall & Oates’ “Out of Touch” which was #1 in Chaka’s third week at #3. The other song? Prince’s “Purple Rain,” in one of its two weeks at #2. Because of the weird chart rules at the time, despite peaking in late 1984, “I Feel For You” was officially one of the five biggest songs of 1985. It cracked the Top 40 this week at #38.
It’s been a good week or two and my new music folder is getting filled up again, making it more difficult to pick what to share than to scare up enough songs to share. It helps we have an anniversary song, an old song that is new to me, a new version of an old song, and a calendar song all in this week’s PL.
“September” – Earth, Wind & Fire
It’s that time of year, y’all!
“BLACK DOG / WHITE HOUSE” – BIG SPECIAL
ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME!!!! Despite being about deep depression and all that comes with it, this is a pretty cool song.
“Crystals” – Sea Lemon featuring Benjamin Gibbard
A near-perfect modern shoegaze track, and Gibbard’s contribution surprisingly excellent.
“Hard to Accept” – Trace Mountains
“Eating the Whole Egg” – Wild Pink
These two The War on Drugs adjacent bands continue to impress with advance tracks from their new albums. Each of these hits a different side of the TWOD sound here. Trace Mountains release their album next Friday, Wild Pink the week after that. Good fall music.
“NEW MOON (DARK PHASE)” – Duran Duran
Again with the CAPS. While making their upcoming album, DD messed around with this classic, adjusting it to fit the sound of their new music. I’m not sure if I like it that much – “New Moon on Monday” is my favorite of their songs – but when the second chorus hits, I admit it does get me interested. Andy Taylor, who is no longer officially part of the group, contributed to this track. I don’t know if that means they used something he played on the original or he actually re-recorded something for them.
“Alligator” – Of Monsters and Men
I heard this sometime this week on The Bridge and was bummed to learn that it is five years old, and not a new song that they will be playing a lot.
“Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)” – Arcade Fire Twenty years ago this week AF released their debut album Funeral. When I listed my ten most influential albums during Covid, it was on there. It was the first album of the MP3 Blog era that I discovered via the new wave of music websites. There are better songs on the disk. But this was the one that appeared on pretty much every music site that fall. When you would scroll through sites like The MP3 Machine, that aggregated what dozens/hundreds of blogs were posting, this showed up over-and-over. It took me a while to get into it, but eventually it clicked with me and led me to getting Funeral later in 2004.
“Strut” – Sheena Easton
I’ve been reluctant to include any ’84 videos from songs I’ve written about in RFTS. But this week the pickings were a little slim and this became my default selection. At #40, on its way to #7. I looked ahead, and starting next week through the end of the year, pretty much every week has some amazing choices. There are a couple weeks where I may have to double-up because there are three legendary songs in the bottom ten. Our late summer lull is over!
Chart Week: September 7, 1985
Song: “Cry” – Godley & Creme
Chart Position: #24, 8th week on the chart. Peaked at #16 the week of October 5.
Every decade is filled with unlikely hits. In the Eighties, the best way to force your way into the Top 40 was by making a video that was unique and memorable.
That’s how Englishmen Godley & Creme earned their only hit as a duo in the US.
Kevin Godley and Lol Creme[1] first met in the late 1950s and began making music together almost immediately. They were partners in several groups, eventually landing in 10cc. They were part of the 10cc roster when that band had its biggest American single, the 1975 dreamy masterpiece “I’m Not In Love,” which peaked at #2 on the Hot 100.
The duo left 10cc in 1976 to work on their own. They managed to churn out a couple minor UK hits but had no luck in America. However, as Casey shared during this countdown, Godley & Creme weren’t limited to just making records.
In 1983 they directed the wild video for Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit.” Without that video, there was no way white, suburban kids like me would have ever heard a Herbie Hancock song without having a really cool uncle.[3] Later that year, the stark, art-house cinema influenced piece for The Police’s mega-smash “Every Breath You Take” was also a G&C joint.[4] The partners earned a stack of awards for those two projects. Casey described to their work as “unusual, complex videos.” I like that. He was calling them artsy, but doing so in a way that wouldn’t put regular folks off.
Then, in 1985, came the video for their single “Cry.”
In that piece, Godley & Creme used the relatively new technique of morphing – the dissolving of one image into another – to blend the faces of various people singing “Cry.” It was a startling effect that helped it stand out from the other videos on MTV at the time, and I’m 100% sure it was almost solely responsible for the song’s success.
Godley said the track’s basic lyrics led them to selecting the visuals for the video.
“It occurred to us that the song itself is a kind of song that anyone can sing,” Godley told Songfacts. “So, we thought, why not do just that? Find a load of interesting faces, including ourselves of course, get them in the studio and get them to lip sync to the song and see what happens, which is precisely what we did.”
A few years later John Landis used the same effect, with a bigger budget and more advanced, digital processing, in the short film for Michael Jackson’s “Black Or White.”
I say the single was successful because of the video. That does not mean that the song itself isn’t good. Musically, it has a cool, sensual swagger countered by dark, ominous undertones. It could easily be the score to a Cinemax movie about a private detective who gets involved with the woman he’s supposed to be investigating, only for things to get really messy. I’m thinking she turns up dead, he’s framed for it, and has to prove it was her ex or something along those lines. You know what else it sounds perfect for? Soundtracking a key, dramatic scene in an episode of Miami Vice. Oh, hey, guess what? That’s exactly what happened!
Godley’s vocals are also layered in significance. If you don’t listen to his words, you might think he was trying to seduce someone through his casual tone. The lyrics, though, are far more bitter than his voice suggests. The words aren’t Shakespearean, but they are exceptionally effective. The listener knows someone has done damage to him. The vocal outro, featuring Godley’s processed, freaked-out, falsetto screams, borders on melodramatic yet serves as the perfect ending statement. It is the only part of the music that has the same impact as the video. Just like that ex-lover who gets under your skin, so too does this song. 7/10
In a huge coincidence, M. Ward just released a cover of “Cry” on his new album.
There were two other songs in this week’s countdown that featured videos produced and/or directed by Godley & Creme: Sting’s “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free,” and Howard Jones’ “Life In One Day.” ↩
I did have a couple cool uncles, but they got me into artists like Boston, Loverboy, Journey, and Hall & Oates. Not exactly earth-shattering stuff. ↩
Billboard’s #1 song of 1983. I think it probably would have done just fine without the video, although it was nearly as inescapable on MTV as the song was on the radio. ↩
“Favourite Songs” – Maximo Park
This was the week I learned that MP and bands like them – The Kooks, The Futureheads, Editors, The Wombats, Bombay Bicycle Club – were lumped into a sub-genre called “Landfill Indie” by some critics. That was not considered a term of endearment. Which bummed me out because I liked a lot of those bands in the stretch during the early 2000s when they were popular. MP is still around, and while this won’t challenge for my favorite song of the year like “Going Missing” did in 2005, I do enjoy this track. Screw the critics!
“D&T” – Japandroids
Further proof there will be no re-invention of the Japandroids wheel on their final album.
“Cut and Run” – Jessica Boudreaux
Boudreaux wrote this for an un-named Apple TV+ show, but the producers ended up passing on it. Their loss. Actually, probably her loss, because it would have gotten a lot more exposure had it landed on the show. But you get what I’m saying.
“I Got Views” – Getdown Services
This band describes their music as “post-Brexit apocalypse disco,” which is awesome. Twat is such a good word. I might start using it to see how it goes over.
“Starting Again” – The Sluts
I’ve been listening to The Bridge, the public radio station in Kansas City that plays music right up my alley, more over the past several weeks. I’ve heard this track a few times, always identified as a local song. Turns out the band is from Lawrence, and maybe the biggest thing in that scene these days. Appropriate that this has a very turn-of-the-millennium sound given that’s about the time the classic Lawrence scene fell apart. I dig.
“Too Much” – Nectar
Speaking of the classic Lawrence scene, this band sounds similar to Frogpond, one of the most successful bands of the Nineties KC/Lawrence scene. But they are from Champaign, IL and very much a current group, not one that faded away 25 years ago.
“High” – The Cure
This week’s The Alternative Number Ones entry (subscription required) was this track from 1992, which topped the Alt chart for four weeks. I had forgotten what a joyous, delightful, silly song it is. Tom Breihan gave it a much-deserved 8/10.
“Come To The City (Live…Again)” – The War on Drugs
TWOD released another live album today. This time rather than picking his favorites from their last tour, Adam Granduciel took individual parts of different performances and stitched them together into new tracks. Which seems like a lot of work. But makes sense if you know how he makes music. This is the song that utterly blew me away when I last saw them. You don’t get the full sense of its power here – I’m convinced anyone with long hair had it blow backwards by the sheer force of the music that night – but I’ll still listen to this a dozen times, cranked all the way today.
“Are We Ourselves?” – The Fixx
Another week with fairly slim pickings from the bottom of the 1984 chart. Don’t get me wrong: I love The Fixx. They are underrated, and this song is super solid. But it doesn’t qualify as a classic of ’84. That said, I do have a vivid memory of hearing it while enjoying the final weekend that Worlds of Fun was open for the year, a balmy, breezy October afternoon. At #32 this week, on its way to #15.
My momentum in this series has been off for a few months. No worries for the two or three of you who care about these posts; I’m not giving up on them!
A combination of factors over the summer kept me from listening to American Top 40 very often. Less time in the kitchen, where I play the iHeart Radio Classic American Top 40 channel the most. No more SiriusXM in the car, so no 80s on 8 Big 40 countdowns to supplement my Casey shows.
While every AT40 boradcast ever aired has been re-mastered and digitized, iHeart Radio and Premiere Networks only play a portion of them. No one is sure why. As I’ve been listening to them, one way or another, for close to 20 years, many of them are repeats to me. Which both makes them a little boring and strips them of material for RFTS posts.
There is a way around this. The man who is responsible for those remastered editions also has the right to sell them. A couple weeks ago I learned that I could have the entire original Casey Kasem era – from 1970 to 1988 – delivered on a hard drive for the low price of $1500. Say I just wanted his shows from the 1980s? $750.
Ok, I love American Top 40 but fifteen hundred bucks, or even seven-fifty, is a lot. Me being me, I did think about it for a minute before deciding it was certainly too much to sneak past S when she reviewed that month’s credit card bill. She’s indulgent of my hobbies, but all indulgences have their limits!
However, I do have a high speed internet connection, a web browser, and the ability to use search engines. Thus I spent about a week finding and downloading hundreds of old AT40 recordings for free. My media hard drive in the basement now holds copies of 365 shows that aired between 1976 and 1986, my golden era of pop music.
I did the most damage in the Seventies, grabbing 196 countdowns, or 94% of the shows recorded between 1976–1979. For some reason the shows from the Eighties were harder to find. I managed to obtain just 46% of them, with as many as 37 (1981) and as few as 14 (1986) per year.
Yes, I tracked them in a spreadsheet.
My source was Archive.org, a brilliant, world treasure of a site for all kinds of material. There were several contributors who have uploaded AT40 programs, a few of which had just been updated. I figure if I keep an eye on those pages, some of my missing shows will eventually appear on them.
I also focused on downloading shows that were available in a single audio file. I skipped over dozens and dozens that had been broken into individual files based on either program hour or side of the original AT40 LP. When I’m bored with this original run of 365 countdowns, there should be opportunities to get more.
Most of the programs were ripped from radio broadcasts, so they include ads and local breaks from the stations that aired them. It has been jarring to hear weather reports from who knows when in the midst of some of them.
So what the hell am I going to do with 365 (and counting) American Top 40s? Play them and write some fucking blog posts!
At 3–4 hours per show, that’s a lot of listening.[1] I figure each week I’ll select a couple that correspond to that moment on the calendar, then scrub through them, focusing on Casey’s trivia between songs and tunes that jump out at me as interesting topics for new posts. I can’t see myself playing them all start-to-finish. I have too much other music and podcasts to listen to.
I’ve already reviewed two of my downloads. One was from September 9, 1979. While there was no great trivia for a new RFTS post in it, I was amazed that Gordon Elliott served as the guest host that week. This was before Elliott came to the States and established himself as a third-tier media personality. He was still a radio DJ in Australia at the time. Apparently one with good contacts in Hollywood!
There was one piece of trivia Elliott shared that was familiar. He told a story about Dionne Warwick’s career going sideways when she changed how she spelled her name on the advice of her astrologer. Casey would relay the same anecdote three years later; I wrote about it two years ago.
Kind of sloppy, AT40 folks. I imagine I’ll find other examples of repeated stories as I work through my digital pile of shows.
What does this all mean for you, the blog post consumer? Hopefully it gets me back on track for one or two RFTS posts per month. I’m currently working a draft based on a song from the second downloaded show I listened. The ratio of my collected shows also helps me with a goal I’ve had for a long time: writing more about music from the Seventies.
So that’s yet another weird way I’ve been wasting my time, obsessing about a radio show from my childhood. I know it makes me seem (even more) like a psychopath, but we all need hobbies. And you benefit from my mania, so everybody wins!
The first show I listened to had no commercials. The second had ads every two breaks in the countdown. So I figure 3.5 hours is the average for the whole collection. Which puts me at 1277.5 hours of American Top 40. ↩
I’ve finally wrapped up the music projects that have been eating up a lot of my time lately. As I do, I find my new music playlist is down around 40 songs. For a good chunk of 2024 it’s been closer to 60 songs. The new tunes have definitely dried up over the past month. Hopefully just a lull before another wave flows before the holidays. It took adding a few old songs to pad this week’s playlist out to a reasonable size.
“Suddenly Last Summer” – The Motels
I was thinking I shared this more often in the past after Labor Day. A check of the blog archives, though, shows I’ve only done it twice before. A good song for a weekend when we will go from 90 one day to the low 40s two mornings later. And then it’s going to be 90 three days later. September in the Midwest is a roller coaster.
“You Wreck Me” – The War On Drugs covering Tom Petty
Last month we got Eddie Vedder. This month TWOD add their entry to the Bad Monkey soundtrack/Petty tribute album. When I heard they were on the LP, this was one of the first songs I imagined them doing. Like the EdVed track, they don’t do much to reimagine the original. Which is fine, because it fits their sound so well.
“I Thought You’d Change” – Hotline TNT
This song came out almost exactly a year ago, and was featured on all the big sites, yet somehow I missed it until this week. Bummer, because it’s a solid mashup of pop and shoegaze. They are signed to Jack White’s Third Man Records.
“A Bit Like James Bond” – The Bug Club
This is fun!
“Casual Drug Use” – Katie Gavin
The second solo single from the lead singer of MUNA. I’m not the first to make this observation but her solo work slides into a space where a lot of country and country-adjacent artists have moved in recent years, while remaining steadfastly pop.
“Wild” – Spoon
So one of my mysterious “Music Projects” was listening to every Spoon album and making a list of my favorite songs. Which I did over the course of about two, two-and-a-half weeks. Then I realized I doubt many of my readers are interested in that list. So I’ll just share the song that I ranked #1. They do have a lot of great ones.
“Until The End Of The World” – U2 Tom Breihan just got to the last song from U2’s Achtung Baby album that reached #1 on the Alternative Rock chart, “One.” In his three entries about AB songs, he referenced other tracks on the album that either were not singles or did not hit #1. So many of them got 8’s, 9’s, and 10’s in his grading scale! A reminder what a great album that was, with almost no misses or songs you skip past. This did not get a big push from the band or label, but still made it to #4 on the Alt chart. He gave it a 10, which was absolutely a deserved ranking.
“Caribbean Queen (No More Love On The Run)” – Billy Ocean
We may have reached the point where all the iconic songs of 1984 have made their chart debuts. Well, almost. I can think of a couple more in the weeks/months ahead. But that great run of the middle part of the year has clearly come to an end. Not that this is a bad song. It went to #1 for two weeks in November. I don’t love it as much as some of the other classics I’ve shared, but it’s still fun and I’ll happily listen to it if I have to.
Famously released first as “European Queen,” it bombed. Only when Billy re-cut this version, and another called “African Queen” that was released in Africa, did it become a smash. Which should have been obvious. European Queen makes me think of someone who is old and stuffy and from a long line of possibly inbred people. Caribbean Queen sounds like someone who is young, fun, and you would do anything to spend time with them. It debuted on the Top 40 this week at #36.
After months of having more than enough songs in the queue for these posts, the tide of new music might finally have slowed a bit. Have no worries, I still have plenty of songs for you. It is just taking a tad more work to put this week’s playlist together. Which I, of course, do not mind.
“Summer’s Over” – Jordana, TV Girl
One weekend left.
“Hallelujah” – Bad Moves
There is always a debate on whether rock music and politics go together, and then how much politics you can inject into a song before it puts people off. Of course there is never the same debate for country music and politics, but let’s not get into double standards at the moment.
At first listen this song would not seem to be political at all. As soon as you pay attention to the lyrics, though, you’ll find this is a scathing indictment of the various ways conservatives attempt to legislate rights away from fellow citizens they don’t like. And you can shake your ass to it, which is a bonus.
“Bitter Pill” – Queen of Jeans
I can’t imagine anyone not liking this song.
“Madeline” – Georgia Gets By
GGB is the solo project of Georgia Nott of the band Broods. Here she sings about the overwhelming feelings that come with meeting someone you know will change your life.
“In the Moonlight (Fade #3)” – The Tisburys
I forget the exact conversation, but some music writer was referring to Bruce Springsteen and recommended this band as one that picked up his mid-80s Heartland Rock sound and carried it into our times. I hear more direct lines to R.E.M.’s Eighties sound than Springsteen’s, but I get what that person was trying to say.
“Little While” – Wishy
Another track from local kids Wishy, who keep getting national love for their new album.
“The Feast Of St. John” – Glen Hansard
As I mentioned, I didn’t know much about Hansard’s music before seeing him open for Pearl Jam Monday night. He introduced this song as being about the “fuckers who try to drag you down.”
“Setting Sun” – Pearl Jam
One more song from Monday, and another great one from the latest album. PJ has always done a pretty good job sequencing tracks, opening and closing their albums with songs that fit the moment. This is the closer for Dark Matter, and has become an immediate, late-in-the-encore track at their concerts. I’ve grown to love it more-and-more over the past few months. Seeing it live Monday reinforced that love. When Eddie lets loose in the extended bridge/outro section it was truly amazing. Earlier this year they were using it as the final song of the night, which makes a ton of sense given its emotional weight and tone. Now, however, it serves as the last new song of the night with the traditional closers (“Baba O’Reilly,” “Rockin’ In The Free World,” and/or “Yellow Ledbetter”) to follow.
“Acquiese” – Oasis
The biggest music news of the week was the Gallagher brothers finally calling a truce and announcing a set of reunion shows later this year. I guess Liam needs to make back the money he lost in his divorce. We’ll see how all of that goes. I liked, but never loved, Oasis’ music. I’ve always been entertained by their dumb antics, though. This song has always been a banger.
“Panama” – Van Halen
Mixing it up a bit this week, sharing a song that was on its way down the charts instead of up the week of September 1, 1984. All of the new songs this week were kind of crap. Somehow this peaked at just #13. This was its final week in the Top 40, landing at #32.
As hinted at in yesterday’s post, I got to do something insanely awesome Monday night that I’ve been waiting a long time for. Even with a short night of sleep, I’m still a little keyed up from it this morning. If you choose to proceed, prepare yourself for an overly detailed accounting of my evening watching Pearl Jam play live rock ’n’ roll music.
One of the funny things about me is that for as big a fan of music as I am – and I think the archives of this blog are testament to that – I’ve not been to tons of concerts in my life.
There are lots of factors that go into that, but I believe the biggest was because in the years I was coming of age with music, I lived with a single mom who both couldn’t afford concert tickets and didn’t have the time to take me. You would think as I got older that would change, but it never did much. In the mid–90s I went to tons of shows at local clubs, but even then I never became one of those music fans who went to a show a week or whatever. And I rarely went to big stadium/arena shows.
I also blame the years in the early ‘90s when I was a poor college student. A big group of friends went to the U2 show at Arrowhead in 1992, one of the greatest tours ever. I was offered a ticket last minute, but the $50 or whatever seemed like soooo much money at the time.[1]
I also just had some bad luck over the years. I was supposed to see Prince in 1998, but came down with the worst case of the flu I’ve ever had and had to sell my ticket.[2]
Anyway, that is all needlessly long prelude to the point of this post: Monday was the best concert I’ve ever attended. My total shows seen might be small, but this beat them all.
It was Pearl Jam’s first visit to Indianapolis in 14 years.[3] It was my first time seeing them in over 20 years. It was worth every second of those collective waits.
It’s hard to review a Pearl Jam show, because they are almost always incredible. While I’ve not seen them in person since 2000 – more on that later – I’ve watched tons of their shows online, both officially and unofficially. There is no better live band in music. They are a well-oiled machine that combines the spontaneity of a setlist that changes every night with a structure that allows for almost seamless transitions between most songs. They famously play epically long shows that often veer in unexpected directions depending on where the night and crowd takes them. Shows become near religious events as thousands of devoted fans scream out every word and react to every element of the performance.
Everything about Monday’s show lived up to the band’s reputation.
It was a fire-cracker hot night here in Indy, in the mid–90s during the day, and the air at Ruoff Music Center was thick and heavy when opener Glen Hansard took stage at exactly 7:30. He had the line of the night when he introduced his band: “We’re from Ireland and we’re happy to be here. We’re going to play for 45 minutes and then we’re going to fuck off.” And then they only played for 30 minutes! Under-promise, over-deliver!
His set was terrific. I didn’t know much about his music, mostly the more soft/folksy songs he did for the movie Flag Day, including “My Father’s Daughter,” a song he made with Eddie Vedder and daughter Olivia Vedder. But from the go, his band absolutely kicked ass. Roaring guitars, screamed lyrics. It was a good start to the night.
Pearl Jam took the stage at 8:40, just as the sun was disappearing and a nice breeze was beginning to blow through the partially covered main seating section. My buddy SK and I had been trying to guess what the opening song would be, a pointless exercise since PJ opens with a different song every night and can literally go hundreds of directions when you account for covers. He guessed “Low Light.” I didn’t take a real stab at it, but “Hail, Hail” had been in my head all day.
We were pleasantly surprised when Stone Gossard started strumming the opening lines to *Ten*-era B-side “Wash.” A terrific omen, as many of theirs shows on this tour have begun with slower songs.
Twenty-three songs followed. The band was in fine form, although the sound was a little muddy. Eddie was in great voice. The crowd was frenzied. On the biggest songs, “Alive” for example, you could barely hear the band because the crowd sang along so loudly. You couldn’t ask for a better show.
It was interesting to look at the show from above, as a long-time PJ fan, and see how far this band has come. They’ve been an incredible live band since day one. Those early Nineties shows were intense affairs, Eddie a brooding, distant, sometimes scary frontman. The band went through their difficult mid–90s period, where the performance was generally great but the band was going through a lot and you never knew how much joy and personality they would put into each show. There were a few notable meltdowns in this era when the band’s future was in question. Around 2000, they realized that touring was their salvation, and they began to enjoy it more, stretching shows out to Springsteen-esque lengths. About 10 years ago it seemed like Eddie was losing some of the power in his voice. He made allowances, but sometimes those were jarring to see/hear.
In the last five years that has changed again. Eddie has become more theatrical on stage. It’s hard to put into words, because that sounds a little cheesy and he is not cheesy. He just does a lot more from the start of the show to the end to interact with the crowd, to entertain with his actions rather than just sing from the bottom of his soul. The once reluctant star happily embraces everything about being the director for where each night’s show is headed.
His political monologues haven’t disappeared, they’ve just morphed. Monday he encouraged everyone to get out and vote, and noted that 30 years ago he was imploring us to vote, where now he is asking us to get our kids to vote. His most pointed comment of the night was about women needing to reclaim their right to choose. He never said any candidate’s name, nor espoused a particular ideology.
Of course last week while in Jeff Ament’s home state of Montana, the entire band wore Jon Tester shirts, so I think they just pick their spots these days.
Eddie’s voice seems to have recovered from whatever ailed it, too. I remember watching concert films from early in last year’s tour and being floored by how good he sounded. I think he’s found ways to strengthen his voice but also to adjust how he hits certain notes so that he can mask the effects of age. Not that long ago I worried about how much longer he could tour. The past couple years, he’s sounded as good as he ever has and I can see the band touring forever. His energy level is also insane for a guy who will turn 60 in a few months. He doesn’t climb lighting rigs anymore, but he’s in constant motion around the stage.
His energy and strength and stage presence translate to the rest of the band. The greatness of their live act has always come from their collective abilities. Every member of the band absolutely still has their A-games. Mike McCready in particular has an apparent endless reservoir of energy. There wasn’t a song, or even part of a song, where the band behind Eddie seemed to be half-assing it.
As we were walking out I told SK beyond the spectacular performance, what makes PJ shows so great is how many terrific songs they have to choose from, and even the ones that might not be your favorites are played so well that there aren’t really any down moments in the show. Even if you don’t hear all your favorite songs, you walk away thoroughly satisfied.
That was the case with me. Of my seven favorite PJ songs I listed a year ago, they played just one, “Corduroy.” And, you know what? I was not disappointed at all that I didn’t hear “Release” or “Elderly Woman,” or “Given to Fly,” etc.
I thought it was interesting they basically cut out an entire era of their career from the setlist. There was exactly one song from their albums that were released between 2000 and 2020, and that, “Lightning Bolt,” was a request from a couple who were attending their 57th PJ show.[4] I think most fans are fine with that large chunk of the band’s studio career getting nudged aside. “Lightning Bolt” did sound great, though.
The per-album breakdown was:
Ten/Ten-era: 6
Vs. – 1
Vitalogy – 5
No Code – 1
Yield – 1
Lightning Bolt – 1
Dark Matter – 7
Covers – 2
The beauty of Pearl Jam is their next show in Chicago will likely have a completely different mix, aside from the Dark Matter tracks.
A note about our seats. When PJ announced they were coming to Indy in May 2023, both SK and I signed up for tickets. With the band not hitting here in so long, we knew it would be a tough ticket. He is in the band’s Ten Club and hoped that would get us in. I didn’t get selected in the public lottery, but he got a notification that he would be able to get Ten Club seats. Until a week later he got another saying he, in fact, did not make their cut.
Fortunately he has a neighbor that has some serious connections in the music industry. Thanks to her assistance, last July he got an email from someone within the Pearl Jam organization saying that we had two Friends and Family seats.[5] When the September 2023 show was postponed, his contact said we would remain on the list for whenever the show was rescheduled. Sure enough, when this year’s tour was announced he got another note asking for confirmation that he still wanted those seats. Two weeks ago he got official word that we were in.
We had no idea where our seats were until we picked up the tickets at Will Call Monday. Even then, Ruoff’s seating scheme is so odd we couldn’t figure it out by just looking at ticket. So we kept showing them to ushers and they kept waving us further forward. We ended up about ten rows behind the pit section, stage left. They were pretty fucking great seats.
Oh, and not to brag too much, but the tickets were somehow comped to us. SK thought he paid for them a year ago, but went back and looked and he never sent anyone money for them. My previous all time best show was U2 in Kemper Arena in 2001. We got free tickets to that show. Yep, I haven’t had to pay a dime for the two best concerts I’ve ever attended. The Music Gods must be rewarding me for all those concerts I did not go to.
This was just my third Pearl Jam show, which seems dumb. SK, in comparison, has now been to 14. I saw them in Kansas City in both 1998 and 2000. I famously missed their appearance in Lawrence in May 1992 because 1) they had not yet become huge and 2) I spent the day playing basketball with one of my best friends who was about to graduate and move to California. Oh, and 3) I’m an idiot. Less than two months later they were my favorite band, a belt they’ve held off-and-on for over three decades now.
In 2003 they were in Kansas City three days before S and I got married and moved to Indianapolis. Didn’t seem like the right time to sneak away for a concert. I missed their Indy stop on that tour because we were on our honeymoon. I think they’ve been in Indy just once or twice since then, during our “lots of little kids in the house” phase and I never even considered going to those shows.
Show number three was a long time coming. And totally worth it.
A few other notes:
SK and I got excited when songs four, five, and six of the night were the first three songs from Vitalogy, in order. Every now and then PJ will play an entire album in order. This was a tease, though, and they moved on to new songs.
“Black” was a song I got sick of in the Nineties because I thought it got super overplayed. It was truly fantastic Monday.
Gossard said before the Dark Matter tour began that they would begin to pare back their shows a bit, with Ament already 60 and Eddie right behind him. They still played nearly two-and-a-half hours Monday. The biggest bummer about not seeing them last year was they were still pushing three hours in those shows.
The audio-visual portion of the show was excellent. At most Ruoff shows there are a few cameras shooting video that show up on the auxiliary boards for fans up in the lawn. PJ shot this like a concert movie, with tons of cameras that were constantly switching feeds on the boards. I now see why so many of their shows end up with high quality movies on one site or another. They take that part of the presentation very seriously.
As we walked out there was a dad with a college-aged son in front of us. We overheard the dad tell the son, very seriously, “I hope you realize that was a fucking incredible concert!” We couldn’t hear what the kid’s response was. He better have recognized, though.
Eddie has been wearing a Walter Payton jersey at all their shows on this tour. It was Jeff Ament who made the local connection, wearing a shirt that had Larry Bird’s face on one side and his number on the other.
Speaking of shirts, I’ve never bought a concert shirt before. Again, I’m a man full of contradictions and surprises. I bought one last night, though, because they were perfect.
Shout out to the merch arm of the PJ empire. That thing is as well-oiled as the band’s performances. They opened up at noon for people who wanted to get there early and get the limited edition items. Inside the venue there were multiple spots to purchase items with crazy long lines before the show. We stopped at one after the show and despite the line, had to wait less than five minutes to purchase my shirt. There was another still open outside the gates that had no wait. And although they were short a few sizes, you could still buy just about anything you wanted almost 12 hours after they sold their first shirt of the day.
Also cool was the special stand that printed up setlist shirts. SK told me the band hands off their final setlist when the show begins and by the time they are done, there are stacks of shirts with that night’s unique collection of songs listed. Genius way to make fans eager to fork over another $40 for a unique memento of the night.
PJ still does the “official bootlegs” of every show. I think I still have all the early 2000s ones I bought somewhere in the basement. I believe I will be buying this one when it is released in a few weeks.
Both times I saw PJ in KC, they closed with “Rockin’ In The Free World.” Which was great. But I was going to be disappointed if I heard it again. Fortunately they closed with a spectacular “Baba O’Reilly” – “Yellow Ledbetter” double. Finally hearing “Baba” live was a big checkmark on my all-time PJ must hear list.
An online inflation calculator suggests that translates to $112 dollars today, which seems reasonable for a U2 show, but understandable for a poor college student to decide he’d rather eat/drink off that for two weeks than blow it in one night. Still wish I had gone to that show, though. ↩
I also missed a KU basketball game that week, so you know I was sick! ↩
And, of course, this concert was delayed from a year ago when Matt Cameron got Covid. ↩
Eddie: “You attend 57 shows, you get a request.” ↩
Not sure if it was accidental or intentional, but his contact sent him the link for F&F tickets for the entire tour. We had a phone call last spring where we seriously debated whether to get tickets for one of the Wrigley shows later this week, or going to another big city to see them. We decided the smart move, and affordable one since we both have kids in college and at Catholic high schools, was to stick to just the Indy show. ↩
