Chart Week: August 8, 1987 Song: “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)” - Whitney Houston Chart Position: #17, 13th week on the chart. Peaked at #1 for two weeks in June and July. I tend to shy away from songs that hit number one since they will get the Tom Breihan treatment over at Stereogum. I squeezed in “West End Girls” before he got to it, but now that he’s just about done with the ‘80s, he’s covered every song of the Casey Kasem era.
Another Summer Olympic Games have passed. These were…fine, I guess. OK, that’s harsh. They certainly weren’t terrible. But they also do not measure up to other recent games. And the constant reminders of how the Covid pandemic is getting worse rather than better was a huge bummer. I remain worried that over the next few weeks we will see spikes all over the world from athletes and the folks around them gathering in Tokyo.
Moving a little slow this Monday morning. We had several of S’s high school friends and their families over yesterday and the gathering ran rather late for a Sunday. Then I woke up at about 1:15 with one of those terrible, mid-summer “The AC is running but I’m still too hot to sleep” things that kept me restless for the better part of two hours. Hate those. I blame the beer and barbecue that was in my stomach.
open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Hard On Everyone” - Kathleen Edwards I hadn’t heard anything from Edwards in several years. Turns out she chucked her music career in 2014 to open a coffee shop in suburban Ottawa, Canada. Maren Morris asked her to cowrite some music two years ago and that recharged Edwards. Somehow I didn’t hear this track until a few weeks ago, despite her Total Freedom album coming out last August. Glad to have her back; this song cooks.
Movies and Shows The Night Manager This was a bit strange, and thus I’m not sure how to properly rate it. Based on a John Le Carré novel, and updated for the modern age, it follows a night manager at an Egyptian hotel - and former British Army officer - as he stumbles into an affair with a woman connected with international arms dealers. She is murdered, he moves on in his career, and eventually runs into the man he believes responsible for the woman’s death.
The first, and best, week of the Olympics is in the books. I say best because the swimming week tends to be better than the track week, which has fewer glamor events. And it also appears the US might suck at track. Puerto Rican medals are technically ours, right? Saturday night I went back and read some of my Olympic posts from 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016. They’re pretty good!
July 2021 The War on Drugs - 27 Leon Bridges - 21 Flowertown - 19 Van Halen - 18 Wolf Alice - 18 Complete stats available at my Last.fm page.
A little different format this week. You will learn why below. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Natural Light” - Flowertown This band went so hard for the retro sound that they put fake crackles and pops, as if you were listening to vinyl, onto it. In fact, they put those “artifacts” on every song on their new album. Which, to be honest, gets a little old. But in a single, pretty song like this, it works.
I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll (Except When I Hate It) - Brian Boone Between both switching to the smaller, satellite Indy library near our house from the larger Carmel library and Covid, I don’t just go wonder the library stacks very often, surprising myself with books that speak to me as I pass them. That is how I found this book, though. I was looking for another music book, it was missing, but spied this and knocked it out in a few sittings.
Not much has been going on the past few days. M turned 17 over the weekend. I read a terrific book in a single day. We went out on a boat with some friends. Ted Lasso returned. The Big 12 may be kaput. Oh, and the Olympics started. Thus it is time to bring back a time-honored recurring feature here on the blog: the Olympics Notebook! Before we get to my observations and thoughts, a confession: I did not begin these games with my traditional strong interest.
This week’s round up of some cool shit I’ve read and think you might also enjoy. ‘You’ve never seen The Beatles like this before’: Peter Jackson on his epic Get Back docuseries This feature/interview sure makes the upcoming Peter Jackson Beatles series sound phenomenal. I found this line interesting: For any self-respecting Beatles nut, this must surely count as one of the final mop-top Holy Grails… I suppose Paul and Ringo could still write exhaustive tell-alls of the 1960s.
Another jam-packed playlist to please your ears and your hearts this week. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Living Proof” - The War on Drugs Here it is, the first new TWOD song in four years! It does not hit with the same impact that the early songs from A Deeper Understanding hit with in the spring/summer of 2017. But as a side one, track one, this is a beautiful teaser for what’s to come. Music writer Steven Hyden said his advance copy of I Don’t Live Here Anymore is already his most-listened to album of the year and that is is “laden with bangers.
Chart Week: July 12, 1986 Song: “If She Knew What She Wants” - The Bangles Chart Position: #29, 10th week on the chart. This was the song’s peak; it fell out of the Top 40 the next week. I recall being in love with a lot of unattainable women in the summer of 1986. There was Heather Thomas, whose poster I had on my wall. There was Tamlyn Tomita, who played Ralph Maccio’s Okinawan love interest in The Karate Kid Part II.
The Alice Network - Kate Quinn A friend gave me this book awhile back, but I left it in my bookshelf for months before finally cracking it open. When I did, S told me she had read it on one of our vacations and loved it. We don’t read a lot of the same books, so I was both excited and nervous about taking it on. What if I hated it?
Another relaxing and laid-back weekend. Friday we wrapped up the rainiest week of a rainy summer by, yep, having more rain. By the time the storms stopped Saturday morning we were at six inches of rain through the first 15 days of the month. Which seems like a lot. The good news is I haven’t had to water the yard once so far this summer. Friday evening S and I went to a party one of her old high school chums hosted.
RIP to the Diabolical B-I-Z. youtu.be/9aofoBrFN…
I’m going to resurrect an old feature of the blog: sharing some of my favorite things I’ve read over the past week on Fridays. This will be an occasion feature, so don’t count on entry every week. And some weeks it might be loaded with cool stuff and others, like this week, only have one or two items in it. Don’t Piss Off Bradley, the Parts Seller Keeping Atari Machines Alive For most folks my age, this will tickle a special part of your memory banks.
This week a focus on new songs by (mostly) long-established artists. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Galacticana” - Strand of Oaks Oh hell yes, new music from Timothy Showalter! And it sounds great! And one critic has said the album this comes from is the finest of his career! It comes out October 1 for those of you who track such things. “Living in the USA” - Son Volt Jay Farrar says this song follows in the tradition of others like “Born in the USA” and “Rockin' in the Free World,” asking questions about the failures of the American Experiment.
Ahhh, the All-Star Game! The mid-summer moment when we set aside our differences and come together as Americans to celebrate our once-and-always National Pastime. Well, except for this year, which was ruined by the forces that want to keep us apart, that want us to continue arguing about manufactured wedge issues to distract us from the true damage being done to our sacred, national institutions. Yes, I’m talking about those fucking terrible, straight ass uniforms.
I realized yesterday that this has been, and should continue to be, a pretty boring summer. Sure, we’ve had a few gatherings to take advantage of the pool and the new pool house. We’re trying to schedule a few more but as kids get older, it gets harder and harder to pin a group of families down to a single night when they are all available to join us. C’s summer school meant no traveling in June, and limited what we were able to do on those days close to home.