Chart Week: December 22, 1984 Song: “Bruce” - Rick Springfield Chart Position: #33, 6th week on the chart. Peaked at #27 for a week in January. As artists move through their careers they often jump from one record company to another. This can lead to uncomfortable situations when the artists break through and their previous employers attempt to capitalize. Rick Springfield was about as big of a second-tier pop star as there was in the early 1980s.
“Favorite Songs by Artist X” lists are a dime a dozen when it comes to certain bands. They are click-baity and unnecessary, as they’ve been done and done and done again. Still, as a music fan I will almost always read them and listen to the songs they cover if it is a band I care about. I think that is why it took Steven Hyden so long to get to the Beatles.
Christmas, 2020. Like most folks, we were trying to have a semi-normal Christmas in the safest manner possible. Most years we end up having several big family gatherings of varying sizes. Last year was a banner year: four get-togethers greatly aided by temperatures in the 60s most of the week. Two days we were in the front yard hitting golf balls. We could have used that weather this year. Christmas Eve, the windchill was down in the low teens.
We’ve lost so much this year, but proving that there is some light in the world, Darlene Love is still with us. For years and years she appeared on David Letterman’s program to sing her signature song just before Christmas. I did not know she moved that over to The View after The Late Show ended. Even Covid couldn’t keep Ms. Love from sharing a little Christmas cheer with the world.
I was digging through the blog archives last night and came across this post, from December 2004. It is an accounting of the best Christmas gifts I received as a kid, which was about as “typical 2004 personal blog post” as you could get. I had two thoughts as I read it: 1 - If I re-did the list today I would add one adult gift: when S got me the first iPhone in 2007.
Christmas vacation, or what counts for it in 2020, is nigh. My in-laws have arrived, the girls have about four more hours of class, and by early afternoon we will be in the final countdown for Christmas. For this year’s Blog Christmas Playlist, I’ve chosen to focus on songs you probably won’t hear on your local Christmas music station. Use them as a break from the normal holiday fare. open.spotify.com/playlist/…
My Wednesday activity, other than preparing for my in-laws to arrive tonight, was watching all of The Office Christmas episodes. As you can imagine, this was an extremely good way to spend time, especially on a very cold, snowy night. As I watched I thought, “I should put together some kind of rudimentary list, ranking them in order of my preference.” Then I looked and saw there are approximately 8000 of these lists.
Pretty good run of books. Lucky Supreme - Jeff Johnson The trick to writing a good crime novel, when approximately eight billion of them have been written, is to find a new angle and/or place the story in an unusual situation. Johnson did that quite well with this book. Darby Holland owns a tattoo parlor in Portland. He’s kind of the CEO of his little neighborhood, a grimy street in the old industrial part of town that is filled with clubs, ethnic restaurants, and prostitutes.
My pre-list State of Music comments are pretty simple this year: 2020 felt like a weak musical year. I don’t know whether to blame that on Covid, me getting older and having to fight changing tastes harder, or that it was just a rough year for good tunes. There are some high quality tracks in this list, but I’m not sure there are many that I will go back to over-and-over in the future.
My Christmas spirit is at an all-time low. I don’t think I’m alone in that this year, nor do I need to explain why. I’ve only watched a couple Christmas movies, I’m not reveling in Christmas music every waking hour, and we’ve had a couple hard discussions about what our family Christmas gathering plans should be. But one thing has made me happy this season, and that is the life of a local radio DJ.
Chart Week: December 3, 1983 Song: “Love Is A Battlefield” - Pat Benatar Chart Position: #6, 11th week on the chart. Peaked at #5 the week of December 10. There’s no great story behind the song this week. Nope, this entry is simply an excuse to share one of the iconic videos of the 1980s. Pat Benatar enlisted director Bob Giraldi to help mold the images for her final single of 1983.
One of the greatest things about the Internet is the ability to dive into your past, to try to clarify memories that have become hazy over time or reconnect with people who were once an integral part of your life. I don’t do a whole lot of biographical scrolling these days. It’s been years since I’ve looked up an ex-girlfriend or classmate. The closest I’ve come is a couple years back when I spent a few winter nights in Google maps working to find the various houses of my youth.
I’ve been a little slower than normal slapping together my Favorite Songs of the Year list. I can just #Blame2020 and leave it at that. I will also add that I’m having a devil of a time picking my favorite song of 2020, which I kind of need to do in order to complete the list. But I’m working on it, and in hopes of ensuring I complete this year’s list over the next week, I’ll go ahead and share my standard prelude.
Some things never change. Those glamorous, early November college basketball matchups that ESPN creates to fill the air in the opening weeks of the season almost always disappoint. Oh, you might get a close game, but rarely are these games ones where, afterward, viewers say, “That might be the game of the year!” The Champions Classic is the ultimate example. It has been college hoops’ de facto kickoff event the last several years, with Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, and Michigan State assembling at a neutral site to play a double header and show off their shiny new toys.
A pretty light month. I guess that happens when the election wipes out roughly a week of normal TV viewing. Plus I read a lot in November. Here’s what I did watch. Archer, season 11 The world’s greatest spy returns for another year. Archer seasons fall into one of two camps. There are the ones that make you laugh so hard that you are constantly rewinding/rewatching to catch the jokes you missed.
Well, today begins a new phase in our home’s daily rhythms. C and L are now eLearning through at least mid-January, joining M who has been home for two weeks. Hopefully the expensive Internet access we pay for holds up; our signal likes to drop in the middle of the day which should make for interesting moments when three girls are all in virtual classes. When I picked C and L up from their final day of classes last Tuesday, L said it felt like the beginning of Christmas vacation.
The Wolf Wants In - Laura McHugh I saw this book described as being for fans of Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects and/or season three of True Detective. I loved Sharp Objects; I’ve never watched True Detective but have always heard good things. That was enough to get me to pick this up. It also help that someone I used to be friends with blurbed the book and served as a mentor to McHugh.
Usually I’m giddy right about now. Thanksgiving is a few days away. We’ll bust out the holiday decorations, crank up the Christmas music, and put the tree up Friday. The most wonderful time of year has arrived! But it’s fucking 2020, which means we can’t have nice things. Yes, we’ll be eating turkey Thursday and the tree will go up on Friday, but so many other things that make this time of year the best are either being cancelled or greatly modified.
A slow music week for me, so this week’s list will be more oldies than…uh, newies? open.spotify.com/playlist/… “let down” - Paris Jackson When I first heard this I had no idea who Paris Jackson was. Or, more correctly, I did not remember. Then I heard it again and the DJ on SiriusXM noted she was Michael’s daughter. Mind blown. Not what I would have expected from The King of Pop’s kid.
The Masters Like most golf fans I was realllllly looking forward to the fall Masters. Seeing Augusta National under different conditions than we’ve ever seen it before and without any fans was a dazzling concept. And in practice it turned out to be pretty damn cool. I was surprised, though, that I didn’t get fully immersed in the tournament. Sure, I had it on a lot, but I wasn’t glued to the screen the way I would have been in April.