Chart Week: August 31, 1985 Song: “Invincible (Theme from The Legend of Billy Jean)” - Pat Benatar Chart Position: #12, 15th week on the chart. Peaked at #10 the week of September 14. I’m cheating a little for this entry. Although I’m sure if I listened to the iHeart Radio classic AT40 station long enough I’d hear a countdown from around this period, I decided to pick a week on my own.
Days are getting marked off the calendar, this meeting or that passes, and we keep getting closer and closer to M’s first day of high school. Last week she took part in a three-day study skills workshop. I must share that this was not her choice. But it was the better end of a bargain she struck with us for making up for slacking off in her final quarter of 8th grade.
August has arrived. There’s been a lull in good music lately, but there are some promising albums on the horizon. I still managed to cobble together five new songs and a classic video for your Friday enjoyment. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Rocket Fuel” - DJ Shadow feat. De La Soul. This song is a bit of a throwback. Not necessarily to the second-wave hip hop of De La Soul’s first act. But rather to some of the genre-bending music that was around at the turn of the millennium.
Chart Week: July 24, 1976 Song: “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” - Elton John and Kiki Dee Chart Position: #8, 4th week on the chart. Peaked at #1 for four weeks in August. What a song. I could stop right there, throw up the video, and that would be enough. A quarter-century after its release it was a Saturday night staple at a bar many of my friends and I frequented, a song that brought a smile to the face of everyone in the house as people sang along with those “OHHH-OH!
I Love You, Michael Collins - Lauren Baratz-Logsted This is the second book that L has read for her book club that I’ve gotten sucked into. It is a wonderful book. It is written as a series of letters from 10-year-old Mamie in Connecticut to the sometimes forgotten member of the Apollo 11 crew. Her letters begin in the school year and stretch through the first moon landing, sharing progressively more about her life and her family’s slow and somewhat shocking unraveling.
Sometimes it takes visitors to shake you out of your routine. Our good friends the Nesbitts - who many of you know - were in town over the weekend and we hit a few spots we either don’t hit enough or had never checked out before. They drove in Friday, so we met them at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, thinking their kids would enjoy touring the museum and then taking the bus ride around the track.
open.spotify.com/playlist/… “I Need a Teacher” - Hiss Golden Messenger. I’m never sure how to pronounce this band’s name. Is it hiss like a cat? Or just his with an extra S? Good thing I’m not podcasting anymore and don’t have to worry about it. This is right in their sweet spot. “Forever Half Mast” - Lucy Dacus. Dacus put out a special track for Mother’s Day and then followed it up with this for the Fourth of July.
We are in weird times. I’m talking about our family and the point in the calendar we’re at, not more globally. Summer’s end is coming up quick and we’re beginning to squeeze in as much as we can. But we also just came out of the hottest stretch of weather in nearly seven years here in Indy, which made it tough to want to get out of the house. Or use the pool, which was a rather disgusting 98 degrees much of the weekend.
youtu.be/1CAzwewVj… “Long Hot Summer” - The Style Council ’Tis time for this annual vid. It has been a long, hot week. One of those weeks that makes you, for a moment, look forward to fall. Then you’re shaken and realize that you don’t really want summer to be over quite yet. Fortunately the forecast looks much more reasonable beginning Monday. BTW, this is a weird-ass video. A clear sign that it is from the heart of the 1980s.
My last two books both came from the same list, GQ’s The 31 Best Beach Reads, According to Your Favorite Writers. Both were solid recommendations. The Municipalists - Seth Fried Drew Magary suggested this novel, which he described as “…a sci-fi novel that reads like flawlessly researched nonfiction.” That’s a pretty good take. The book is set in the not-so-distant future, in a time when much of the rural world has been wiped out in favor of hyper-planned mega cities.
A belated and brief wrap up of my weekend in Kansas City. Thanks to Southwest’s always morphing flight schedule, I believe for the first time ever on one of these trips I flew over late in the afternoon, landing at 4:00. That certainly shortened the weekend up a bit. But, to be honest, often when I came over in the morning, after meeting people for lunch weariness would set in and I would seriously contemplate going to a library or bookstore and taking a quick nap.
Some new songs from groups that still seem like representatives of new music, but have actually been putting out songs for a long time. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Born and Razed” - The Raconteurs. Not a huge fan of the new album - it’s ok, should be better - but this is easily the stand-out track. “Can’t Stop You” - Pete Yorn. I shared his other new single a few weeks back. I find this one to be both stronger and more reminiscent of his classic sound.
I am a world famous procrastinator. I’ve been putting shit off my entire life. Sometimes, even when I’m all fired up about something, I’ll put off an important step in enjoying that thing because, well, that’s just what I do. I remind you of that because today, after something like 11 months of thinking about it, I finally took my first golf lesson. In my defense I’ve had a coach picked out for awhile and he’s been unavailable for three weeks because of family and travel plans.
Some sports takes from the long, holiday weekend. USWNT Oh hell yes, the ladies got it done! In a tournament that proved that the women’s game is as strong as it has ever been, and getting stronger each year, the US had the toughest possible path to the title and still managed to win with a fair amount of comfort. Sure, they were a bit fortunate against England, but they were the better team in that game.
Remember the Malaysian Airlines flight that mysteriously disappeared five years ago, never to be found? Like the airliner itself, the story kind of disappeared, replaced by about 1000 other things that the news networks could grind to a pulp and fill their schedules with. Veteran reporter William Langewiesche dove into the disappearance and the result was this fascinating article. He points out fatal flaws in the early investigation, aims blame at the corrupt Malaysian government and military, and separates wild guesses from reasonable theories to come up with a chilling explanation for what he believes actually happened on that fateful day.
I seem to recall making some July 4th centered playlists back in the day. I just searched through the blog archives and couldn’t find one, though. I think that’s probably because I scrubbed the site of a lot of old playlists and videos during one of my transitions to a new platform. Regardless, I think it’s been awhile. So here is a list of songs that mostly have nothing to do with the holiday other than a word in their titles.
My reading pace has slowed a bit in recent weeks. The two books below go back to our trip to San Diego, so it looks like I finished just three books in June. Time to get back on my usual pace, I guess… Paper Tiger: An Obsessed Golfer’s Quest to Play with the Pros - Tom Coyne A Course Called Scotland: Searching the Home of Golf for the Secret to Its Game - Tom Coyne With these two, I finished reading all of Coyne’s current golf writings.
I figure most of my readers are taking it easy on this holiday week. So I will slow the pace here a bit, get caught up on some things, and otherwise take advantage of the lazy week. Chart Week: June 29, 1985 Song: “19” - Paul Hardcastle Chart Position: #27, 5th week on the chart. Peaked at #15 for two weeks in July. Wow, it’s been awhile! My around the house music habits have changed a little and I haven’t been listening to as many countdowns as I did over the winter and early spring.
Just a video this week. youtu.be/xwdXi0I8v… “Stay With Me” - Hatchie. I still hate the move for new music to drop on Fridays instead of Tuesdays. It seems like I can never get through all the new albums I want to listen to on Friday, the weekend keeps me from spending much time with new albums, and then on Monday I’m trying to reset and catch up. On the weeks when there are multiple new albums I want to sample, it always seems like one slips through and I’m scrambling to review it the following week.
Here is a pretty fascinating article that has gotten a lot of attention over the past week or so. Jody Rosen writes about the massive fire in 2008 that wiped out a storage facility that housed thousands and thousands of original sound recordings. News just broke overnight that a huge swath of big artists not mentioned in the article also lost their original masters. There’s no doubting it is an immeasurable loss.