MTV in the 80s Song of the Day

[King Postwhore]

Rag Doll is the one song on the album I am not fond of.  Never liked it at all.

[Lowdz]

Don't mind Rag Doll. Hated St John- always skip it.

PV is a great album and only bettered by Pump for me in their discog. Never liked 70s Aerosmith at all.

[bundy]

Aerosmith are a band I've never really gotten into, although to be fair the only stuff of their s I'm familiar with is the are the tracks that got a lot of airplay in the 80s such as Jamies Got a Gun and the stuff they did with Run DMC which I simply don't like. I understand that many people enjoy it, but it's just not my kind of music.

[lonestar]

Though I now enjoy the later Aerosmith, the older stuff was just so gritty and raw and real to me, the vibe of the newer stuff lost me for a long while.

[KevShmev]

The Tubes - She's a Beauty

A wonderfully catchy song, one that has aged well, and the video was provocatively interesting, especially for those of us who still hadn't hit puberty when it was popular.

[bosk1]

The video was just so odd and offputting that I never really found myself able to enjoy the song.

[lonestar]

The Tubes were my first concert when I was thirteen, on their support of The Completion Backwards Principle album, so when this song came out, I could be all badass and say that I had seen them live.

[bosk1]

The Tubes

badass

Wait...what?

[King Postwhore]

Very good tune.  Catchy.  Though I think Talk To You Later is their home run of a song.

[Big Hath]

always thought this song sounded like it should have been done by Chicago (around Chicago 16/17) with Bill Champlin singing the primary vocal parts and Peter Cetera doing the chorus.


. . . and I just saw that David Foster was a co-writer, so I guess that makes perfect sense.

[Big Hath]

Though I think Talk To You Later is their home run of a song.

saw this song on SCTV way back in the day.

[lonestar]

Very good tune.  Catchy.  Though I think Talk To You Later is their home run of a song.

Agreed, killer tune.



@bosk, I was 13  and a video of the only band I had seen was on MTV, of course I felt like a badass. Also was the start of my proggy uniqueness and snobbery, since no one else listened to them at school.

[Jaq]

I had forgotten that Foster was involved in the writing of She's A Beauty, but in hindsight it makes perfect sense. The Tubes were the sort of weird theatrical rock band that probably should have stayed in the 70s, though Talk to You Later is a damn amazing song. She's A Beauty is one of many songs where the band sacrificed itself to have a hit, because after this, they basically vanished. Seems that David Foster producing you in the 80s, unless you were Chicago arguably, was a death knell.

[Orbert]

David Foster was the death knell for Chicago as well, they just didn't realize it at the time.

The video was just so odd and offputting that I never really found myself able to enjoy the song.

Same here.

The Tubes started off edgy and wild.  "She's a Beauty" was most people's introduction to The Tubes, but by then they too were shadows of their former selves.  I'm glad that they finally became popular and made some money, after years of being pretty much an underground band, but I'm sure longtime fans had some trouble with later Tubes.

"Talk to Ya Later" was a cool song.  I liked it because we played it in the band I was in and I actually got to do a synth solo.

[Big Hath]

David Foster was the death knell for Chicago as well, they just didn't realize it at the time.

They did have 4 or 5 top ten hits after he left, but yeah, they quickly became a cover band of themselves.


On the other hand, a lot of people will tell you Terry Kath's accidental death was also the death knell for Chicago.

[Orbert]

The death of Terry Kath actually killed the band, but they continued as a zombie band for years after that, unaware.  They'd been on life support for a while anyway.  Robert Lamm was out of ideas, and Peter Cetera was establishing himself as "the" lead singer because his crappy soft-rock songs were the hits, but when they had to bring in outside writers, that was the death knell.

(Note that "death knell" is not the actual fatal stroke, but that which heralds or pronounces the death. The band as we know it had been dead for a while.)

[Big Hath]

agreed

That first handful of Chicago albums is so good.  So inventive and fresh, especially for that time.

[Orbert]

Seriously.  My first album was Chicago Live at Carnegie Hall.  I had no idea how incredible and unusual that was.  I was in 7th grade and bought it for five dollars from my friend's sister, who had played Side One and didn't like it.  Can you imagine?  I picked up Chicago V and then Chicago VI when it came out (it was the new one), then went back to I, II, and III.  As a fledgling musician, it was truly mind-blowing.  The arrangements, the improvisation, the horns, the vocals, the songs themselves.

Ten years later, they were singing "soft hits" written by David Foster and Diane Warren.  Yeah, it was over.

[KevShmev]

Wow, I did not expect this much chatter as a result of She's a Beauty being this morning's song.

But this is a good segue way into...

Chicago - Love Me Tomorrow

For as many cheeseball, shmaltzy songs as Chicago did in the 80s, this is one I think holds up well and is still quite enjoyable.  I always liked this song when I was a kid and this is the one Chicago song that remains in all of my 80s playlists.

[DebraKadabra]

Agreed on Talk To Ya Later being the better of the two Tubes songs mentioned.

Chicago?  The older the better, especially when Terry was still alive.

[Cool Chris]

I need to check out those Tubes songs, not sure if familiar.

Schmaltzy Chicago was the soundtrack to my junior high years. Nothing like breaking up with your girlfriend, thinking it is the most depressing thing that could ever happen in life, and then hearing a Chicago song to just kick you while you are down. 

[Big Hath]

well, this thread is surely full of David Foster today.  He co-wrote this one and both of the Tubes songs we've been discussing.

I do like the orchestral ending of Love Me Tomorrow.  I remember I had this on one of those BackTrax cassette singles along with Hard to Say I'm Sorry/Get Away.

[Orbert]

Chicago always had its share of happy songs.  "Saturday in the Park", "Beginnings", even "Questions 67 & 68" (sung by none other than Peter Cetera), and Schmaltzy Chicago was not particularly horrible music.  It was just horrible to folks who'd grown up with Chicago and missed what they used to be.

That's true of most bands, I suppose.  Longtime fans say the new stuff sucks, etc.  But to go from progressive jazzfusion featuring horns and Hendrix-style guitar to music for junior high girls is just sad.

"Hard to Say I'm Sorry" wasn't completely awful, and while I thought it was a clever segue, I always felt like "Get Away" was tacked on to appease the fans of "old" Chicago.  Those horns really smoke, for pretty much the last time.

[DebraKadabra]

Questions 67 & 68 is an AMAZING song.  The album it's on ain't too shabby either.

[Orbert]

Both true.  The Chicago Transit Authority and Chicago Live at Carnegie Hall are still the two Chicago albums I spin the most often.

[Big Hath]

Chicago always had its share of happy songs.  "Saturday in the Park", "Beginnings", even "Questions 67 & 68" (sung by none other than Peter Cetera), and Schmaltzy Chicago was not particularly horrible music.  It was just horrible to folks who'd grown up with Chicago and missed what they used to be.

That's true of most bands, I suppose.  Longtime fans say the new stuff sucks, etc.  But to go from progressive jazzfusion featuring horns and Hendrix-style guitar to music for junior high girls is just sad.

"Hard to Say I'm Sorry" wasn't completely awful, and while I thought it was a clever segue, I always felt like "Get Away" was tacked on to appease the fans of "old" Chicago.  Those horns really smoke, for pretty much the last time.

My introduction to Chicago was the 1982-1989 Greatest Hits compilation, so I definitely did not have the history with them that other longtime fans did.  I love the 80's pop stuff and I love the old jazz-rock stuff.

[Orbert]

You're actually fortunate in that way, you can appreciate both earlier and later Chicago.  (I was gonna say "older and newer" but it's all pretty old now.)

I picked up Chicago XXX because it supposedly was a return to their old sound, but apparently that merely meant that a few of the songs actually have horns on them.  The long-lost album Stone of Sisyphus was finally released and was also promoted as something that would appeal to longtime fans, as it was originally recorded 15 years earlier.  It was recorded in 1993 and finally released in 2008, but 1993 was still long after the change, and it still had the slick overproduction so characteristic of the 80's and 90's.

Oh well.  I still have the old albums.

[Big Hath]

I remember the first time I heard Get Away I thought "Where in the world did this come from?"  Didn't sound like anything else I was familiar with of theirs.  But I thought it was awesome and it prompted me to look back at some of their older material.

[Jaq]

You make one comment about how arguably Chicago wasn't killed by David Foster, look what happens. 

[DebraKadabra]

Both true.  The Chicago Transit Authority and Chicago Live at Carnegie Hall are still the two Chicago albums I spin the most often.

I need to get Carnegie Hall - I'm a HUGE fan of South California Purples and there's a 15 minute version on that disc.

[King Postwhore]

Both true.  The Chicago Transit Authority and Chicago Live at Carnegie Hall are still the two Chicago albums I spin the most often.

I need to get Carnegie Hall - I'm a HUGE fan of South California Purples and there's a 15 minute version on that disc.

I have that 4 night CD from Rhino and it is incredible.

[Orbert]

The Rhino reissue fits the original four LPs onto three CDs and throws in a fourth disc of bonus songs and alternate takes.  You actually get two live versions of "South California Purples" and yes, they're both amazing.  Also a second version of "Sing a Mean Tune, Kid" and "25 or 6 to 4", and another take of Lamm's piano intro to "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" which fades out as the song proper starts up.

I used to hear about how Deadheads collect like every possible live recording of The Greatful Dead that they can get their hands on, and I used to think "Damn, how many different versions of the same songs can you hear?"  But after hearing how different and amazing Terry's and Robert's solos are in those Chicago songs, and knowing that they were there all week, I would pay good money to hear the takes from the other nights as well.

[DebraKadabra]

See... I used to think that way too, until I got into Frank Zappa's music hard and heavy - and he recorded pretty much everything he did.
 
I'm definitely going to have to get that now.  TWO versions of SCP?!  Oh hell yeah, I'm all over that.

[KevShmev]

The Buggles - Video Killed the Radio Star

While technically from 1979, this is heavily associated with the 80s, it being the first video ever played on MTV and all. I didn't care for it back then, but I like it now.  Very catchy, and was almost prophetic, given how many careers or were derailed in the 80s because of their lack of airplay on MTV or video appeal. 

[Big Hath]

paging Mr. Cross.  Paging Mr. Christopher Cross.