And my second Random Weekend selection is… ‘Temptation’ from Billy Joel’s 1986 album, The Bridge.
Well, it could have been worse. It could have been ‘This is the Time.’
The Bridge is an interesting album in that it features some of Joel’s most ambitious, complex work (songs such as ‘Big Man on Mulberry Street,’ ‘Running On Ice’ and ‘Code of Silence’) but also some of his worst forays into MOR sap.
I’ve gone through seven different weekend series over the past two and a half years. Starting in May of 2009, I’ve featured (in order) Motown, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Ron Sexsmith, Brad Paisley and Paul Simon.
Faced with the need for a new weekend theme, my first thought was that I’d have to go with a woman. With the exception of about half of the Motown tracks, I’ve gone through 250+ weekend songs by men.
This video should be better than it is. The idea — to parody a movie trailer for a biopic about a rock star — is ripe with possibilities (Walk Hard did some fun things with this idea at feature length).
And the assembled cast, including Paul Rudd, Bill Hader and half the correspondent team from The Daily Show, is certainly up to the task.
Wild Flag is a Portland band made up of four women who are members of other bands — sort of the chick version of Monsters of Folk.
Front woman Carrie Brownstein and drummer Janet Weiss are both veterans of Sleater-Kinney, the celebrated alternative band that went on “hiatus” five years ago. Brownstein has also received attention recently for co-writing and co-starring in Portlandia, a sketch comedy show that also features SNL-er Fred Armisen.
Everything old is destined to become new again and, Adele’s resurrection of the 60s pop sound notwithstanding, the most prevalent example these days has to be the ubiquity of the 80s New Wave sound on modern dance records.
Remember when this stuff wasn’t cool, about 15 minutes after it was? Well, now it’s as cool as it gets. I remember when Carson Daly introduced some hot upcoming band on a New Year’s Eve special a year ago, calling them “what music will sound like in the future” and my wife, after hearing 30 seconds of their performance, said “Apparently music in the future will sound like 1985.”
