Keeping it in the 80s for one more day. That decade gets a pretty bad rap, musically — Flock of Seagulls and all that — but as with any decade there are tons of gems to be found.
Take INXS, whose infectious brand of sparse but danceable funk can be heard in modern bands as trendy as Spoon. Yes, INXS has released an album as recently as 2005, but for me their defining sound will always be tied to the mid-80s albums Listen Like Thieves and especially Kick.
I don’t have many associations with this song, apart from some vague memories of the rather odd video. Benatar plays a troubled teen who is kicked out of the house and winds up dancing with strangers in a bar. Then one day a fellow employee is roughed up by the sleazy manager and she comes to the girl’s defense by leading the rest of the employees in a line dance not unlike the one the zombies do in ‘Thriller.’
This song came up recently when I was talking about the near-blanket rule I have about songs with spoken-word parts. As in, I hate almost all of them. I’m thinking of the sort of thing you hear in Elvis Presley songs, where after the second chorus the singer feels the need to chit-chat: “You know, baby, every time I see your face I want to die…” You know the drill. It’s like somebody interrupted the song to read a Hallmark card.
Certain songs are so intertwined with movies they’ve appeared in that they sort of become extensions of the film. The films of Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino and Andersons Wes and Paul Thomas come immediately to mind.
I don’t think I can ever hear ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’ or Urge Overkill’s cover of ‘Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon’ without being thrown back into Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Nor can I hear the piano coda of ‘Layla’ without picturing the parade of corpses toward the end of Goodfellas. Nico’s version of Jackson Browne’s ‘These Days’ is married to the image of Margot Tenenbaum stepping off the green line bus and Aimee Mann’s ‘Wise Up’ and ‘Save Me’ conjure up the heart and soul of Magnolia.
Sadly, the draconian Warner Music Group decision to pull all their content from YouTube has forced me to skip over Lucinda Williams’ next two albums — World Without Tears and West — and straight to her latest release, Little Honey. I really hope WMG pulls its head out of its ass and realizes that they’re doing nothing but losing free advertising and generating a lot of ill will.
World Without Tears came just two years after Essence and was Williams’ most ambitious record yet. She rocked harder than ever on the album and explored talking blues (bordering on rap) on a couple of tunes. She also delivered her rawest lyrics yet… miles away from the sweet acoustic love songs of 20+ years earlier.
Car Wheels on a Gravel Road was a tough act to follow and Williams responded by going a whole new direction on her next release, Essence, released a relatively short (by her standards) two years later.
Essence eschewed the country rock and blues style of her earlier albums in exchange for a jazzier sound while the very specific lyrical content of previous songs was replaced by more abstract mood pieces. This is the album that suddenly made Lucinda Williams impossible to pin down in a single genre.
