Steven Rubio's Online Life

friday random ten, 1982 edition

I’ve posted this picture before. I got my teeth cleaned this week, and when I arrived, the woman doing the cleaning said, “Hello, handsome!” I replied, “You shoulda seen me when I was 28.” I don’t have any pictures that I am sure come from that time, so I’ve posted one from right after I turned 29, and used it to give me a year for this week’s Music Friday post.

1. Michael Jackson, “Billie Jean”. The video link takes you to a live performance of the song from March 25, 1983. It was telecast on American TV on May 16 of that year. You might recall the following day, May 17, 1983, one of the biggest dates in pop culture history. On that date, millions of young people across the country were moonwalking.

2. Au Pairs, “Sex Without Stress”. Wikipedia on Sense and Sensuality, the album on which this song appears: “No singles were released from the album. The album cover wasn't approved by the band. There were errors on the recording, including it being recorded at too fast a speed.”

3. The Weather Girls, “It’s Raining Men”. Co-written by Paul Shaffer. The video is mindboggling.

4. Bonnie Hayes with the Wild Combo, “Girls Like Me”. Hayes and the band were very popular in the Bay Area, and this song’s appearance in the movie Valley Girl brought them some wider attention. For a variety of reasons, they never really broke out. But late in the 1980s, another Bonnie, Raitt, discovered Hayes’ music and recorded two of her songs for Nick of Time, the huge hit that remade Raitt’s career.

5. George Clinton, “Atomic Dog”. Bow wow wow, yippie yo, yippie yay! I lost track somewhere past 50, but this one has been sampled many, many times over the years.

6. The Waitresses, “I Know What Boys Like”. Released in 1980, made its biggest impact in 1982 as part of the album Wasn’t Tomorrow Wonderful?. Singer Patty Donahue died at 40 of lung cancer.

7. Lou Reed, “Waves of Fear”. Fans of Lou Reed’s guitar work suffered through a lot in the first years of Lou’s solo career. He had some fine guitar on albums like Rock n Roll Animal, but he wasn’t the one doing the playing. Reed gradually began playing again, but he didn’t find a proper guitar companion until Robert Quine joined his band. Toss in Fernando Saunders, one of the finest (and most recognizable bass players) ever, and you had what was probably the best band of Reed’s solo career.

Crazy with sweat, spittle on my jaw
What's that funny noise, what's that on the floor
Waves of fear, pulsing with death
I curse my tremors, I jump at my own step
I cringe at my terror, I hate my own smell
I know where I must be, I must be in hell

8. Flipper, “The Old Lady that Swallowed the Fly”. My cousin used to sing this to me when I was a little boy. She was, and is, a beautiful singer. Flipper is not my cousin. (Oft-told tale: when I bought the first Flipper album and put it on the turntable, my wife came from upstairs after a few minutes and told me it was the worst record I had ever brought into her house.)

9. Mission of Burma, “That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate”. Quoting Wikipedia again: “In 1983, after the release of Vs., the group disbanded due to Miller's worsening tinnitus, attributed in large part to their notoriously loud live performances—during their farewell tour, Miller took to augmenting his usual small foam earplugs with rifle-range earphones onstage.”

10. The Pop-O-Pies, “Truckin’”. I find myself at a loss to explain the Pop-O-Pies. I can tell you that I was a big fan for awhile, and that once I met someone who was friends with Joe Pop-O-Pie. The idea that Joe Pop-O-Pie existed in the real world fascinated me.

happy birthday, geoff!

Here comes my annual attempt at photoshopping. I suck at it.

ray manzarek and the doors

Ray Manzarek’s death has led to a lot of online discussion about The Doors, who Manzarek co-founded. It’s typical that even in death, Manzarek is overshadowed. And not only does he kick off memories of The Doors, memories of The Doors inevitably turn into discussions about Jim Morrison.

“Light My Fire” is a fine example of Manzarek and our relationship to The Doors. It kicks off with drummer John Densmore’s snare shot, after which the band appears, with Manzarek’s seductive, Bach-inspired organ inviting the listener in. After a couple of verses, Manzarek lays out an atmospherically appropriate solo for a few minutes … that’s followed by an equally fine guitar solo by Robby Krieger. Finally, the band returns to Morrison and the song ends. The chorus is catchy … I imagine most people who have heard it know “come on baby, light my fire” by heart. But Manzarek’s opening organ theme is equally iconic.

But his solo (and Krieger’s)? The song was so popular that AM radio stations wanted to play it, so a shorter version was released that edited out the two solos from the middle. Thus, the version many people heard was dominated by Morrison to a much larger extent than was the original.

The 45 version was a big deal in the Bay Area, where “underground radio” was starting. I can remember my older brother telling me there was this new station on FM that I should check out; I also remember him telling me there was this really amazing song on the first Doors album, called “The End”. Thus began my decades-long-and-still-counting obsession with the underground radio of those days. Again relying on memory, once, Tom Donahue said he didn’t want to play “Light My Fire” because it was being played to death on the AM dial. Someone pointed out to him that we no longer listened to AM, so it wasn’t played out for us.

“The End”, like “Light My Fire”, desperately needs what the musicians bring to the table, and Manzarek’s keyboards are essential. But, as was regularly true for The Doors, the musicians’ contributions were overwhelmed by the presence of Jim Morrison. “The End” wasn’t remarkable because of the music, it was remarkable for the Oedipal lyrics from Morrison (“Father? Yes, son. I want to kill you. Mother? I want to …. ARRGGRGAJHGRHHGH!).

The Doors released five more studio albums during Morrison’s lifetime, some better than others. None of them startled us the way the debut did, but that’s always the case with startling debuts. Each album went Top Ten, as did three singles. If anything, the band got better as time went on. But what got noticed was Jim Morrison, with his poetic lyrics and outrageous stage presence. He was arrested several times, he had problems with alcohol and drugs, and about the time he exposed himself on stage, if not long before, it was clear that if you asked the average fan what they knew about The Doors, they would reply “Jim Morrison”. (Anyone who thinks Morrison’s stage shenanigans were over-the-top are invited to check out GG Allin on YouTube. No, I’m not offering any links.) Morrison overdosed, and while the band released another couple of albums, their time in the spotlight was gone. They still pop up occasionally, but not for their music … Oliver Stone’s movie may have been called The Doors, but it never would have been made if Stone hadn’t made Morrison the focus of his film.

And now Ray Manzarek is dead, and people like me offer hundreds of words filled with talk about the Doors, which is to say about Jim Morrison, which is to say, not about Ray Manzarek. But if you listen to the “long” version of “Light My Fire”, you’ll hear Ray. You’ll notice him.