2023 Rock & Roll HOF screechfest

1988 was an awesome year for music. That was the end of my junior, summer in between, and start of senior years.
I saw Cinderella twice, although the second time pissed me off because I bought tickets to see GNR open for AC/DC but they pulled out to start headlining.
I also bought a Def Lep concert shirt with the aforementioned:
Worship
Our
Master's
Every
Need

I burned through two INXS Kick cassettes as well as two Appetites.
Damn Sparkomatic cassette deck from Walmart.

 

When it comes to music? We rarely admit it, but I think our personal circumstance informs whether we like a certain year or not.

To wit, my favorite summer of my youth was 1985, so I still enjoy that music quite a bit. In 1986, our family moved, I knew no one, so I don’t associate fun times with that year. Then, I had a fun summer in ‘87 and a very shit summer in ‘88 and you get the drift.

Then again? I do hear a difference between ‘85 and ‘86, so maybe I’m just projecting?

 

The mid-'80s was a perfectly cromulent time for many genres of music.

 

This is some of the 1988 tripe to which I was referring. Eric Carmen hit No. 3 on the charts.
It was the kind of crap that played at water parks and such, that summer.

 

It's weird how my music "knowledge" declined sharply once I was out of high school. I'd say I was "aware" of 90 percent of current music in high school - by 1990, five years later, I maybe was aware of the top 10 percent
And now we're getting into the RRHOF era with acts that came after my high school years - and I'm kind of lost.

That Carmen video - OK, the song and Hungry Eyes were attached to Dirty Dancing in some way - but I still don't understand the video - it's modern day, then it "flashes back" to where Carmen (looking the same as he does in modern day) hangs out in a classic car, with friends dressed like in the 50s. But Carmen is still in the big hair '90s. So odd. Nostalgic Anachronism? Now there is a name for a band.

 

I always liked this video b/c for some inexplicable reason Eric threw a dart at a dartboard picturing well-known NY-area DJ Scott Shannon.

And I'm fond of this summer b/c I was 14 going on 15 and it seemed to last forever. I'd get up at the crack of dawn to do my newspaper route, come home, make myself a bucket of iced tea, play video games while listening to the local top 40 station until noon, ride my bike to the pool, swim all day, come home and do something with baseball cards while watching the Yankees, Red Sox and/or Mets. I ended up finding a girlfriend that summer too and having my first date. (We didn't have many more dates, but it was fun while it lasted) Now, summers go by in a flash. But when you're young and don't know any better, they seem to last forever. Which is probably what Eric Carmen was singing about here!

 

The DJ threw the dart - but yes, I hear you. Frankly, if it takes 30 years for music to become popular again, I can't wait for a revival of New Jack Swing.

It's funny, because these guys were friends of friends I'd see at parties now and then back in the day - "oh hey, how's it going?"

 

Feels Good is a BANGER.

 

Bear in mind that Eric Carmen had a nostalgic streak all the way back in his Raspberries days when he pushed for those 60s surf-ish sounds in various songs of theirs.

It pained me to admit it when it dawned on me, because I LOVE the Raspberries and their perfect power pop from the early 70s, and Carmen’s solo career is nowhere near as well respected.

But the Raspberries (well, Carmen) loved them some mid-tempo pop songs too in addition to their rockers.

It means that “Make Me Lose Control” would have been exactly what the Raspberries would have sounded like if they existed in 1988. “Make Me Lose Control” is to 1988 what “I Wanna Be With You” (the top 40 hit after the brilliant “Go All The Way”) was to 1972.

Which also means I get a ton more enjoyment out of “Make Me Lose Control” than I did in 1988. Funny how an association can make something click. It is a nice, breezy summer song.

 

wanted to get this on record on something other than “Likes”: I fucking love INXS and have for 40 years.

Not sure I’d go so far as to say they “owned” the ‘80s, but they certainly owned the cassette decks in my shitbox cars back then.

Also, completely incidentally, I had breakfast last week in a little coffee shop across the street from the hotel in which Michael Hutchence died. It’s no longer a Ritz-Carlton; it’s now an Intercontinental.

 

Always gets turned up when it comes across my shuffle.

 

Used perfectly in the Rick and Morty purge episode. (Starts around the 1:15 mark)