RIP Greg Kihn

The little arpeggio riff at the beginning of “The Break-Up Song” is one of my faves. Kihn opened for Journey in 82 and hearing 17,000 people doing the aw-aw-aw uh-uh aw-aw-aw between every line was pretty cool.

 

Yeah, the arpeggio riffs set up everything that followed in that song.

 

What's extra sad are all the people on social media offering condolensces who can't spell "jeopardy".

 

Between Peter Marshall and Jeopardy, tough day for game shows. Hope Drew Carey took his pills today.

RIP Citizen Kihn. He had one other top-40 hit (without the band) called "Lucky" that debuted on 2/16/1985, peaked at No. 30 and stayed on the Hot 100 chart for 12 weeks. I do not remember this song at all.

 

One brush with fame, One of our kids’ friend’s dad was the drummer for the GK Band. He always lamented that without songwriting credit, minuscule residuals.

BTW on one of my favorite mixtapes was “Jeopardy “ followed by Corey Hart’s “ Never Surrender”. Good times.

 

I'm guessing Donald Fagen used it a few times on his solo stuff in the 80s. I'm sure Stevie Wonder snuck in it there on some well-known 80s songs too. But I absolutely love the intro to "Jeopardy". It's one of those songs where the minute you hear the first three second you know what it is.

 

I listened to all kinds of music then, age 14, and hadn’t heard that one till now.

 

Good call, though few of the tracks by either are A+ clavinet-dominant in the way, say, "Superstition", "You Haven't Done Nuthin'" or "Up On Cripple Creek" or even "Jeopardy" are.

Fagen is more of a Rhodes/Wurly kind of guy, but there is one track on "The Nightfly" with clavinet ... "Green Flower Street". That's about his batting average with clavinet and Dan too. Used sparingly with "Kid Charlemagne" the only one that jumps at me from the top of my head.

Edit: Fuck me. "Black Cow" has clavinet. Still, about an average of one per album.

Stevie? I was curious, so I looked it up.

"Hotter Than July", which came out in 1980, has three tracks with clavinet, including "I Ain't Gonna Stand For It" and "Master Blaster (Jammin')". I suppose I recall clavinet in those two, but they're nowhere near as prominent as in his early-to-mid-70s stuff. That was it. None of his other 80s albums had it, which stands to reason, given that he always wanted to be at the cutting edge of keyboards/synths.

 

BYH and I traded notes on that one ... because that's what we do. We both recalled it ... because of course we do.

 

Master Blaster was exactly the song I was thinking of!

 

Clavinet (I'm kind of obsessed, absolutely love that instrument, along with Rhodes/Wurlys) was also frequently sampled.

Stevie's awesome "Maybe Your Baby" was the backing for Tone Loc's underrated and funny "Cheeba Cheeba" ... still my favorite hip-hop peon to weed because it's goofy, dated, but kinda awesome.

And yes, I do think it's awesome that I turned a Greg Kihn tribute thread into both a tribute to clavinets and Tone Loc weed songs.

 

Huge fan of the Dan...and Black Cow is one of their finest songs. So outrageous!