The video to “Sledgehammer” reads like Teletubbies on angel dust, or a kindergarten K hole. But the lyrics of the song are inspiring and a call to arms for someone who’s down on their luck.
Sometime during that awkward phase in adolescence where I had obtained a learner’s permit, but did not yet have “off campus lunch” at high school, I bought a “Best of Disco” CD compilation at Hastings in Wenatchee, Washington.
If ever there was a moment where all things brilliant converged into one 60 second montage, it would have to be the German made-for-TV movie “Das Millionenspiel” (The Millions Game).
It seems like the ‘serious’ teenage runaway movie was almost a trope circa 1980. I can think of two in particular, which featured pretty bland, terrible, melodramatic plotlines, yet contained fabulous music on their soundtracks.
I’ve always loved road signs – even as a little kid, many of my drawings featured highway signs or billboards. I love them so much because they tell you where to go, and also where you’ve been. They are the metadata of the physical world, and what they can tell you contextually is priceless.
Backlashes work in all directions, at least they went every which way in the Winter of Discontent in the late 1970’s in the UK.
I live for surprises. I am the only white boy I know that has multiple Yarbrough and Peoples singles, can sing all the traditional Spanish folk songs thanks to Joan Baez, and who listens to ABBA in its original native Klingon.
The adjacent suburbs of New York City, that’s where the Roches came from. Not a household name by any measure, but nevertheless an interesting group of Irish American singing sisters who typify the results of the 1970’s music scene.
The lens through which many Europeans view Texas, and America in general, is from the TV show “Dallas”, which was wildly popular in Germany, France, the UK, and beyond.
Imitation, being the sincerest form of flattery, reached its weirdest and widest extent in the early 1980’s. One of the very first “rap songs”, Rap-O Clap-O by Joe Bataan, was covered in Dutch by “Danny Boy”.