Whether it’s this story – about a Polish couple that is divorce after meeting in a “client-to-provider” capacity in a brothel:
A Polish man got the shock of his life when he visited a brothel and spotted his wife among the establishment’s employees.
Polish tabloid Super Express said the woman had been making some extra money on the side while telling her husband she worked at a store in a nearby town.
…or that Ed was able to seamlessly correlate it with Rupert Holmes’ “Pina Colada Song” (AKA “the day Satan conquered the Seventies”).
I’ll get back to y’all on that.
What’s really surprising is that most of the 70s tunage fit into the same catagory. That decade was a pop musical train wreck.
That’s the conventional wisdom. And much of it is correct.
And yet:
* Damn the Torpedos
* Night Moves and Stranger in Town
* Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town and The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle
* Exile on Main Street
* The Pretenders
* Hearts of Stone
* Dire Straits
* The first several Police albums
* London Calling (actually was released in ’79)
* The first two Cars albums
* Most of the combined Ramones, Sex Pistols, Stiff Little Fingers and other discographies.
* Much of the Kinks’ better middle-period stuff
* And, nodding to my personal favorite, “Love’s So Tough” by the Iron City Houserockers (’79)
…and on and on.
There’s tons of good stuff in any period of music. You just gotta know where to dig.
The first four Blue Oyster Cult albums (now remastered with even MORE cowbell) are also signs of good licks, tracks, album sides, and even (in the case of at least one) whole albums.
Ditto for Rush.
Pop musical train wreck, check.
Some really good music (Pink Floyd, Kinks, Springsteen, Rush, BOC, none of which were “mainstream”), check.
Still, overall the decade sucked. Which is probably why the “underground” stuff was so good. One of my faves, Floyd, kicked serious jams that decade: Meddle, Obscured By Clouds, Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and Animals (which is great when you’re in a lousy or bitter mood). And the BOC from that decade was probably my favorite period (Cowbell? In Secret Treaties? I don’t think so.).
Nerdbert,
BOC and Rush both dabbled into pop… in the case of BOC (and their album “Mirrors”), it didn’t sit too well with some folks. (I don’t really mind some of the songs at all… The Vigil is very nice.) Rush, has it’s own set of problems with pop rock. They do it fine, but they experiment so much that folks probably won’t see any of their “pop” efforts as real pop music… and as you say, they can easily be classed as anything but pop music since they are anything but mainstream.
Rupert Holmes is going to hell for that song. You know that, right?
“The Golden Age of Leather” redeems all of BOC’s pop-cult mistakes. Also “Before the Kiss, a Redcap” is a great track.
“Then Came the Last Days of May” cures many ills of Mirrors for me. A buddy built a whole D&D campaign out of that song, which was pretty cool from all accounts since nobody noticed until the “guides” they’d hired turned on them to the background tunage of the first BOC album.
2112 cured anything Fairwell To Kings might have done, although as a pop effort that was a good album. But seeing the 2112 tour probably has something to do with my affection for Rush, and it’s been rare for Rush to disappoint, especially lyrically.
Hell, both versions of “Fire of Unknown Origin” redeems anything that lacks on Mirrors. I still need to see them live again. You never know what those guys might pull out of the old bag.
Don’t speak ill of A Farewell to Kings, nerdbert… that’s blasphemy! 😉