In this episode, we kick off our tour through 120 Minute’s 1988 playlists, starting in January with three amazing artists who each represent a completely different genre of music.
And welcome back to 120 months. We are doing a deep dive on MTV’s 120 minutes. We’re going month by month and looking at the playlist for each really each week, but for each month, we choose a song that was played in that month
Talk about the band, talk about the song, talk about the video, and maybe a few other things along the way. We choose a mystery song that none of us have heard before, and then we talk about that. That is always fun
And we are actually starting a new year. We have finished 1987. We’re doing an entire decade
So one year down, 9 to go. We are on January of 1988. And, you know, one thing I hadn’t been doing is kind of setting the table for what the music landscape looked like in January of 1988 or, you know, each month as we go
So just to kind of set the mood here. These were the top songs, the number one songs in January of 1988 as far as like the billboard charts and pop music was concerned. So George Michael Faith, got my mind set on you by one George Harrison, believe it or not, Whitney Houston so emotional
Michael Jackson, the way you make me feel, and a band that we were actually just talking about offline, INXS – Need you tonight was also a number one song that year. So a little bit of, you know, what would kind of become alternative INXS, got wrapped into alternative music as they went, but they really were always a pop rock band, I think
But they were there, but also, yeah, you’re heavy hitters, George Michael, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, like that was the musical landscape. So into that comes MTV’s 120 minutes, and they’re playing videos that were not only really not in that pop world. They weren’t even really in the MTV’s main rotation world, which was a little bit more daring
In 1988, if I remember right, it was very pop metal focused, so you’d got a lot of poison in Motley Crue and Def Leppard during these times. So, and 120 minutes was a break from all that and an introduction into kind of a whole different world of music. One that we are going to start exploring right now
So with me, today, Scott Mobley, and kicking it off today, Mr. Keith Porterfield. Well, from my money, we’re kicking off 1988 strong because today I get to talk about one of my favorite songs from one of my all-time favorite bands. So we’re kicking January of 88 off with Bastards of Young by the replacements
We’re on the side, top, no one. Wait on the sun, no one. Masters of young Now our daughters and the sun
Now, the replacements, I imagine most of our listeners are familiar with replacements, just real quickly. They were a band that was formed in Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1979. Largely Paul Westerberg, Bob Stinson, Tommy Stinson, and Chris Mars, although they did have a few other players with them through the years
Slim Dunlap played guitar for them on the last couple of albums, and then right towards the end of their career. They had another drummer named Steve Foley that took over for Chris Mars. But that was only on the very last album, which is more or less a Paul Westerberg solo album anyway, but largely for their most of their career
It was the 4 piece of Westerberg, the Stinson Brothers, and Chris Mars. Stinson was fired from the band in 1986 for drug and alcohol abuse, which knowing the replacement’s reputation, that had to have been some serious abuse of drugs and alcohol for him to get kicked out of the replacements. This song, Bastards of Young, is off their 1985 album called Tim
I’m going to talk a little bit more about Tim as we go along because it’s one of my favorite albums by those guys, but I want to start off with the 1st the video. Usually I kind of save the video for last. This video is, there’s really not much of anything at all going on in this video
So we’ll just get that out of the way first. The video starts with a close-up shot of a speaker, a stereo speaker, you actually hear the needle drop on a record, and then the song kicks on, and you can see the woofer pulsing with the bass drum and everything, and there’s a slow camera pan out. But largely the entire video is focused just one long camera shot focused on that speaker
At one point you see an ashtray fall off of it and then a guy walks in front, picks it back up and sets it back on the speaker, then he goes and sits on the couch. You never see his face at all. You see his hand holding a cigarette for a while, and then you see him kick his feet up as he’s listening to the song, and then right toward the end as the song kicks into the kind of coda at the end of the song, he gets up and walks over and kicks the speaker down and busts it up and then walks out the front door, and then the video ends
That’s your entire video. It’s basically just a shot of this speaker and occasional shots of this dude standing in front of it and then kicking it down at the end. So, you know, take it or leave it
It is what it is. It’s either a masterful video or one that was not, you know, thought about at all. I’m not sure which one of those 2 things is true, but I don’t think it falls anywhere in between that spectrum
It’s one of those 2 things. The song itself is, like I said, one of my favorite replacement songs. It’s a rocker
There are a lot of the replacement songs are rockers. It’s off the floor, studio album, like I said, called Tim. This one, not only is it a favorite of mine, it’s widely considered to be one of their best songs, and Paul Westerberg, I’m a big Paul Westerberg fan, and anybody that’s listening to this podcast before probably knows that
You know, Paul Westerberg gets a lot of credit for being kind of a rock and roll poet. His lyrics are generally thought of pretty well. And I do think he has written a lot of great lyrics over his career
I also think, unfortunately, he’s written some pretty silly lyrics over his career too. So as big of Westerburg fan as I am, I maybe don’t fall as heavily into the, you know, this guy is the poet of our generation kind of mindset that some of the fans do. This song, however, I think really does have great lyrics
I love the lyrics to this song. Song very much about kind of like just disaffected youth, but it’s got a couple of really great lines in it. Me personally, I’m a big fan, both the 1st and the 2nd verse, end with the line
It beats picking cotton and waiting to be forgotten. Well, I have mentioned before that I’m from a little town in West Texas, and the main industry in the little town that I grew up was cotton farming. And so, like, I know a bunch of guys that never left that small town and are picking cotton and waiting to be forgotten
And so like that that line has always hit home for me. I’m also a big fan of the final verse, which runs the ones that love us best are the ones that we later rest and visit their graves on holidays at best, the ones that love us least are the ones that will die to please. If it’s any consolation, I don’t begin to understand
Man, I love that lyric. That’s just fantastic. That’s one of the best verses that Westerberg’s ever written
And then there’s the chorus, which, if you’re like me, you probably for years and years thought he was saying, we are the sons of no one, bastards of young. Turns out that that is actually weight on the sons of no one. Bastards of Young
So it’s actually a biblical reference, the weight on the sons of no one. It’s from the Bible verse, Micah 57. And if you look that verse up, it doesn’t actually say that
It’s kind of a paraphrase of it, but that’s actually what that lyric is. And so for years and years, I ran around singing and screaming in Paul Westerberg style. We are the sons of no one
Yeah, completely wrong. That’s not what that lyric is at all. if you you and everybody else. Yeah, exactly
Including apparently Paul Westerberg at one point. Yeah, he’s forgotten it too and fit it the other way. So, yeah, you would be forgotten or forgiven, I should say, if you didn’t realize that that was what that willing rick was, because I certainly didn’t know it either
But man, do I love this song? And like I said, it’s off the album Tim, which is the 4th studio album by the replacements, and it’s the last studio album that features the original 4 members. This is the last album that Bob Stinson played on
Um, great album, and I love the fact that it’s named Tim. They just finished up their album. what are we going to call her album? I don’t know
How about Tim? Well, okay, sure. that’ll work. So we end up with an album called Tim, you know, could have been Bob, could have been John
Who knows? Instead it ended up being Tim. Tim, like I said, one of my favorite replacements albums, when we did the alien abduction album episode of the old 35,000 Watts podcast, I took a replacements album, and the one I took was Let It Be
And I remember, you know, we talked a little bit about our hard cuts, the ones that were the hardest for us to decide which ones we wanted to cut. And for me, I knew I was going to take a replacements album. And it came down to let it be in this one, Tim
And I ended up taking let it be. And for me personally, I think I would stand by that decision because Let It Be was actually the album that really got me into the replacements. It wasn’t the 1st one I had
I had Hootenanny before I had, let it be. But let it be, was really the one that really made me a replacements fan. And so for me personally, I think, you know, that was the right choice
I would still, if I’m going to a desert island, that’s the replacements album I want. But if you happen to be a music listener that has never really dug in on the replacements, you maybe have heard of them, heard people talk about them, but have never really given them a good try. Tim is actually the album that I would suggest starting on
I really do think that if you are coming in cold and don’t know anything about this band, you’re going to know one way or the other if you’re a replacements fan by listening to this album. It’s got a little bit of everything they do well. If you like kind of the more ragged, loose stuff
You’re going to want to go backwards and listen to the early stuff. If you like the more slickly produced, a little more polished stuff, you’re going to want to go forward for the stuff that comes after that. But there’s going to be stuff for you
If you like this album, there’s going to be stuff for you throughout their entire catalog. I mean, but I do think, you know, if you’re coming in cold, if you don’t know anything about this band and you just want to give them a try. I think Tim is the is the record to start on
And I do have one… I want to call it a complaint, an idea about this album that I wanted to run by you guys because I have thought this about this album, like, since maybe right after the 1st time I heard it. So I think to my to my money, for my money, my opinion, the sequencing of the tracks on an album is is really important to the album. you get the, I want to get the opener, right? You want to get the closer right. You want there to be flow, a natural flow of all your tracks in between on the album. And in the earlier days, I mean, with CDs and nowadays, with playlists, you know, it’s it’s something you want to get right and do, but I don’t think it’s as hard as it was in the earlier days when you had vinyl records and even cassettes where you had 2 sides of the album to worry about
Because not only were you tracking out the full album, you’re tracking out each side and you want each side to have its own natural flow. And so you want there to be an album opener and a side one closer, and then a side tube opener and an album closer, and then you want it to flow well in between these songs. And in between those songs, you know? And I think the album, Tim, the 2 sides on it are perfectly tracked. They are perfectly sequenced. It’s just that side 2 should be side one and side one should be side 2 because as it stands now, you start that album out with Hold My Life and I’ll buy, which are both pretty good rockers, but they are the kind of rockers that the replacements could kind of knock out in their sleep
You know, they’re not, they’re not, to my mind, like really classic songs. If you start the record with side two. When you drop the needle, the 1st thing you hear is the guitar lick intro and then Paul Howling into Bastards of Young, which is probably one of, if not the best song on the album, just for my money, if that’s the number one track, that grabs you right off the bat and sucks you in, you know, it’s kind of like I will dare on, let it be one of the best tracks right up front, just brings you right into the album right off the bat
Then you get lay it down clown, which is a pretty good punk rocker. You get another classic right at track number 3 and left at the dial, and then you get another great rocker, little mascara after that. So you open the album with, if you put side 2 on first
You open the album with 4 really great rockers, including 2 all-time classics. And then you break everything completely down with the acoustic ballad. Here comes a regular, which is the album closer on the way the album was actually released
And it works great as a closer. But I think it also works great as a side one album closer because you get those 4 rockers right off the bat, kind of a blistering pace to set the album, break it completely down for the acoustic ballad, which is largely just pollen an acoustic guitar. And then you’re done with side one
Flip your record over. Then you get 1st 2 on the other side, hold my life, and I’ll buy, which again, are pretty good songs, and I think work better coming out of that really killer side one to open up side two. Then you get a late album classic and kiss me on the bus
Then you get dose of Thunder, which, if I’m being honest, dose of Thunder is the one song on this album that I can kind of do without, but it is a harder rocker than kiss me on the bus and kind of, you know, brings the energy back up a little bit after you get done with kiss me on the bus, you follow that up with waitress in the sky, which is kind of the tongue in cheek kind of country song on there. And then the perfect thing to me is you get to close the album swinging party. And swinging party to me is one of, if not my absolute favorite song on this album, and one of my favorite replacement songs of all time
And it works great closing outside one, but I think it would be a perfect album closer, especially for this album that rocks really hard and has a lot of high energy until you kind of get towards the end and then it kind of moves, you know, kind of cools down a little bit with waitress in the sky and you get the almost kind of like loungy kind of sound of swinging party to close out the album. I just think that would be a perfect album closer. So for my money, as great as this album is, it is best experienced if you can do it by listening to side tuned 1st and then flipping over and listening to side one
And I actually think you get a better flow of an album doing it that way than if you listen to it the way it was actually released. So that’s kind of a weird tangent there. I let you guys weigh on that if you want to
For me, this song, this video, one of my favorite bands, one of my favorite songs by them, a interesting video, if nothing else. But yeah, that’s that’s Bastards of Young, by the replacements, and then also a little bit about the album Tim, by the replacements. So, uh, interesting to see what you guys think
Totally agree about the sequencing of the album, both in terms of how important it is in general and the way you laid it out. I think for Tim is the probably would be the correct way or the better way to do it, in my opinion. So I think if you’re a DJ, like just the idea of how you sequence songs is in your blood, because that’s kind of what you do, especially if you get to program your own show or program, you know, a night in a club or whatever, you know, you want to take people on a journey, you want them up, you want them down, you want to, you know, you want diversity, but you want to highlight the things you want to highlight or whatever
And I think the way you kind of laid it out makes more sense because it does all of those things, if nothing else, kicking that album off with Bastards of Young is an improvement. I was actually kind of surprised that those, the 2 tracks that kick it off, do kick it off because it feels like it needs one of the… I mean, there’s 4 or 5 all-time classics on there
It feels like one of those should be the kicker off and Bastards Young is as good as you could get. I think, to lead an album off. So yeah, I totally agree with that
As far as the album name, I wonder, this is a long shot, but this actually just came to me as just now, as you were saying it. I wonder if they were Monty Python fans by any chance, because Monty Python and the Holy Grail has a very, very, well, it has a 100 hilarious moments, but one of them is they build up this kind of sorcerer who guards a cave as being this great and wonderful sorcerer. And of course, you’re assuming he’s going to have a great and wonderful name that would be befitting of a sorcerer, and he declares that his name is, in fact, Tim
I kind of wonder if maybe that played. I dont know, you know, that would that would explain why Tim and not Bob, Jim, or some other name. And the humor is kind of there
I don’t know. I did not find any evidence of that. I am assuming you did not either
It did not occur to me until you actually were talking. I was like, I just had this idea that maybe they had a night out, came back, knocked back some more beers, watched My Python and were like, you know what? That’s pretty that’s pretty funny
I wonder if we should name our album that. So just a thought on that. Music wise, I don’t think there’s anything I could add to what you said, the replacements are as quintessential a rock band as you can get, especially American rock band
They’re as good as they come. There’s not many bad songs in their entire catalog. I do agree that this is a good starting point because I’m not the huge fan that you are
So for me, I think when I, as I kind of got into the replacements, a couple of these songs, other ones that kind of drew me in and then I kind of went out from there, uh, not knowing really what album, what came off of. I was kind of coming at it more from just grab a grab bag kind of situation. Seeing this album and hearing it now in its entirety, it really is a good starting point if you’re kind of coming in completely cold on the replacements
You know, music wise, there’s there’s not much I can say that hasn’t been said about the replacements. They are absolutely at the top of the heap in terms of American rock and roll as far as I’m concerned. The video
I like that it takes a chance. I like that it’s different from probably every other thing that was on MTV at the time. So I love that
I’d never seen it. I didn’t know where it was going. Like, I, I, I remember glancing up about 35 seconds in
I was like, damn, this shot has been, they’ve held this shot for 35 seconds. That’s crazy. Where is this going to go? And then I was like, oh, no, they are gonna just hold this shot for 2 minutes, 52 seconds or whatever. I also think it’s really funny that Wikipedia has the budget for this video in it because the Wikipedia also has the budget for the video I’m going to talk about in it. And they’re very similar budgets with very, very, very, very different amounts of work put into it. you would assume
So it was kind of funny. There’s a little comment about the dog being the most expensive part. I gotta tell you, I don’t remember a dog in this video at all
I completely missed the dog in the background that it mentions in Wikipedia, but yeah, they spent $10,000 on this video somehow. I imagine a lot of that was the beer budget, but I don’t know. I’m going to guess that’s a beer budget type thing
Yeah, is it exciting? Is it thriller? No, it’s not, but it is, of all the videos we’ve watched
We watched an entire years worth of videos at this point for this podcast. So it’s 48 videos. This is one of the most unique just out of the box
Let’s think of something, let’s think of a different way to approach this thing, we call a music video, and they nailed it. I really, really, really like it a lot. So I think that I think that’s pretty cool
Yeah, what can I say? The replacements, folks. If you don’t know them, go listen to them immediately after this podcast
This is also one of my favorite bands. I can’t add too much of that to that part of the conversation, other 10, you know, to agree with Keith. I think the only thing we probably differ on in this, in this realm is that I, you like Paul Westerberg’s solo stuff more than I do
I prefer the replacements to Western Virgin Solars, but that is, that is not anything worth arguing about it. It’s just a mere matter of opinion. I think they’re both pretty brilliant
You know, as far as Westernbrook goes, lyrically, I think you kind of nailed it. When he’s on lyrically, he is a poet. But then he also writes songs about the waitress that wouldn’t bring him another drink on the plane, you know, it’s it’s both
He’s silly and poetic at the same time. So it just depends on which song you put on, what you’re going to hear. As far as your assertion that you should flip the album. totally agree with that
In fact, I listened to it twice this week. And both times, I thought, the 2nd half, really, you know, Bastards of Young really kicks off, what might be the best 2nd half of an album ever. I mean, it’s just it’s just perfect
And then the 1st half is also very, very good, but it just kind of doesn’t live up to the 2nd half. Also, this album ending with swinging party is Chef’s Kiss perfect idea. That’s how this album should end
So I totally agree with you on that. So, the interesting thing about watching this was I remember this video. I was not a replacements fan until I got to college
I think I bought Don’t Tell a Soul 1st when it came out, and then I started going backwards. You know, obviously I really like the punk stuff. This is the sweet spot though
Let it be and Tim really are the perfect blend of what the replacement started out as and what they would end up being. This is really the sweet spot. And I go back and forth on which album is better
I think, though, when it comes down to it, I like this one a little better, but it’s my love of Androgynous and their cover of Black Diamond that made me love, let it be so much. But I think overall cover to cover. This is the better album
But anyway, I put this on and I went, oh yeah, I remember this video and I remember it from being in high school. I was not a replacements fan at the time. And I kind of forgotten that this video was the replacements
I guess I kind of knew that, but I didn’t know which song it was. I didn’t remember what song it was. My friends and I used to watch this video all the time, and I remember being really just kind of impressed by the minimalist nature of it
So we talked about some of these videos being done on a micro budget, you know, like Black Flag, for example, and where the entire budget of the video probably was the beer that they were throwing at each other in the video. And I think that this song probably is in the same realm, but it’s almost like a masterclass on how to capture the vibe and energy and spirit of a band without having to really do anything. I mean, I think, You watch this video and yeah, nothing happens, and you’re right, and nothing happens
But don’t you feel like when it’s over, you kind of get a feel for who the replacements are? So I think on that level, it really, really works. I mean, I just love this video
I love it. But yeah, so totally agree with you on everything about the replacements. I think they are one of the greatest American rock bands ever
And if you’re not familiar with them and you want to get started, start right there in the middle of their catalog, Tim, or let it be is the way to go. And you mentioned Westerburg solo stuff, I am a bigger fan of the replacement stuff than I am his solo stuff, although I will defend a lot of his solo stuff to my dying days. If you’re interested in checking out Paul’s Solo stuff, the 2 albums I would recommend are his very 1st one
It called 14 songs. It is very much in the same vein as like the last couple of replacements albums. And I personally think it’s a better album than All Shut Down, which is the last replacements album
But that album actually is more or less like Paul Westberg’s solo album. The other guys in the band didn’t have a whole lot to do with all shook down. So I actually think 14 songs is the better of those 2 albums
So that one I would recommend. And then the other one that I would recommend on Paul Westerberg’s solo’s career is called Come Filmy Tremble. And it came out
I’m trying to think. It came out in around 2002, three, four, somewhere in that neighborhood. Was it three? Okay. And it is just him. He recorded it in his basement studio playing all the instruments himself, and it is very raw and ragged and reminiscent to me of early replacement stuff
It’s not quite as energetic. Not the punk energy isn’t quite there, but production wise and just the vibe of it. It very much reminds me of early replacements
So if you’re at all interested in Paul Westerberg’s solo stuff. those are the 2 albums I would recommend, 14 songs and come feel me tremble. I wanted to mention you guys talked about the title, Tim. And I like your theory, Michael
I never even thought of that, but obviously, you know, we just you just mentioned Paul Wessenberg’s 1st solo being called 14 songs. I mean, this guy obviously has a little tongue in cheek field of how he names these things. So I think that may be part of it too
But yeah, I never thought of the Monty Python thing, but that’s that’s good. I like it. All right, from the top of the heap in terms of American rock and roll to a completely other, the other side of the pond, the other side of music genre as we’re going in a completely different direction this time now
So for this week, I chose Troy by Sinead O’Connor. rise And you’ll see me return This was the first single off of her debut album. It’s called The Lion of the Cobra. Came out in 1987
Before I go too much further, I just want to say we talked fairly in depth about this album back on the 35,000 watts podcast, we did our favorite debut albums and this was mine. So I’m not going to go super in depth again. I just, if you want to know more about this stuff
You can go back and check that out. I will say again, though, this is one of my all-time favorite debut albums. For what I think is one of the most important voices of this era of music we’re listening to
Just briefly, Sinead O’Connor was an Irish singer-songwriter. I say was, she did pass away in 2023, I believe. She rose to fame fairly quickly after being discovered
She blew up into Superstardom with the 2nd album that she put out. It’s called I do not want what I haven’t got on the strength of a single called Nothing Compares to You, which I think most people have heard, which was number one all over the world in 1990. This song, Troy, was the lead off single of the album before that, The Lion and the Cobra
And so other than a couple of appearances on other people’s songs right before this, this really is the 1st time that most people probably heard Sinead O’Connor. I will say that this is my favorite song on this album by a pretty good margin, and I think it’s possibly my my favorite Sinead O’Connor song, more than likely, if I had to, if I had to pick one. But all that said, I do not understand why I was chosen to be the 1st single on this album
There are better ones, but it does what it’s supposed to do in that it is a showcase of this woman’s incredible vocal talent. Um, but it is long. It’s very different
It kind of takes a minute to get where it’s going. So to me, it was always a strange choice, but I did a little deeper research on that, and I kind of found what I think might be the answer. So, her label, uh, chrysalis records, actually put out
Even though Troy was the official single. They put out 3 videos at the same time from this album. Troy was the first
Mandinka was the 2nd, which was also being played on 120 minutes about this time. In fact, it’s within a week of this one on the playlists, and then I want your hands on me, which was being played more during prime time on MTV during this time. If you were watching MTV during the day and they played a Sinead O’Connor video, it was going to be, I want your hands on me
So that song is kind of this funky, dancy track. There were remixes of it. It was being played in club
You know, Mandinka is the hooky, rocket and pop song, has a super, super infectious riff. and then there’s Troy. which is the showcase for what she does vocally. So I just don’t think there’s a lot of singers that can pull off something like this. And the fact that there aren’t really any effects on her voice, it’s pretty raw
And according to some sources, I was never able to like 100% verify this, but, um, the producer was quoted at one time as saying that this was recorded in one take, that is mind blowing to me. So the video, and in fact, all 3 of these videos are basically the same thing. And I think it’s a good choice
They just show her singing. She is so striking a presence. She’s a really beautiful woman, but she has a shaved head, which always kind of catches your eye
People talked about it. It was sort of her signature thing, but she’s so emotive and so passionate that it really comes through and she’s just allowed to just perform these songs. There’s not really a whole lot of reason
And there probably wasn’t a whole lot of money either, but there’s not really any reason to make big complicated videos around these things. We just need to watch her sing them. In fact, you know, the one of the great things about nothing compares to you, the big hit from the next album, is the video that came with it was just this super tight close-up of her face singing for almost its entirety
There’s a couple of little other things interspersed in there, but that’s really all it was. And, you know, so even early on, they seem to get the fact that if people could just watch her do this, it would generate interest in her. And I mean, it certainly worked on me. didn’t work on the rest of the world to allow them too, but um, so I know we talked about this before
And I know you guys preferred some of the other songs on this album to this one. But I wondered if, you know, maybe watching it in and of itself, not on the album or with the video or anything, maybe change your mind or give you a new perspective on it or whatever. I’m just curious to see if anything, anything move the needle for you this time. can’t say that it did a whole lot
I think you’re right probably about the videos. I think she has such a striking look about her that the idea that just putting her forward in the video and having her sing and just have her be the kind of the face of her own song does work really well. This song I do like
It’s not that I dislike the song. And I do, I like the build of it. You know, it kind of starts slower and builds up into it to get where it’s going
I do think it is a great showcase for her voice. I just, yeah, there are other songs that I like better by her and on this album. And in fact, I mentioned this before we even started recording
I actually watched the Mandika video more than I did the toy video this week because I was getting ready for this just because I really love that song so much. And I love the shiny guitar she’s got in the Mandinka video where when the light hits it, it dazzles your eyes when the light reflects back at you. There is no doubt that Mandenka is a more accessible song than this
I mean, it just it just is. It’s catchy and hooky and all of that. You know, I totally understand that
But I do agree that this is Troy, that song is a great showcase for her voice. You know, it’s not that I dislike it. I will say that I do not dislike the song, Troy
It’s just that there are other songs on that album that I like a lot better. Say O’Connor. She is as talented as they come. there’s no denying that
It’s hard to come into a conversation like this with any kind of negativity or like, you know, I don’t want to come in and be like, I just don’t really like Snate O’Connor because, I mean, how could you not like, so she’s sings so well. She’s like such a great present. She’s, by all accounts, a really wonderful person and all of those things
So it’s really hard to come in and be like, yeah, I just don’t really, but I don’t really care for Sinate O’Connor that much in terms of, in terms of me like going out of my way to listen to it, I guess. Because, again, I don’t have anything again, like Mandinka is catchy. Nothing compares to you is a classic
I mean, the way she, you know, it’s not her song that she wrote, but the way she interpreted it is, it’s one of those situations where she like essentially stole that song from Prince and it became her song because she did such an amazing job on it. So I don’t know what it is that just doesn’t quite get me there with her to get me on board with like being a Cenny O’Connor fan, but I never can quite get there. But, I mean, Troy is a showcase for everything that she can do from her singing talent, also just the way she can emote, and she, the way she takes you through that song as it gets kind of more angry and aggressive
And, you know, there’s one or 2 lines where she just really grits into it. And it’s like, this is seeing her, you know, little tiny frame and and, you know, cute face, like just really, like, that’s cool. I dig the way she can do that. you know, she does that in several of her songs as well
So, you know, it’s a taste thing and I don’t think there’s any, it’s subjective. I don’t think there’s any, you know, we don’t need to get into the whys and wherefores of why you may or may not like her. I think you could just all agree that she’s incredibly talented and deserves, you know, every bit of success and probably more than she really got
I’m with you guys to a degree on the videos. I think nothing compares to you, absolutely takes that to its logical and amazing extreme conclusion where something about the way she’s looking into the camera and performing that particular song and… the way her eyes well up, you know, it’s just it’s just a perfect video. It really is
It draws you absolutely into that song and what she’s feeling. And I think that’s why I actually don’t feel that way as much about Troy. Nothing compares to you really humanizes her
Your empathy for her just like, you just, you just have this instant empathetic connection with what she’s going through and who she is as a person. I think Troy actually does her the opposite, and I think it’s a little bit of a disservice. It makes me feel more detached from her in a way
It’s a very I feel like she’s a little alien in that video, purposely so. I mean, they have it at one point kind of more of in a white, you know, she’s kind of like whited out a little bit or whatever. They were doing some effects things in that video that I don’t think work
And that could be budget stuff. You’re right that, you know, what they’re toying with here, they nail on nothing compares to you. The idea is correct
This woman can carry this on her own. We just need to see her doing this and it’ll be fine. But then they got a little clever with the lighting and the colors and all that kind of stuff
Yeah, and even just some of her positioning and stuff just it made me detach from her and not feel the empathy and like the connection with her that I feel and nothing compares to you. And I think that would win me over a little bit more to Troy because that song, I think, requires you to kind of get on board with what she’s feeling in this journey she’s about to take you on and the video actually pulls me out. Absolutely does
Yeah, because the song’s not doing much. You know, it’s you have to get on board with what she’s doing vocally. You have to buy it
Yeah, to have it work on you, you know. Yeah. And so that, that, I didn’t, I didn’t feel as much for that, for that
And like Mandinka is another example of kind of seeing her in a different light where she’s got the guitar. She’s, you know, you kind of see her a little bit in a little bit more of an actual performance type situation, and that works for me. So I do like the Mandinka video
I do like Mandinka as a song. You should check out, you should check out, I Want Your Hands on Me too, because it’s more of the same. You know, it’s her performing it, but she’s dancing, like, kind of joyously
I remember that from, yeah, it’s really a good video. But yeah, what can I say? I mean, she is at the top of the list of, I don’t even know how to like, I don’t even want to try to categorize her
She’s just someone who can take a song and make it hers and sing it to its absolute perfection and make you want to, you know, feel those emotions as you’re, and all of those things I do. Even if I’m not a fan, even if I don’t necessarily go out of my way to listen to Sane O’Connor, I get that every time I hear a song from her. She does, she can still affect me in that way, which I think maybe is more of a compliment than anything that, even though I don’t necessarily say, you know, I wouldn’t say, I love this song, I buy into what she’s given me
You know what I mean? Like, that’s, that’s maybe better. So, uh, yeah, nothing against Sinate O’Connor
She never going to be someone that I, you know, listen to, you know, front to back albums or whatever. But when I do hear it, I I listen in, my ears perk up, so that’s that’s a compliment, and I I do think, you know, if nothing else, this is certainly a unique voice in that there’s nobody else that sounds like this, whether you, you know, you could not like it, and that’s fine. But it’s, you have to admit that nobody else sounds like this
I think the only cop she has from this era, and and it’s only a comp in the uniqueness of it is Bjork. Um, you know, Bjork has a very different voice. I wouldn’t compare the 2 people
You’d never listen to the 2 of them and mistake them for each other. But the uniqueness of Bjork’s voice is what carried her career through this time as well. And I think that’s what Sinead O’Connor has is, you know, it’s not only a powerful voice and a good voice
There is no one else that sounds like this. And so a lot of these songs, and I think Troy is one of them. I don’t think anyone else could have pulled off
I just I just don’t. And you can say it’s not for you, and I think that’s a perfectly fair argument, but I don’t think you’d want to hear anyone’s cover of it. That’s for sure
I would agree with that. All right, we’re going to stay in the UK now, but we are going to take another curve back in time a little bit. So we are talking about January of 1988, but the song that I’m going to talk about, which is Ultravox, Vienna
This means nothing to me It was actually recorded in, actually recorded in 1980 and released as a single in 81, so this was kind of a classic track that 120 minutes was pulling out. And I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about it because I, you know, it obviously probably won’t show up again on 120 minutes. Um, and it’s one of my favorite electropop songs
It also brings us back to a genre we talked about early on in the podcast when we talked about OMD, which is sophistopop. I think was the term that we all learned on that one and this one is as sophistapop as they come. I think that this is the definition of that
If you wanted to try to explain to someone what that means, I think you would probably pull this song out and be successful. You know, it’s about Vienna a little bit. It’s meant to kind of evoke a little bit of the class, you know, of classical music with the piano and and obviously when the up when the up tempo bits come in. kind of a little bit of a string type of, you know, it’s synth, but it’s, there’s a string arrangement
So they’re kind of playing with that idea of Mozart and Vienna as being kind of a capital of classical music, but also just a straight up electro pop jam, which I, which I love. So let’s talk a little bit about Ultravox first. They formed in London as a band called Tiger Lily, all the way back in 1974
So these guys had been around a while. They originally started out with a lead singer named John Fox, who left the band in 1979, and he was replaced by someone named Midge Jour, I think is how you pronounce his last name, being Swedish that I think there’s a little J sound that doesn’t actually show up when you spell the name, but I wasn’t able to find someone that was said it out loud. So I’m kind of taking a stab at that
But Midge came, which is actually Midge is actually a, his real name is Jim, so it’s a backwards. He switched it around to be Midge, which is Jim backwards. Midge was in a band right before this with the keyboardist that was also in Ultravox by the name of Visage, which you may have run across, if you remember their song, Fade to Grey
Kind of a classic, another classic, like electro pop song, another kind of memorable video that used like real stark, like fake face painting, is kind of the thing that you might remember about seeing the visage video if you’ve seen it recently or remember that. But that was around around the turn of the decade. So like 7980, they were envisaged
Mitch came over, joined Ultravox, and just took them on a run in the UK. The amount of success they have in the UK blows me away. So from 80 to 86, 6 year run, 7 top 10 albums, 17 top 40 singles in the UK
That is a lot of hit making in 6 years. I mean, that’s like almost a Beatles type run. You know, I’m not going to say that Ultrabox is the Beatles or compare it, but, I mean, that’s a lot of, a lot of hit albums and singles
Not a single one of those songs, including Vienna, ever hit the charts in the USA that I could find. I didn’t do the research on every single single because I was pretty sure if Vienna didn’t even touch the hot 100. None of these other songs did, but I did a little checking and I couldn’t find anything
So they really never cracked that nut coming over to the United States until, I mean, I guess it depends on how you look at it. Like Vienna obviously did get some play, I think, in the United States, here and there. 120 minutes, obviously, you know, picked it up later in the decade and it became kind of a classic. And I think in retrospect now, you know, Scott, you were telling me right before we started recording that you saw a list where Ultravox was like, that was the number one electro pop song of all time
So it has obviously gained some renown over here and certainly in the UK. Like, it was, it was massive in Europe. it still, you know, I think people still would stop and be like, hey, hey, yeah, I like that, you know, if you heard it over here. It is a song
I will say that there are well, let me put it this way. First of all, I think music is an activity. It’s an active activity
So in other words, I’m not the kind of person who thinks that you should, not that you can’t, but that you should always like put music on the background and then go do something else, right? Like, I think music is in and of itself in activity. It’s fine to put on headphones, and just listen to music, and that’s the thing you’re doing
You’re not doing something else. This is a song that I think really benefits from putting on headphones and like really listening to a very good copy. I would say if you haven’t heard the song, don’t listen to it on YouTube, go to your music platform of choice, whether it’s Apple Music or Spotify or something
Listen to like an actual really good recording of this song, because I think that makes the difference between liking and loving this track to some degree. And I think that should apply to all music, but I will say like there are some albums that cry out for that more than others. Like, okay, computer, I think, cries out for headphones and quiet and focus and let’s listen to this album
This is a song that I’m not going to say it requires it, but it benefits from headphones and a good copy and turn it up loud and really let yourself just kind of go on this 3 or 4 minute journey with Ultravox. So that’s my advice for listening to it if you’ve listened to it. It’s the production on it is so good
There’s all these little things that are just kind of happening that you may not pick out if you’re just kind of throwing it on like a cheap spare of speakers and you’re not really listening to it, that I think kind of make this. It takes the song from good to great, in my opinion, the production does. So I do believe that some of maybe if you’ve heard the song and you don’t really love it, it might be because you’ve never just really heard like all the things that are going on in it
That said, I see why it didn’t hit the charts in the U.S. Like, it’s not a pop song that really is going to fit on any US radio format in the 80s. Uh, even now. I mean, it’s just it’s not really a club song either
It just doesn’t really fit into a neat box that would have worked for for a billboard hot 100 hit. It’s just a really cool song. The intro is so sparse and so spare that, of course, that’s, again, a thing that usually doesn’t work on US top 40 radio
I love it when the beat does drop, as the kids say, and it gets into it. Like, that’s, to me, is just, it’s really fantastic when you do kind of feel where it’s going to start to go. I do have some criticisms of it, but I do love how there’s a moment where you hear the piano, the beat, and then, like, you can just kind of start to feel the tempo come up a little bit and come out
Oh, they’re going to go somewhere with this and they do. And then when it comes all the way back around to the to the course and that and the slow beat. I just really love the way that the song is put together
I love the production. I love… Well, and the melody
I mean, the melody and obviously his voice is absolutely phenomenal. The way he hits those top notes when he’s seeing in Vienna is just like, to me, that it’s just really transcendent. I absolutely love it
If I was going to criticize this song, and I will. For me, actually, the only thing is I think I think they were limited by the equipment that they had at their disposal when they recorded this, and specifically what I’m talking about is the song was almost certainly recorded on tape on like a A track or 24 track, depending on what they had. And when they do the transition
The thing is, with electronic music at this time, MIDI was an extremely new thing, and MIDI is a way that you can connect all these electronic instruments and have them all synced and the tempos are the same. When you change tempo in electronic music. It’s a real problem
You don’t have a live drummer and live people that can kind of feel where you’re going and follow the drummer and you can make this like really smooth transition. And you kind of feel it when that, when the tempo comes up, it goes, it goes, and then it’s like this really jarring kind of into the, to the fast tempo part. And the strings come in and you feel a little glitched out and a little off base, just, just a touch
And I don’t necessarily love the sense in that up-tempo part. I think if I was, if I were to quote unquote, fix this song, I would redo that part. I don’t love that element of it
And then when it drops back to the slow beat, again, I think they had to do like a hard cut on tape and you can just kind of feel it kind of jump back to that. It’s not as smooth as you would want it to be. again, it’s not, I don’t think they had a choice. I don’t think there was any way they could have done it better in 81
And I’ll give you an example of a song that I also feel this way about, as classic a song as it comes, as top of the heat production as it comes, but good vibrations from Beach Boys has that same problem because they just couldn’t make those transitions as smooth as I think Brian Wilson probably would like them to be because you have to make that hard cut on tape. You can’t, you don’t have the tools that you have now to make those little transitions as smooth as, as, and so I feel when I listen to good vibrations when I listen to Vienna, when I listen to a few other songs that kind of make those big jumps. They just jump out a little bit at me
And I really just think that’s a limitation, not in their imagination, not in their skill set, just a limitation of what they had at their disposal in the studio. That’s my feeling. That’s the only thing I have against this song
Otherwise, I feel like it’s perfect. It’s not, again, it’s not something that I ever would have thought would be a hit. It’s not something that you can bump in the club
It’s not anything other than a couple minutes of just quiet kind of introspection and like let this guy take you on this journey and it either works for you or it doesn’t. And I have a feeling it works for one of you, and it doesn’t work for another of you. And let’s let’s find out which is which
I, you know, I, it’s gonna, I probably sound like I’m about to slide on this song. I’m not. I like the song
It’s fine. But I do have to kind of admit that I have a strange relationship with it because I definitely didn’t hear it at the time we’re talking about it. I definitely didn’t hear when it came out
Um, I don’t even remember it from like the retro radio shows that you guys did and stuff in the in the 90s. I don’t, I just, I probably heard it and it just never like stuck with me for some reason. So I do remember about 20 years ago, about 2005 or so, like you mentioned, I was reading an article and it was like the 100 greatest electro pop songs of all time
And number one is Vienna by UltraBox. I don’t even know that song, so I put it on. I just didn’t get it
And I guess I was expecting something different. It just didn’t do anything for me. And I, I, it’s almost like it’s trying to get somewhere and it never does
You know, you talk about the part at the end, where he goes, you know, do, do, do, do, do. They’re like, all right, here we go, and then the brakes just slam right back on and just never gets there. But anyway, I’m giving it a few more shots over the years
It has grown on me a little or maybe even a lot, I could say. I mean, it’s definitely well done. And I, I think, knowing that it was recorded in 1980 probably, should give you some perspective on why it sounds the way it does or why it is the way it is or even why it’s so beloved
Like, at that time, there was not a lot of this music, you know, what, in 1980, what was around in this? You know, do craft work? like there wasn’t a whole lot going on in this kind of music
So, from that perspective, I understand maybe it’s why as popular as it was. I did really like the video. It’s great to look at it. works really well for the song and so I know it sounds like I’m kind of down on it
I’m really not. It is a good song. It’s just, it’s not the greatest electro pop single of all time
It’s, it’s, to me, it’s not even the best Ultravox song of all time. You know, I mean, are they, they’re saying that this is a better song than always on my mind by the Pet Shop Boys. Nope
I think I went into it with an expectation that it didn’t live up to for me. But, you know, stepping back from that, putting things in perspective, listening to it again, I do like this song. And I really like the video
I love it. I love it, love it, love it. Love me some of the end
This is a great song. Like the video too. Musically, it’s just a beautiful song
And you talked a little bit about some of the production stuff, Mike. One of the things I wanted to point out that I really, really like about this song is in the verse, it’s kind of got the just synth bass hits, the boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, kind of thing going on. But then when it gets into the chorus, there’s that rising synth base as it comes up into the held notes that run through the chorus and then the piano kicks in right over it and man, that changed
Like, you know, there are certain songs that you listen to that can, like, make the hair on the back of your neck stand up a little bit just because it’s, you know, it’s affecting you in such a visceral way. That change in that song does that to me almost every time. I just really, really love that
And like I said, I like the video a lot too. This was the 1st time I’d ever seen it. And so I didn’t know going in what it was
This is a perfect 80s video. This is what all videos from the 80s should be and in my head are, just really love the video. And I’m not sure about this
I think watching it, you know, at the very beginning, you’ve got the kind of the street scene in Vienna, and there’s like a horse walking down, and then there’s the girl walking behind it on all that. And then later in the video, at the very end, I believe it’s the same girl that ends up shooting the guy on the stairs. You know, she’s running away from the guy down the stairs, gets to the other guy down there
I guess he hands her a pistol and she reads up and shoots the guy and he goes, you know, goes down and that’s kind of the climax of the video. And my thinking is that the horse imagery, you remember, you guys probably heard the the phrase, you know, death rides a pale horse, or death rides a white horse, you know, the death rides a pale horse is a reference to the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse, death. The horseman rides a pale horse
And I think that that’s what you’re seeing there. Because that horse doesn’t show up anywhere else in the video. It’s just in that one shot, right? At the very beginning. I think that’s what it is. foreshadowing, you know, here’s the girl that’s going to end up killing this guy and the horse is coming in front of her and then kind of walks out of the picture. And so I really like that
I thought that was a neat thing. I also want to give kudos to whichever band member it was that let the giant tarantula crawl on his face for a 2nd there because you would have had to have paid me literally 1000000s of dollars to do that. There’s no way that would ever have happened
And then the last thing I thought about the videos that, uh, Midge, the, especially when he had the overcoat on and the pencil thin mustache was given off some very cool snidely whiplash vibes. So I really liked that look too. So yeah, everything about this
I love the song, have loved it for a lot of years, used to play it on retro radio a lot. Like I said, 1st time seeing the video, really loved the video. So, yeah, this was this was a delight for me. like everything about it
I enjoyed. Yeah, I didn’t, I forgot to mention the video. It is fantastic. actually shot in in Vienna
Meant to evoke the 3rd man, which was a film that Star Orson Wells, and was about shot envy, and it was basically a story of post-World War 2 Vienna. So there’s some parallels there. I don’t know the film very well
So I don’t know if, you know, the woman shooting the guy as part of that film or anything like that. didn’t get that deep into it. But I particularly like the 1st like minute or so of just the black and white and Midge being kind of out and walking in his trench coat. And yeah, it evokes the right feeling, I think, for the song, which this song could really be damaged by the wrong video and this is not that
This is the right video for that song. So that’s that’s fantastic. The video definitely works
Was this video made when the song came out like in 81? As far as I know, yeah, it was it was… So a little ahead of its time, honestly
I mean, it’s a really solid video for what it is. Yeah, both the song and the video, I think. Video costs 67,000 English sterling pounds to make
The exchange rate at the time, as near as I could tell, was pretty strong, so that roughly translates to about $15,000. So about $5000 more than the replacements video that was made a few years later, very vast difference in what you think the budgets to those 2 videos would have been. How much beer did Ultrabox have? Yeah, probably not a fraction of what the replacements would require, I think, to not that they’re actually even in that video. I don’t know that they were in that, they probably wouldn’t have been there. They may not have been known, yeah
But yeah, it does speak to the timing of that song coming out, I think, is critical if you’re kind of looking at it through that lens, like through a critical lens or wondering why it might appear at the top 10 or top 5 of like Alzheimer’s. 1980. I mean, think about, like, just can’t get enough, or maybe some of the stuff, early stuff from Yaz, or craft work
Like, those songs, Devo, those songs are very metric because of kind of, again, the limitations of electronics since at that time, the lack of the ability to kind of tie it all together with technology like MIDI, which really wouldn’t come along and become more prevalent for a few more years. The song structure being, you know, structured like, I mean, it’s not like a rock song either or a pop song, but it’s not structured the way a lot of early or late 70s, early 80s electropop was, it just really stands out for its uniqueness and for pushing the boundaries of what I think electronic music could be. I think that’s it 100% is that
And that’s what I was trying to get at is, is that I think the fact that it’s not dancey, when you, when you think electro pop, you think dancey. And the fact that you, you know, you put this on cold and it’s not dancy. I think that’s why it didn’t leap out at me
But when you go back to it a 2nd time or a 3rd time and you go, you know what it’s going to be, you do start to notice all the intricacies of it and how well produced it is and how well executed it is, even though it, you know, it doesn’t make you want to, you know, shake your butt or anything, it’s got a vibe that had to be incredibly rare at this time in that type of music. And I think maybe that’s why it has the reputation that it does, is because it was way ahead of its time and doing something that everybody else with a room full of keyboards was not doing. And so that’s, that’s probably why it has built the reputation that it has
Because it really is. If nothing else, it’s unique. So, and unique is a good thing
It’s just gorgeous, though. That’s what gets me about it is especially for the time, you know, we’re talking about 1980 or whatever. And you’re right, Mike, there may be some limits of the production in there too, but with what they had, they produced a absolutely beautiful song
And that’s, you know, you just can’t, to my mind, you can’t take that away from it. whether you like it or not, it is a gorgeous song. Yeah, I couldn’t I couldn’t agree more. I think of this song as like, it’s like a standalone song
It doesn’t necessarily, it’s certainly, you know, you’re not going to listen to it in a club. It’s not something to listen to in the background. I can’t even really say that you should throw it on playlist
Like, it’s a song that just, if you just want to hear a really pretty song and feel a certain way for a couple minutes. Put this song on, put the headphones on and just experience this song. It just doesn’t, it doesn’t really fit in a lot of other places other than just being what it is
It is what it is. It stands alone. It doesn’t feel like it should just kind of, you know, I know it’s actually on a lot of 80s compilations that we were talking about, but I don’t even feel like it exists in that world
It doesn’t correctly exist even in that world. It just, it’s just its own thing. And if you just want to kind of be taking on a little journey and um, for me, it’s a, it’s a pretty transcendent one that, that 1st time he hits that, like, this means nothing to me at that, at that high register and just, oh, man, it just takes me there every time
Like, I really, I love it. But, but I don’t, I, I think maybe the reason that it’s not as well known or maybe forgotten in some circles or whatever is, because it’s not the kind of thing you would put on like your party playlist or, you know, you’re, I’m going to clean the house, so I need a, you know, I need some rockers playlist or whatever it is, it just, it doesn’t really fit anywhere else. It’s just its own. it’s just its own thing
You know? It’s it’s like David S. Pumpkins, man. It is its own thing
I know I know you said you didn’t do too deep of a dive, but they really did never have like a US hit. I can find no evidence of them hitting the charger. I remember, like, in high school, instead of hearing, like, dancing with tears in my eyes and reap the wild wind
I knew those songs. somebody must have played them for me. You know, I must have had a friend that knew somebody from England or something. don’t know. Yeah, and it’s possible that I missed it because they had 17 songs
I just didn’t know this. Yeah. I mean, they had 17 hits in the UK, so I didn’t check every single one to see where it may have charted, but I figure if Vienna didn’t, I don’t know
But maybe because of all the things we’ve been talking about. Maybe that’s why the ended up. Yeah, like the 2 I just mentioned
I both just mentioned both very dancey. I think that’s what they did, yeah. Tell us in the comments, folks
You can let us know. Tell Scott how wrong he is about Vienna because I know. Yeah, Rose Scott and then and then talk about Ultravox’s success in the US
All right, we are going to move on to the mystery song. And this week, you know, we almost we almost chose a different song. There was a song that popped up in December
We ended up choosing a different song and so we listened to it, and it was kind of one that we were like, oh, it’s kind of a shame we didn’t talk about it. So we thought about talking about it in January, but we ended up picking something else, and I’m glad we did, because I think it’s really interesting to have this song and the replacements both in the same episode, because there’s some, like, same season. There’s some differences that maybe are kind of interesting to juxtapose, but let’s get into it and let’s let Keith kind of take us there
All right. Well, today for our mystery song. We are going to be talking about a song called Face to Face by the band Government Teams
The only time you tell a truth. I’ll ask the questions I can’t answer now You can’t tell me then. Nothing’s changed And in case you don’t know, Back in the ’80s, the U.S. government bought a bunch of excess dairy to help dairy farmers at the time were having trouble with their products, and then ended up turning around and making these blocks of processed cheese that they gave out to, you know, people that were on needed food assistance and food banks and all that kind of stuff was known as government cheese
And that is where the phrase government cheese comes from. That’s a pretty funny name for a band. And if you dig into these guys a little bit, and I’ll get into it here in a second, they have a pretty good sense of humor
So I think it makes sense that they had a band named like government cheese. But this song is a jam. I don’t know what you guys thought about it, but man, this song rocks
Yeah, it was awesome. And yeah, very much in the same vein as the replacements, kind of loud and over the top and a little loose and just rocks hard, man. I really, really like this song
These guys were from Bowling Green, Kentucky, active mainly from 85 to 92, but they have had a few reunions over the years, and in fact, released an album as recently as 2022. The band is a guy named Tommy Womack, his guitar and vocals, Scott Willis on guitar, Billy Mack Hill on bass, Joe Elvis in quotation marks, King on drums, and Viva McQueen on guitar. And as far as I can tell, I think it’s always been just these 5 guys through the comings and goings of the band
I think that’s just been them that have been the band the entire time. This song is often EP that’s called Come on back to Bowling Green and Marry Me, which, you know, seems like a reasonable request if your girl is taking off on you. So maybe they were trying to get one of their girls back, who knows? These guys were known for their stage shows. Apparently they put on really good stage shows and this video is largely a live video. It’s just them playing the song, you know, a club that appeared to be called Picasso’s, and I’m guessing that was in Bowling Green
There’s a few other interstitial cuts in there, but it largely is just a performance video. Like I said, these guys were known for being a really good live band and they played around. They played the 40 watt in Athens
They played the CBGB one pointer or another. So these guys got a little bit of a push. I mean, they got to, you know, obviously got a song on MTV, got to travel around and play some pretty, uh, influential and popular clubs in different places around the country
Like I said, one of my favorite things about these guys were just kind of reading a little bit about them, is that they do seem to have a really great tongue in cheek kind of sense of humor. Like, Tommy Womack wrote a book about the band, and it’s called the Cheese Chronicles, which is just a great name for a band or for a book. So yeah, if you ever want to learn more about government cheese, the band, go looking for the cheese chronicles
And then last year they had a 40th anniversary, what they called a 40th anniversary world tour, which consisted of 3 dates, 2 of which were in Kentucky. The other one was in Tennessee. So that was their world tour
They played 3 shows right around their hometown, and that was the 40th anniversary world tour. So, yeah, these guys had a good sense of humor. I didn’t check any of the other stuff out
I wish I had time to go listen to more of this stuff because this song really, really rocks, but that’s really about all I got about it is just, I loved this song. I thought it was a great kind of up tempo, almost punk rocker. The guys seem like really fun dudes with really good suits of humor
They were known for being a good live band. So, yeah, I have a feeling that if I had known about government cheese back in the day, I probably would have been a fan, but yeah, interesting to see what you guys thought about them. Yeah, I meant to check the KTXT playlist that we have to see if they were on the playlist
Maybe. I don’t think so. I mean, obviously the 3 of us were not familiar with them, but we should have been playing them because why not? Like, they’re great. Like they’re the classic just straight ahead, rock and roll, but I love like little tongue in cheek, little sense of humor. They had some charisma, like you could tell in the video
They, you know, they were comfortable being on stage and performing all the things that you want from a rock band. So I don’t, I mean, and then there really isn’t like a lot to like break down the way we were just like breaking Vienna down. Like it is straight ahead rocker
The guy seemed cool. Video is just them up on stage. Like there’s really not a lot to break down about this other than just it rocks
And so really my takeaway was this and the replacements, you know, coming up on the same episode because they are very much cut from the same cloth. I mean, they’re, you know, they’re they’re brothers in arms, practically like late 80s, like rock bands that were kind of trying to not be… I I guess be I, I, I don’t know that they consciously thought this, but like kind of the antidote or the the alternative to Poison and Motley Crew and Def Leppard and the bands that were dominating, you know, MTV at this time, the all bands that I loved at the time, you know, so no disc to those guys, but like the replacements and and these guys and then, you know, the pixies and bands like that were coming along and kind of challenging that type of music and saying, hey, you know, there’s a different way to do rock and these guys were part of that, I think
And it’s that question that we’ve had a couple times now, both on like the one-hit wonder shows and on these mystery bands of like, why the replacements are the replacements and why government cheese are government cheese. You know, the replacements got back together and did a world tour, it would legitimately be a world tour and they would be huge and people would go nuts and like it would be a big thing. Government she’s played 3 tour, you know, 3 dates around where they were and that’s probably as big as they got
And why is that? I, you know, in this case, maybe Paul Westerberg is a little bit more of a front man type. Like there was a little something with a front man’s voice that didn’t quite hit me the way like Paul Westerberg’s voice hit me
I don’t even know what it is if it’s like the timbre of his voice or just, it’s not even really singing ability because it’s not that either of them could sing better or worse than the other. There was just something about government cheese that fell a little flat when you hear it back to back with Bastards of Young, for example. Like, it’s a tough comparison for any rock band to have to, like, go up against the replacements
But like, if you listen to him back to back, well, let’s say this, if you played those 2 songs for someone who didn’t know either, back to back and said one of these bands is thought of as one of the greatest rock and roll bands of all time and one of them isn’t, would the person always choose Bastards of Young? I think so. And I don’t know why exactly
Does that make sense? Like, I couldn’t pin it down. You’re right, and I couldn’t tell you why
But it’s so ineffable. And maybe that’s my bias. Maybe that’s, you know, me writing history that doesn’t exist or whatever, but like, I feel like if, if, and maybe I’ll try this on, on my wife, Tracy, and although I think she’s familiar with replacements a little bit, but like maybe she, this, that would be a good experiment, but there’s something missing in government cheese that’s there for the replacements, I think, but that maybe is, again, me using my bias or my knowledge of, of where those bands would go, you know, against them, and that’s not fair, because government cheese is a great song
It’s a rocker. Again, the guys seem friendly and great and charismatic and all the things you would want in a rock band. So no just to government cheese. definitely check him out
But that was kind of my takeaway is hearing them up against replacements is kind of enlightening in a way. So I love this. I think these guys have just a great sound
I mean, they’re right in that groove. between new wave and punk, you know, that was happening this time. It’s got the, like, sort of the polish and fun of new wave, but the edge of punk or something. I mean, it’s, I’m kind of having a hard time describing it in the same way that you are, like why that band and not this band
But my only comment on the video that I’m not really sure about their look. And now, I knew nothing about this other than watching the video. So, you know, hearing you say that they’re a little tongue in cheek, maybe that’s what it is, but I think they should look like the replacements
I think they should be wearing jeans and t-shirts and whatever, you know, if I heard the song and not saw the video. what I’d think. But they look like the romantics or the outfield or, you know, one of those early 80s sort of new wavy rock bands, right? So it’s like they picked a look in 82 and just kind of stuck with it
Yeah, lover boy came to mind for that. Yeah, exactly, that kind of thing. Right? That early 80s rock and roll where it was still like new wave influence. Other than that, nothing to say about this. I loved every 2nd of it
And, um, in fact, I didn’t look up that they were still around, but I did look up whether or not they sell merchandise and they do. You can buy a government cheese t-shirt. And if you think I didn’t buy one you are wrong
So, uh, I I love this. Loved every 2nd of it. all I have to say. Yeah, fantastic rocker
And I’m so glad. The other song that we talked about. I’ve listened to it too and liked it well enough, but man, switching to this one was such a great move
Yeah, this is this is good. Like for however they stack up against the replacements or whatever, that’s no knock on the, you should go check these guys out. They’re fun
If you just like rock and roll. And I mean, just like, you just want rock and roll. like right down the pipe. This is it
That’s exactly it. There is nothing earth shattering about this. It’s not going to change your world
Yeah, but man, is it just a great 4 minutes of rock and roll? Just a solid, solid rock and roll song. Solid 4 minutes of gum cheese, baby
All right, so we’re going to wrap it up. I am going to go back and fix a mistake on my part. Well, the mistake was not doing the research
So Ultravox had a number 71 track in the U.S. with Reap the Wild Wind and a number 108 chart for Dancing with Tears in My Eyes, which fits below 100 that doesn’t even really count as charts, so it’s not. Those are the 2 songs of theirs that I know. So those are
So, yeah, those are the ones. Vienna didn’t touch. Yeah
Vienna did not touch, but it was released also in 92 and 93, they re-released Vienna, which is interesting, and that might be where it kind of came back into some people’s conscious as well. Still didn’t hit the charts in the US, even on the reissue, but I did want to correct that because they technically did hit the billboard 101 time with Reap the Wild Wind, oddly enough. And then, yeah, those were the 2 songs of theirs that I knew
So I somebody must have played them for me when I was in high school because I knew those 2 songs. All right, folks, January 1988. There you have it
Man. You know, we always kind of like to say, well, if you haven’t heard these people, go check them out. I mean, if you haven’t heard the replacements
I mean, that’s kind of of, yeah, go fix that. Like that, if you have to just choose one from this episode, I’m going to say the replacements because, 0 my god, like they are as good as rock and roll gets. Barnone, period
In-stop. No, you don’t have to qualify that. you don’t have to it’s just as good as a rock and roll band can be the replacements are that. Sinate O’Connor is a different story in terms of it’s not for everybody
I mean, I mean, maybe their placements aren’t for everybody either, but I mean, it’s, uh, Sunato Connor is a little bit more of an acquired taste, but man, if you aren’t familiar with her game beyond nothing compares to you, you should go listen to it. I mean, I, again, not it’s not something I seek out, but wow, can she really, I mean, she can do even more than you think she can do just. Nothing compares to you just scratches the surface of what she does
Yeah, and Troy is as good at any to see what she can do. It’s not the catchiest or the most easily accessible song like Mandinka and some of her other stuff. But if you just are curious about what we’re talking about
And I’m like, what, you know, what do they what do they mean when they say that she can go listen to Troy, because, I mean, you will see the range that she has in terms of literal range, literal vocal range and also emotional range, both in Troy, that is pretty impressive. I mean, whether you like it or not, you have to like kind of stand back and be like, well, that’s talent. Barna, you know, unequivocally talented
Song may not be for you, but you can’t deny what she’s doing. No absolutely not. Ultravox, just set aside 4 minutes, grab a pair of headphones
Find a good copy of it and listen to it. That’s it. You don’t have to go deeper into their catalog
You don’t have to make a big thing of it. Just listen to the Vienna at some point in your life. I think you’ll like it. all I have to say about that
Government cheese. absolutely go check them out. By their merch, they deserve it. I mean, who doesn’t want a government cheese shirt? Mine on the way. Like, why not? I actually am going to dig a little deeper into them because I am curious if this was kind of the, the, you know, the peak of their their output or if this is just an example of what they did all the time
Because if they were chugging these out, you know, if they have 5 or 6 other songs as good as this one, then it’s really a shame they didn’t like break out. What can I say? Another episode where we pretty much, you know, universally liked everything. you know, just because we’re not the biggest fans of a particular artist, like good stuff all around
Thanks to 120 minutes.org. That is a website where you can see these playlists that we’re working off of for 120 minutes. They’ve done a lot of the legwork in terms of finding out what played each week on 120 minutes and also link into the YouTube video, so it’s super easy to go through and listen to the stuff that we’ve talked about and also what we didn’t talk about
You can kind of go and see like what we skipped because there’s a lot, especially now that were in 88 and 89 and like moving forward, there are a lot of playlists for each month and a lot of songs that we can’t cover because we don’t have time. So thanks to them, go check it out. Don’t forget about 35,000 watts, the story of college radio, documentary film about college radio
It’s available right now on Amazon Prime, Google Play, 2B, and now available for free on YouTube so you don’t have any excuses to go not to not go check it out. Thanks again to Scott Mobley, to Keith Porterfield. We will be back with February of 1988 next time on 120 months