Tuesday Tuneage
INXS and Jimmy Barnes - "Good Times"
1987

The Lost Boys looked promising upon release: teen horror-comedy flick featuring the actors responsible for the two best performanes in Stand By Me: That era’s teen movie creepo Kiefer Sutherland and the irrepressible Corey Feldman. Throw in the other Corey (Haim) to advance the comedy (“that’s a serious book”) and include Jason Patric and Jami Gertz, who brought the darkly smoldering aspect. But upon three or four viewings over the decades, it’s never topped that first fun “watch it some Saturday night with roommates” vibe, though my most recent alone with Cutty Sark rocks and in the mood to laugh brought some valued summer entertainment.

“Good Time” by INXS and (who the heck is) Jimmy Barnes is heard twice in The Lost Boys, early in a boardwalk scene and then in the climatic waste-the-vampires scene:

Vampire: You missed, sucker.
Corey Haim: Only once, pal.

First heard this one in the summer of ‘87 on Q-98 out of Fargo, was quick to learn it was first recorded by Aussie legends The Easybeats, who featured Harry Vanda and George Young, later to go on to produce AC/DC albums. As let’s-have-some-fun songs goes it’s up there with and reminiscent of Eddie Cochran’s “C’mon Everybody” and in another throwback the party promises to include Little Richard’s Long Tall Sally and Larry Williams’ Bony Moronie. I have the single of the INXS/Barnes version, my 45 practically jumps off the turntable, what a grade-A fucking sound! Figures, it was remixed by Bob Clearmountain. (The B-side was remixed by Chris Thomas, which somehow made complete and utter sense when I first scanned the credits.) I bought my single at Cheapo way back when and it has a Fallon McElligott sticker on it. Makes you wonder who was running that joint back in the day — we know Sterling Cooper controller Lane Pryce wouldn’t go for buying random singles to play on the firm’s hi-fi.

Tuesday Tuneage
AC/DC - "For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)"
1981

As noted here before, the Young brothers’ attempts to mimic Pete Townshend’s *Who’s Next* synthesizer using guitars were downright admirable. That sound was first heard on this track and the use of cannons towards the end of the song was downright Spinal Tap-esque*. Wikipedia says AC/DC was inspired to employ artillery when hearing cannons being used at the wedding of Charles and Diana. Turns out those inbred German royals were good for something after all.

*AC/DC’s use of phallic metaphors is a whole other Tap-worthy thing. As Chuck Eddy has noted, the *For Those About To Rock** album alone has “Let’s Get It Up”, “Inject the Venom”, and “Night of the Long Knives.” You could make your own playlist of such songs by throwing in “Big Gun”, “Sink the Pink”, “Hard As a Rock”, “Fire Your Guns”, “Let Me Put My Love Into You,” and many, many more.

Tuesday Tuneage
Alice Cooper - "School's Out"
1972

On a recent Saturday morning I was supposed to take an accounting course to further my knowledge and appreciation of the profession learn something new to help make some extra money so I can maybe bump up my retirement savings and hopefully get out of the game before chronic pain takes over my life. So I had a doughnut and coffee ready in my UND mug and was set to start. I logged in and found out a specific software was needed to take this course and I would have to take it elsewhere. What to do with an unexpected hour off?

Reminds me of junior year in college when I was taking a course called The Economics of Labor and the professor was a real stiff. Grumpy and anti-union. Great, a professor hostile to labor teaching a course centered around labor … it was fun to wear my P-9 Proud button to class one day. And now I’m hesitant to get out my transcript to see if I: 1) gutted out an A or B in this course, or 2) took a C in some sort of mail-it-in misguided protest. Anyway, one day he simply didn’t show up. We all sat in the classroom for about ten minutes and then reached some sort of consensus: F*ck this, let’s leave. Huh, an unexpected hour off during college? What to do? Unfortunately I didn’t have a non-school book with me to pass the time with (the best thing about going to the laundromat back then, shun the video games and sit on one of those crummy uncomfortable plastic seats and read a book that wasn’t required for as long as the machines were running) so I headed to the library, found a quiet cubicle, and took a nap. Professor Grumpus was back the next day. (And that Saturday morning I took my coffee and doughnut to the recliner and watched Succession.)

Tuesday Tuneage
Van Halen - “Dancing in the Street”
1982

Per Wikipedia, the David Bowie and Mick Jagger cover of “Dancing in the Street” had two lead singers, three guitarists, two bassists, one drummer and a variety of other hangers-on who participated in that absolute mediocrity. But three years earlier, Van Halen made some seriously great white funk with the same song using just the four guys in the band being produced by the irreproachable Ted Templeman. The Bowie/Jagger song was produced by the duo of (seriously, I’m not making these names up) Alan Winstanley and Clive Langer, who no doubt were paying more attention to their black pudding and/or bangers and mash than to bother working with a couple of fading postage-prepaid superstars and put out anything that anyone would want to listen to decades later. Some didn’t want to listen to it the following week back in ‘85, either.

RIP Edward Van Halen, 1955 - 2020

Tuesday Tuneage
Bachman-Turner Overdrive - “Roll On Down the Highway”
1974

I was going to write this as a short ramble:

While this song celebrates a road trip, blasting it while on the elliptical or out for a walk makes me want to hit a dive bar, order a PBR tallboy, put some BTO in the jukebox, get a cheeseburger and fries, and thank the Lord that despite some bad habits I don’t have the physique of the BTO guys ...

But then I decided to look at the lyrics to see if I might glean some insight (as one does with BTO lyrics) and hoo-boy came across this ...

“I’d like to have a jet but it’s not in the song”

Oh man, just like Alice Cooper in “School’s Out” (”we can’t even think of a word that rhymes”) — they broke the fourth wall! That BTO pulled this off along with the self-employed anthem “Takin’ Care of Business” and the straight-up weirdo “Hey You” just amps up my respect for these guys. Time for another tallboy.

Tuesday Tuneage
Bachman-Turner Overdrive - “Takin’ Care of Business”
1973

Look at me I’m self-employed

I love to work at nothing all day.

     - BTO

In the past twenty years or so: 1) I’ve complained about my long-ago time in Corporate America and, 2) gloated about working from home as my own boss. As my twentieth anniversary of being self-employed approaches, I decided to gather up my instinctive making-it-up-as-I-go moves as Real Knowledge, available only as a correspondence course. So here you go, excerpts from Accounting 666: How To Run Your Own Bookkeeping Business.

WORKDAY/WORKWEEK

First off, recent study shows that if you’re over forty, you shouldn’t work five-day weeks. I read this in Martha Stewart Living magazine when looking for recipes for my mini crockpot. Actually an algorithm in my Pocket app sent it to me, but cooking dinner in your mini crockpot makes the end of your day rather easy — no dinner to prep as you did that in the morning —though you have to smell the deliciousness brewing in it as the afternoon goes on. Load up on almonds when the hunger pangs hit.

Do not set your alarm in the morning. Being woken up when you’re not ready to be awake causes crankiness. Scientists say that you should sleep until you wake on your own, this is best for your sleep habits. Lord, I love science. Then again, maybe I read this one in Martha Stewart Living as well.

And if you’re not knocking off by three p.m. (no matter how late you sleep), you’re doing it wrong. The elliptical machines at the gym will be widely available or you can take your (non- business related) reading material to the coffee shop or you can get a head start on happy hour.

WORDS TO LIVE YOUR BUSINESS BY:

“Get the money up front.” This one has stuck with me since I was a kid and had no idea what I was going to be when I grew up. Maybe I dreamt of being a scientist who would convince people not to use an alarm clock. The quote is from a commercial that constantly ran for a kids version of  The Joker’s Wild game show. It was some smartass kid who cracked the host up.

“TCB: Taking Care of Business.” Cosmo Kramer said this on Seinfeld when he inadvertently stumbled into a corporate office gig and Jerry asked him what he did. Say it with the utmost confidence.

“That’s a Quickbooks bug, given Intuit’s knack for making an upgrade a downgrade.” This is one of my own quotes. It’s true, and never hesitate to blame any sort of glitch in reports on Quickbooks. It’s reputation precedes it.

“100 dollars a day, plus expenses.” Said by Jim Rockford, who should be your patron saint. Sure, he got beat up every episode and never seemed to get paid, but he lived in a trailer by the Pacific Ocean*, had an answering machine (BIG in the mid-seventies, and the messages were always noteworthy), didn’t have to wear a tie, drove a cool car, and was always taking attractive women out for tacos.

MEETINGS

I’ve extolled the virtues of being self-employed before: No dress code, no jerk boss, scheduling paying job around writing schedule, no nosy coworkers, charging bags of coffee beans to my business’s expenses, etc. But have I mentioned: I hardly have to sit in a meeting ever? I telecommute most days and do almost all my communication via email. The last meeting I was asked to be a part of I attended from home, it was a teleconference. The last in-person business meeting I was at? I couldn’t tell you for sure. Meetings are more often than not useless. They take you away from what you’re supposed to be doing — working — and usually exist to advance somebody else’s agenda, this agenda is usually advanced by somebody above you and involves giving you and others more work.

Hence, working at home with no boss: Just gimme a stack of papers (via email or cloud, please, don’t ask me to stop by your office for them) and I’ll get ‘em into the software and then head out to the coffee shop, blissfully blasting music on headphones and continuing to enjoy my meeting-free life. Lord, it’s awesome not being in an office that has meetings. Don’t have to sweat it out hoping that the coffee is good. Don’t have to sit around listening to other people talk. Don’t have to hear awkward attempts at humor.  Don’t have to kill time by hoping I have a pal across the conference table to play nickel hockey or paper triangle football with if the meeting starts late because some big shot is on a phone call. Don’t have to hear others use big words to show their insecurity over looking dumb. Don’t have to play mental run-out-the-clock, hoping I’m not called on … where I use small words and look smart.

The downside (I guess) to all this working at home/not leaving the apartment except to hit the coffee shop or get some exercise is that whatever limited social skills I had have diminished. Socializing is something I never learned to handle quite well and as I’ve gotten older I’ve shrugged and stopped worrying about whether I can carry on a conversation. I’ll save find the right word, dammit for writing. At least then I can edit away in glee. So now I pick and choose when I socialize. More often than not, I choose not to. Why leave this apartment when Narcos: Mexico is on Netflix, there’s books on my phone, and my turntable beckons?

WRAP-UP

If a client doesn’t pay up, threaten them with the ELCA (Enlightened Lutheran Collection Agency.)

Also, music will help you as you study the assignments in this class. My self-employed accountant acoustic blues album will be out soon on the Elektra label. First single will be "Your Love (Is Like A Bad Debt Expense)" b/w "I Got The Schedule C Blues Again". Ask for it at your favorite record store.

*Adjust for inflation.

**Better location and view than my likely retirement destination of a trailer in Richfield. This is my plan to retire in the south.

Tuesday Tuneage
AC/DC - “Who Made Who”
1986

For my money, one of the more enjoyable sounds of the eighties was when the Young brothers of AC/DC spent a few songs trying to get their guitars to replicate the sounds Pete Townshend of The Who made with a synthesizer on the Who’s Next album. “For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)”, “Sink the Pink”, “Who Made Who”, “Thunderstruck” ... these bring a smile to my face. “For Those About to Rock” was their first attempt at this —and had a very Spinal Tap-ish move of using actual cannons on the recording — but “Who Made Who” might be my favorite, it’s also their best attempt to meet the eighties halfway.* It’s a slow burn with a chanted chorus and Brian Johnson’s voice moves slightly more towards soul and less from his usual razors. The first line is: “The video game says ‘play me.’”** and the rest of the lyrics are all about data, satellites, and whether we made the machines or whether they now make us. (I think, maybe they were just taking a stab at a Cliffs Notes version of Townshend’s Lifehouse project.)

The Who Made Who album was the soundtrack the band put out for Maximum Overdrive, a movie that was supposed to be remarkable for being Stephen King’s directorial debut, but is most memorable to my friends and I for King doing a TV ad where he takes a minute and twenty seconds to declare “I’M GONNA SCARE THE HELL OUT OF YOU”, while pointing at the camera. My buds and I never saw the movie, it ended up being a big flop, and yet King was smart enough to hire AC/DC for the soundtrack so let’s call it a wash***. Not to mention that after the Flick of the Switch and Fly on the Wall albums, AC/DC seemed to be slipping off the map with the dreaded “where are they now” tag looming. Instead, they unleashed this tune and it set the stage for "Heatseeker" and their being Pillars of Hard Rock into the nineties and beyond. Every subsequent release of theirs was worth it because the singles were always great.

*One could argue that since it was AC/DC, they didn’t meet the eighties halfway as much as they won.

**I always thought the lyric was: “The video games they play me”, probably because Maximum Overdrive star Emilio Estevez played a character who got trapped in a video game in the Nightmares movie a few years earlier.

*** Think King would take a 2018 contract to take out a fictional hit on Lucinda Williams for her butchering of “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll)"?

Tuesday Tuneage
Billy Thorpe - “Children of the Sun”
1979

An Aussie updates Billy Lee Riley’s “Flyin’ Saucers Rock and Roll” from 1957 with synths and power riffs. It’s the title track of what is allegedly (sez Wikipedia) a space opera, which takes up side two of the album. (Side one? Don’t ask. Let’s just say it was also futuristic as it presaged the worst stuff you’d hear on hits radio in the eighties.) And no, Roman, I don’t know if its hard sci-fi or not. I scored this on vinyl ten years ago (and the sticker on it indicated it had sat in the Roadrunner Records used LP racks for four years) and have only listened to it in its entirety twice, afraid that if listen more I may actually understand the opera’s plot and start blabbering about it to my two friends who remember this song. Then that’ll be two guys who would “forget” to invite me to bull sessions at the CC Club. I can’t get over the photo of Thorpe on the back cover and MOST IMPORTANTLY: this song was used in Fargo season two, when Rye Gerhardt was driving down the highway — undoubtably blasting Q-98 on the radio.

Tuesday Tuneage
ZZ Top - "TV Dinners"
1983

Dear Netflix:

No more recommendations on kitchens, a chef, multiple chefs, cakes, or anything else involving food. I don't know who James Beard was, don't care. When the Star Tribune has their annual top ten local restaurants, I take it as the Top Ten Places I Have Never Eaten (and probably never will.) Usually I'm at home with meats on my George Foreman Grill or a Stouffer's Spaghetti With Meatballs. (Had to switch it up a while back from their also-hardy Lasagna With Meat And Sauce.) If it's a Friday, maybe a Heggie's. If I can work up the energy and hunger to place an order: pizza and wings or tacos-and-nachos or Chinese delivery. I used to get Jimmy John's but they turned from freaky-fast-to-taking-freaking-forever. If I venture out (BIG IF) it's the neighborhood counter diner or the local bar with the BLT that adds a fried egg. Oh and that place I bike to that has chicken tenders, sandwiches, gyros, fries, and is take-out only. That's it. No dining experience, no Grass Fed Beef!™, no dessert menu, nobody sitting across from me, nowhere to go afterwards. You should know by know I like crime thrillers, spy movies, maybe the occasional bawdy comedy or historical drama. Keep the foodie nonsense away from me. Unless it's Soylent Green.

Tuesday Tuneage
Saga - "On the Loose"
1981

She was carrying on about her boyfriend. She cried about him
every month. Check that. She cried about him every other month,
when they broke up. Then the next month they would make up,
then the next month back to a break up. She was addicted to
drama, drew my roommate into it. Phone calls where he would use
the word maintain. He was there for her. But that one Saturday
night, I don't know what the hell happened. If I wasn't with
my usual running buddies, then I should have been
somewhere quiet reading a book. But we were together
having a nightcap, Stroh's, gathered near the window,
open in winter as the heat blasted that small room.
The radio on the desk played Saga, then Moving Pictures.
Not the Rush album, the band. She started crying, saying
the song was so specific. I wished I was listening to Aerosmith.
At that point I would have settled for The Goddamn Hooters.

Tuesday Tuneage
Rush - "New World Man"
1982

Canadian smart-not-clever prog-metal power trio set out for
something different, ended up sounding kinda like ... The Police.
Geddy Lee - ...who sounds like a cross between Donald Duck and
Robert Plant. - Alan Niester, The Rolling Stone Record Guide, 1979
- doesn't sound manic, no not AT ALL. Subdued Geddy ultimately
makes this tune weird, not fun ...  unless you're into nostalgia and
this came out when you were in high school when the Rushies ran
amok, then it's likely oddly fun(ny). And hey the bass sounds cool.
Any bets on when these guys start their Second Farewell Tour?

Tuesday Tuneage
Zebra - "Who's Behind The Door?"
1983

Unlike Kingdom Come, who five years hence with "Get It On" would

shrewdly-and-astoundingly make every Hard Zep move possible, 

this one starts out as Mellow Zep, acoustic niceties off of Zep III

slowly morph into a synth/guitar/bombs-dropping blowout. The tune

is like a trip from 1970 Zep to Possible Future Zep. Synth drums

mean business sometime dammit, BadCo's "Rock 'N Roll Fantasy"

showed us this. By the last half of the tune, the vocalist suddenly

starts out hype-Planting the master: Geddy Lee. And all those

chumps in my high school hallways who insisted that Rush was

superior to all other hard rock competition because "they're so

technological" - Rush had synths, you see, and they played them

WITH THEIR FEET in concert, no sidemen needed - probably dug

these guys. You know what? Now I do too.

Tuesday Tuneage
The Alan Parsons Project - "(The System of) Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether" 
1976

I didn't realize how soul-draining an accounting day job could be until the accounting mentality started to take over more and more aspects of my life. I need order to get my accounting tasks done: assemble the paperwork in a certain way, reply and/or print off emails, check websites and Google Drive for needed information, etc. This Order Of Things unfortunately tends to take over the rest of my life ... you must clean the apartment on this day, you read the newspaper at this time of day, you do not take the bus to the art museum on this day because it is a Tuesday and you write and read on Tuesdays, etc. My bookkeeping business pays the bills and buys the whiskey and I certainly would not give it up or diss my beloved clients, but still. Doing tasks over and over that need and crave order while the other half of my mind is daydreaming and scheming and thinking about that book or movie or TV show or gal at the coffee shop is gonna result in a breakdown or at least an anxiety attack and no matter how much I walk (ankle injury keeping me off the elliptical) or do breathing exercises or dose up on hydroxyzine, I still have phases where I'm short of breath and pacing around and wonder if I should go see the doctor or just walk to a bar and numb out.

But, but. There's always music. I can got lost in it and there's no better feeling when it's playing beautifully in my living room or on headphones especially when the walls are closing in. And to further take the edge off of the hassles of accounting/debits/credits/Quickbooks' refusal to handle customer credit memos responsibly? Make a mix tape to yourself, dummy. Apple Music works beautifully for this: I create a playlist and it carries over to all my devices. I choose the songs, then assign a title to the playlist. Many times the title is an inside joke only I understand. My recent steady rotation of playlists is:

High School Hits - this one's name is as bland as the playlist (Top 40 in 1980-83 was horribly bland, you know this when the highlight of the playlist is After The Fire.) (Forgetting to put Def Leppard, Michael Jackson, Prince, and Van Halen on this list was kinda stupid, dude.)

Q98, Y'know - AOR smashes from the late seventies and early eighties.

Q98 Again - Ditto.

2014 We're Comin' We're Comin'!! - grab bag of solid songs.

Summer 2014 Bound For Rebound - funk, soul, hip-hop, hard rock all apparently intent on helping me find a dare-to-be-great situation.

My most recent playlist was quickly assembled as I was digging Type O Negative so much recently that a doomy, gloomy mix seemed to be the one thing that might make my mind feel right. (And this was before the election, go figure.) It's a mix of Type O Negative, Black Sabbath, UFO, Funkadelic, Deep Purple, Fear Factory, and others who dabble in the artsy darks. (Today's track is courtesy of the The Alan Parsons Project, whose debut album was an homage to the great Edgar Allan Poe.) The title is "The Doom That Came To", as H.P. Lovecraft had a short story titled "The Doom That Came To Sarnath", that I read in seventh grade after being fired up to read his work and finding an anthology of his in the school library. The story scared me bad, I put the book aside immediately, and returned it the next day. So I was trying to come up with my playlist title, but couldn't find the final words. These were considered:

"The Doom That Came To Harriet Avenue" YAWN
"The Doom That Came To South Minneapolis" BIGGER YAWN
"The Doom That Came To Tuomala" might have worked, but sheesh it seemed a little too ominous, like when there was that Twitter meme #AddAWordRuinAMovie and I tweeted "Kill Bill Tuomala". Yikes.

One last thing. My playlists tend to have thirteen songs and I assemble them in mostly-random order. There are thirteen cards in a suit of cards, thirteen songs in my playlists. Over time, the songs have always come to be numbered at thirteen so I don't have to omit any cards in a suit. What I do is shuffle the cards and then pick them one by one, the card number decides a song's place on the playlist. This act of randomness - a fitting act of rebellion against my Accounting Mind - is almost as much fun as picking out the songs themselves. The cards dictate the order of the songs, though sometimes the leadoff track is inserted as mandatory. Various tweaks - switches or re-jumbling of a few tracks - are usually made. (Can't have two slower songs in a row, can't have too much awesomeness clumped at the beginning or end, etc.) The cards are generally shuffled again and used to determine the tweaks. Or maybe a coin flip or two. Then the playlist is hammered out, finalized, and I crank it on my iPhone. I head out the door for a walk, daydream, write a little in my head, and maybe even relax.

Tuesday Tuneage
Van Halen - "Little Guitars"
1982

Osco Drug store, Moorhead, Minnesota, early 1982. My Dad was working across the river in Fargo and staying in a motel here in Moorhead. My Mom and I were in town to visit. My parents were elsewhere in the adjoining grocery and liquor stores shopping, I was in the Osco standing alone in front of an expansive magazine stand. We didn't have a stand like this in my town of Grand Forks, not that I knew of*. If I wanted to read a rock mag, generally I grabbed the latest Rolling Stone off the rack in my high school's library to read on a free period or asked for back issues from the librarian. This Osco stand had a beauty of a magazine that I had never seen: Creem Special Issue: Guitar Heroes of Rock 'n' Roll. There at the top it proclaimed: "America's Only Rock 'N' Roll Magazine". Photos on the cover: Jimi Hendrix! Keith Richards! Jimmy Page! And a host of other guitar slingers promised to be featured inside. I flipped around trying to absorb highlights of all the content. It was stacked page-to-page with features and a lengthy list of paragraph-each blurbs on all the other guitarists to make the cut. This is awesome, I thought. Then I didn't buy it. I'm guessing the cover price scared me away - $2.95. ($7.42 in today's dollars.) If memory serves, regular issues of magazines were about a dollar or so cheaper, so would I be getting burned by buying this three-dollar-plus (including sales tax) mag? Plus, I was on the clock. Mom and Dad would soon return from their shopping run and it was time to head out into the night. Whether I was hesitant, cheap, hurried, or was saving my cash for future gas money, I don't recall. All I know is that I have thought about that magazine ever since.

But hey: We have the Internet now, everything is possible. Because of course I found Guitar Heroes of Rock 'n' Roll on eBay, bought it NOW (no auction on this one, no more losing out) and had it shipped to my mailbox. For the price of $11.99 - including shipping - meaning I waited almost thirty-five years to pay $4.57 more for a decades-old magazine. But I can take that financial hit now, you can't get a beer plus tip for $4.57 these days in a bar unless you hit a lucky happy hour with bottles of Premium on special. And now that I had my grubby little paws on it, I'm so glad I finally stepped up and made this purchase. This magazine is a gem.

It has long-form features on Hendrix, Page, and Jeff Beck. It has shorter features on other notable guitarists, and those aforementioned paragraph blurbs. While there are oddly no mentions of Joni Mitchell or Michael Schenker, this is still the only source I have consulted that explains the whole Dave Edmunds/Nick Lowe/Rockpile jumble. I treasured every minute of reading this mag this fall. With a heady mix of reverence, wit, and insults, this shows that Creem was still running on all cylinders in the early eighties. Check these out:

On Russ Ballard: "...loss leader solo LPs for CBS..."

On Marc Bolan: "If T. Rex began as Donovan for the pre-pubescent set and wound up as Chuck Berry for the prenatals, well, that's show biz."

On Peter Frampton: "Since his screen debut in Sgt. Pepper's, Pete's had flop after flop. Nyah Nyah."

On Steve Hillage: "Would really excite you if had a beard, smoked a pipe, and read science fiction."

On Tom Scholz: "Light beer of rock 'n' roll guitarists: 'Everything you always wanted in a lead guitarist. And less.'"

On George Thorogood: "The more you drink, the better he sounds."

While I loved the issue's slipped-in asides, cheap shots, and pokes at readers, the Osco Drug 1982 Memory is always devoted to the two pages of the Edward Van Halen feature - a half page of writing, one-point-five pages of two glorious photos. In the early eighties, Van Halen was known by hard rock fans as perhaps the best rock guitarist since Hendrix. But he played metal, so recognition outside of the hard rock arena was difficult to come by, no matter how pop the metal was or how exuberant and smile-causing his playing was. He came up with hooky power chords a la Pete Townshend and his band's songs generally were as long as early Who singles, i.e. not long at all ... but his band WASN'T BRITISH AND DIDN'T ENGAGE IN BLUESY JAMS NOR WERE THEY PUNK OR QUIRKY NEW WAVE. Did Creem assign a hagiographic piece like they did with Hendrix or Page? Hell no, they did us a favor by having J. Kordosh write a hilarious FAQ that stabbed The Yardbirds, rock critics, and Valerie Bertinelli. (Plus duct tape. And it included a goddamn vinyl joke too, ha!) This is why I bought this magazine off of eBay, this is the prose I remember from 1982 in that Osco store on Highway 75 in Moorhead on a cold winter night. It is why I returned to this magazine all these years later. And I'm pretty sure buying it retroactively gives me my biggest win from 1982 since my PSAT results scored me an honorable mention.

*Turns out the UND bookstore did.

Tuesday Tuneage
John Mellencamp - "I Need a Lover"
1979

On this one, John Mellencamp easily surpasses anything he would do up to Uh-Huh and while the song is classic heartland rock, it yet stands out in odd and endearing ways:

- The intro remains special no matter how many times you hear it - rhythm section plus guitar pyrotechnics plus piano plus organ. Any time a whiff of pretension sneaks in, the killer riffs come back and take over.

- Call and response vocals, always in season.

- "This hole I call home."

- The bitch about repeated phone calls. I know, right? (Like me, I bet the narrator of this song loves the iPhone do not disturb feature which makes me soooo glad to live in this future.)

- Drums outro, a percussive reminder for you to cue this track from the beginning all over again.

Pet Benatar, on the same album where she did a passable working of the Rascals' "You Better Run" (and sent young William aflutter with that song's video), did a rather rote take on "I Need a Lover". Disappointing … leather pants, though. As for the last words uttered by Mellencamp on this one, they are "you betcha!"* which is greater Midwestern than "The Great Midwest" on the same LP.

* I paused in the dark from a walk home from a convenience store with a Heggies in my bag to type this observation on my phone. Writing is a 24/7 gig no matter where the days and nights may lead you.

Tuesday Tuneage
The Doobie Brothers - "Black Water"
1974

Harpers Bizarre's cover of Simon and Garfunkel's "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)" is one of those sixties songs like The 5th Dimension's "Up, Up And Away" and The Association's "Windy" that sounds to me like a children's song and hence I didn't like as a child.* These days such songs as these have a cute little subgenre name to match their cute little sounds: Sunshine Pop. Ugh. (File under "p" for "Precious".)

While I am unaware of a nonfunny video of Harpers Bizarre's hit that features Chevy Chase, the band is notable for one reason here we just recently became aware of here at Tuesday Tuneage: TED TEMPLEMAN WAS IN THE BAND. And it gets better…

Templeman would go on to produce The Doobie Brothers, turning their biker-friendly hard rock into solid-and-sometimes-great radio hits. Most noticeably on "Black Water", a gem that goes from pretty-tasty-to-genius with the a cappella stylings at the end. Templeman confesses to nicking this from Harpers Bizarre producer Lenny Waronker on their Groovy hit. Fine with me, I never get tired of this song and have fond memories of hearing in the back of a station wagon as a kid. And it gets EVEN better…

Ted Templeman used this same vocal trick on Van Halen's debut album. Just when "I'm The One" is racing along at 110 mph, it hits the brakes and stops for an a cappella break** that had to have blown the minds of every teenager in a Camaro or Nova in late-seventies mid-America the first time they heard it. Such a smooth move on Templeman's part: Even Michael McDonald approved.

*Because none of those annoying ditties could touch the original cast of Sesame Street and their smash hit "Rubber Duckie".

** Okay there is a little bit of percussion in it, but close enough.

Tuesday Tuneage
Kansas - "Carry On My Wayward Son"
1976

At a client on Friday they were playing a Spotify classic rock station. We heard most of the usual suspects and had a moment of serendipity: Creedence Clearwater Revival followed by The Hollies' Creedence ripoff/homage "Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress". But I was disappointed to not hear a couple of Midwestern AOR oldies-but-goodies:

1) Head East - "Never Been Any Reason"
2) Kansas - "Carry On My Wayward Son"

I mean if "Carry On My Wayward Son" came on, I was prepared to initiate a big rap session on whether it was about Jesus or Icarus. (Don't snicker, it woulda added some life to my time spent reconciling that PayPal account!) (Oh and hey PayPal: put on your big boy pants and add genuine MONTHLY STATEMENTS to your options. C'mon, be a true pal.) Also: Would an Icacus song infringe on Led Zeppelin's trademark?

I tracked The Best of Kansas last week, and can hear the peanut gallery already: "Hey Tuomala - That anthology shoulda been an EP! Just like Badfinger's shoulda been! 'Carry On My Wayward Son', 'Point Of Know Return', 'Dust In The Wind', and 'Hold On'. That's it!" I would have agreed just ten days ago, but for some reason suddenly I have a soft spot in my heart for Kansas, who I honestly had not given much thought to over the years. While I have not delved outside of The Best of Kansas, there is just enough there to keep me intrigued. For instance, "Song For America" proves that Kansas could be just as pretentious as the UK progressive bands they emulated*. You might want that one around just to show anybody who thinks eighties product "Fight Fire With Fire" is typical Kansas and you want to show what these guys were up to before airplay became the valued prize. (Surprised the drive for airplay took so long, considering these guys were on the Kirshner label. You'd think the man behind The Archies** would have urged them to shorten the songs, punch up the sound, and go for gold and platinum records.)

And if you're looking for an excuse - and I am, as I am currently tracking The Best of Kansas again with Tullamore Dew and it's getting to be a slog - to not look into any of the Kansas catalog proper, consider the groaner plays on the English language made with a couple of album titles: Point of Know Return and Leftoverture. Makes you wish the discography instead read Kansas, Kansas II, Kansas III, Kansas IV, etc. Wikipedia "research" shows that Kansas original member/guitarist/songwriter Kerry Livgren became a Godboy born again, started the Christian rock*** band AD, and they had an album titled Art of the State. You can guess who had been in charge of the Kansas album titles during their heyday. Some things a baptism just does not fix.

So I'm still playing The Best of Kansas on shuffle and I just forced iTunes to play "Carry On My Wayward Son", which I almost typed as "Carry On My Wayward Song". (Dammit Livgren!) All I can write before I sign off and blast this tune again on headphones is: If you're gonna listen to one vaguely Christian, leans-towards-progressive Midwestern band with chops, clean production, and a staid Geographic Rock name, it's gotta be Kansas right?

* Early in the next decade, Styx would release an allegory about America, Paradise Theater, upping the pretentious ante. And you thought the Midwest was just boogie bands and power pop.

** Just came up with a mid-seventies Archie comics storyline where Reggie steals Kansas's idea for a concept album and presents it to looking-for-a-change members of The Archies band. Andy Kim, meet Rick Wakeman …

*** "She comes home from church / She takes off her pants / That's what I like about Amy Grant" - The Young Fresh Fellows

Tuesday Tuneage
Pat Travers Band - "Snortin' Whiskey"
1980

Who let Pat Travers down?

1) Apple Music. Hey, it's "Pat Travers Band" NOT "Pat Traver's Band". Many of us who don't want to log into - or in my case, create - a Facebook account go to Apple for our streaming music needs. We value correct spelling and proper possessive vs. plural usage. Let the slobs over at Spotify mess that stuff up.

2) The designer of Pat Travers Band's Crash And Burn album cover. The orange mist that takes up most of the cover denotes some kind of explosion, but what the hell is going on here? It's almost like they took the cover of The Jimi Hendrix Experience's Electric Ladyland and removed Jimi's face.

3) The copywriter for PolyGram Records, who wrote the back cover notes to Boom Boom … The Best Of Pat Travers. (The only Travers album I own and hence the only one whose notes I have read.) It's like reading a book report from a mailing-it-in kid in junior high:

"Two of his songs have become legend, like rock and roll anthems…" LIKE rock and roll anthems? Show some conviction, scribe!

"(although he detests the term 'guitar hero')" Find me a guitarist who digs this term, it would be refreshing. If you got it, flaunt it.

"Pat Travers can be described as the thinking man's hard rocker, a master of no-frills rock and roll. Pat Travers and his breed of hard rock, are timeless." Rewrite please! YAWN. And what's with the needless comma in that last sentence? IT SEEMS LIKE A FRILL.

Below all of this is a declaration that this album is DIGITALLY RE-MASTERED, but if it's a vinyl LP, isn't that analog? I'm confused.

4) Canadian whisky. Our neighbors to the north spell this distilled beverage "whisky", as do the Scots. But Americans and the Irish spell it "whiskey". Pat Travers is a Toronto native, but "Snortin' Whiskey" is spelled the latter way, meaning that the song likely pays tribute to the superior American brands or maybe Old Crow at the worst. Heck, maybe it was the vastly underrated Old Overcoat that triggered the inspiration for this tune. What we do know is that this group of Canadians wanted nothing to do with their inferior sweet/ugh labels such as Windsor, Crown Royal, Canadian Club (sorry, Draper), Canadian Mist, Black Velvet, McAdams, McWhatever*.

Who did not let Pat Travers down?

1) Pat Thrall, Travers Band guitarist. According to Wikipedia: The inspiration for ("Snortin' Whiskey") came when Thrall showed up to a studio session late. When asked why Thrall was late, he fumbled his words saying that he was “snortin’ whiskey” and “drinkin’ cocaine” the night before. A Jeff Spicoli-like moment inspired a monster monster rock song and Travers took it to the hilt. Bravo.

*Or maybe the song title merely used clever placement of an "e" to gain acceptance in the massive American market?

Tuesday Tuneage
The Rockets - "Oh Well"
1979

Last Friday, a thirty-year-long misconception of mine was cleared up, a boneheaded belief that led me last month to tweet something wrong about the season two premiere of Fargo. I had tweeted a chide at Rolling Stone about them stating that a song by Fleetwood Mac appeared in the episode. That was The Rockets version of "Oh Well", I confidently stated. "Oh Well" appeared shortly after the opening, and was soon followed by Billy Thorpe's "Children of the Sun", meaning that this episode set in 1979 was dead-on in its grasp of the power and the glory of late-seventies AOR radio. But after being steered in the right direction on this song (more on this later) and watching the beginning of the episode again on demand, it turns out it was Fleetwood Mac, with a live version from a 1980 album.*

A summary of the three versions of "Oh Well" that should be familiar to classic rock fans:

 - Fleetwood Mac original studio version from 1969. Written and sung by original Mac leader Peter Green. A long cut on the album, radio usually plays a shorter version.

- The Rockets studio version from 1979. A more hard rock take on the song.

- Fleetwood Mac live version from 1980. Here, Lindsey Buckingham takes over the lead guitar and singing duties from long-departed from the band Peter Green. This version also rocks harder than the original.

On Friday, my friend Jeff and I were raving about Fargo and I was still under the belief that The Rockets version was used in the premiere. Jeff said no, it was the Fleetwood Mac live version. Then after we tracked all three versions (and likely annoying Jeff's studio mates in the process, nothing like trying to wrap up a workweek late on a Friday and two middle-aged dudes are having an AOR bull session complete with playing a single song over and over again), Jeff posited the gotta-be-true theory that after The Rockets rocked up "Oh Well", Lindsey Buckingham responded by making sure it was on their live album and released as an AOR cut to stations nationwide.

Which brings me to the source of my confusion over whose version of "Oh Well" is whose. Because The Rockets released a live album in 1984, which OF COURSE featured "Oh Well". I was at beer-fueled game of Risk in the Twin Cities circa 1986 and a debate broke out over whose version of "Oh Well" was being played on KQRS. I was still relatively unfamiliar with the song, and one of the dudes insisted that the "hard rock" version of the tune - whether it was studio or live - was by The Rockets. This was eventually accepted as fact, further discussion was shelved, and I proceeded to get my armies blown off the world map. Being someone who never cared for superstar-lineup Fleetwood Mac, I was totally unaware that they even had a live album in 1980. Or if I was, I wrote it off as the "cash in on the fans with a quickie tour souvenir" it surely was. (And I ain't gonna give it a listen now, not even for research purposes. Not with The Rockets available on Apple Music.)

And now, looking back, I realized I got my bogus "Oh Well" information from the same crowd who a year earlier had insisted that a new Boston song was out from their long-rumored, always-pending third album. Things were tricky back then in the days before we had the Internet. Oh well...

*And with this season of Fargo being set in 1979, this means the use of this song is an anachronism. This is a slight bummer, as so far this season is one of the best things I've ever seen on TV. If they had used The Rockets 1979 version, they'd still be pitching a perfect game.

Tuesday Tuneage
Rush - "Limelight"
1981

(I make a lot of Q98 references here during Tuesday Tuneage…

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