Throw it down, big fella!

This is a perhaps hidden or forgotten gem from the halcyon days of Andy Samberg’s Digital Shorts on SNL.

Incidentally, there was a time when you could only view these SNL clips on Hulu, but I would suppose that when Samberg left SNL he was able to take the digital shorts with him because they can now be found on Youtube.

Though his best known Digital Short will always be his “(Expletive deleted) in a box” production with Justin Timberlake, his lesser-known “Threw It on the Ground” is hilarious on many levels.

Before reading further, click the photo link above to watch the video on Youtube. I’ll wait….

Welcome back.

Now here’s why I find the video so effective.

The character Samberg creates is paranoid of a ubiquitous “system” – yet the only systemic phenomenon is his own state of delusion. Concurrently, he is caught up in today’s all-too-common realm of false bravado and edginess, and in each example his anger is completely misdirected at people who are at worst neutral and innocuous, and at best are downright benevolent.

All these factors add up to produce a cutting juxtaposition of Samberg and those either trying to deliver benevolence, innocently trying to do their jobs or simply ignorant of his existence altogether. The fact that he attributes his tazing to validate his delusional belief that “you can’t trust the system” is a fitting punchline.

I admire when someone creates a character with such complexity – though I concede you may not view the video the same way; you may find the character to be a ridiculous imp. The result of watching the video (repeatedly) was to provoke further pondering of this character and how he might react in other situations. For example, I contend that the character, if actually faced with a real situation in which he is indeed legitimately disrespected, he would probably back down. It’s only when facing completely innocent people that he can summon up the hip-hop style cojones.  Or, because he’s so paranoid he wouldn’t even recognize a true example of disrespect foisted upon him. He simply wouldn’t know how to react, for example, to being bullied.

Now, I had been meaning to write about this video for several weeks but recently I was inspired truly by divine intervention. I was reading this passage of the Bible – and I should point out the version because that’s important; it’s the New International Version. Lo and behold, this passage appeared to me, as if in a dream. Exodus 4:3.

Signs for Moses

4 Moses answered, “What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you’?”

² Then the Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?”

“A staff,” he replied.

³ The Lord said, “Throw it on the ground.”

Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake, and he ran from it. ⁴ Then the Lordsaid to him, “Reach out your hand and take it by the tail.” So Moses reached out and took hold of the snake and it turned back into a staff in his hand. ⁵ “This,” said the Lord, “is so that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has appeared to you.”

In the spirit of the Samberg video, I picture God saying to Moses: “You can’t DOUBT me! I’m your Creator! That’s not a staff; that’s a SNAKE!” 

Though, because Moses is actually the one who “threw it on the ground” – the lyrics would more appropriate come from him. Actually, though, if Moses were like Samberg’s character, he would’ve been defiant of God. I can’t picturing him throwing something on the ground simply because somebody, even his own Creator, told him to do it. Can you? That wouldn’t fit his mode of defiance; he’d be obedient – i.e., part of the Lord’s “system”.

Now, I reference the Bible’s version because later I found through the help of a nearby Bible expert that many other versions don’t use “Throw it on the ground.” They use, “Cast it on the ground” or some variation of that.

I wonder if Samberg is even aware that this is stated in the Bible. I’ll have to try to send it to him if I can.

Nevertheless, from this day forward I will always strive to preface the phrase “Throw it to the ground” with, “The Lord said.” In some cases I may even simply state, “Exodus 4:3” – and only a select few will get the reference.

The only ones who’ll get the reference are those people who are indeed part of my “system”.

Rock discussion: Start Me Up!

Though I immediately concede that anthems of rock music mostly all were produced during the 60s and 70s, I still like to brand the 80s as the overall “rockingest” decade. I will proceed to cite a few reasons.

First of all, it’s too bad we can’t back up one year from 1980 to include 1979. That would allow you to include The Wall, In Through the Out Door, Damn the Torpedoes, Cheap Trick at Budakon (as well as Dream Police) and Van Halen II, to name only four. Alas, those offerings instead buttress the case for the 70s as the best decade of rock music – but so close to being 80s rock.

When I think of the early 80s when I first began listening to rock music, I think about those great albums: Tattoo You, Escape, Face Dances, High Infidelity, Ghost In the Machine, Abacab, Fair Warning, Diver Down, Permanent Waves, Moving Pictures  – to name a handful. What an era that was. A great many anthems, in fact, were produced during that timeframe. (“This is the Spirit of Radio.” – Geddy Lee)

Nearly a decade ago I participated in Focus Group at Sacramento’s Classic Rock station, 96.9 The Eagle. I gave them an earful of feedback regarding the lack of “modernization” of their playlist, which seemed to be stuck in the 60s and 70s mode while ignoring the 80s. I argued that most of those same classic rock staple artists of 60s-70s continued to thrive into the 80s and beyond – e.g., The Who, Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Rainbow, Golden Earring, Genesis, etc. Think about The Kinks. Sure, you’d hear “Lola” – of course – on The Eagle. But why didn’t we hear the equally-iconic “Destroyer” from the 80s? Why limit your Genesis playlist to “Misunderstanding” and “Follow You, Follow Me” when you could’ve included “No Reply At All” and “Abacab”?

“Hang Fire” and “Start Me Up” are Stones staples from the 80s. Why would a classic rock station ignore them? I couldn’t get a definitive answer from The Eagle on “how do we define a classic?” Does it have to be a song from a certain time period? Can be a sliding time period, like “Twenty years prior to the current date” – for example? I made this suggestion because that way you could add “new” songs to your classic playlist every year.

To reiterate, I argued that if The Who and The Stones were classic rock bands, then you’d pretty much have to argue that they continued to produce classic rock music into the 80s.

In addition to this argument, I will cite a few more phenomena I especially recall fondly about 80s rock.

• Solo efforts – Not unlike the Beatles, who broke up in 1970 but spawned legendary solo careers of McCartney, Lennon and Harrison (even Ringo had a hit or two), the staple 70 bands produced some outstanding solo careers in the 80s. From The Eagles came the efforts of Joe Walsh, Don Henley, Glenn Frye, Don Felder, and even Timothy B. Schmit had an 80s tune that got some airplay. From Zeppelin came Robert Plant’s standout solo efforts. Even groups that stayed together in the 80s also produced great solo efforts – namely, Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey of The Who and the Genesis spin-off efforts of Phil Collins and Mike (Rutherford) & the Mechanics. Sting and David Lee Roth also stood out for their solo efforts, if not quite as rocking as their groups’ efforts. I have to cite Fleetwood Mac as well; even though they continued to record in the 80s, nearly every band member also went solo during that decade. Most successful was Stevie Nicks – in fact, it was while listening to her classic “Edge of 17″ that I was inspired to write this.
• Supergroups – The two most notable of this category are Asia and The Firm; but also worth mentioning are HSAS, Rockpile and Anderson-Brukford-Wakeman-Howe (“Brother of Mine” – 1989).
• Collaborations – Aside from the formal supergroups there were some nice collaborative efforts during the 80s. Most notable are Phil Collins’ drumming on Robert Plant’s albums (his signature drums were also paramount on Fryda Lyndstadt’s “I Know There’s Something Going On” and even on Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas”), Stevie Ray Vaughn’s guitar on David Bowie’s Let’s Dance and China Girl, and David Gilmour’s guitar stylings on Pete Townshend’s Give Blood, and Kate Bush’s Love and Anger, (speaking of Kate Bush, don’t forget her collaborative vocals with Peter Gabriel on “Don’t Give Up”.) My favorite 80s collaboration? The sitar stylings of Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart on Tom Petty’s “Don’t Come Around Here No More”.I know I’ve missed a lot of great collaborations but those are the ones I recall at the moment.
• Heavy Metal – sure, this was a genre that launched in the 70s with Kiss and a few others but it clearly reached its heyday in 80s with Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Scorpions, Motley Crue, Krokus, Y&T, Quiet Riot early years of “underground” bands Metallica, Accept, Saxon and Anthrax). Of course, the Hair Band movement also spawned during the 80s. It should be noted that this movement – and I’m going to cite here that this movement also produced many “anthems of rock” – such as Guns N Roses’ “Sweet Child of Mine” and even “Dead Or Alive” from Bon Jovi.
• Alternative Rock – again, launched in the late 70s but the heyday was unarguably in the 80s. Because this subject is “rockingest” decade I won’t highlight the “New Wave” bands of this genre but I’ll focus more on those that produced the crossover classic rock recordings like U2, The Clash, Talking Heads, REM, The Cult; and I will include The Smiths in that category even if I deliberately omit the likes of The Cure, New Order, OMD and Erasure). Within the more “underground” subgenre were the early versions of the Seattle sound – even Nirvana kicked off in the late 80s, following efforts by Sonic Youth and others of the more mainstream punk variety like Sex Pistols.
• Variety – clearly, no decade has ever produced, nor will it likely produce, the variety of what could be classified “rock music”. Much of this was brought to light by MTV’s 80s inception and ascension. It especially pulled the Alternative genre into the rock mainstream.

I could expand on this, but that’s my case in a nutshell.

As always, I should throw in a plug for Sirius-XM radio. It is the presence of throwback stations like Classic Rewind (the station I basically asked for during the Eagle Focus Group) and First Wave that reminds me of the greatness of 80s rock.

Keep in mind I’ve already conceded a huge point that the anthems of rock were mostly produced before the 80s; but I suggest that, perhaps as a result, those decades are overrated relative to the rocking-ness of the 80s. Also, I think the 80s may get underrated as a rock decade because the “remember the 80s” vignettes we see tend to focus on the insipid pop songs of the 80s and the emergence of the Madonnas, Culture Clubs, Cyndi Laupers and Debbie Gibsons. Their influence doesn’t mean the 80s didn’t also rock, I contend.

So, as O’Reilly would say, “Tell me where I’m wrong.”

And also, tell me which 80s classics I failed to mention.

Drop-dead Fred

I can’t look a gift-horse in the mouth. Given that the merger of Satellite radio companies Sirius and XM a few years back probably saved the satellite radio medium, I can’t complain too much. Nearly everything I liked so much about satellite radio – mostly the sports and political talk programming – was preserved. Yippee!

I said, “nearly” everything I liked was saved. One favorite aspect of mine was not.

When the two stationed merged, decisions were made on the consolidation of like music stations. For the classic alternative genre, which is the one I enjoyed most when I first subscribed to XM in 2005 due, XM had “Fred” and Sirius had “First Wave”. Unfortunately, Sirius won out and “First Wave” survived the merger. Their playlist is decidedly different from Fred’s – much more mainstream alternative I’ve surmised. Though Fred did play some way-out-there songs I didn’t like – the kind of silly songs you might’ve heard on the Doctor Demento Show – songs like, “Teenage Enema Nurses in Bondage,” “TV Party,” and “Bitchin’ Camaro” – overall, I preferred the more eclectic variety of Fred.

In fact, I just heard a bit of a song that was a Fred staple that I’ve never heard on First Wave. It was used as “bumper” music to introduce a new half-inning of Baltimore Orioles radio coverage (some baseball radio broadcasts feature this phenomenon also used in talk radio, including the Detroit Tigers; I believe the Cleveland Indians broadcasts also do it). The song is “The Only One I Know” by Charlatans UK. Awesome!

That is one of many songs heard on Fred that I no longer hear on First Wave, which gets me (finally!) to my point. Many of those songs were played during the annual Fred Essentials Top 2,044 Classic Alternative countdown. I’m writing this today because the annual countdown, if Fred still existed, would have started today – i.e., the Wednesday before Memorial Day. That’s how long it takes to play 2,044 songs, even without commercials.

It was usually on Day 1 where you’d hear some forgotten gems like, “I Don’t Wanna” by The Call – one of my designated “Fred Favorites” (not long after I began listening to Fred, I began compiling my own CDs of Fred Favorites – I ended up with 10 CDs, 70 minutes apiece, if that’s any indication of how many great songs were played on the station).

The countdown became an annual tradition in my household – or at times, on lengthy road trips that were associated with the three times per year the countdown was played (it was replayed Labor Day weekend and New Year’s Day weekend in addition to the Memorial Day initial countdown).

I had long been a fan of the classic rock countdowns that also permeated FM radio on Memorial Day or 4^th of July weekends, so the Fred countdown was much-welcomed and appreciated. It also prompted pondering of a favorite topic of mine:  how the ranking of old songs can change from year-to-year based on many factors. First, our appreciation of songs vary over time and hence re-ranking is applicable. Second, the use in pop culture of older songs can also impact their ranking. For example, in 2006, Fred’s countdown ranked The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” number one, when it was not number one the year before. That made sense though because the year before (but after the 2005 countdown), a movie called “Just Like Heaven” – with Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo – was released which featured two versions of The Cure song (the original plus a remake by another group).

We also have seen the use of classic alternative songs in TV commercials, which can also catapult a song up the charts.

Alas, it’s no longer. The merger occurred in 2008, meaning that I must’ve heard four countdowns in all. I believe I can remember the four songs that were number one in each of those years, as follows:

2005 “London Calling” – The Clash
2006 “Just Like Heaven” – The Cure
2007 “How Soon Is Now?” – The Smiths
2008 “How Soon Is Now?” – The Smiths

In fact I was also able to find documentation on the Internet of prior countdowns which was very enlightening and demonstrated the evolution of the Fred countdown. In the first year, for example, the Seattle bands were included – Nirvana, Pearl Jam, etc. At some point early on those bands were not played on Fred; it must’ve been determined that they belonged on the playlist of the next-generation alternative music, which I believe was called “Lucy” (also lost in the Sirius-XM merger).

I did a search on the merger of Sirius-XM specifically focused on Fred versus New Wave, and apparently I’m not the only one who was unhappy with the decision. I have many times contacted First Wave to remind them of Fred favorites that I’ve yet to hear on First Wave, but to little avail. Recently I did begin hearing a handful of songs I hadn’t heard before on First Wave, and I did send them their props.

But First Wave is no Fred, and this week more than any other, reminds me of that.

’60 set

I have noted before that one of my favorite pastimes is viewing (or reading) productions from yesteryear simply for the experience of getting a sense of the time period and how it differed from today.

Within that scope, I recently began watching, from the beginning, the AMC series Mad Men which is initially set in 1960 New York, portraying the men and women of a fictional advertising company on Madison Avenue.

Keep in mind, that I would much rather watch a series actually produced (and set) in 1960 because I would know that it is a true time capsule of the period. I am always dubious when a modern production tries to depict a prior time period, because it’s nearly impossible to accurately portray every aspect.

In particular, I am most intrigued by the use of terminology when partaking of such time capsule reviewing. The types of cars people drove and the clothing they wore doesn’t interest me much – though I am intrigued also by how much an item was worth in an earlier time. Most notably for me was the Sergio Leone film Once Upon A Time in America – set in the early 1900s, when, at least according to the period piece, one dollar could’ve purchased “ten hot corned beef sandwiches on poppy seed rolls”. Giddy up!

That noted, one term in particular intrigued me about an early episode of Mad Men. One of the main characters and his new wife were looking at buying an “apartment” in upper Manhattan. Yes, that’s buying an apartment. A secondary point is that the Manhattan apartment cost only $30,000; imagine that. At least equally significant to me was that people bought something called an apartment. I’ve heard this reference before, so I believe it to have been accurately portrayed in the series – I.e., the term apartment merely describes the type of dwelling, not the method of procurement. At some point a dwelling that looked like an apartment but was purchased rather than rented became known, perhaps exclusively, as a condominium.

Meanwhile, today, we know that people still rent houses; yet you never hear of someone “buying” an apartment. I found that to be fascinating as a time capsule.

During the sequence in which the characters are viewing the apartment, the concept of the mortgage is mentioned as if it were a brand new concept in 1960. On that point I’m fairly dubious. Weren’t there mortgages portrayed at George Bailey’s bank in It’s A Wonderful Life, for example? I could be wrong at that point. I’ll have to look that up – but sometimes it’s more fun to not know the answer but merely to speculate about it.

As for other portrayals of 1960 in Mad Men? Much of it I found pretty convenient. There’s the portrayal of everyone smoking, including pregnant women, which should shock no one if you knew anything about the past. Also, that every office featured a wet bar is also perhaps intended to shock us but again, it’s a pretty obvious reference. Also very convenient are portrayals of objects such as aerosol cans. It’s new and it’s amazing technology! The ad men in the office are shown lighting the cans’ emissions on fire. Ha ha! If only these bumpkins knew they were killing the ozone layer, right?

What I found missing was any sense of the family values aspect captured in real series of the time such as Leave It To Beaver (although, thanks to the censors of the day, hokey portrayals of married couples not even sharing a bed were featured) are seldom showcased in modern productions about our past. Instead, the “values” portrayed are predictably of a negative variety – i.e., the glass ceiling for women in the office, the snobbish aristocratic housewives, etc. In the six episodes I’ve seen there hasn’t been a single mention that I recall about anyone attending church on Sunday. Even if you worked in the upscale world of big-time advertising in a metropolis, are we to believe that no one went to church in 1960?

Instead, everyone’s cheating on their wives. Naturally. This has been a contention of Hollywood for as long as I can remember – the popular, “They all do it!” portrayal. Recall a scene in the 80s film Reds, done in documentary style, where we are told that there was every bit as much fornication going on in the 1920s as there are today. Although I can’t prove it not to be true, but I simply don’t buy it.

Because it’s an AMC series, adult language is allowed. I’m not exactly sure how this works. I’ve also begun to watch Breaking Bad on AMC and it features every word in the book, whereas Mad Men and The Walking Dead seem to omit the f-word. This may have to do with the time slots of the series more than it does the time capsule nature of the series. Recently, Michael Medved cited that Lincoln contained a scene with language never used in 1865 – and that had to have been a reference to the f-word. I’ve been fascinated by the use of that word over time, yet it is hard to tell from entertainment productions how it was actually used, because any film produced way-back-when wouldn’t have incorporated the word, even if it had been used in real life. So all we have are period piece productions’ deployments of the word, but we can never be sure they are accurate; case-in-point, Lincoln. The “WTF” expression, for example, I don’t recall ever hearing it until its prominence in the early 80s Risky Business, though it was used in other contexts for decades, if not centuries, before.

Anyway, I’ll continue to watch Mad Men for the time capsule aspects to see if anything else of note comes up.

Not oblivious to Indie music.

As I watched the film Oblivion, I was struck by how much I enjoyed the techo-sounding score that seemed befitting of the science fiction genre. However it didn’t strike whatsoever that it was the music of Indie group M83; I happened to see it on the closing credits – and then it made perfect sense, based on the M83 music I’d heard before on SiriusXMU.

Here’s a quick six degrees of separation, sort of – another thing that struck me about the Oblivion was, and I’ll offer this in as manly a way as possible, how good Tom Cruise looked. But then I realized that’s really nothing new. The first actor that occurred to me from an earlier era who also looked good well into his 40s (I had to look up how old he was when he died; he was 50) was Steve McQueen. Alas, one of M83’s songs played on SiriusXMU is called “Steve McQueen”.

Another perhaps noteworthy point is the distinction between a movie “soundtrack” and its “score”. I’m going to offer that M83’s music constituted the score more than the soundtrack, but that’s debatable. If their instrumentals from the film are featured on the actual soundtrack, then they will be mixed with a couple classic rock songs that were favorites of Cruise’s character. One was “Ramble On” by Led Zeppelin and the other is “A Whiter Shade of Pale” by Procol Harum. This too was intriguing to me because Cruises character is – let’s say his character is actually a bit younger than Cruise because Cruise looks good for his age. His character begins his mission in the year 2017, and so if he was 40 years old he’d have been born in the late 70s – after both these songs were released.

It just goes to show that the iconic songs you’d put in a movie still tend to be from the classic rock genre. That’s what makes it classic. In fact, in the scene, Cruise’s character finds and old house in what was New York before the war. It has very old 70s-80s audio technology and a case full of vinyl records. He sifts through some of the albums and among them were Pink Floyd’s The Wall and Asia’s first album (“Asia”). I don’t recall them showing Led Zeppelin II but that’s the album he chooses as he plays “Ramble On”.

As I go through this thought process something else occurs to me. I just looked at the playlist from Led Zeppelin II. “Ramble On” is the third of five songs on side 2. The scene shows Cruise playing the record from the beginning of the side. It couldn’t have been a single record because it would’ve been a 45 not a full-size record.

I checked moviemistakes.com to see if anyone caught this already but it’s not there. I’ll have to see if I can submit that.

Anyway, back to the point about classic rock. It seemed more appropriate to have Cruise’s character, though probably born in the late 70s, be a fan of the classics because it simply made it more impactful. I mean, can you picture a scene where Cruise’s character is romantically remembering his favorite songs and he pulls out a CD of Smashmouth or Sugar Ray or someone a bit more contemporary?

I’m not giving away any more of the film – though I will note that I give them points for not making the “oblivion” theme the usual politically correct narrative whereby we polluted ourselves to death or we engaged in senseless nuclear war to our own demise. That’s way too predictable at this juncture. There was a compelling “use of sea water for energy” angle, which has been a myth (or is it?) we’ve heard floated out there that is given plausibility in the film. Maybe we haven’t figured out how to harness sea water for energy but an alien species evidently has. Oh and also, the movie did contain what I am just now calling the number one movie cliché, which is the characters having sex one time and automatically producing a child.

I did thought it was worth mentioning the juxtaposition between the classic rock selections played as part of the plot and the techno, Sci-Fi-appropriate instrumental offerings from M83.

As you’ll see in the hyperlinked M83 reference above, they are doing well to work their way into the mainstream, as their song, “Midnight City” was recently featured in a Victoria’s Secret ad.

As I always state, if you check out Indie music on Sirius-XMU, you’ll hear a vast variety of subgenres, some of which have more of a classic rock feel and others being of the more techno variety. In other words, you can hear the same dichotomy heard in Oblivion every day on Sirius-XMU.

Do I live in the woods?

One of my perhaps silly pet peeves is the repeated misuse of the cactus wren sound effect in films and TV shows. Though I’m a couple seasons behind on AMC’s gripping but gory The Walking Dead (just started on Season 1 on Netflix), this was the latest example of the violation I’ve seen.

It’s the typical pattern of misuse. Typically, the cactus wren’s distinct call (which I recently heard up close at an Arizona arboretum, see photo above) is applied in woods or rain forests or mountainous regions. In this case, much of Walking Dead is set in the woods of Georgia – obviously nowhere near any desert in which a cactus wren would reside.

But hey, this is a post zombie apocalypse setting in which humans are wandering America looking for safe havens. Perhaps the wren were disenfranchised with the Sonoran desert region and relocated to the South. Or maybe they became zombies too and didn’t know where they were going or what they were doing.

Ah well, it is what it is. I’m too literal. It doesn’t diminish the show given that so many others have misused the effect.

Incidentally, The Walking Dead is highly-gripping as I mentioned. I do have to remove points from the writers for implying that the stereotypical racist redneck character Daryl is also a Republican, which occurred in one scene in which he’s seeing a vision of his dead brother hurling racial epithets and throwing in “Democrats” as one of the slurred groups – as if to suggest these backwoods-living, squirrel-hunting people are also politically-aware and active in the Republican party. Yeesh!

Speaking of AMC shows: I wrote this joke the other day and it goes like this.

Tonto and Tarzan bought an old car. They took it to the mechanic and said: “AMC: Braking Bad”.

Thank you.

Give a little bit… to Lipton.

I’d been firmly entrenched in 80s flashback mode when this happened.

Anytime an Indie song heard by me on SiriusXMU works its way into the cultural mainstream, I like to point it out. So I just saw a Lipton ad which featured a funky Indie tune from The Givers called “Up Up Up”.

The song is a couple years old so don’t fool yourself into thinking Lipton hired some musicians to write a new jingle for its beverage product.

But you’ve got to hear the entire song because the 30-second Lipton ad doesn’t do it justice. In particular, hold on for the big finish.

Great stuff. Enjoy Indie music wherever it’s played. And stay thirsty my friends!

Music Ala Mode

I liked my Top 20 Van Halen countdown so much that I’ve decided to periodically and randomly post some of my countdowns of favorite songs by artists.

This is all in the spirit of the now defunct (merged with Sirius) XM Radio Fred channel annual countdown of the top 2,044 classic alternative songs. It is based on the premise that, as years go by, your countdown of old songs can change based on new-found appreciation – or the opposite – for a song, or its recent resurgence in pop culture by virtue of either being covered, or being featured in a movie, TV show or advertisement.

With that in mind – and again, I still listen to a lot of classic alternative on SiriusXM First Wave, the Sirius channel that supplanted Fred when the two networks merged, though mixed with SiriusXMU (contemporary Indie Rock) – here’s my Top 5 Depeche Mode songs.

First, a few footnotes. I’m only doing 5 because I can’t justify 10. There aren’t quite that many Depeche Mode songs I revere enough – however, the Top 5 are so great that they merit a countdown.

Not that it was Top 5 (or 10)-worthy anyway, but I have to disqualify Blasphemous Rumours for its anti-Christian message, very much like XTC’s Dear God with its oversimplistic and insipid, “Why does God punish people” skepticism that shows no understanding whatsoever of the Bible.

Personal Jesus, on the other hand, is one of those songs a Christian can convert on-the-spot and sing as if it were a spiritual song. Nonetheless, it’s not in my Top 5.

Perhaps their most recognized song within the pop culture, People Are People, doesn’t merit my Top 5 either. Just so I’ve mentioned ten songs, I’ll point out that Behind The Wheel, Route 66 and the combination 12″ single of Behind The Wheel/Route 66 didn’t do much for me either.

So here goes, as always, in reverse order:

5. Never Let Me Down Again - signature instrumental melody; I often confuse the title with Fleetwood Mac’s Never Going Back Again from Rumors though they are nothing like one another.

4. Enjoy the Silence - Profound and perfect. There was actually an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond which resembled the theme of this song, in which Deborah laments the lack of communication between she and husband Raymond. Then at the end she sees Ray’s parents sitting quietly eating together, no words spoken, deploying nonverbal communication effectively, and she sees the light. It’s not always about talking.

3. Just Can’t Enough - There was a time this would’ve been number 1 in this countdown; there was perhaps just as lengthy a period in which it would’ve been number 2. Only in the last week or so has it dropped to 3 – but not because I see it as any less spectacular. It only drops do to a further appreciation of the next song in the countdown.

2. Policy of Truth – Again, perfect. Such a memorable instrumental melody with eloquent lyrics like, “Never again is what your swore the time before”. Awesome. It also signifies a period when I had a roommate who listened to KWOD at a time this song was in the heavy rotation (early 90s).

1. Everything Counts - This is really the reason I did the countdown in the first place – because I’m convinced I’m the only person on Earth for whom this is my favorite Depeche Mode offering. I’m probably wrong though as this is such a great song. I vaguely remembered it when it was popular but my appreciation accelerated immensely during the Fred years – in fact, there was a particular version I only heard on Fred and haven’t heard since on First Wave that was especially wonderful.

There you have it. Hope this inspires you to go back and catch up with the Mode all over again. Oh, and I see they’re touring again so hopefully you’ll get your chance.

80s Kate

Technically, George H.W. Bush was already a household name by the time British pop artist Kate Bush gained notoriety for her unique alternative sound. Hence, there was likely never a time where the name “Bush” would first conjure an image of Kate. However, she long predated George W. Bush’s run as Texas Governor and U.S. President, and more importantly, from a musical standpoint, she was the original Bush relative to that 90s alternative rock group fronted by Gwen Stefani’s husband Gavin Rossdale.

Kate Bush has not been forgotten. Quite often she is heard on SiriusXM’s First Wave Classic Alternative station. Noteworthy, though, is that First Wave only seems to feature one Bush tune – and a great one at that, probably her signature song (which a few years ago I heard covered in an episode of CSI) called “Runnin’ Up That Hill”.

I thought I’d feature my favorite Bush song, coinciding with George H.W. Bush’s first year as President, from The Sensual World album, called “Love and Anger”. Used to listen to this one over and over and over.

Click the image link above to get to the official video on Youtube. Good to know, even after Bush, Bush and Bush are no longer in the mainstream pop culture, thanks to my propensity for 80s flashbacks, you’ve still got Bush! Kate Bush.

Incidentally, heard on First Wave from D.J. Richard Blade that Kate Bush is agoraphobic, so she doesn’t get out much. She did make her share of videos including an eclectic one with Donald Sutherland called “Cloudbursting” (look that one up on Youtube). She’s also known for her vocals on Peter Gabriel’s “Don’t Give Up” from his signature 1986 So album.

So… enjoy her unique and perhaps forgotten stylings all over again, or for the very first time.