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The best podcast you aren’t listening to.

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Give it a listen. It doesn’t suck completely.

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All this talk of the World Cup has got me taking a little trip down the international memory lane.  You see, apparently the World Cup is such a big deal, that when it happens every four years, there’s an ‘official’ World Cup song.  In the past, Shakira sang one, Ricky Martin did in ‘98., etc.  Well, back in 1982′s World Cup (held in Spain), the honor went to none other than the suave Spanish tenor, Placido Domingo.  The song itself was a little lackluster, but’s it’s entertaining nonetheless. 

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Greatest music video ever? I have no words.  This is...I dunno.  Just watch the whole damn thing.

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YOU KNOW YOU’RE A BADASS 1980s BAND WHEN YOU GET A PROMO LIKE THIS

That’s right.  In 1986, the Steve Perry-fronted Journey could do no wrong.  And the Raised on Radio album was so highly-anticipated that it had this insane and bizarre, sixty second promo piece to announce its impending arrival.

Sure, they still tour.  And yeah, Arnel Pineda does a good job.  But nothing- and I mean NOTHING- will top Steve Perry crying out ‘SUZANNNNE!’ and singing about ‘those summer nights’ as he does here. 

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Yes, I’m still here.  One year later.  My heart is still beating. More to come.  Stay tuned.

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Some good Friday viewing.  The late, great Arthur Lee & Love back in ‘03.

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A cold war epic in four minutes.  This follow-up single to their A Whiter Shade of Pale, wasn’t nearly as successful as its predecessor.  But lyrically, it’s equally cryptic.  And musically, it may be even better.  Whatever sort of strange story it tells, it sounds like something out of the Sean Connery-era Bond film and it’ll be in your head all day. 

Well worth a listen. 

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SCREW THE WRESTLER! This is Mickey Rourke’s best work...

Dating back to 2001 (the Indian Summer, if you will, of the music video-era), this melodramatic, over the top video was a huge hit for Enrique Iglesias.  And as exciting as it is to see a sultry, twentysomething, Jennifer Love Hewitt, the real star here is Mickey Rourke.

From his first appearance onscreen (at around the 1:00 minute mark), he steals the God damn show.  Menacing, brooding, and downright scary, I remember watching this on MTV when it first came out and thinking, ‘What the fuck is Mickey Rourke doing in an Enrique Iglesias video? And where the hell has he been for the last ten years?!’

It’s a hell of a performance, and it almost (I repeat- ALMOST) makes me nostalgic and miss the heyday of MTV’s Total Request Live.  

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THIS IS A GOOD LOOK

In terms of the bizarre, retro-cool look that I often write about, this one seems like a bit of an odd choice, but it works.  Gene Hackman in the 1993 film, The Firm, epitomized the sleazy look of a desperate man in the throes of a somewhat belated mid-life crisis in the early 1990s.  Note the baggy linen shirt, unbuttoned halfway and the (quadruple?!) pleated pants.  I’d be willing to bet that there at least two Nautica shirts in his suitcase back in the hotel.

Here we see him on the prowl, poolside at a swanky tiki lounge in The Cayman Islands.  Sure, Hackman had more memorable roles that this, but I doubt he ever looked sleazier or cooler. 

I tried to rock this look circa 2001-2002.  There were two problems there- I was a decade too late on the trend, and I was in my mid-twenties.  But give me about twenty years, and it’s game on. 

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY to SERGE GAINSBOURG

Had he not chain-smoked Gitanes and drank himself into oblivion, the legendary and iconic French singer, Serge Gainsbourg, would have turned 89 yesterday.  This of course is a stretch, as it’s a miracle that Gainsbourg (who passed in 1991) even made it to sixty.

There isn’t much that I can write about Gainsbourg that hasn’t already been written.  But I will remain forever enamored at the baffling career move he made in the late-1970s by abandoning the classic French crooner chanson genre in favor of reggae.  Eyebrow-raising, for sure, but highly entertaining.

Serge is somewhere up there, high above, still smoking like a chimney and trying to screw Whitney Houston.  Vive le Gainsbourg!

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WTF CANADA?!

These days, we hear a lot about how great our neighbors to the north are. How wonderful their heathcare system is; how tolerable they are to all ethnicities and religions; how strong their economy seems to be.  Well, Canada just about seems perfect here in 2017.    

But once upon a time, Canada came across like a third-rate version of the United States, at least when it came to pop-culture and music.  In the mid-1980s, when famine aid charity was all the rage, Canada (inspired by USA for Africa and that mega-hit, We Are the World), decided to throw their toque into the ring.  The result was, well, weird and downright Canadian...

While the song itself, Tears Are Not Enough, is actually a considerably better song than We Are the World, the video paints a much bleaker picture.  Now I know that 1980s fashion was largely a mixed-bag, but man are there some ugly-ass outfits here.  And speaking of ugly, I’m hard pressed to find one attractive Canadian in this video.  I realize that Pamela Anderson was a nobody at this point, but Hell, I’d settle for someone of Celine Dion’s caliber.  

And let’s for a minute compare and contrast the USA talent versus the Canadian talent.  Now, I realize that this may be a bit unfair, but come on- how many times have they beaten us in hockey?

In We Are the World we have Bob Dylan, they have the dude from The Guess Who.  We have Steve Perry and Daryl Hall, they have the guy that sang Sometimes When We Touch and Mike Reno from Loverboy.  We have Miss Diana Ross, they’ve got Anne Murray.  Quincy Jones produced We Are the World, while self-aborbsed and self-proclaimed ‘Hit Man,’ David Foster, was at the helm of Tears are Not Enough.  USA for Africa had a plethora of mega-stars from the diverse world of American music, Northern Lights puts Paul Shaffer in the chorus.  Sure, it’s better to see Neil Young than USA for Africa’s obnoxious, 1980s-era Bruce Springsteen, but supposedly Young was shitfaced during the recording session (hence the sunglasses).  And what’s with the grainy video quality and stark background? When assembled together, they look about as miserable as the fly-ridden Ethipopian children they’re trying to save.  All that said, the brief appearance of some anoynmous Quebecois trio of singers is a nice touch.

Alas, the era of famine relief and 1980s star-studded musical unions would come to a close.  But Tears Are Not Enough stands a quirky and odd snapshot of this trend, and of Canada. 

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I’d probably get arrested if I tried doing this these days to a sorority girl.

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WTF JOHNNY MAESTRO?!

The late Johnny Maestro was considered one of the more prominent and significant names in the New York City doo-wop and oldies scene.  The guy could belt it out, and he was widely regarded as a humble and down-to-earth fella, who saw no venue as being too small and no performance too meaningless (I saw him play at a local suburban middle school in the 1980s as part of a police athletic league fundraiser).

So I guess the fact that the above performance looks like it was at a Memorial Day BBQ in someone’s backyard in Bensonhurst shouldn’t be too much of an issue.  In actuality, the performance was at the Hebrew Home for the Aged in the Bronx (which is odd in itself).  But the real puzzling surprise here is Maestro’s decision to take the stage and open with Led Zeppelin’s Dazed and Confused to an audience consisting largely of people who probably weren’t exactly into Zeppelin and hard rock.  

Sure, he only sings a few bars of the song before seguing into his signature tune, the Jimmy Webb-penned The Worst That Could Happen, but this is an all-aroud weird-ass performance.  Perhaps Maestro, in his mid-sixties at the time of this ‘concert,’ just wanted to show people that he could still hit all the right notes.  I’ll give him this much- he sounds better here than Robert Plant does these days.  And that suit!

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THIS IS A GOOD LOOK 

Not many people bothered with the 2009 film, Pirate Radio, which tells the story of a group of rogue DJs who defy an English government order that basically outlawed rock and roll from the radio waves.  Boasting an excellent cast, the film itself is an above average slice of 1960s English nostalgia.  As you would guess, it has a hell of a soundtrack, and is visually quite good to look at.

But the real scene-stealer here is Bill Nighy, the de facto head of the pirate radio station that broadcasts aboard a boat out in The Atlantic.  Neither dressing as a hippie or a mod, Nighy’s fashion choices- consisting of clashing colours and outlandishly foolish accessories- can best be described as, ‘I just doesn’t give a fuck.’ It works.  

If you haven’t already, watch the movie.  If nothing else, it’s worth it for the soundtrack and Bill Nighy’s peculiar sartorial selections.

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GRAHAM NASH LETS LOOSE ON DAVID CROSBY

‘Who are you? Are you a decent person? Or are you a fucking ass hole?!’

Wow. So much for all of that nice harmony.   I’d say a CSN reunion is probably out of the question.  Maybe in ten years, but at that point the odds of all three of them still being above the ground is iffy. 

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REMEMBERING CHUCK BARRIS

About ten or so years ago, a girl that I was dating and I had a long coversation about film.  In particular, she brought up the topic of which movie charcater each of us felt that we most identified with.  Oddly enough, she chose Shrek as she- like many females- wasn’t happy with her weight.  In truth, at 5′8 with 38DD breasts, she was a bit curvy, but also quite striking and hardly a Shrek-type.  When she asked me the question, she fully expected me to say some sort of swaggering, machismo hero (like a James Bond), or Fight Club-era Brad Pitt.  I came right out and said that, for me, the one and only character was Chuck Barris in the 2002 film, Confessions of a Dangeroud Mind (which, it should be said, was played perfectly by Sam Rockwell).  

Now I’ve never created a game show or hosted one.  Nor have I ever claimed to have murdered people on behalf of the CIA. I’ve never written hit songs for other artists or best-selling books (come to think of it, I’ve never written a song or a book), and I’m very much an ordinary and average guy.  And yet, I identified with Chuck, or at least the way he was portrayed in the film.  He was ambitious, if slightly unfocused.  He was well-intetioned with the ladies in his life, but struggled to keep it in his pants.  He wanted to fancy himself as being dashing and handsome, but he was a man of average at best looks. He tried to be swaggering, but could never entirely mask his vunerability.  He did his best to be cold, calculated, and heartless when necessary, but couldn’t hide his guilty conscience.  I remember being struck by his presence as I watched Gong Shot reruns as a kid.  As the host, he strutted around stage not in a perfectly taiolred suit, but rather awkwardly, in a tuxedo with an open-collar shirt and his chest hair pouring out.  He managed to be both endearing and slightly creepy at the same time. Forget James Bond.  This was the guy I wanted to be like.  

Chuck Barris, who passed away earlier today at the age of 87, was an unlikely star and pop icon; the perfect behind-the-scenes creative genius who found himself in front of the camera when he hosted the hugely succcesful game show, The Gong Show.  But long before his on-screen success, he created some of the most popular and defining game shows of all time, like The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game.  He wrote Palisades Park, which was a chart-topping hit in the early 1960s for Freddie ‘Boom Boom’ Cannon, and claimed to have written a variety of other songs.  I was particularly fond of his two autobiographies.  The first, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, caused a bit of a stir as this is where he first claimed to have been a hired gun for the CIA. This claim has been debunked by the CIA, but hey, you never know, right? The second autobiography, The Game Show King, was more of a straightforward (and highly entertaining!) look at Hollywood in the 1960s and 1970s.  In addition, Barris penned a handful of other books. 

But it was undoubtedly The Gong Show that made Barris a household name in the 1970s.  And while critics slammed the show for being trash-television, it’s safe to say that without The Gong Show, there would be no Star Search, no American Idol, no America’s Got Talent, etc.  

Barris had a sort of unrefined charm that was completely without pretense. He rose to fame in an industry which was all about glitz and glamour, during the tail-end of an glitzy era.  But there was a certain element of Chuck not giving a shit about all of that.  He was seemingly so uncool and out of place, that it made him incredibly cool.  And let’s face it, if you’re going to be so insanely and outlandish that you claim to have murdered over thirty people for the CIA, then- true or not- you’ve got to have some balls. 

More than decade or so after that conversation I had with that curvy brunette girlfriend, I can’t help but wonder if she ever outgrew that insecurity that often plagues early twentysomething females about their body and figure.  Does she still identify with Shrek? Who the hell knows.  Who cares, really?  As for me, I can safely say that I still identify with the conflicted and often times square-peg in-a-round-hole Barris in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.  And I probably will for quite some time.