MP3 – “I Eat Cannibals (Part One)” by Total Coelo
Lyrics – “I Eat Cannibals (Part One)” by Total Coelo

Approximately 10-15 years from now, some psi-blogger (in the future, you will be able to post to your blog using only your mind) will be trying to force himself to blog more often and will decide to blog about mild pop hits of the mid-1990s that show up on Now That’s What I Call Music compilations. He will then come to a Spice Girls song – possibly “Wannabe” but more likely “Stop”* and have the same reaction I am having right now to Total Coelo’s “I Eat Cannibals (Part One)”, which is “Meh.”

Seriously, this song is crap. I will – no lie – PayPal you $20 if you can name me a stupider lyric than this:

Hot pot, cook it up, I’m never gonna stop
Yum, yum, gee it’s fun, I’m banging on a drum

I know 1982 was the year that “Pac-Man Fever” was a hit but dear God, someone actually paid someone else for that shit.

Although I do have to admit, this lyric actually has a lil’ sumthin’:

All I wanna do, is make a meal of you
We are what we eat, you’re my kind of meat
Got a hunger for your love, it’s what I’m speaking of
Give a dog a bone, I can take it home

AC/DC wishes it wrote that.

Still, the “Pac-Man Fever” reference isn’t accidental. If you look at the top 100 from 1982, it’s rife with novelty songs, piss-poor MOR and a slew of head-scratchers.** How “Spirits In The Material World” ever charted that year, I do not know.

The best thing you can say about the five women of Total Coelo, who were named Toto Coelo when the song was originally released in the UK but changed their name when the band Toto bitched, is that they managed to piss off Steve Lukather. Bananarama has more cred.

I was wrong. I have much stronger feelings that “meh.” This song is really terrible. I’m almost sad I blogged about it.***

* “Wannabe” was lame then and holy hell has it aged poorly. “Stop” is actually not too bad, along with a handful of other Spice Girls tracks. They weren’t exactly Joni Mitchell, but I’d rather listen to Spice and Spiceworld than any album by Avril Lavigne. At least Spice Girls didn’t try and convince you they were anything but dance-pop queens. While I take issue with the whole “girl power” bit, at least Mel B never extolled the joys of stealing another girl’s boyfriend in song.
** I have Juice Newton’s Greatest Hits on my iPod and I still had to cue up “The Sweetest Thing (I’ve Ever Known).” I know I’ve heard it before (thanks, Mom) but I couldn’t have sang it to you with a gun to my head. Incidentally, Jenny Lewis? You owe Juice Newton a thank-you note.
*** Except I got to write about Juice Newton and Spice Girls, which was actually fun.

Lyrics – “Chant No. 1 (I Don’t Need This Pressure On)” by Spandau Ballet
MP3 – “Chant No. 1 (I Don’t Need This Pressure On)” by Spandau Ballet

I’ve long held that Spandau Ballet’s “True” is one of the worst songs to come out of the 80s. But in much the same way that Berlin’s “Metro” is better at summing up the group’s output than “Take My Breath Away” is, “Chant No. 1 (I Don’t Need This Pressure On)” leaves a more complete impression of Spandau Ballet than “True,” which is arguably its best known hit. This isn’t to say that “Chant” is a great song. But it’s worth examining so as to give SB a fair shake.

Disco never really died, it just laid low for a while until it could infect New Wave. I’m not sure why this noted more, but there it is. It’s probably most evident in the work of the New Romantics, and Spandau Ballet takes it to the extreme here. Yes, there’s a bit of funkiness going on, but it’s quite disposable. Most of the vocals sound as if lead singer Tony Hadley is yawning the whole time, and the whole affair makes Howard Jones sound like George Clinton by comparison. The breakdown at 2:25 conjures up images of your parents “gettin’ down.” And, for some reason: slacks. Brown ones. With lots of pleats.

Speaking of Hadley’s lyrics, “Chant” sounds like a half-finished work, to the point where singing “TK” would have been more interesting. Arguably, the best thing about the track is its horn section, provided by Beggar and Co., an even less-remembered group than SB. But the weirdest thing about the group is this nugget, courtesy of Wikipedia: apparently the group’s name refers to “the spasms of the Nazi war criminals as they “danced at the end of the rope”, when they were hanged at Spandau Prison.”

This has me so incredibly freaked out, it has eliminated what little remaining desire I had to ever hear Spandau Ballet again.

MP3 – “She Blinded Me With Science” by Thomas Dolby
Lyrics – “She Blinded Me With Science” by Thomas Dolby

There seems little point in me going on about this song, even though I’d maintain that it’s far more obscure than most people would admit.

Rare is the person over 25 who hasn’t heard this song, even though it was released exactly that many years ago. And the Freudian video remains in the collective consciousness as well. Yet together it is all that most people know about Dolby.

Dolby’s influence on American culture was – at one point – so pronounced that “Weird Al” Yankovic recorded a stylistic parody of Dolby’s “Hyperactive” in a song called “Slime Creatures From Outer Space.” While not a note-for-note parody like “Beat It”/”Eat It”, Dolby’s electrokinetic vocals, big beat and spasmic guitars were unmistakably nicked for the Yankovic song. Only if Dolby’s presence was so large, would such a song have any resonance.

Though it is unmistakably 80s, few could tell you the year or the album from whence the song came. Sure, you could say this about many one-hit wonders, but Dolby’s influence then was far greater, and his time spent in scoring and creating electronic music – including the creation of his own synthesizers – should have left him with a much more influential footprint than, say, Lipps, Inc.

And yet history has not been kind to Mr. Dolby, at least in this country. Perhaps, in part, because Dolby was too accomplished in creating a persona, even while music video was in its infancy. Dolby’s lesser profile as he reaches the silver anniversary of his best-known hit is not punishment, but rather the most likely result of a career based largely on image.

Then again, how many people enthusiastically sing along to something YOU did 25 years ago?

MP3 – “(She’s) Sexy + 17” by The Stray Cats
Lyrics – “(She’s) Sexy + 17” by The Stray Cats

If you’re not able to tolerate the schtick of The Stray Cats, you won’t find anything of value in what they do. (Incidentally, the same thing could be said of the ten o’clock news.) But one has to give credit where credit is due: lead guitarist and vocalist Brian Setzer was able to dredge up two long-dead musical forms (rockabilly in the ‘80s and swing in the ‘90s) and make them briefly popular again. One could also argue that Setzer was merely mainstreaming underground trends of the time, but hey: no one else made it work so the guy has something to him.

The Stray Cats catalog isn’t devoid of teeth either; songs like “Runaway Boys,” “Built for Speed,” “18 Miles From Memphis” and “Bring It Back Again” all improve on the template of Elvis’ predecessors, and are worthy inclusions on whatever summer road trip mix you’re putting together.

Unfortunately, for readers of this entry, “(She’s) Sexy + 17” may be the limpest track the Cats ever committed to record.

The song hasn’t even started before problems result. First, points off for unnecessary parentheses. Also, what’s with the plus sign as a stand-in for the word “and?” I look at that and I think “Ah, it appears that Ember as found a Salve of Hotness and receives +17 sexy points.”

Then there’s the spoken word intro – problem number two, then exacerbated by Setzer having a conversation, ostensibly with another person who is voiced by…Setzer. So yes, the spoken word intro – already one of the weakest tropes in music – is made even more insufferable by Setzer having a conversation with…himself. Nevermind that the topic at hand – the narrator’s dislike of academia and his mistaken belief that compulsory school attendance for all those under 18 does not apply to him – has little to do with sexiness or the young lady at the root of the song’s title.

In fact, very little in the verses applies to the inherent sexiness of the titular girl (tee hee), leaving said topic for the choruses.

(By the way, let us pretend that this song was recorded in, and is being listened to, in a state/country where a youth is considered an adult at 17 so none of us feels like a creepy guy on MySpace. U.S. readers can pretend they are in New York, while international readers can pretend they are in…New Zealand. Or Northern Ireland if that’s a bit too far a jaunt for you).

Here is a list of topics covered by “She’s Sexy and + 17”
* Misunderstood youth
* Truancy
* The inexpensive cover charges and cheap alcohol found at a local bar, which happens to feature better-than-average live music on a consistent basis
* Possible ADHD symptoms experienced by the narrator when he hears a “rockin’ beat”
* Poor public school curriculum and its inability to cover topics not already addressed in better detail by one’s friends and associates

The topic of sexiness as it relates to the narrator’s girl (who we learn in the first verse is named Marie) is given scant attention. The chorus informs us of her sexiness, her age, her love of rock and roll and her propensity for mildly obscene behavior (though this is never elaborated upon, leaving the listener to imagine that the narrator is a member of the Supreme Court, and knows it when he sees it). Later, we’re informed that Marie is stylish and does not pay close attention to the opinion of others. Admirable traits, to be sure, but again the sexiness is given short shrift as a result.

As for the music, it’s a variant on 12-bar blues with a walking bass line and…oh come on, you’ve heard it by now. I’ve heard tougher-sounding songs come out of an end-of-the-year kindergarten recital.

MP3 – “C30, C60, C90, Go” by Bow Wow Wow
Lyrics – “C30, C60, C90, Go” by Bow Wow Wow

First, a message for the kids: there is nothing here about Bow Wow. Sorry, blame Google.

Now then: Raise your hand if you ever bought those K-Mart blank cassette tapes that were a buck each. Ah, what a relic this song is.

Or is it…

It’s impossible to be a consumer of music these days, and not think this song has a renewed relevance. Back in the 80s, the record industry was freaking out because people were recording music off of records and the radio, and onto magnetic cassette tapes. Yes, kids, off the radio, and didn’t I saw there was no Bow Wow here? Consider it the very first version of time-shifting programming. Nevermind that music on the radio was – and largely still is – often of lesser sound quality than most records. And nevermind that more often than not, you had to put up with inane DJ chatter that made Eric and Kathy sound like Rhodes scholars. Or at least scholars from the Rhode Island School of Design.

No matter: record execs were convinced they were going to lose scads of money. Needless to say, it didn’t happen. But what it did lead to was a new format: the compact disc. Eventually, the CD led to the downfall of the cassette format, but home taping (or mixtape making, if you will) continued apace until the arrival of recordable CDs and then came MP3s and…well, you know the rest of that story.

But the salient point here is this: people will not be bound by formats and technology when it comes to the consumption of music. Especially now. And this doesn’t just extend to music. The iPhone was barely a week old before someone cracked the encryption on it that forces the user to activate it with AT&T. Building a business model around a format just doesn’t work anymore.

As for the song, Bow Wow Wow had one trick, but Lord, it was a good one.

BWW was another of Malcolm McLaren’s pre-fab rock acts. Three-quarters of the band were once Ants of the Adam variety, and its lead singer was Annabella Lwin, a brash 14 year old who managed to fashion her own personality, despite MacLaren’s Swengali routine.

BWW had a knack for reflecting culture back at itself. The songs were a mish-mash of pop touchstones, with an immediacy delivered through Lwin’s me-me-me vocal style and an insistent island rhythms straight out of a Sandals resort. Not the first band I’d pick to represent the 80s, but an apt one.

If you’re coming late to the party, this is a 37-part series on the first two volumes of the Living In Oblivion collection, which are available pretty much nowhere.

MP3 – “2-4-6-8 Motorway” by Tom Robinson Band
Lyrics – “2-4-6-8 Motorway” by Tom Robinson Band

Name an contemporary openly gay rock singer. Melissa Etheridge, right? But then who? It took me a minute to come up with Tegan and Sara, who have been open about their sexuality from the start. But I’m still racking my brain to come up with a guy other than Rufus Wainright. Outside of anyone in dance music, there’s…who? Rob Halford? I don’t think it’s quite proper to refer to Halford as a contemporary rocker, no offense to him or his leather chaps (same with Elton John though the chaps don’t really figure in there).

In any case, it rarely happens, which is why it’s really saying something that Tom Robinson had any career at all in America in the 1970s.

In point of fact, Robinson was hardly a rock star here. His albums languished in the bottom fourth of the Billboard Top 200 here, while his singles never charted. In the UK, he fared much better, with “2-4-6-8” ending up in the top 5, while the album from whence it came, Power In the Darkness, topped out at #4. This was largely due to The Tom Robinson Band being featured on the cover of NME a whopping eight times.

I imagine it was Robinson’s political outspokenness that earned him a lack of success here. Robinson not only sang “Glad To Be Gay” but he also spoke out against Britain’s conservative government, and helped form Rock Against Racism. Other song titles from Darkness include “Don’t Take No For An Answer,” “Better Decide Which Side You’re On” and “Up Against The Wall.” This was in 1978. “Shadow Dancin'” it ain’t.

So his lack of status made his outspokenness all the more daring, although it probably gave his A&R man fits.

Since then, Robinson got married – to a woman – and later began hosting a BBC Radio 6 show, which he continues to this day. He remains outspoken about GLBT issues, and hosts a site called Having It Both Ways. He holds a yearly party in Belgium (!!) for his European fans, offers several of his solo albums for free on his website, and archived many articles about him from NME and other sources, which I’ve spent the better part of the evening perusing. I’ve certainly entertained thoughts of hanging of with famous rock stars, and have done so occasionally. But this is the first time I ever thought it’d be nice if one hung out at my local pub so we could casually shoot the crap from time to time.

As for the song itself, I’m still not quite sure what it’s about. But I think Ted Leo probably heard it as a kid, bought Darkness and found it got him thinking.

If you’re coming late to the party, this is a 37-part series on the first two volumes of the Living In Oblivion collection, which are available pretty much nowhere.

MP3 – “(Get A) Grip (On Yourself)” – The Stranglers
Lyrics – “(Get A) Grip (On Yourself)” – The Stranglers

You know what punk rock needs more of? Saxophone.

Used to be, you could have a decent shot at hearing some saxophone in a punk song. I’m not talking about punk bands that are actually ska bands, I’m talking about actual punk bands.

The Stranglers, X-Ray Spex, Buzzcocks, New York Dolls? Modern Lovers and The Jam maybe? Even the odd Clash number. Saxophone. Nothing says angst like a woodwind instrument. (It is, too. Look it up.)

Honestly, I’m not sure what else to say about “(Get A) Grip (On Yourself),” except that it wins the award for most hilarious use of parentheses. The song’s another example of a late 70s inclusion that, while great, has no business here. Then again, the Stranglers were really men out of time so perhaps that makes sense. They came up through the pub-rock movement, and found themselves trying to adapt to the punk and New Wave scenes. They made a pretty good go of it until about 1984 when their career came down to a low simmer that’s pretty much stayed there. Like 999, they still tour throughout Europe.

I find it really interesting that no one ever rags on old punk bands that stay together long after the new material’s dried up. Classic rock bands get it all the time, but old punk bands never do. It’s seen as another sortie in the fight against…what, exactly? Welcome to the new nostalgia.

Moreover, The Stranglers were also accused of being misogynists, and Lotharios. This is even more proof that this band didn’t really cut its teeth in the 80s. You did not get to be known as a band of shag monkeys in the 80s if your video featured a drummer that looks like the bass player from Almost Famous. You had to look like Mötley Crüe to get away with that shit. That is to say, you had to look a lot like the women you were chasing.

MP3 – “Romanticide” by Combo Audio
Lyrics – “Romanticide” by Combo Audio

A brief aside to begin: With Combo Audio’s “Romanticide,” we’re getting into fairly obscure territory here. Case in point: whenever I’ve been doing research for these posts (Yes, research! Do you think I just pour a glass of whiskey and knock this out? I mean, I do, but there’s a bit of poking around first) I’ve run into countless lyrics pages for each song. Not so for this one. “Romanticide” has a mere two pages devoted to publishing its lyrics. The band’s allmusic.com page doesn’t even list its discography or a brief bio; the sole piece of information published there is a reference to this Living in Oblivion compilation. Plus, it’s not even the most common song called “Romanticide” out there (that honor goes to some goth metal band called Nightwish). In fact, there’s so little information out there about this song that by the second page of Google results, this blog pops up thanks to last week’s post. So give a listen to the song first via the link above. Otherwise, you’re going to be bored stiff.

“Romanticide” follows an almost quintessential New Romantic song structure. The first and second verses are nearly identical, save for the opening stanzas, and contain a couple almost rhymes (yourself/health) when the words aren’t flat-out identical (out/out). The lyrics are built around a prominent chorus, with everyone in the band chipping in for the lead-in (“It’s a clear! Cut! Case!”). The drums are the loudest things in the mix, the keyboards sound like a harpsichord, and the guitarist appears to have nipped out for a bit to eat during the session. All it’s really missing is a properly overwrought bridge, though the turn of phrase that substitutes for it (“It’s not losing you, it’s just feeling lost”) is exactly the kind of clever wordplay that leaves stoners breathless and has been getting “sensitive guys” laid since time immemorial. In all manner of presentation, the song sounds as if it were composed by those who’ve studied at The Dream Academy under Professor Ultravox.

So it’s a bit of a surprise to discover that they’re from Urbana, IL.

The idea behind the chorus is brilliant. Rag on emo if you like, but there was no genre of music more romantically self-involved, more destructively navel-gazing than New Romanticism. This guy is killing himself, not necessarily because his heart is broken, but because he’s continuing to ruminate over this woman who’s tossed him aside with so little regard that she couldn’t even be bothered to have an argument with him before throwing him out. And now he is so destroyed that he cannot even summon up the good graces to tip his waitress, while he sits there taking up a table that could very well be used by two people who would probably order more than the measly cup of coffee and order of fries (with a side of ranch dressing) that he’s fussing over.

There’s a line in High Fidelity that goes “Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?” I think of it every time I hear the lines of this song, along with a piece of literary criticism that I picked up somewhere along the way about the character of Romeo in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Someone – it may have been my 8th grade English teacher – said that Romeo was in love with the idea of being in love. It wasn’t so much the lady who was important, as it was the feeling she engendered within him. Both reflections speak of a kind of young man who tortures himself with that which he cannot have. It’s an unattainable – and in some cases unquantifiable – love that will always elude him, while the love that will ultimately be the best for him slips away quietly without his notice. In movies, said young man usually comes to his senses at the end (see also: Eric Stoltz in Some Kind of Wonderful), but in real life, this doesn’t always happen, and he always mourns a bit for what might have been.

AAAAAnyway, the song is a trifle, but it’s a well-constructed trifle. Little but sugar at its center, but easily stacks up against the best of its genre, which brings us back around to the obscurity of this song. Like one chocolate in a box full of them, there is little to suggest this band had any impact on the 80s at all, and merely blended in with the rest. A Google search about Combo Audio is more likely to turn up information about RCA cables than anything else. Yet I discovered a couple fan sites that were quite effusive in their praise of the band, who apparently hailed not from London, but from Urbana, IL.

All this is further evidence of a long-held theory of mine that no matter how unknown the band, no matter how early on in its career it might be or no matter how past their prime they are, there will always be three to five people standing near the front of the stage at its live shows, singing along with every word, with at least one girl dancing around like she is a little tipsy on cherry wine, while at her Senior Prom that she is attending with the best-looking boy at school. If the band is no longer performing live, there were most assuredly be at least three to five people who will proclaim the band to be “incredibly underrated” and the best of a series of bands in a particular “scene,” a scene with which most other people are not familiar thereby rendering said statement unassailable in its logic.

And so it is with Combo Audio’s “Romanticide,” where it matters not the quantity of love, but the quality. Not the longevity, but the intensity.

MP3 – “Homicide” by 999
Lyrics – “Homicide” by 999 (and here as well…see below)

You could count on one hand the number of bands on the first two discs of the Living In Oblivion collection that are still performing live in 2007, and 999 would be one of them. This sounds unusual – twenty-odd years is a long time for any band to play together – but not unthinkable. Until you place it a modern-day context, that is.

Imagine that you find a time machine and travel into the future – specifically the year 2031 – and after getting your hands on a sports almanac, Back To The Future-style so you can make a few well-placed bets later on, you start paging through the A&E section of your Chicago Tribune Personal KeyPadd Edition touchscreen, to discover that Sum 41 is still touring and recording the occasional album every couple of years. How shocked would you be? Despite the strength of “Homicide,” 999 were the Sum 41 of their day, neither the best or the worst of the UK punk movement, but certainly not the band most likely to succeed.

“Homicide” is off 999’s 2nd album, Separates, and was followed by an album replete with covers, so this could fairly be called the band’s artistic peak. From the outset, it sounds a bit like a slowed-down version of Generation X’s “Dancing With Myself” then transmogrifies into a kind of Stiff Records pub rock crossed with AC/DC’s “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap.”

Even with this meager C.V., 999 still tours regularly in the U.K. and if their website is to be believed, they’ll be releasing their first album of original material later this summer. I suppose if Iggy can do it, so can they.

Depending on the lyric sheet you read, the song is either a prima facie uber-anarchist call to arms, or a dark, foreboding cautionary tale. I’d be more inclined to believe the latter if the band’s website wasn’t otherwise riddled with typos, leading me to wonder if they’d bollixed up their own lyrics. But since “I believe in homicide/I rest my case” is like saying “Your honor, that man is a murderer, and the state calls no further witnesses,” I’m going to side with 999 on this matter.

Plus, this video puts to rest any questions of whether the band had cum for your children. Seriously, what the hell is going on here? Vocalist Nick Cash is wearing a brown vest AND a red bow tie* over a yellow shirt and yellow pants. It’s as if he is dressed up for Halloween as the first accountant made entirely of banana pudding. Also: if you are the costumer designer for this video, and the band is being filmed against a stark white background, what color pants would you put on the bassist? If you said “white,” then congrats, you will have a job in show business if that time machine of yours can make it back to 1978, while millions of children scream in horror at the disembodied torso fiddling around on the Fender.

“Homicide” also reveals that while Living in Oblivion may have a lot more charm to the modern ear than your average Now That’s What I Call Music! compilation, the motives for both are the same. See, “Homicide” came out in 1978, and as a result, it sounds very out of place here. But no matter. It’s making someone some money. It won’t be the last track here to play fast and loose with the subtitle (“The 80s Greatest Hits”), but you could argue that most of the tracks here don’t live up to that boast. And frankly, slotting it here – right before Combo Audio’s “Romanticide,” is a sly move, and a nice palette cleanser after the mush that preceded it.

* By the way, is that thing made of tissue paper? It sure looks like it.