Then came the most recent bout of unemployment… and now I long for the days when there was something cheaper than the cheapest.

A desolate park on a day with decent weather – a nice place to collect one’s thoughts, right?  Not as such  -  for I was unexpectedly distracted, stopped almost dead in my tracks as I saw a conceptual videotape of my childhood played back across the algae-filled “pond”.

It turns out I had been to this park before, 20 years ago,  maybe even 20 years ago to the week.  The day care I went to organized a summer camp “outing”  here – one of the camp’s selling points was that we went on field trips twice a week.  However, the day care quickly ran out of glamorous locales such as Zilker Park or the Crow’s Nest Farm; by the end of August, the Ford Econoline conversion van was being dispatched to mere neighborhood parks such as this one.

I loved any chance to be away from home base, because that meant we had to bring a sack lunch.  For my single-working mother, this meant that my sack consisted of Cool Ranch Doritos and a Lunchable perhaps – the foodstuffs of pre-adolescent dreams!  It didn’t matter that I had few friends – when it came time to release us to “free play” – I could always pretend I was on an “away mission” in my own makeshift Star Trek universe.  Or, as was more often the case, I’d pretend I was digging to China or that the railroad ties were bascule bridges across an imagined gorge.  I managed my solitude fairly well – it was only when others dared to invite me into the greater juvenile society that things went poorly.

I found myself in a game of “hide and go seek” with the other kids.  I set my sights far and wide, betting that a longer distance from “base” would yield me better opportunities to evade.  I hid behind the bathroom. It smelled; it seemed like a place people wouldn’t consider. But it would not matter if I had hid near or far, because it was all a game.  Not “hide and go seek”, but “ignore the gaywad”.

You see, Darnell (I still remember his name so well), had played a trick on me – he had told all the other kids to run away and to essentially pretend like the game had never started.   I waited for the appropriate cue to come back, but didn’t see anyone, so I continued to hide behind the outhouse.  Once I made a “dash” for it – I noticed that nobody was even at this corner of the park.  I wasn’t even supposed to be at this corner of the park.

By the time I made it back to the swing, I was already in trouble; I was in time-out.  My plaintive insistence that I was part of a bigger game of hide and go seek only elicited laughter from others.  It seemed everyone but the teacher and I knew that this was some kind of joke.

I cried my eyes out next to the swings.  I sat on the little stone wall, and I ate my lunch next to my grouchy teacher, wondering why I was on the outside and they had made it in.  I would continue to wonder that for my entire childhood.  I continue to wonder that as an adult.

The more I remember of that day, the harder my heart felt, a pang of loneliness and heartburn.  I remember feeling so alone, and so misunderstood – and genuinely hurt that I had both been the recipient of a mean prank and a misdirected punishment.  Yet I knew even if I told my mother what happened, she would side with the teacher.  She always sided with the teacher, assuming that I was conjuring up an imagined reality instead of the hard facts.

Then I thought forward to my impending interview, but my emotions were still somewhere in 1990. While adults are more civilized, there is still the possibility that you can mean something in your heart and approach a situation with a total expectation of transparency and innocence, like the game of hide and go seek, but end up being part of something you aren’t aware of and are feckless to control.  I could get the job or I could not get the job – but even if I answered the questions to the best of my ability, with a similar degree of transparency and innocence as I’ve always approached life, there would still be the possibility that my intentions and essence would not resonate.   There is the possibility that the 27-year-old is still the 7-year-old, fraught with powerlessness despite having the right intentions.

I was teased a lot as a kid – this is only one of many stories like this that still sit in my brain somewhere.  But every time, I left the situation feeling like they would never do it to me if they knew how I really felt as a result.  No facial expression or postured phrase can make it sink in the way it sinks into your own heart.  The same goes for any person or people who don’t know you intimately.

And even when there were times that I was the bully – for the bullied also bully – I still, to this day, would do anything to set it right.  I remember pushing this girl Lisa into a hot sea of pebbles on the playground in 2nd grade for absolutely no reason.  She was deaf and her big hearing aids popped out of her ears as she laid there – her cry was not like mine, it was the cry of someone who was hard of hearing, with its unusual timbre.   Her red-flushed face is grilled onto my brain but it has never sat well.  I ran away and never got caught for it – but I was so deeply ashamed of what I did.  I owned that shame for years, even as we both made it through high school and even as it became clear that she didn’t outwardly recognize that it had even happened.

I wonder if Darnell has thought about what he did to me – whether he thought about it 5 minutes or 5 years after it happened, no matter if it was a casualty of childhoods transpiring the way they normally transpire.  I also wonder if those who interview me realize how personal and close to the surface the answers of those they interview can really be.  It seems I have learned a lot in 20 years, but not how to stop wearing my emotions on my sleeve.  That would require a trepidation of my spheres, I fear.

But I did take a few nice shots tonight – they may be the last, however.

One of the last-gasp trends that encapsulated the disco music era was the disco medley – it was briefly a very popular phenomenon around 1980 and 1981. While there were disco medleys that hit the charts as far back as 1976, the mass market appeal of the condensed form “DJ set within a DJ set” did not occur until Stars on 45 came to be.

I learned about Stars on 45 as a first-grader one particularly boring afternoon – I was a lonely, friendless brainchild with a cash-poor single mother; as a result, her LP records from eras of yore were my imaginary friends – musty jewels ensconced inside a mystical treasure chest of adulthood, tucked away in the dust-bunny annals of our living room floor-unit stereo.

I didn’t know what they really were or who sang them, and I didn’t care – these albums were MAGIC. And my mother owned both “Stars on Long Play” and “Stars on Long Play II” – something she probably would be loathe she owned to admit even then, for she wanted to be seen as a true HEAVY METAL MAMA, and not merely a transition metal somewhere between Manganese and Cadmium. The result, though, of letting these albums be my playthings is that I was destined to be a disco dolly when I grew up – sorry, ma, nature and nuture and all that jazz.

So “Long Play” and “Long Play II” quickly became my favorite things ever; I loved ‘em more than my Legos for a brief period. How could one not adore the idea of putting the Carpenters to a dance beat? These songs were so cartoonishly energetic in its vocals, much like a children’s album should be, but without the pandering that befalls all child-focused anything. It was also a fabulous introduction to pop music in general, as Stars on 45 were notorious for making the undisco suddenly digestible in a repetitive groove-shuffle-hustle pattern – they synthesized everything into their musical hurdy-gurdy, from the aforementioned Carpenters to Madness, the Beatles, even Frank Sinatra. They had no shame! They attempted to make something already kind of silly (disco for the masses) into something even sillier, something full of glorious artifice, just for the sake of fun and dancing.

I probably took it more seriously as a preteen, but today it should just be seen as a fabulously awful novelty trendette. Half of the glory of Stars on 45 was in its intro – a branding technique that opened every one of their medleys. It featured a brief reference to one of the best disco songs ever, “Beat The Clock” by Sparks, and contained its own broken English mission statement, a call to arms, if you will:

“THE STARS ON FORTY FIVE KEEP ON BURNING IN YOUR MIND, WHILE WE CAN WORK IT OUT, REMEMBER TWIST AND SHOUT!”

Here is the original Stars on 45 single – featuring the Beatles. (Although the first song is ‘Sugar Sugar’, which is certainly not a Beatles song. They threw music together like a Rachael Ray salad!)

Stars on 45 – Stars on 45

Disco medlies are not something to take all that seriously – they do not rank up there with a song like Donna Summer’s “Our Love”, Azoto’s “Exalt-Exalt”, or Tantra’s “Hills of Kathmandu”, but they have their place. Everything has its place. And it’s clear that every band of the time secretly wished they had the types of songs in their repertoire to comprise a medley of their own – it’s the sign that you not only write catchy songs, but that you write many catchy songs.

The best “ironic disco medley” has to be Squabs on Forty Fab by Squeeze. They were ‘the Beatles of new wave’; critics and fanboys alike continue to profess that Squeeze is the most underrated thing since people rated things like rock bands in the first place. This medley proves that – it expresses the joy of Squeeze in a concise listener’s digest. The first time I heard this song, it was on the muzak at a barbecue restaurant here in Austin, circa 2001. I was so unbelievably overtaken with joy, I got up and ran around like Jodie Foster in ‘Nell’, bleeping out jibberish to a bunch of annoyed Texans about my favorite British wonderband.

Squeeze – Squabs on Forty Fab

From start to finish, the songs featured are: Take me I’m Yours / Cool For Cats / Up the Junction / Is That Love? / Pulling Mussels From The Shell / Another Nail In My Heart / Slap and Tickle / Goodbye Girl / instrumental break from Someone Else’s Heart

Another great British band, Orange Juice, decided to create a medley of their own, called Blokes on 45, for a Peel Session. It’s nearly as good as “Squabs”, but has to be seen as derivative since it came out a year or more later than Squeeze’s effort. While I love this band, Edwyn Collins’ ersatz-sentimental bored-school-boy vocals do wear thin on me. Which is why I just play this song (and “Rip It Up”, their one hit) whenever I DJ – for it covers all bases.

Orange Juice – Blokes on 45

Here is another fantastic medley, but this time, the band themselves didn’t create it in an ironic gesture. (It came out in 1979, before the whole trend started.) In this case, I am glad the band didn’t sing it themselves, because it’s the Sex Pistols, and the Sex Pistols suck. They’re overrated media-whore tripe – which is why the French band Black Arabs deserves so much credit, for they managed to turn crap into fantastic. The way they sing “Pretty Vacant” makes it seem like a love song of the ages. It is the only “Sex Pistols” song I will ever own.

Sex Pistols – Black Arabs

There was one ‘serious’ medley in my book – the Disco Circus medley of Giorgio Moroder’s best songs. It is flawlessly mixed, it is a grand showcase of his many noteworthy songs, and it is not gimmicky. It is also one of the very last of its breed, coming out in 1983, after traditional disco had all but died.

Disco Circus – Giorgio Moroder

Editor’s note: I have gone on and on and on about medleys and medleys and medleys; you have probably learned more than you ever expected to or wanted to. But that was part of this blog post’s design, if you will – for medleys go on forever and ever. But I digress.

You see, Alf was pretty popular in France.  He even got his own promo spots on Antenne 2, my favorite French channel for middle-brow sitcommery.

Somehow it’s all very watchable, even though the French voice actor who played Alf was clearly all they could find – there is no comparison!

In case you wanted to know what he ‘said’, here’s my best guess translation: “Watch out, friends! I’m coming to Antenne Deux very soon!”

In my ALF research, I came across this juicy bit of gossip: Max Wright, who played the father, “…stated that he despised supporting a technically demanding inanimate object that received most of the good lines of dialog.”

There are dozens of ALF clips in French – but this one seems to be the closest to funny.

In Japanese, Alf is known as, “アルフ”, or “Arufu”. Currently, ALF is playing somewhere in Denmark, Serbia, Bulgaria, Australia, and on Nick At Nite Latinoamerica. That’s a lot of dubbing.

Email me at rutledge.matthew@gmail.com if you’re interested.

Of all the bands in which I take a serious interest, Simple Minds went from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows in a short time span.  Does success really alter one’s style that much? Apparently it does.  The ironic thing is that U2 was quoted in the press as saying that New Gold Dream was an inspiration for The Unforgettable Fire.  Apparently it worked both ways, as Simple Minds became a Scottish analogue to U2, ostensibly selling out stadia whenever U2 was otherwise engaged elsewhere.

Their success does not mimic U2′s at all – U2 was a press darling within a few years of their first releases.  1980′s Boy had a top 20 single in the US and went platinum in Canada.  1983′s War was a top 20 album hit in the US, a really tough feat for anything from the British Isles at the time, even if it was the era of Kajagoogoo and Duran Duran.  So that’s about 4 years from obscure to widespread.   While U2′s public image really grates on me, I concede that Boy and War especially are two fantastic albums.

Simple Minds, on the other hand, wavered stylistically.  They started out with a bright, new wave sound – “Chelsea Girl” sounds eerily like Sparks.  This propelled their first album, Life In A Day, to #30 on the UK charts.   Not bad for a band that was comprised of members still in their teens.  But instead of going more poppy, they went far, far less poppy, and stuck with a very experimental sound for several years.  Real to Real Cacophony, their second album, didn’t even chart.   But it does contain a brilliant, perversely pop-oriented track, “Factory”:

Simple Minds – Factory (1979)

1980′s Empires and Dance, one of their best, hit #41 on the charts but their (fantastic, futuristic, prototypical) single “I Travel” did not. “I Travel” was almost their “Hand in Glove” or “Life in Tokyo” – i.e. the single that was released three different times and never met expectations.  (“Life in Tokyo” is by Japan, and “Hand in Glove” is from the Smiths and Sandie Shaw). “I Travel” is, as one writer put it, a mix of Roxy Music and Giorgio Moroder.

Simple Minds – I Travel (1981)

They were dropped from their Arista after “I Travel” and given a second chance at Virgin.  But instead of returning to a more accessible sound, they descended into experimental depths that placed it almost in Cabaret Voltaire territory, i.e. critically claimed but rather inaccessible.

It’s a surprise these albums were released in the form that they were – two albums for a band that was so far, only a tepid success.  They were released at the exact same time - Sister Feelings Call was usually packaged as a special bonus to the main Sons and Fascination.

To die hard fans of a ‘certain sound’ – like myself, these two albums are their crowning master achievement.    They are hard-rocking, they are set in odd time signatures, they feature brittle, heaving synthesizers – they have instrumentals, short pop songs and long krautrock imitations.  They reach a depth that very, very few million-record-selling bands ever would dare to go.  That is why and that is where they earn my respect.

Sister Feelings Call/Sons and Fascination together is what I would call the “Low” of the 80′s.  “Theme For Great Cities” is a thoughtful continuation of “A New Career In A New Town” – “20th Century Promised Land” speaks of far more political concepts than anything on “Low” did, but stylistically speaking, “20th Century” could be a lost second 2nd half to “Be My Wife”.  Nearly every song on these two albums are fantastic.  They speak of very dark concepts, containing wan hope for the future.  The lyrics often leave you with an impressionist blur at best, kind of like the Associates’ lyrics – you can figure out the words, but you stumble on the meaning.

Simple Minds – 20th Century Promised Land (1981)

This was the time that the somewhat catchy  “Love Song” and “The American” were released – the two singles that got them back in the public consciousness.  They were almost (but not quite) smash hits in Canada and Australia.

Then, in 1982,  they released their mainstream breakthrough (it hit #3 in the UK charts) – the album “New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84)”.  I could never figure out what the hell 81-82-83-84 was supposed to represent – the album was released in September 1982.  Were they midway in a 4-year-old ‘dream’ of making the very big bucks (i.e. ‘gold”)?  In a sad way, the words new, gold and dream were exactly what this album was about – a dream of their new sound making them lots of gold.

Simple Minds – New Gold Dream (1982)

That being said, it is one of their very best albums.  Many say it’s their career best – and if I weren’t such a slave to post-punk difficulties, it would probably be mine.  Except for the album cover, which is GHASTLY.  They went from this to that in 3 years! ACK!

GOD (no pun intended) is that album cover gaudy!  But it was a success beyond expectations.  Among its tracks, “New Gold Dream”, “Promised You A Miracle”, “Glittering Prize”, “Someone Somewhere in the Summer Time”, and “Hunter and the Hunted” were profound pieces of work.  (The rest, I could take or leave.)  The one alarming thing about the album is that it’s way Christian…not that there’s anything wrong with that.  But it seems to be the death knell for many – Cliff Richard spent 10 years being a Billy Graham yes-man, and it probably cost him several million singles in lost fans.  At least U2 was up front about their Christian beliefs – their first single, “I Will Follow”, puts it right out there.  But Simple Minds must have been born again sometime between 1981 and 1982, and baptized in 1984.  They have never been the same.

After that, it’s all downhill in critical terms – Sparkle In The Rain features more hideous album design (some kind of pre-Medieval England motif that is so out of place).  “East at Easter” is the only standout track. From there, it was all about huge smash hits like “Alive and Kicking” – not a bad song, mind you, but it was buffered by increasingly shabby album tracks.   Jim Kerr’s voice, unique and brooding, now sounds like Michael Hutchence of INXS.   All of the formerly-alternative arena rock bands of the Commonwealth – INXS, U2, and Simple Minds – sound like little imitations of one another.

It gets worse, sadly – Simple Minds’ work after “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” is often ghastly at time.  Their “big message” songs couldn’t hold a candle to U2.  Their “jukebox dance” songs were a pale imitation – INXS’ “Suicide Blonde” will do nicely instead, thanks. At least it was hip.  At least it was sexy.  At least we all wanted to do Michael Hutchence.

Instead, we got regurgitated “concern for the world’s people” stuff.  I can’t even write about the stuff that came after 1991′s “Real Life”.  It’s worse than Duran Duran’s “Electric Barbarella”!

I almost cringe at how patronizing this song seems:

Simple Minds – African Skies (1991)

I know I have thoroughly savaged Simple Minds post-1982, but what you should take from that is not to avoid this band.  Instead, it is a call for you to thoroughly explore their first 6 albums and love them as I do.

Ed’s note: I am not anti-Christian as far as music goes.  One of my favorite songs of all time in the history of man is “On the Wings of A Dove” by Ferlin Husky.

This is the title card to “Masculin Feminin” by Jean-Luc Godard.

It is apparently a customization of Neuzeit Grotesk.

This is another drawing from the mystery man who created the Roxy Music comic that I previously wrote about. I wish I could figure out who this guy is, because I want to give him proper credit. If I recall, he lives in the English Midlands and does not make a living as an artist. I think he could, though.