"Oh no. Don't say that it's true."

A dark day indeed. RIP David Bowie.
A true giant of the music world if ever there was one.

For several years late in the decade Andy Partridge was one of the most interesting/disturbing/exciting/innovative and talented songwriters/singers/guitarists in popular music. Songs such as "Dear God", "Merely a Man" and "Mayor of Simpleton" to name just a few kept power pop relevant in the days leading up to the grunge onslaught. Partridge's lyrics were brutally cynical and took on all comers from religion to politics to consumerism with a vitriol that seemed not quite consistent with his baby-faced, good boy looks.

After contract disputes led to the end of XTC following the stellar album "Nonsuch" Partridge became something of a musical vagabond which is what he remains to this day (XTC, says Partridge, is something he thinks of "in the past tense"). He lives a fairly secluded life with his long time gf Erica Wexler and is fond of creating his own board games.







Left:
Then: Andy Partridge late 80s
Now: Andy Partridge and GF Erica Wexler

After a long time away during which I've been helping my friend Rich Chambers with his film projects I've decided to get the 80s party back on track as best I can while working around shooting schedules and post production obligations.

So, without further ado...

What better way to conjure the glorious 80s than with the desperate lyrics of Roger Waters and perhaps the greatest guitar solo in the history of rock from David Gilmour. Yes, we're going to get this party re-started with "Comfortably Numb" from Pink Floyd's "The Wall"; a snarling dragon of a concept album if ever there was one. No need to remind me it was released in November '79 because it doesn't matter. This album laid down the tone for the decade to come.

Terence Trent D'arby (or Sananda Francesco Maitreya as he is now legally called) burst onto the music scene with his 1987 album "Introducing the Hard Line According to Terence Trent D'arby". The album was a massive his and spawned two hit singles: "Wishing Well" and the track here "Sign Your Name". For my money this is one of the best R&B tracks of the decade.

They just don't make 'em like this anymore. Melodic, ironic, lean and mean it's one of my favorite driving songs.

1988 represented the low point of 80s music, what with the likes of Tiffany, Richard Marx, Rick Astley and Whitney Houston cluttering up the airwaves. Music was in a holding pattern as new wave had exhausted itself and the seismic shift that was Nirvana was still a ways off.

Still there were a few gems to be found if you were willing to sift through the waste material and this is one of them. A remake of a minor 1968 hit by Neil Diamond UB40 took the original and reggaed the s**t out of it. The result was a pop music masterpiece that sounds as good today as it did then.

For me Christine McVie's contributions to Fleetwood Mac are almost always overlooked. She had a beautiful soft voice and wrote uncomplicated, catchy love songs that stuck in your head on the first listening. This gem from the band's 1987 multi-platinum album "Tango in the Night" is a perfect example. The song reached number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 and spent 3 weeks at number 1 on the adult contemporary charts.

Huey Lewis and the Afterthoughts, uh, I mean the News became music superstars with the release of 1984's "Sports". Lewis himself looked like he worked at a machine shop during the day and let his sister-in-law cut his hair and pick his stage outfits. In many ways though it was his everyguy image that underpinned his popularity and Lewis never shied away from it. Following the pinnacle of "Sports" and it's followup "Fore" HL&TN began a long slide into obscurity. By the late 80s they had parted with their record company and gone on an extended hiatus. The advent of grunge drove the final nail into the coffin of Lewis' brand of feel good, uber-mainstream, working class pop.

So where is Huey Lewis today anyway?

Huey Lewis then and now.

Huey Lewis and the News still do a fair number of live shows each year, though these days they play venues like the California State Fair and the Cape Cod Melody Tent. Their new album "Soulsville" did manage to crack the Billboard 200, peaking at number 121. Lewis himself doesn't seem to have changed much over the years. He's still a happy go lucky figure who seems quite content to get together with the boys and play to whoever will listen.

Spanish Bombs is my favorite tune from the Clash's third album, the double LP classic "London Calling".  Some have said that London Calling is a 1970s record but the fact is that while it was released on December 14, 1979 in Britain it wasn't released in the US until January of 1980. That same month saw the release of the Pretenders self-titled debut album. What a great time for rock music.

"Man in the Mirror" live at the 1988 Grammy Awards. Happy New Year!

On September 19, 1981 Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel held a free concert on the Great Lawn of Central Park in New York City. Nobody knew what to expect as far as public response was concerned. Would there be 50 aging hippies wandering into the park seeking some kind of validation? Or would there be 10 or 20,000 people? Nobody knew.

As the sun set on the evening of the show it became apparent that this was going to be a concert of historical proportions. More than 500,000 packed the lawn and adjoining areas in a mass whose end wasn't visible from the stage. It was a remarkable tribute to a duo that hadn't issued new music under the name "Simon and Garfunkel" in more than a decade.

These being the days before concerts with gi-normous video screens the vast majority of the crowd could hear but barely see the performers. But who cared? The price was right, the music was right, the weather was perfect and, as Simon (jokingly?) pointed out "The guys selling loose joints are donating half their proceeds to the city."

The concert begat an HBO special, VHS cassette, DVD and a multi-platinum live album.

Here is one of the highlights of the show, Art Garfunkel's soaring "Bridge Over Troubled Water". (Note: the video uploader has dated the piece "1982". That is when the HBO special aired.)

One of my favorite Christmas songs of all time. Merry Christmas from Paris and myself.

With "Notorious" Duran Duran took a turn down funky street and "Skin Trade" is a perfect example. A lot of fans thought the band had lost their way but to me this is one of their most satisfying albums ever and serves as a nice bridge between the adolescent energy of the first few records and the exquisite maturity of their later "Wedding Album".

For me this song is the best thing about "Top Gun". Written by Giorgio Moroder and Tom Whitlock it was the first single released from the movie soundtrack and reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on September 13, 1986. It would turn out to be Berlin's biggest hit.

This song, written by Daryl Hall in 1980, was given a workover by producer Laurie Latham and became a monster hit for Paul Young in 1985. A beautiful ballad marked by Pino Palladino's distinctive fretless bass it was his only song to reach #1 in the US and was the springboard to the multi-platinum success of the album that spawned it; "The Secret of Association".

I have to admit up front that much of Journey's music I can live without just fine but the clarity, range, subtlety and power of Steve Perry's vocal on this track caught my ear the first time I heard it and has never really let me go. On "Faithfully" Perry gives the kind of performance that separates an artist from the pack and turns what could have been just another song about how hard it is to be rich and famous into a bonafide classic that pretty much set the standard for all power ballads right to this day.

Though Talking Heads came out of the 70s punk scene in New York they were anything but slash and burn Sex Pistols types. From the beginning there was something different about them. Unlike a lot of punk-rock types David Byrne looked like he couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag and probably spent his Sunday's at the library. For some reason though the contradictory image worked to Talking Heads advantage as a lot of people who appreciated punks desire to wipe the slate clean but couldn't embrace its "any day's a good day to overdose" ethos found refuge in the band's somewhat nerdy public image and experimental musicality.

By the time of the release of 1983's "Speaking in Tongues" Talking Heads had become firmly established as America's favorite alternative band. If you were in college at the time owning several Talking Heads albums was practically required. Still, they lacked that breakthrough hit that would deliver them the mountaintop. That situation finally changed with the release of the single "Burning Down the House". The song, buttressed by an appropriately quirky video in heavy rotation on MTV, reached the top 10 in both the US and Canada. The song evolved from a studio jam which, when it reached a satisfactory point, was given over to Byrne to write lyrics for. He employed the tactic of finding phrasal rhythms that matched the song's structure and then finding words that fit the phrasing. The result is a song that is hard to pin down. What exactly is it about? There is no 'subject' really. It's about music, kind of like the way that dreaming is about life.

Released in 1987 "Tunnel of Love" was Bruce Springsteen's second solo album (though various members of the E-Street band did play on some of the tracks) and is, in my opinion, the second best album he ever made (the best being 1973's "The Wild, The Innocent and the E-Street Shuffle"). It's also a problematic record for me to listen to because as good as the B-side is the A-side of Tunnel of Love seems strangely unfinished. For this reason it didn't make my list of "10 best albums of the 80's".

Still, if you didn't give up on the record halfway through the A-side the wonders of the B-side were there to be discovered. From the first track to the last it's one of the great 24 minute listening experiences available in popular music. Springsteen's music has always tended to waiver between the poles of over-the-top production on the one hand and bare bones, dust dry minimalism on the other but with the B-side of Tunnel of Love he finally found that sweet equatorial zone in between.

My favorite song from the album is the one featured here and it's a perfect example of this stripped down but not naked approach. The lyrics are spare yet eloquent and to the point ("I met a girl and we ran away, I swore I'd make her happy every day. But how I made her cry. Two faces have I."). The instrumentation starts off with a solo acoustic guitar finding its way and then, with the advent of the second verse, bass and drums are added in the background. Springsteen's vocals are way up front in the mix, his voice clear, his phrasing revealing his decidedly mixed feelings about the dissolution of his relationship: he's accepted it, but he's not at all happy about it. After the third verse there's a short, scratchy guitar solo and the final verse contains one of rocks great unheralded threats, tacked on in what almost seems like an afterthought: referring to the unnamed third party's intention to "take your love away from me" the singer, in a subdued but determined voice states flatly "Well go ahead and let him try".

What follows that menacing line is maybe the most soaring, beautiful Hammond organ solo ever recorded. It's a breathtaking tribute to the facility of the late Danny Federici and all he brought to the table in the service of Springsteen's songs over all the many years.

No video was ever recorded for "Two Faces" and to me the live versions simply don't measure up. So here's the original album version of the song, music only. Enjoy.

The first time I heard this beautiful song I knew it was Barbra Streisand with that distinctive voice but I also thought "It sounds an awful lot like somebody else". Well that someone else is of course the Bee Gees who were at the height of their creative power when they wrote and produced this incredible ballad for Barbra. The brother's breathy chorus played off against Streisand's dramatic soprano climaxes is almost too much of a good thing. Almost. The song spent 3 weeks at number one in the U.S. and became Streisand's most popular single ever.

"With or Without You" was the first single released by U2 from their 1987 album The Joshua Tree. It became their first #1 song in the US and topped the charts in several other countries as well. Originally written during The Unforgettable Fire tour the song was taken out and dusted off in 1986 when the band sat down and began to plan their next album. Several rough versions were recorded but none met with the band's satisfaction. At one point producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois abandoned the song but Bono felt there was something there that could be saved. In the end it was The Edge's experiments with a device called "infinite guitar" which allowed for practically endless sustain to be created that proved to be the breakthrough everyone had been looking for. The resulting song begins slowly as though rising from an early morning fog and then builds to a huge, landscape-crossing, church-bell-ringing climax before disappearing again into the mist. The final minute, with The Edge's chiming guitar notes playing off Larry Mullen's priapic back beat, is enough to send shivers down my spine even today.

The song can be taken many ways; Bono himself has often spoken of it as being about the difficulties in trying to balance a rock and roll life with family but it can also be heard as a song about spiritual conflict or, in the context of the album in general (whose working title was "The Two America's"), as an outsider's view of the US.