4. “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over” by Jeff Buckley (1994)
This is one of the best tracks on the only album from one of the best talents of the 90s. As I’ve written here before, the album takes me back to a specific time of my youth, maybe more than any other music every has or can.

3. “When the Party’s Over” by Billie Eilish (2018)
Released in 2018 and featured on her 2019 debut album When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, this was the song that got me hooked.

2. “A Place for Us” by Dan Zanes (2003)
Dan Zanes was one of the founding members of The Del Fuegos, an 80s rock band that had a loyal following. I didn’t learn about him until the 2000s, when I was a dad of a toddler and Zanes was making children’s music that was interesting, fun, and culturally-inclusive. And it was damn good. This is my favorite of the many we loved, part of the soundtrack of our early family.

1. “Don’t Give Up” by Peter Gabriel, with Ane Brun (2011)
The original recording of this song is a duet with Kate Bush, among the gems on Gabriel’s 1986 album So. I didn’t buy the album for this song, but it’s become my favorite of his always interesting and heartfelt songs. This live performance from his 2011 album Live Blood features Norwegian singer Ane Brun and a full orchestra backing them.

I love him like crazy, but I like him a heck of a lot, too. It’s not just that we’ve got lots of loves in common––like music, comedy, and history––it’s that he’s always been his own unique self. He’s always been a kid with lots of style, lots of imagination, and a lot of caring for others.

This Friday Five is in honor of this momentous day. Each of the below songs was the #1 song in the country on November 14.

“Hello” By Adele (November 14, 2015)

“Gold Digger” by Kanye West, featuring Jamie Foxx (November 14, 2005)

“Fantasy” by Mariah Carey (November 14, 1995)

“We Built This City” by Starship (November 14, 1985)

“Island Girl” by Elton John (November 14, 1975)

The connection is fun to my historian brain because a lot of the musical acts making it big by the 1970s were kids in that early era of rock ‘n roll, when African American musical styles went mainstream and global. So their covers songs were their rock, new wave, or punk spins on the classic songs from their youth.

Obviously, folks covering oldies because it was the music of their youth wasn’t a new idea to me. The new part was that I never really thought of the below groups as comprising people whose childhoods were from that era. Because their sounds were so distinct and specific to their era, I just thought of them as something new, kind of a break from the past.

And so that’s how I came up with the below list. These are all musical groups known for work in 70s subgenres like punk and new wave, but who covered R&B songs from that earlier era. They are also musical groups made up people who were alive and conscious (and impressionable) when the song they covered was first a hit.

5. “Denis” by Blondie (1978)
This cover of 1963’s “Denise” by Randy & the Rainbows (a doo-wop group from New York) changes the spelling of the name that is the title, but not the way the name is pronounced. It also flips the gender from a girl to guy, I assume to fit lead singer Debbie Harry in the lead. Wouldn’ve been way cooler as a subtly queer song, but its still fantastic. It was the first international hit for Blondie, pioneers in the new wave sound and so much more.

4. “Do You Love Me” by The Heartbreakers (1979)
Punk bands on this list are probably the most surprising, at least to those of us who came of age after the genre was born. For those who were there, the connection between 50s and 60’s R&B and punk were clear and, often, intentional. Here, punk pioneers The Heartbreakers perform their version of the massive 1962 hit from the Contours. This is a live recording of their version of the song, as featured on their second album, 1979’s Live at Max’s Kansas City. Because the band had technically broken up the year before, it’s also a kind of reunion album.

3. “Tears of a Clown” by The Beat (1979)
Until looking up the band for this post, I didn’t know they were only known as “English Beat” in the US. Back home they were just “The Beat, ” and yes they were. One of the many legendary bands from Birmingham, England, their unique ska sounds and grooves mixed with punk tendencies are more than bit of the US alternative trend of the times. This cover of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles’ legendary 1967 hit “Tears of a Clown” was, for The Beat, their very first single! Here they are lip-synching to it on “Top of the Pops.”

2. “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” by The Slits (1979)
The Slits were a all-female band formed in late-70’s London. Comprised of women who had played in two early punk bands––the Castrators and the Flowers of Romance––their sound was very much a mix of the kinds of varied sounds of London at the time. Now viewed as “post-punk,” the band was never that big, but over the years they’ve been talked about as a influence in the Riot Grrrl movement and more. This cover of the legendary Motown tune written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong was on their debut album. The song was famous since 1967, when Gladys Knight & the Pips released their version. Smokey Robinson and The Miracles recorded it in 1966, but didn’t released their version until summer of 1968. The most famous version was released later that year, by the great Marvin Gaye.

1. “Do You Want to Dance” by The Ramones (1977)
When I heard the cover by Blondie this week, this was the first song I thought of. First recorded and released by Bobby Freeman in 1958, this song remains one of the most recognizable “oldies.” New York punk progenitors The Ramones had a fondness for covers, and a fondness for old R&B. In many ways their music drew from the R&B sounds of the 50s and 60s, especially groups like The Ronettes and The Shangri-las. Their cover of Freeman’s hit was released on their 1977 album Rocket to Russia, their last with all the original four members of the band.

Honorable mention goes to “Tainted Love,” covered by Soft Cell in 1981 but originally recorded and released by Gloria Jones in 1964. In this instance, the cover was bigger than the original (and the same for the people who recorded each). I’ve written about it here before.

4. “Overland Junction” by Albert King (1966)
From his 1969 album King of the Blues Guitar, a compilation of recordings previously released only as singles by Stax Records. This gem is so recognizably Albert King, though he never sings.

3. “Kozmic Blues” by Janis Joplin (1969)
From Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, her first album after leaving Big Brother and the Holding Company, Janis Joplin reaches deep and gives us a display of rare talent and an awful lot of emotions.

2. “Hard Times” by Baby Huey (1970)
James “Baby Huey” Ramey died in 1970. He was only 26 years old. He had spent part of that year recording what was to be his debut album. Curtis Mayfield wrote many of the songs Huey sang, and produced and played on them, too. The completed tracks of the uncompleted album were released posthumously in 1971 as The Baby Huey Story: The Living Legend.

1. “Walkin’ the Boogie” by John Lee Hooker (1965)
The title track from his 1965 album on Chess Records is an interesting as it is unusual.

5. “Bennie and the Jets” performed by Jacob Lusk (2024)
I’d imagine it’s nerve-racking to perform a legendary song in front of the original performer. I’d imagine that feeling is multiplied when the legends are Elton John and Bernie Taupin. Jacob Lusk not only did that, he reinterpreted the song and made it his own, blowing the audience (including the two legends) away.

4. “Fix You” performed by Coldplay (2017)
They might be the best stadium band working today, expert at creating a moving musical experience with the energy and emotion of tens of thousands of people. There are no shortage of liver performances of this song online. It’s one of the greatest songs and their greatest live sing along. This performance, in São Paulo, captures what their music and their live experience does so well.

3. “Stairway to Heaven” performed by Heart (2012)
The amazing Ann and Nancy Wilson (with a formidable backing band, including Jason Bonham) performed at the 2012 Kennedy Center Honors, when Led Zeppelin were among the honorees. They had the formidable task of performing one of the greatest songs of all-time in front of the surviving members of the band. We all had the honor of watching them, and the rock legends’ emotional reaction to the performance (and hat tip to the late John Bonham).

2. “When the Party’s Over” performed by Billie Eilish (2014)
In her last tour, she created an experience with this song, one of her most hauntingly beautiful recordings. It’s the kind of song her fans sing at the top of their lungs when their all alone in their rooms. I think she knows that when she does this, singing it for and with them at the same time.

1. “Natural Woman” performed by Aretha Franklin (2015)
Songwriter and singer Carole King was honored by the Kennedy Center in 2015. Apparently, the honorees are never told who is going to pay tribute to them or, in the case of musical artists, play their music. Carole King was visibly surprised (maybe even shocked) when Aretha came out. Even more so when she sat at the piano and started playing the legendary song King wrote for her. It is that “last” greatest performances= by a women who gave us countless greatest performances in her life.

5. “Separate Lives,” Phil Collinsand Marilyn Martin (#37)
It was from the movie White Knights, starring Gregory Hines and the legendary Mikhail Barynishkov. The movie was fine, Cold War entertainment and amazing dancing. The song was a bigger hit.

4. “Lay Your Hands on Me,” Thompson Twins (#30)
A very 80s song from a very 80s band. Not sure how I feel about this. I was never a big fan but it does give me the way back feels.

3. “Freedom,” Wham! (#14)
Not at all their biggest hit, but one dripping in both 80s greatness and the upbeat, got to move kind of feels they did so well.

2. “Miami Vice Theme,” Jan Hammer (#6)
Perhaps nothing says fall 1985 more than the theme song to the new hit TV show Miami Vice. This longer “official video” is a bit weird. Below is the way it played on TV in its shorter version.

1. “Oh Sheila,” Ready for the World (#1)
“Take on Me” by A-ha was #3 this week. As a song and a video it’s such an 80s iconic thing, but I’ve posted it enough times in the past. This hit from Ready for the World is also a big deal. It doesn’t have the life that makes it as known right now (like A-ha’s hit) but at the time I liked this song way more.

I hadn’t planned on watching this but I’m so glad I did.

Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery is a documentary on the history behind the famed 90s music festival featuring women musical artists. Organized by singer/songwriter Sarah MacLachlan, the festival ran for three summers from 1997-99, with an evolving line-up each time.

The documentary helps contextualize the era in which the festival first took shape. MacLachlan and an assortment of other female performers—most singers, musicians, and songwriters—were a big segment of popular music by the mid 90s. Their success came despite the male dominated music industry, one in which radio stations wouldn’t even play two songs in a row by women.

The documentary does a great job of helping us see why and how Lilith Fair happened. It does a good job, too, of exploring its impact, one that clearly stretches into our present.

The doc features interviews with many of the big acts from the festival’s three-year run. Aside from MacLachlan, that assortment of talent includes folks like Jewel, Sheryl Crow, the Indigo Girls, Shawn Colvin, Emmylou Harris, and even Erykah Badu. There are some notables missing, mostly Tracy Chapman (the lone non-white act on the first tour), and perhaps those voices could have added something more.

The film was still a pleasing surprise. The history was good and seemingly honest, even willing to self-criticize on issues like race. It provides more context to understand just what a big deal the festival was, beyond the obvious. Most of that story is about the habitual male centeredness of the industry and our whole culture, really. It’s a great record of how sexism was still a powerfully different thing in the 90s than it is now (not that it’s not powerfully present now).

The footage from the various years of the festival was the best part. It’s a nostalgic movie for those of us who were there in the 90s. I loved seeing the crowds of folks attending as much as anything. The sea of 90s hairstyles and outfits and everything was great.

Of course so is the music. Though I did wish there was more actual concert footage of that. This is a movie about a live music tour but not really a traditional “concert movie” per se. We get glimpses of some of the amazing performances, but not anything more than clips.

In a musical present where the power of Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Billie Eilish are established truths, it might be easy to see this film as a record of what was before. Even though some things are far better, it doesn’t take a musical industry insider to see sexism in the industry is not a completely resolved issue, despite the successes of many women as dominant in the business.

That’s a shortcoming in the film too. In some ways, the film underrepresents its importance on the present, or at least doesn’t connect the dots that it suggests. It comes out in interviews with Olivia Rodrigo, and more in the analysis of critic Ann Powers, but not as explored as it should or could be. Lilith Fair was important and influential, and that’s a story in itself.

Still, this was a fun movie and really moving at times. It’s definitely worth a watch if you’re a fan of the 90s.

See more on my Letterboxd.

5. Revival by Selena Gomez (2015)
Selena Gomez’ second album turns 10 years old on October 9 this year. She’s had an admirable career, and our family is proof of that. She’s been a part of our household since 2008, when she sang “Fly to Your Heart,” the theme song for the first Tinker Bell movie; we listened to (and often sang along to) her music in the teens, as we shuttled kids from here to there with the local Top 40 radio station on; and now, the whole family might sit down––in the same room no less!!––to watch her in the latest episode of Only Murders in the Building. And that’s not even touching her other business and social media successes.

I like this single from the album the most. It was both interesting and something I never seemed to get tired of, which is saying a lot for almost any era of music.

4. Picture Book by Simply Red (1985)
I never owned Picture Book, which turns 40 on October 11. The album marks the debut Simply Red, a band from Manchester who had a lot of success in the UK and a decent career in the US. I can’t say I was a huge fan of the below song, either, although I did like it. Aside from the fact that it was hard to miss, at the time I remember being attracted to its surprising soulfulness, and also to what sounded like “adult” in music form. At the time of its release it felt oddly placed, like something that didn’t sound like anything else. Now, it reminds me of those times just about as vividly as any song can.

3. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness by The Smashing Pumpkins (1995)
The Smashing Pumpkins’ third album turns 30 years old on October 24. This amazing double CD album from Chicago’s most famous 90s alternative band is in an small group of albums that define the mid-90s. It debuted in the #1 position, due at least in part to this first single release, which was released a week before the album dropped.

2. All That You Can’t Leave Behind by U2 (2000)
I was never a big U2 fan when I was a kid. I knew of them, but they weren’t really mainstream as much as “college radio,” and that cultural world was kind of liminal to mine. After 1987’s Joshua Tree they were unavoidable, and while the peculiar devotion of their fans kind of confused me, I enjoyed what I heard then, and even more in some subsequent albums.

By 2000 they had been the (or one of the) most famous bands in the world for awhile, but they seemed on the decline. This album––their tenth––was released on October 30 of that year. I bought it soon after and kept it in my 5-disc changed for the next year. I remember thinking (and telling people) what a solid album it was from start to finish. It was easy and poetic and soulful. And it was just good.

25 years later, I still like it a lot. This song was one of my favorites, both then and now. I love it a little more now because it was the song Joey Ramone was listening to when he passed away the following April.

1. Nighthawks at the Diner by Tom Waits (1975)
The great Tom Waits’ third studio album turns 50 years old this month, on the 21st. It’s a faux live album, in that while Waits recorded it in studio over multiple sessions, he did so before a small group of people who simulated being an audience in a club (one he calls “Raphael’s Silver Cloud Lounge” in the album). The format of the recording accentuates that simulation, with Tom’s witty banter with the audience a big part of the experience. You can almost hear the smoke!

Without a doubt, this album was one of the most impactful pieces of art on my young life. I’m not an artist, of course, but this album inspired me in ways I don’t think I even fully recognize. It’s also first time I ever listened to Tom Waits. It was spring 1993, I was in college, and one late night (or early morning) my friend Josh put the album in the CD player and hit play. We listened to the whole thing, and I was never the same again.

5. “Julia” performed by John Lennon
John’s beautiful love song to his mother, from the “White Album” (officially The Beatles) released in 1968. It’s the only Beatles song featuring John as the lone Beatle.

4. “Goodnight” (performed by Ringo Starr)
Ringo’s solo performance Beatles record is one of their sweetest tracks, and almost Golden Age of Hollywood cinematic. It’s the closing track to the double album known as “White.”

3. “Within You Without You” performed by George Harrison
The only Beatles track where George is the only Beatle is also his only composition on 1967’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. In an album that changed a whole lot in music and in the larger culture, this song is both a treat and a big part of the album’s legendary impact.

2. “Her Majesty” performed by Paul McCartney
Paul is the lone Beatle on an assortment of Beatles tracks. This one––the secret closing track to my favorite Beatles album, 1969’s Abbey Road–– is also the shortest Beatles song. It’s also funny and awfully catchy.

1.”Blackbird” performed by Sir Paul
Some of the songs on which Paul is the lone Beatle are among the bands greatest and most memorable songs. One is the legendary “Yesterday,” from 1965. Another is this gorgeous gem of a song, also from the “White Album.”

His absence from our daily lives and home is deeply felt. The best proof of that was the joy of having him home again for the last three months! While we love him and will miss him again, the reason is right, and good, and important, and exciting.

So here are five songs that are in my heart as I wish him well on year number two! Have a great next step in this adventure, mijo!

5. “Homeward Bound” by Simon and Garfunkel (1966)
While he’s headed in the opposite direction, this song is always such a reminder for me of the things that come with this kind of distance. This particular recording is on their greatest hits album, recorded from a live performance in 1970.

4. “Vivir Mi Vida” by Marc Anthony (2013)
This was a big song in his elementary school days and a big song in our house, and, well, a big song in the world. This is what it’s about.

3. “Beautiful Boy” by John Lennon (1980)
This is from the final studio album by Lennon, released just weeks before his untimely death. It’s a song about his son, one that serves to capture so much for so many of us.

2. “Time” by Tom Waits (1985)
First released on Waits’ 1985 album Rain Dogs, this live recording of the song is from 1987, the closing track on Big Time, his 1988 live album.

1. “Golden Slumbers” (et al) by the Beatles (1969)
This is from the closing stream of songs from our mutual favorite album by The Beatles, I’d play this song (through to “The End”) when he was little little, prepping him for bed after his bath.

5. Ani DiFranco (born September 23, 1970)
The uniquely talented singer songwriter Ani DiFranco turns 55 next month. DiFranco’s appeal to my generation––and my little corner of it, in particular––was and is deep. I was slow to connect with her music, but this song was certainly the entry point.

4. Joe Perry (born September 10, 1950)
The great Joe Perry, the lead guitarist, co-songwriter, and founding member of Aerosmith, turns 75 next month. He is one of the best around, and I’m happy to say I got to see them twice during my life. Drugs and alcohol plagued the band’s early years, leading to their temporary breakup. But when they reunited in1986, they became even bigger than they were before. I’m partial to their sober playing, captured here in this 1989 performance of their most immortal song, “Walk This Way.”

3. José Feliciano (born September 10, 1945)
September is the 80th birthday of pertorriqueño extraordinaire, José Feliciano! His story is one of the most “American” of things. Born blind in Puerto Rico, he migrated with his family to New York City when he was only five. They lived in Spanish Harlem, a culturally dynamic and polyglot place, especially at that time. He learned to play the guitar (self-taught) at nine, by playing (by ear) the music he heard on the streets, on the radio, and from rock ‘n roll, classical, and other records. In the early 60s, he started playing in clubs and coffeehouses in Greenwich Village, which is its own amazing story. He broke through in the English language market with his unique covers of contemporary songs of the era, but he also became a major recording start in Spanish-language music, often for his romantic ballads. His talent is beyond compare. Here is his most famous cover, his almost revolutionary reinterpretation of the Doors’ “Light My Fire.”

2. Les McCann (born September 23, 1935)
Jazz great Les McCann would have turned 90 next month. A brilliant pianist and vocalist, McCann is most famous for his collaborations with saxophonist Eddie Harris. That partnership produced one of the best jazz albums ever––1969’s Swiss Movement, a live recording of their June 21, 1969 performance at the Montreaux Jazz Festival. This performance of “Compared to What”––an exceedingly political song written by the great Gene McDaniels––is from that very concert.

1. B.B. King (born September 16, 1925)
The immortal bluesman B.B. King would have turned 100 this year. Here he is from 1971 performing one of his most famous tracks, “The Thrill Is Gone.” Written by Roy Hawkins, B.B. recorded it for his 1969 album Completely Well. Happy 100th Mr. King!

This year marks my 24th as a full-time, tenured or tenure-track professor. My first time teaching in higher education was as a teaching assistant in 1995, my second year at Cal. I didn’t teach every semester after that, but I did teach most. That makes this the start of my 31st year as a college teacher.

All of that work is part of my longer history in higher education. Including my 4 undergraduate years at Claremont McKenna College and my 8 years as a grad student at UC Berkeley, this is my 36th consecutive academic year in the higher education industry.

That’s a long time to be in any “world,” but certainly one that has so many perks and differences from the rest of the capitalist economy. It ain’t perfect, but it sure is better than the vast majority of alternatives. I’m really lucky and grateful to be in this business.

The BEST difference is that the world of higher education is one that resets each year. A new year and new semester is a fresh start and new beginning. For the first-year student; a student who struggled in the past or one who’s had nothing but success; or the old guy standing at the front of the classroom, it’s a chance to reboot.

This year is a particularly special year for me, too. I begin this academic year as a “full professor.” That means I went through a major review of my work last year. I was tenured in 2011-12, where I promoted from “Assistant Professor” to “Associate Professor.” Now, after a period made la little longer by health surprises and a global pandemic, I’m just “Professor.”

Not a day goes by when I don’t think about how grateful I am to do what I do. I have a job where I get to learn about and teach the things that excite me. I get to make relationships––mostly short-term but some longer––with other people finding their own excitements. And the best part is, because the stuff I know is always expanding and the people I teach are always changing, it never really gets boring.

So happy new year to me and to you!! I hope it’s a day when you can feel what we feel over here: that today––like every single day––is always a new beginning.

5. “Power of Love” by Huey Lewis and the News (1985)
San Francisco’s own Huey Lewis and the News struck the big time with this song from the super popular <em>Back to the Future</em>. The movie helped catapult them to the ops of the charts––their first number 1 hit, and the start of a new phase in their long career.

4. “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears (1985)
This one might be a little bit of a cheat. Tears for Fears was already known in the U.S., especially after their hit “Shout” from the previous year. This last minute add-on to their 1985 album <em>Songs from the Big Chair</em> was released in March 1985 and, in June, it reached the #1 spot in the U.S. The following August, it was featured in the movie <em>Real Genius</em>, starring Val Kilmer. Even though it wasn’t written for the movie, and even though it was already hit before the movie’s release, for fans of the film, it will be forever associated with it.

3. “A Hazy Shade of Winter” by the Bangles (1987)
Recorded for the soundtrack of the 1987 movie <em>Less Than Zero</em>, the Bangles had been covering this song as part of their live shows for some time. Originally written and performed by Simon & Garfunkel (well, Paul Simon did the writing), this version peaked at #2 in the U.S., which was way better than its original release in 1966. More importantly, I don’t think many would argue against this being the definitive version of the song.

2. “Crazy for You” by Madonna (1985)
If the top song on this week’s list never existed, this would certainly occupy the spot. Madonna was already a huge deal in the world of music but this song––recorded for the movie <em>Vision Quest</em>––was a whole new kind of Madonna. The movie did well, but the song did even better. One of the best 80s slow dance songs, and a key part of the Madonna catalog, the song reached #1 in May 1985. It was Madonna’s fifth straight top ten hit in a year and her second #1. For the fans of 80s musical trivia, let it be known the song knocked “We Are the World” out of the top spot.

1. “Purple Rain” by Prince (1984)
One of the greatest songs in U.S. musical history, this is the title track to the soundtrack for the film released on July 27, 1984. The album came out a month earlier, and though nobody forgot it was all for a movie, the album and it’s four top ten singles––”When Doves Cry” and “Let’s Go Crazy” hit #1, “Purple Rain” peaked at #2, and “I Would Die for You” at #8––eclipsed the soundtrack genre.

I’ve written this before, but after the monumental success of Michael’s 1982 album <em>Thriller</em>, which dominated the charts for more than a year, Prince’s sixth album (and first to hit #1) felt like the start of a new reign.

By the time I saw The Last Waltz (1978) I already knew it was considered a big deal. I knew a lot of people who felt that, and their love of music was something I both respected and often used as an exploratory guide for my own continuing learning. Honestly, that’s a good description of my own pathway to the music of The Band––curiosity, respect, and a desire to figure out what others found special.

In my first viewing in the mid-90s, I don’t think I found the movie all that special. I found it interesting but it didn’t speak to me in any special kind of way because I didn’t know much about the music at the center of the film. Since then, I developed my own relationship of love with the music, and the movie became all the more interesting.

That, I think, says a lot about the movie, though. Watching the film as a person who wasn’t part of that moment, the film doesn’t help us enter and appreciate it as anything more than an outsider. Of course, I’m not saying a concert film can’t be good if it doesn’t explain itself. A good concert film probably shouldn’t get in the way of the music with too much narrative. But, like Woodstock (1970) before it, this concert is also an “event.” When you know the concert is part of something larger, then capturing that and sharing it with the audience can be more than a good thing.

And the concert behind The Last Waltz certainly was an “event.” The film is a record of The Band’s “goodbye” concert on November 25, 1976, at the Winterland Ballroom (in San Francisco). The cavalcade of talent that joins them on stage makes it even more special, from Ronnie Hawkins to Muddy Waters to Joni Mitchell, and even Bob Dylan.

But the film is better at capturing highlights of the show than involving us in that cultural moment. We don’t get much of a taste of the fans attending this historic show on Thanksgiving Day 1976. We don’t get to feel much of the historic connection the group has to the decrepit venue, or the 16 years of touring and other history from that first show to now. We don’t even get to see the logistics of a turkey dinner for 5000.

I think those things are missing. But I also think it’s still a great film.

Martin Scorsese makes it beautiful. The look of it––from the choice to film in 35mm, to the perspective, to the lighting & sound––is rich and exciting. As a film based on live music it succeeds. Scorsese adds in some interviews here and there with The Band, most of which are filmed at their homemade studio and complex on the Malibu coast, Shangri-La. Those give us sparce narrative, but do give us more a chance to see them interact with each other in a caring, band-like kind of way.

The choice to film in 35mm meant the cameras couldn’t capture the entire evening without overheating. That created a limit that might undergird a lot of Scorsese’s decisions on what the film could be. Most historically, it meant some of the performances were not recorded on camera from that night. And so the film gives us interludes of live performances of some of the hits (like “The Weight”) filmed without an audience.

The moment of the film is more complicated than the narrative of it. That’s not a critique, but it does speak more to the significance of the “moment.” We know (now, maybe then) there’s conflict among the members of the group. It’s not just interpersonal but also driven by alcohol and drugs. We also know there’s not unanimity about the decision to stop touring and break-up. By 1983, all of the original members except Robbie Robertson have reunited, started touring, and eventually recorded new music.

That “behind the scenes” story of The Band in 1976 is something Scorsese probably saw. What he could have done with it, who knows? But it’s now the stuff that helps form part of their legend. (As my friend wrote, “Levon Helm was pissed until the day he died at Scorsese and Robertson for making Robertson seem more important than he was.”)

All this said, The Last Waltz is a great movie. I think your appreciation for it deepens when you have some relationship to the music, or at least interest in the history of which it’s a part. Having come from a social/cultural world that didn’t know or seem to care about The Band, that process took me a bit. Now that I have that love, it’s always a joy to spend time with this snapshot of a historic event.

• The Last Waltz (1978)
• Dune: Part Two (2024)
• The Magnificent Seven (1960)
• It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley (2025)
• Soul to Soul (1971)
• Splash (1984)

After the late 70s successes of Saturday Night Fever and Grease, studio’s started paying more attention to the connection between music and movies. It was often too costly to invest too much in a soundtrack, but one song by a big name could help publicize the movie and, every once in awhile, produce a hit.

Next week I’ll give a list of five songs from 80s movies that were legitimately good and/or major hits. This week I’d like to focus on major stars who recorded a song especially for an 80s movie, but that didn’t make a mark, either then or now.

5. “Twins” by Little Richard & Philip Bailey (1988)
Little Richard is legitimately one of the foundations of rock ‘n roll. But everything he touched didn’t turn to gold. The movie Twins starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito as long-lost twin brothers. There was a fund story there to explain it, and the movie was a lot of laughs and a big hit. Not so much for the Little Richard and Philip Bailey collaboration that crafted the movies theme song.

4. “Dream Warriors” by Dokken (1987)
Dokken is a heavy metal band with a more than respectable career. In the 1908s, as big har rock and heavy metal kind of converged in the musical world created by MTV, they were at their peak, seen as way more “real” that the big hair stuff and really consistent with the rock they offered. They were the lead single of the 3rd installment of the Freddy Krueger series, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. It wasn’t a great movie, but it made money. The video for the song was an MTV hit for the later summer of 1987, but–like the movie–it is what it is.

3. “The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough” by Cyndi Lauper (1985)
Cyndi Lauper was a big deal in 1985. It was not because of this song. Tweaked from an earlier composition to fit the title of the movie, it was not her best stuff at all, but her fame still helped it crack the top ten for a spell. Either way, it turned out the Goonies movie really didn’t need the help. This is a full-court press of what I’m writing about here, the combo of meh song from a great star being used to push a movie. The video, featuring some of the biggest stars of professional wrestling, is more of the corporate strategy to bring in potential audience.

2. Like a Cannonball” by Menudo (1984)
Menudo was a Spanish-language, teen, all-boys pop group from Puerto Rico. The group was never consistent––it took young boys and made them popular stars but then dropped them when the hit late puberty––but the various line-ups were a huge in the 1980s, at least if you were in the Spanish-speaking world.

In the mid-80s, the owners of the group started to made efforts to crossover into the English-language market. This is the product of that effort. It’s Menudo singing the theme song for a dumb but funny movie, Cannonball Run II. Starring Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise and a cavalcade of stars from another era (it’s the last film appearance of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin), the movie kind of failed but the song did too! (The mid-80s line-up included future start Ricky Martin and the song was released on their first English album the same year.)

1. “Spies Like Us” by Paul McCartney (1985)
This is a major movie, with major comedy stars, and it gets a major music star to record the title track. The movie was funny, but not great. It made money but wasn’t the kind of thing that stuck around in the cultural memory for long. The song was a minor hit, especially because there was a musical the legend singing it. But, like the movie, it is not very good.

So much 80s movie marketing!!

5. “Ramble on Rose” (1972)
4. “Uncle John’s Band” (1969)
3. “Dear Prudence” Jerry Garcia Band
2. “Truckin’” (1970)
1. “Ripple” (1970)

There’s nothing all that creative about the above list. A lot of the songs are pretty “low-hanging fruit” for the Grateful Dead. But those songs meant a lot (and still mean a lot) to me.

I wasn’t the biggest Grateful Dead fan but they played a big role in my life starting in my college years. I saw them in concert only once––on May 14, 1993––in Las Vegas. It was the day before I turned 21, and it was a magical day.

When Jerry passed, I was living in the Bay Area. In my second year of grad school, I was living in a small apartment in downtown Berkeley. That day, two friends of mine from England––who were on a cross-country trip exploring the US––were set to arrive in San Francisco and we had plans to hang out for a week or so and take a road trip north, to Seattle.

The morning of August 9, I was up unusually early. My radio alarm clock went off and started playing the Mark & Brian morning show. M&B were a pair of LA-based DJs who I listened to back home, and who had recently started syndicating their morning show in the Bay Area.

Before they even went on the air, a Bay Area listener of that show had called in and told them Jerry Garcia had died. Her husband was some kind of cop or paramedic or something, and he had been called to the Novato rehab facility where Jerry died. He called her to tell her, and she called Mark & Brian.

They were cautious with the news, as I remember. They said a listener had called in with some news, and that it was big news and seemed bona fide, but they weren’t going to share it until they had some confirmation. At some point that morning, they shared what they knew. I turned on the TV and tuned in to other Bay Area stations on my stereo system to see if anyone else was reporting what they had. I didn’t find anyone else at that moment reporting on his death.

As far as I can tell, the Mark & Brian morning show in Los Angeles, broke the news of the death of Jerry Garcia.

It was a terribly sad day in the Bay. I went to San Francisco to meet the bus of my mates, and there were vigils here and there, just as there were in Berkeley when we returned. Fans were gathered on random corners or in this or that park. They were playing his music, mourning together and celebrating the love they all shared.

Again, I wasn’t a “Dead Head” or anything but I had a relationship with the Dead, and Jerry Garcia, in particular. Writing about his death thirty years later, still kind of makes me sad.

I’m glad we still have so much of their creative brilliance and living community to enjoy.

A whopping 11 of these songs topped the charts in the 1970s (because, well, disco). Here are my five picks from that decade, featuring instrumental tunes that peaked at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.

5. “The Sounds of Philadelphia” by MFSB (1974)

4. “The Hustle” by Van McCoy & The Soul City Symphony (1975)

3. “Theme From S.W.A.T.” by Rhythm Heritage (1976)

2. “Gonna Fly Now” by Bill Conti (1977)

1. Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band” by Meco (1977)

I didn’t become an Ozzy or Black Sabbath fan until high school in the late 80s. I knew of him, for sure. One of my older cousins was a fan of heavy metal in the 70s and early 80s and I remember listening to Ozzy in his room. Between my Catholic upbringing and Ozzy’s album covers, music, and reputation earned by biting off a bat’s head on stage, I was scared of him. When the music cut through the fear later in life, there was no looking back.

To honor his contribution to my love of music, here are five of my favorite Ozzy Osbourne records. I’ve left off all his work with Black Sabbath. These five all come from his career after leaving the legendary band.

5. “A Shot in the Dark” (1986)
Aside from his ballads and other songs on his 1991 album No More Tears, this is Ozzy at his most accessible and, dare I say it, pop. It even has a little groove to it. Part of the wave of big hair rock that MTV helped to popularize. Because I was glued to MTV back then, this was probably the first song to make me realize Ozzy wasn’t all that scary.

4. “Close My Eyes Forever” (1988 & 1989), with Lita Ford
His first song to enter the Billboard top ten, this duet with fellow hard rocker Lita Ford (the track was on her 1988 album Lita) was a legitimate hit beyond the MTV screen. It’s also the first non-Black Sabbath song of Ozzy’s that I fell in love with.

3. “Flying High Again” (1981)
From his second solo album Diary of a Madman, this second track (right after the also classic “Over the Mountain”) was one of his early hits that I discovered years later. Featuring the legendary Randy Rhoades on guitar.

2. “Crazy Train” (1980)
From Blizzard of Ozz, his 1980/81 debut album, this is perhaps his most famous song. Again, the genius of Randy Rhoades is on display. The video here was an MTV hit after he had died, and the song got a re-release for the music video generation. It is greatness.

1. “Mr. Crowley” (1980)
Songs like this helped him earn the moniker “Price of Darkness.” This track about occultist Aleister Crowley was also on his Blizzard of Ozz debut solo album. It’s my favorite Ozzy song.

Thank you for your years of rock!!

That got me thinking about songs that start with vocals instead of music. I probably thought of a dozen almost immediately, and when I searched for it I found hundreds more. Here’s a list of just five songs that fit the category.

5. “Happiness is a Warm Gun” (1968) by The Beatles
A peculiar song in title and composition, the strangeness is almost aided by the vocal beginning.

4. “Let’s Get It Started” (2003) by The Black Eyed Peas
Although the music video below does contain sound before lyrics, the actual album and single tracks do not. It’s quite simply one of my favorite feel good songs of all time.

3. “Somebody to Love” (1967) by Jefferson Airplane
When you can sing like Grace Slick, there’s no reason to let music get in the way.

2. “Blue Suede Shoes” (1955) by Carl Perkins
This track i brilliance in every way, from start to finish.

1. “Good Vibrations” (1966) by The Beach Boys
There’s more than one great song from the Beach Boys that starts this way. This might be the greatest.

4. “Up Jumped Spring” by Art Blakey (1962)
Art Blakey was a badass jazz drummer and bandleader. While he was coming up, he played with bebop legends like Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk. Then, with pianist Horace, he founded his own band called the Jazz Messengers. Blakey led the band for more than three decades, with the rotating line up of musicians including names like Woody Shaw, Chick Corea, Wayne Shorter, Chuck Mangione, Terence Blanchard, Wynton Marsalis, and Freddie Hubbard. This great tune was written by trumpeter Hubbard, and was released on Blakey’s 1962 live album, 3 Blind Mice.

3. “Wait ’til My Bobby Gets Home” by Darlene Love (1962)
Darlene Love is a legendary R&B vocalist, a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and a national treasure. She with legends like Sam Cooke, Elvis Presley, the Beach Boys, and Sonny and Cher. I first became aware of her as an annual feature on both of David Letterman’s late night shows. She visited each Christmas to sing her hit, “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).” Love was part of the creative world of Phil Spector, who was one of the writer’s of this song, and the one who gave her her stage name (she was born Darlene Wright). This record features the talents of the most famous studio band in rock and roll history, The Wrecking Crew.

2. “Turn Back the Hands of Time” by Tyrone Davis (1970)
Soul singer Tyrone Davis might not be as famous as voices like Sam Cooke or Al Green, but he had an amazing career with a wide variety of singles that cracked both the R&B and Pop charts. This was his biggest hit, the first single from his 1970 album of the same name.

1. “Comin’ Home Baby” by Mel Tormé (1962)
I probably could have made this list from just songs released in 1962. Mel Tormé was one of the greatest and most successful jazz vocalists of the mid-20th century. Known as the “velvet fog” for his smooth sound, he was also a stellar scat artist. You can hear that Tormé in this 1962 hit from his album of the same name (but with an exclamation mark, Comin’ Home Baby!).

5. “Respect” by Otis Redding (1965)
Aretha Franklin’s 1967 cover made a song about a disgruntled man into a feminist anthem, which is one of the greatest songs of the 20th century. The original by the Big O is no slouch though. It was part of his live shows until he died in late 1967, months after Aretha had topped the charts with her cover.

4. “Tainted Love” by Gloria Jones (1964)
This is the first recording of this song, a B-side release for R&B vocalist Gloria Jones. It failed to make a mark on the charts for her but it caught on in the UK club scene of the 1970s thanks to a DJ named Richard Searling. In 1981 the UK synth-pop duo Soft Cell covered it and had massive success in the UK. It introduced them to the US market, too, where it spent 43 weeks on the hot 100 charts in 1982.

3. “Hey Joe, Where You Gonna Go” by The Leaves (1965)
This is apparently the first known commercial recording of the song written by Billy Roberts (or at least he copyrighted it in 1962). A year after The Leaves, Jimi Hendrix recorded it with his new band. It would be the first single released by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and forever tied to the genius of the famed guitarist.

2. “Blinded By the Light” by Bruce Springsteen (1973)
It’s is the first single released from the debut album of the man from Ashbury Park, New Jersey. His success throughout the 1970s eclipsed his start, but Manfred Mann’s Earth Band helped, too. Their 1977 cover would top the charts in the US and elsewhere. The cover is a perennial feature of most classic rock radio stations to this day, but the original has more than historic importance going for it. The catchiness is there as is a lot of the early Springsteen charm.

1. “Evil Ways” by Willie Bobo (1967)
This 1967 song by the brilliant Latin percussionist and Nuyorican Willie Bobo is lots of things. It’s groovy, sexy, and more than a little bit sexist. Two years later a Mexican American from San Francisco would cover the song on his band’s self titled debut album Santana. The rest is history.

The Karate Kid is one of my favorite movies of all-time. I wouldn’t argue that’s it’s a perfect film, or pathbreaking, or that its hasn’t been properly regarding as a work of cinematic art. I would say it’s a very skilled work of genre (within the expectations and goals of the Hollywood system) that adds memorable bits of the new. More importantly, I would say, as a 12 year-old boy, it felt like a perfect film to me in 1984.

I literally remember seeing it in the movie theater, and can even recall my movie-watching experience during specific parts of the movie. To give you a sense of its impact, me and my cousin started trying to learn karate after it. And, while I didn’t have money to buy a poster for the movie, I did cut-out the full-page ad for it from the Los Angeles Times. That newspaper hung it on the wall of my room for years. (I still have it in a box of my childhood special things.)

The goals of the The Karate Kid are abundantly clear. It’s an attempt to make a “Rocky movie” for kids. The third installment of the Rocky franchise was released in 1982, and had huge box office success (greater than it’s two predecessors). Hollywood was looking to capitalize on what the people wanted and, in this case, what the young people wanted. The comparisons of The Karate Kid to Rocky weren’t incidental. They were the goal. It was even part of its advertising campaign.

And the connections are more than genre. The film is directed by John G. Avildsen, who directed the original Rocky (for which he won the Best Directing Oscar), and the music––which is a key component of the underdog genre reinvigorated by Rocky––is done by the amazing Bill Conti, who also scored the 1976 Oscar winner.

The Karate Kid follows the Rocky genre or emotional format in every way. A good kid from New Jersey, who is new to Southern California, is just trying to get by and make friends when he runs afoul of a group of no-good teens who seem willing to repeatedly beat him to within an inch of his life. Thanks to a older, Asian man who works as the handyman for his apartment building, the kid learns the art of karate and beats the bad guys (and their even meaner teacher) at a local martial arts tournament.

The important thing to know about the reception of the film isn’t just its attempt to ride the popularity of fighting/underdog films. It also comes at a time when martial arts is becoming an even bigger thing in US culture. The Bruce Lee effect from the previous decade (which itself felt like some kind of myth after his death) started to work its way into more TV shows and other movies, too. At least in LA, we had two options on TV to select every week to watch films from Hong Kong where protagonists were using these mystical yet physical skills of the Orient to kick ass.

The Karate Kid was a success because of all those trends, but that’s also why it made such an impact on my life. I was only 12, and that’s right about the age where the story of a boy learning stuff to become physically powerful is the dominating urge of pubescent masculinity. For kids like me, who never really fit easily into that physical kind of masculinity, the fantasy world of films was perhaps even more important.

Since that viewing in 1984, I’ve probably seen The Karate Kid from start to finish at least 20 times in my life. I’ve probably seen substantial parts of it at least double that amount, or more. Watching it in my adulthood numerous times, I think there are some things about this first movie in the franchise that stand out to me.

One of the really nice backdrop stories of the film is that of a single, working-class mom moving out West to try and give her son a better life. The wonderful Randee Heller, who plays Daniel’s mom, brings a real endearing element to the movie. That subplot (or even sub-subplot) was a thing in the 80s, as divorce, “latch-key kids,” and similar issues increasingly entered mainstream consciousness.

The narrative of the film relies a lot on the budding romance between Daniel, played by Ralph Macchio, and Ali, played by Elizabeth Shue. This is a classic theme for a teenage movie. (To my 12 year-old eyes this looked like a movie of really grown up people, a.k.a. high schoolers). What adds to it is the fact that Daniel is a poor, Italian kid from the “wrong side” of the tracks and Ali is a blonde, white, upperclass kid of country clubs and other class perks. That story carries a lot of the underdog weight on its cinematic shoulders, and it also speaks to most of us watching (who are closer to Daniel than Ali).

The real driving heart of the film is the friendship between Pat Morita’s Mister Miyagi and Daniel. For all the various genres that play out in the film, the most significant one is the unlikely friendship genre. Here it crosses both generations and race.

Morita was already a household figure to everyone in the 80s because of his work as Arnold on the 50s nostalgia TV show Happy Days. Here, he also plays into the kind of wise sage we had come to respect most contemporaneously with the Yoda character in the Star Wars franchise. What I mean to say is his character is old, wise, and almost mystic in his powers. He’s also a teacher and protector, one we all wish we had.

All these elements––from the director and score, to the story and acting, to the genres it follows, to the ways it plucks from the popularity of its time––are all masterful in their execution. Everything I feel about this movie is clearly shared with and by millions and millions of others––not only my age but of many age groups. The fact that it has spawned multiple sequels, and reboot TV show (that went from YouTube to Netflix), and another upcoming Hollywood release this summer (2025) that will bridge between various branches on the Karate Kid tree, are proof of that.

This movie is perfect in lots of ways, even though it’s super commercial and, at the end of the day, derivative more than original. But sometimes really amazing things can happen when you bring a whole bunch of trends together in a slightly new way and/or at just the right time.

As with all films, you’re reaction to this classic might vary. That said, I am pretty confident in saying that this is a movie most people will like. I think, with some close viewing and attention to the context of the times, it can also be a fun film to talk about.

5. “Amazed” by Lonestar
I honestly couldn’t have even told you who performed this song. It’s nothing against them, just a reflection of me and where my musical attention was and wasn’t. It was one of only two country songs to top the pop charts in the 2000s. It’s also one of those songs that seems to never go away.

4. “Say My Name” by Destiny’s Child
This might be my favorite pop song of the year. It was catchy as all hell, and spotlighted the amazing collective talents of this super trio in the best of ways.

3. “I Knew I Loved You” by Savage Garden
This wasn’t a song for me. Even then it sounded and felt like a song from the earlier 90s to me, but sounds don’t change as abruptly as do the years. Some people loved it though, as evidenced by the number of folks I saw try to sing this at various karaoke spots. Most would just miss than key shift in the chorus.

2. “What a Girl Wants” by Christina Aguilera
Not the best song ever (or even her best song ever), but it was catchy. Even in something that’s not that great, you could hear the greatness that was in her voice. It was only the second #1 single for the greatest vocal talent of the 2000s, and the first new #1 single of the year.

1. “Maria Maria” by Santana (featuring the Product G&B)
From the end of 1999 through the year 2000, guitar legend Carlos Santana was a the most successful pop star in the country. He had two singles that peaked at #1 for a combined 22 weeks atop the charts. This song, the second chart topper from his 1999 album Supernatural, stayed a #1 for ten weeks, longer than any other single in the year 2000.

“Sukiyaki,” 4P.M.
An R&B group from Baltimore covers the 1961 song by Japanese vocalist Kyu Sakamoto, which Wikipedia tells me is one of the “world’s best-selling singles” of all-time. It was their only hit

“This Is How We Do It,” Montell Jordan
This song is from 1995 but it always sounded more like what the late 80s sounded like. It made me feel like I was back in high school. Released by Def Jam Records (which meant something).

“Waterfalls,” TLC
I would put this on my short list of greatest songs of the decade. No matter what you were into in 1995, I’m sure there was at least a moment you were into this. And the video was one to remember, too.

“Run-Around,” Blues Traveler
I heard it on the radio late at night sometime in late 1994 or early 1995. I loved it so much I started calling the station to find out who sang it. They never answered.

Despite the clear divides, a friend of ours (thank you Charlie Bertsch!!) thought we’d get along. I remember him saying we “had a lot in common,” including that Steven was as much an Elvis fan as I was. And so Charlie talked me into attending a reception somewhere, just so I could meet Steven.

Charlie was a perceptive humanist and reader/analyst of people, though, truth be told, Steven was a bigger fan of the King than me. We barely talked about Elvis that day, anyway. I remember it as a great afternoon learning about an interesting guy as we talked about movies, TV, baseball, and the Bay Area. Over the next few years, every time I got to interact with Steven was a memorable experience.

Charlie, Steven, and a whole bunch of other smart, creative, and interesting people wrote for this online (and, at Berkeley, in photocopy form) publication called Bad Subjects. It was a collective that produced writing at the intersection of multiple worlds, most of which were new to me. They were people at Cal but also an online intellectual community in other parts of the world, and that was something unique in the early to mid-90s. They were theoretical, political, and kind of righteous, all in a cutting-edge, punk, post-colonial way.

Steven was the most accessible person in that group, at least to me. Just as smart, just as critically-minded, but way more working-class, “regular guy” about it. His writing could be like that, too, which helped me get more and more into reading their issues. Though I was never really part of the collective that produced it, I did write a few things for them and, more importantly, spent time talking (and learning) from some of the folks involved. Steven and Charlie were my interlocutors, for sure, but also my two favorite ones to talk “critical shop” with.

A few years after grad school, as various social media platforms were beginning to take off, I slowly reconnected with some of those people from Berkeley, and a whole bunch more I never really knew in real life but only “knew of.” Many of them were writing online about their lives or work or various obsessions, most in some kind of blog format. I had started doing the same thing, first on Blogger (where this blog first started) and then right here, on this WordPress site.

Around the time I started blogging here in 2007 I reconnected with Steven through his blog, Steven Rubio’s Online Life. It was the beginning of an almost 20-year conversation with this wonderful man. It was great to “see” him again, but even better to read more of his writing. I soon became a frequent commentator on his regular posts, and he on mine. And visiting his blog became––and this is 100% the truth––a daily ritual for me. Even though I knew he didn’t post every day, I never wanted to miss the latest from Steven’s life.

Steven and I have a lot of the same predilections. I loved hearing his reviews of movies and TV shows, or his posts about baseball, politics, or just the latests in his life. He was the first to introduce me to the world of soccer, something I knew nothing (and cared nothing) about. But Steven’s passion made something interesting and made me want to know more about it.

I cherished engaging with Steven’s take on all things, especially his love––just pure, unadulterated love––of music, our strongest common interest. As with all things cultural, Steven has views, but he also has a humility and a “your mileage may vary” critical sensibility that made learning from his loves and interests a welcoming, interesting, and even exciting thing to do.

Steven and I don’t just share a lot of common musical interests, his musical tastes and experiences fascinated me as a historian. First, he is a born archivist of his own media consumption, whether movies or music. As a life-long lover of rock ‘n roll, he’s also seen a whole bunch of the legends in concert, often times before they were big deals. His taste in music, and the context and story his words provided as he shares it, were my favorite things to read from him.

That’s the relationship I’ve treasured for these 30 years, and especially for the last 18 as we cultivated our friendship online. And, whenever I got up to the Bay Area for research, I tried to make the time to see Steven. I just had coffee and bagels with him and his wife this past January when I made a quick trip to the National Archives up there.

Steven passed away last week. My heart is just torn apart for the loss this is for his lovely wife Robin. She and Steven were together for more than 50 years! And I know it’s also a terrible loss for his kids, Neal and Sarah, their spouses, and his beautiful grandson, Felix, who he was just absolutely crazy about. My love goes out to all of them, and the entire family of siblings, nieces and nephews, and other of loved ones he leaves behind.

And then there is an even larger community of people who have been part of the Steven Rubio universe via his blog and online life. I’m sure each on of them is feeling the loss of not having him as a part of their lives, too.

Knowing what I know of Steven, I know each of us is feeling a little emptiness right now. Its the measure of the extraordinary person he was. Genuine, caring, accepting, and humble. The kind of guy who made you see the parts of you the sparkle, even when you never saw them that way.

The loss so many are feeling right now is the record of the positive impact he made on this world, not in some abstract way, but in real people’s lives. I have no doubt that the community of people feeling this loss is as diverse, eclectic, and interesting as can be. Because people like Steven attract all kinds of good people.

I’ve been missing him something terrible in my life these past weeks. One of the things I’m so grateful for is the blog he spent so much time creating. I’m so sad that I won’t be able to read new posts from him going forward, or to start a conversation with him over the latest movie he saw. I’m sad, too, that any posts I make here won’t result in any more comments from him, my most regular reader. But how wonderful to have more than 20 years of him sharing so much of his loves via his blog.

I’ve started posting again because of Steven Rubio. And what better way to pay tribute to this wonderful man––quite literally, one of the most interesting people I ever knew in my life––than to dedicate this Friday Five to my friend.

Here are 5 songs that I will always make me remember our friend, Steven Rubio. You will be missed greatly, but I know you’re name and memory will continue to be a joy in all our lives.

“Dig Me Out,” Sleater Kinney

“Gloria,” Patti Smith

“One Night With You” (’68 Comeback Special), Elvis Presley

“Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” (Phoenix, 1976), Bruce Springsteen

“Pale Blue Eyes,” The Velvet Underground

Performances that night included Stevie Wonder singing an assortment of his hits; Marvin Gaye sharing his immortal “What’s Going On?”; a reunion of Diana Ross and her Supremes and Smokey Robinson and his Miracles; and a reunion of the Jackson Five.

The evening also included this performance:

The television special being filmed that night was titled “Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever.” The show wouldn’t air until Monday, May 16th, on the NBC television network. It was the day after my 11th birthday.

On Tuesday morning, it was the thing everyone was talking about. I don’t remember anyone in my fifth grade world saying anything about the moonwalk he did, but Michael was already the big thing. At the time of the taping, “Billie Jean” (the second single released from Michael’s album Thriller) was already the #1 single in the country. It would stay there for more than a month.

Thriller had been released the previous November, and by February it had entered the top spot on the album sales chart. It would stay there for a total of 37 nonconsecutive weeks, from 1983 to 1984. The week after the Motown special aired, it began selling an astonishing 1 million copies a week.

It would go on to be the biggest selling album in musical history.

Here are five songs from the Billboard Hot 100 from 50 years ago, specifically from the March 15, 1975 charts.

Freddy Fender, “Before the Next Teardrop Falls”
Tejano legend Freddy Fender topped both the Billboard Country and Pop charts with this recording, the first hit of an illustrious career.

Linda Ronstadt, “You’re No Good”
This was the breakout single for the Tucson-born Ronstadt, who became one of the most popular performers of the 70s. The first release from her Heart Like a Wheel album, it was her first #1 single (and #1 album).

Earth, Wind & Fire, “Shining Star”
These guys are one of the most important musical parts of my youth. They had been together since 1969 and had five studio albums before That’s the Way of the World, from which “Shining Star” came, the first single released from the album. They had already been successful, a reflected on the R&B and Soul charts. This song topped that earlier success, and became one of their greatest standards.

The Doobie Brothers, “Black Water”
This was the first #1 single for the band (in it’s first week atop the Hot 100 for March 15, 1975) and perhaps their most well-known song, but it came as a surprise to the performers and management. It was originally released as a B-side single (look it up kids). After a couple of other singles from the album had lackluster reception, they released “Black Water” as an A-side, and the rest is rock ‘n roll history.

Pure Prairie League, “Amie”
It’s a single released in 1973 from an album released in 1972, but in 1975–after getting more and more airplay on college radio stations–it started to climb into the Hot 100. While it only stayed there a few weeks, and never broke into the top 50, the song has never left radio play since.

It’ll be a different that regular year for me. I’m teaching in the fall (my survey course, “Intro to Chicane-Latine Histories,” and my carceral history seminar, “American Inequality”) but I’ll be on sabbatical in spring.

This year is my 22nd as a full-time, tenured/tenure-track professor. Overall, if you include my 4 years of undergrad at Claremont McKenna College and 8 as a grad student at UC Berkeley, it’s my 34th consecutive year in higher education. Lordy, but there’s no hope for me ever working in the “real” world.

A new year is my favorite time because it’s a time of fresh starts and new beginnings. Whether you’re a first year student, a senior, or a seasoned old guy professor, it’s a chance to reboot.

I’m also grateful for a job where I get to teach the things that excite me. The relationships I get to enjoy in higher ed are the best part of the job, whether they only last for a semester or much longer.

And so happy new year! I hope it’s a day when you can feel the joy of a new beginning.

Maybe it’s the historian in me, maybe it’s the incessant storyteller, maybe it’s the habit that helps compensate for the middle-aged memory, but my annual “tradition” is to mark each new academic year in the context of my life (and my time).

And so, this is my 21st academic year as a full-time, tenured/tenure-track professor. Overall, it’s my 33rd consecutive year in higher education (including 4 years as an undergrad at Claremont McKenna College and 8 as a grad student at UC Berkeley).

I’m grateful for every single one of those past years, and even more grateful for the ones still ahead. I feel so lucky to be a professor, and to work in a place that is structured to embrace each year as a new beginning.

What I feel the most grateful for are the relationships––the short ones that last for only a class; the ones that have lasted for 20-30 years; or the many, many others in between. Relationships with other people have been the best part of life, and certainly the best part of my job.

For those of you reading this now who fit into any one of the above categories, all I can say is “thanks.” And no matter where you are, or whatever calendar you live by, we are all learners. Happy new beginning to you!

If you’re a fan already, it’s made for you with love and respect. It’s a massive film, clocking in at about 7 and a half hours. Aside from a few lulls in the first episode, it’s so compelling that it feels like it moves fast. I can honestly say it left me wanting more.

Jackson doesn’t just re-edit the story of the boys in January 1969 from an archive of some 60 hours of unseen footage. He also re-edits the story we “know” of The Beatles in this period, what we now know as the last year of their time together as a band.

I want to offer just a few quick thoughts only because I feel like so many of the reviews I’ve read, watched, and listened to in the last few days are so different than what I felt/thought after watching. So here it goes…

The elephant in the proverbial room of this film is the hindsight that comes with us knowing The Beatles were about to end as a group. The original cut of this footage by director Michael Lindsay-Hogg (released in 1970 as Let It Be) made this it’s story. 50 years later, we’re still fascinated by this running debate of who (or what) broke up The Beatles.

Jackson answers this question by diffusing it as a question, and that’s part of the beauty of this film.

There are surface ways his film engages the question. I walk away from it thinking the most direct answer to that question is Paul. Paul is asserting a greater leadership and his leadership isn’t really a collaborative one. Paul has a vision and he’s not really patient or skilled enough to bring the others aboard on that vision. When he can, it seems to satisfy him but where he can’t, it frustrates him further.

If Paul is to blame, then it’s for all the right creative reasons. He was growing into an artist with his own vision apart from the rest. The other beauty of this film is that we see the same thing happening for each of the other three.

George is on fire as a songwriter during these sessions. He’s going home three nights in a row and coming back with songs that will be among his most enduring. John is playing with his own vision, one that includes Yoko. For him, the film seems to present the roots of the story we know of the next (and last) decade of his life. Even Ringo is branching out. In one of the most memorable scenes, we see him sharing the start of what will become “Octopus’s Garden” on the piano (!!) with George, who offers him some song writing theory.

The point is each of the young men are developing into their own artist and for each of them that growth meant each moving away from what was.

Jackson’s recut makes the question of their break-up seem like a narrow and simple question, like the thinking of a child. It assumes The Beatles were supposed to not break-up. What we see in this almost eight-hour glimpse into the band is a story of positive growth. That growth (growing up?) will end the band, but it also births the rest of their creative careers.

Some pressures are pulling the band apart. The classic pressure the original film suggested was Yoko Ono. This cut diffuses that story. Yes, Yoko is hanging around (almost attached to John) for the recording sessions. But so are other partners and any number of other people (including a Hare Kirshna disciple). The experiment of filming their making of an album (which is also part of the story of this new film) created anything but a hermetically sealed environment for these sessions.

The film should make one question why we’d focus on Yoko above or before any of the others who are there. In some subtle ways, Jackson’s cut suggests the entire “Yoko is to blame” argument comes from the racism inherent in a larger society weighing in on John’s choice of partners. Their relationship was more news than Paul’s or Ringo’s (or even the crazy one we know of George), and the film suggests some reasons why.

Jackson also includes footage that frames the real “break-up issue” for the band, namely, the lack of a manager and the about to emerge disagreement over who the replacement one should be. Episode 1 frames its narrative partially around the death of Brian Epstein. We hear George say they are now without a “father.” The boys are mourning, and not doing so in any healthy way. You can hear that in their inability to really talk with each other but you can see it, too. John and Ringo are 28, Paul is 26, and George is 25 but they all look like shit! Drugs, drinking, and smoking (so much smoking!) are taking their toll in visible ways at this time.

The lack of Brian Epstein shows its presence in a host of negative ways, including the chaos of a project being re-written as it’s playing out. Jackson also lets us glimpse into John’s enthusiasm after meeting with Stones manager Alan Klein. The whole band even breaks to meet with Klein, unfortunately off-camera. Fans know there would soon be a split over who to make their new manager, and Jackson shows that story progressing over these days.

What we see a lot of in the film is how each of the “boys” are becoming “men.” This isn’t a simple story, not at all. Like the destructive things they’re doing to their bodies, and their inability to each speak like grown-ups with feelings, it’s a growing up while also tripping over their own malformed adulting skills. Here’s where we should be sympathetic to them. After all, they went from pubescent boys to global stars, never getting a chance to develop in a “normal” way. The kind of masculinity each carries is one most of us can recognize, but few of us would really know.

But each is growing nonetheless. They’re starting to make lives with new lovers and kids. They’re becoming less reliant on each other and more on themselves and these new families. And all that is natural and expected. And it leads to the end of the band as they built it.

This film is fun. If you love The Beatles you get to see some amazing stuff. As a glimpse into the creative process of the most influential writing team in popular music, it is more than amazing, it’s precious. (And we get to see Billy Preston and the formidable role he plays in this creative process.) But it’s also a really gripping (and, at times, sad) study in fame, growing up, and masculinity.

And I can’t wait to watch it again.

There’s a lot of great articles to read today, pieces not only marking the event but also ruminating on the life and legacy of the man and his music. (Here’s one from the BBC and another from Rolling Stone.) There’s a current of nostalgia in remembering an icon like Lennon, and even in remembering a shocking event like the murder of a high-profile figure (I remember where I was when I heard…). That’s a natural way to remember days like this, and an appropriate one, too.

The life and death of John Lennon has been a kind of a surrogate for the baby boomer generation to remember and think about themselves. They’re not a monolithic generation (none of us is) but Lennon and The Beatles—the music they created, the culture they helped define, and the impact they made—played a disproportionate role at a critical period in the lives of this generation. Good music mixed with experiences that define us as people makes the music carry special meaning. It becomes the soundtrack of definitive times in our lives. John Lennon and The Beatles also did more than that. They were, themselves, a definitive experience. It’s only natural, then, for the people who had those emotional connections to John Lennon to think about themselves and their lives on a day like this. In a way, it’s an extension and reflection of his impact.

That nostalgia seems less pronounced today than it was ten years ago, when we marked the 30th anniversary of his murder (and I wrote this). I wonder if it’s because more and more of the people for whom this mattered are no longer with us. I have no way of knowing if the two articles I linked to above are reflective of the bulk of the work published for today but, if they were, we’d probably point out the way they provide a healthy amount of explanation and history mixed in with their nostalgia. And it wouldn’t be hard to understand why.

I was only 8 years old when John Lennon was murdered, and although I remember the news that day and the sadness of the people I saw on TV, it wasn’t as impactful an event for me as other celebrity deaths had been or would be. If my memory is accurate (and that’s asking a lot) I didn’t really feel like I had an emotional relationship with John. I knew him and I knew The Beatles but neither were mine. I don’t remember sensing anything different from the people around me, although I’m sure my memory or my ability to perceive are to blame there. Still, for me, it was sad—it was shocking—but it wasn’t an event related to the things that mattered most in my world.

In a couple of months from now (February 6, 2021 to be exact), John Lennon will have been dead longer than he was alive. Funny thing is, for me he has become more alive over the last ten years than he was for me on this day 40 years ago. My relationship with The Beatles (and their solo work) has grown (really, only emerged) over the last four decades. Whether as the music I love, the personal connection I feel to the art these men created, or my professional interest in the times they helped define, me and John, Paul, George, and Ringo have a thing. And it’s a living thing, one that keeps growing over time.

So today doesn’t bring much nostalgia for me. I don’t really remember where I was when I heard John Lennon had been killed, and the day doesn’t bring me an unavoidable reckoning with the memories of my past. But it is a day for me. Even though the day is about a man’s death, for me, it’s not defined so much by his passing but by his continuing and evolving presence in my life. It’s a relationship almost completely formed since his passing.

As each year passes, more and more of us will be these kinds of people with respect to John Lennon and The Beatles. In a way, that says more about his life and legacy than anything, even more than the impact his death had on the generation who loved him and his music while he lived. Forty years after he stopped living, he’s still creating new and deep relationships with generations of people all over the world.

Today is the start of the new academic year at the Claremont Colleges and I’m confident in saying it’s not going to be like any other before. We’re all online this semester, a first for me–and a first for most of us at the five colleges.

In lots of ways, the liberal arts model is the opposite of online education. It’s very personal. It’s about small, collaborative, and even intimate kinds of learning spaces. It’s as much about the conversations that happen in the hallways and in the quad, in the dining halls and in the dorms, as the ones that happen in the classroom.

Of course, online education can be a lot of these things. It’ll just take work, creativity, and a willingness to fail and grow. I’ve literally spent the last two months preparing my classes and while I feel as unprepared as I do for any other semester (maybe a little more so because it’s hard to anticipate what the normally predictable “feel” of the semester will be), I’m also excited about working with students to define what our new learning context can mean for us.

Maybe the most fun part of this is that I feel like a new professor again, despite the fact that this is my 19th year as a full-time professor (tenure-track and tenured combined). I got my first TA gig at Cal back in 1995. That makes this year the start of my 25th year as college instructor.

I first arrived at the Claremont Colleges in August 1990 as first-year undergrad at Claremont McKenna College. After graduating, I went straight to grad school at UC Berkeley and then got my first academic job straight out of Cal. That means I’ve been in this higher education world consistently for the last three decades, making this the start of my 31st consecutive year in higher education.

It’s always mind-blowing to write the above. None of it seems odd to me and all of it feels right but, at the same time, how have I been alive long enough to have been in a single industry for three decades?

And so it continues and, yet, begins anew. May it be a good year.

I’ve been living in institutions of higher education for the majority of my life–more than 30 years. As a result, those institutions have a dominating influence on me and my thinking. Their values and patterns of being inordinately become my own.

Nowhere is this more true than in the timing of things. The rhythms and pace of higher ed are the rhythms and pace of my own life. My life follows the predictable course of the semester. My autumns move fast and ebb and flow. My springs are marathons that end with a grind. This is true for my work as much as it is for my life. Maybe the most powerful evidence of this is in the fact that I speak of years not in terms of the calendar year but in terms of the school year.

This has been a crazy year. It was a comeback year, going back to work and stepping back into the classroom after a summer of major surgery. It was a year of familial adjustment. My wife started working full-time (more than full-time, actually) and that meant changes for us all, individually and as a family.

You can get a sense of what this year has been like just by observing how frequently (or infrequently) I’ve posted on this blog. Over the thirteen years I’ve been writing here, the frequency of my posting has always varied as family or work take precedent. (Maybe that happens more because I tend to favor posts that take time to put together like a mini-essay, another example of how I’m colonized by academia.) I was on a a pretty regular pace for most of 2018-19 until the fall semester got fully underway and my wife started working. And then COVID happened.

I don’t like to complain about it because I’ve got a job, my wife has a job, and we’re all healthy and happy. Still it’s been a whole mix of ups and downs for us, just like for everyone else. Most days it feels like we’re keeping our heads above water alright and doing okay, but not much else. It’s boring most of the time. My kids know how to find their way out of that better than most but they’ve also grown a little accustomed to this new pandemic life.

Like I said, it’s not all bad. In fact, a whole bunch of it is pretty good. I wish we were all back to the lives we had before but it has been pretty great to have the kids with me all day, every day for more than 140 days now. Our relationship has evolved in good ways, deeper ways, and I really enjoy watching them grow and learning about them as the people they are and are becoming. It’s my silver lining, and I’ll miss it like crazy when this is over.

My #3 starts 4th grade tomorrow. The other two don’t start school (first day of middle school for one and first day of high school for the other) for a few more weeks. And I start my online semester in two. I’m scrambling like crazy to prepare myself and we’re all baby-stepping our way out of summer and into some form of a more scheduled, homeschooling life. We don’t know what it’ll be like but we do know the familiarity and predictability of the the fall semester won’t be there to lean on.

It’s going to be crazy times ahead for us, no doubt, but it’s all good. We got good kids and a good family, everything we need to be safe and cared for, and we got each other. It’s crazy times but good times. Like the song said–ain’t we lucky we got ’em?

“But ain’t he dead?” you might ask. Yes, Elvis was born on January 8, 1935 and died on August 16, 1977. He was 42 years, 7 months, and 8 days old. That’s 15,561 days in total that the King of Rock ‘n Roll roamed this earth.

Well, today is the 15,562nd day since Elvis passed. That means the big guy has now been officially dead longer than he ever was alive.

Of course, in many non-physical ways Elvis remains very much alive. I could throw a whole bunch of statistics at you about the yearly visitor count to Graceland or the millions of dollars Elvis Presley Enterprises continues to make off his work and likeness to show how he “lives” as a business. And, surely, he continues to live in the hearts of all his fans.

The kind of “life” that most interests me is the cultural one. We continue to live in a pop cultural world that he helped to build. Even if the music doesn’t sound at all the same, Elvis played a big part is defining the “culture” of pop music. He helped define the popular music teen idol, sex symbol, rebel, “has been” and the comeback, and even the spectacle, all in ways that still linger today. Oh, there were many others who also played a part in defining those, but few would deny Elvis’ role.

The most interesting way he still lives is through his music. How many times a day is Elvis played on this planet’s radio waves? How many times a day do people put on and listen to his music?

We all live and, I hope, we are all loved and remembered. But how many of us are well remembered longer than we were ever alive? How many of us make such a cultural mark on this globe to be remembered in such meaningful, vital, and longstanding ways as this cat? Not many in the big scheme of things. That doesn’t say much about him or about us as people. It is worth a thought, though. For me, it’s a good excuse to spend some time with his music.

So way to go Elvis. Here’s to your continuing life as the King of Rock ‘n Roll.

I have some experience with online classes, but not much. I don’t have anything against online education, it’s just that my work in higher ed has been limited to the traditional, physical classroom. As I prepared to make this change, colleagues who are experts with online teaching have been an amazing resource. I’m so grateful for their generosity in sharing what they know so that people like me can learn and, hopefully, be just a little bit better than we would have otherwise.

Of course, what me and others are doing isn’t exactly the same as just making the switch to online teaching. We’re being forced to make this change because of a pandemic, and not at the start of the term but midstream. What we’re grappling with isn’t just the move to online education but the challenge of making this switch with a class that has already begun and was not originally designed to be anything other than face-to-face.

As I make the transition, I’ve been giving myself advice, too. Here’s what I’m trying to do and remember to do:

Don’t pretend it’s the same.
We’re all living in––and teaching and learning in––an unstable and unpredictable context. Both students and faculty shouldn’t expect our experience to be the same. That doesn’t mean it can’t be good and productive. That doesn’t mean we can’t learn. But it does mean we should recognize from the start that it’s going to be different.

Reduce.
One of the ways this isn’t going to be the same is in the amount of work I expect out of my classes.  It’s both smart and fair to make reductions in the workload of our classes.  But how to reduce? Twenty years ago, when I began my first journey into the world of outcomes-based education, one of the most compelling lessons for me was to design courses around what the essential takeaways were for each class. What skills and understandings did I want them to leave with? How can I enable them to get there? As I make changes to the workload of my classes, it helps for me to identify (or remind myself of) those essential “need to know” outcomes and to try to foster an ability to reach them in as direct a way as possible.

Be sympathetic.
We’re all kind of stepping into the unknown and we’re doing so while our lives are in flux. I’m learning to be an online professor while my wife works and while I’m also homeschooling, feeding, and caring for three kids. The students I work with are going through their own adjustments. Students have a wide variety of home spaces and contexts in which they will now be learning, and the inequities of our society are only going to be more pronounced in the weeks ahead. Keeping all this in mind, we should be as sympathetic with each other (and with ourselves) as we can in the weeks ahead.

Be flexible.
I like beginning my smaller classes with a weekly check-in. I can’t think of anything more vital right now. How else can I be responsive to changing student needs if I don’t know about them?  Creating space to hear what’s going on in their lives and with their learning is not only smart, it’s ethical under these circumstances.   Being open to that information means also being prepared to be flexible.  All the changes I’ve made so far are really only a proposal to the students I work with.  None of us knows what the days and weeks ahead will bring. So, just like with our present––when we find ourselves in a place we could not have anticipated at the start of our term––we should anticipate having to make changes again as circumstances change and needs arise.

And so here we go! If you’re facing the same challenges in your life, I wish you the best of luck. Be patient and be kind and, please, stay put.

Abbey Road was the last studio album recorded by the group (though 1970’s Let it Be–––recorded before Abbey Road–––would be the last studio album of the group ever released). The boys recorded it from February to August of that year, at the same time the group was breaking up. As the story goes, the group was done just before Abbey Road was released. John Lennon had already told the others he was leaving. When Paul made the public announcement in April 1970 that he was done, the world knew The Beatles were over.

Abbey Road is a special album for me and my son. It’s our favorite, and some of the songs–––”Here Comes the Sun,” “Something,” and the ending medley of “Golden Slumbers,” “Carry That Weight,” and “The End”–––have been a part of his life since he was a newborn. I used to play “Golden Slumbers” to him every night after bath time, while I dried him off and put on his lotion. I still think of those times when I hear it.

But it’s our favorite album for a whole lot of other reasons. It opens with a classic John Lennon song (“Come Together”). Some of the best George Harrison songs are on it (“Something” and “Here Comes the Sun”). It’s got Paul McCartney at his bluesy best (“Oh! Darling”). And not to be out done, Ringo Starr gives us a classic, too (“Octopus’s Garden”). I think the thing that always brings it all together for us is the fact that it’s the band’s last. They know they’re ending their time together and they use the album to say goodbye, not only to their fans but also to each other.

If I were trapped on the proverbial deserted island, and I had only one album of music with me to play, I would hope that album were Abbey Road. That’s not because I think it’s the greatest album ever made. Heck, I’m willing to admit it might not even be the band’s greatest album. But it is my favorite of theirs and, more importantly, it’s something that has marked the relationship of my son and I in big ways. This album has my heart.

So happy 50th birthday to Abbey Road!

The rest of the top of the charts from that month aren’t much better, but there still are some great tunes. I was starting my senior year in high school that fall and I guarantee you, there was a lot of great music at the time. It’s just that the things that were most popular in September 1989 weren’t all the best reflection of the most creative and exciting music of that time.

So here’s five songs from the top five from September 1989, a mix of great, good, and, well, popular.

5. “If I Could Turn Back Time” by Cher
Don’t call it a comeback. Sure, Cher wasn’t the Cher of my early childhood, when hit records and a weekly variety TV show made her into a staple of the world of the famous. But 80’s Cher was making a name for herself as a real-deal actress, with movies like Silkwood, Mask, and Moonstruck, to name but a few. And Cher never stopped being Cher in those years. She was larger than life, sparkly, and a big deal in multiple intersecting cultural worlds––queer, straight, camp, dance, comedy, glam, and then some. I don’t remember liking the song that much in 1989 but sometime in the 90s I realized that I knew all the words to it, so I must have been some kind of fan. The video was popular (the 43-year-old Cher shares a bit more than her voice) but the song was even bigger, hitting #3 on the Hot 100 and #1 on the “Adult Contemporary” charts in September 1989.

4. “Heaven” by Warrant
It is what it is people. Big hair rock was all kinds of sputtering half-formed masculinity, whether in its guitar-driven rock anthems or its guitar-driven love ballads. Is this the best hard rock ballad? No. Is this the band’s best? Probably. But it is what it is. I liked it at the time because I liked Warrant. Their debut album dropped in ’89 and this was its biggest hit, peaking at #2 on the Hot 100 in September. That said, I don’t listen to much Warrant these days. I might not change the channel when one of their hits comes on the radio, but I’m rarely seeking them out. There’s a warm nostalgia factor for me but, in retrospect, the band rode the wave of MTV and big hair rock at a time when the wave was tsunami huge, but not all that creative.

3. Mixed Emotions by the Rolling Stones
It was #1 on the rock charts for the entire month of September 1989 and peaked at #5 on the Hot 100 at the same time. The greatest band in the world was still making good music throughout the 80s. Even though it wasn’t their best, it was still better than the best of most bands at the time. The album it came from––Steel Wheels––along with their Singles Collection compilation released that fall made the Stones pertinent to my generation. I was in a hard rock/heavy metal social group and we were listening to them by 1989, and not just because our parents were, either.

2. “Freefallin'” by Tom Petty
Tom Petty made a solo album in 1989 called Full Moon Fever. Maybe “solo” is the wrong word because his buddy Jeff Lynne was all over the place as a writer and performer. Still, the album produced a bunch of hit records, some of which became regular features at his live performances for the remaining quarter century of his career. This song is the biggest of those, and arguably “the” song of his career (although I wouldn’t make that argument). I liked it then, I like it now, and my kids like to hear it, too. I suspect this song will be enjoyed for as long as we’re around on this planet. It topped the “Mainstream Rock” charts for the last week of August, and then began its decline the following month. It would peak at #7 on the Hot 100 months later.

1. “Love Shack” by the B52’s
It was #1 on the Alternative charts for four weeks, ending the first week of October. That’s a little bit of an odd place for its biggest success, but it did make it to #3 on the Hot 100. Moreover, it really is the band’s biggest song, and that’s something for a band that made Rock Lobster a decade before, which was kind of a big deal. It’s a unique and catchy song that builds off the band’s strengths and still gets you moving thirty years later.

Maybe it’s a product of where music was at the time. Big hair rock, pop ballads, and dance pop seemed all equally popular, and college (or alternative) radio was climbing towards the mainstream. This musical polyglot is kind of characteristic of the charts for most of the rock n’ roll era, so maybe it’s not unusual. The dearth of really ensuring, standout hits that have survived the ages is the more interesting thing.

Apparently, September 1988 is a good reflection of the year as a whole. You’ll know the songs, or you won’t, but only one of them has stood the test of time to achieve the iconic status I’m talking about. And even that only sat atop the Hot 100 for two weeks.

5. “Peek-A-Boo” by Siouxsie and the Banshees
I don’t know this song and I really don’t know much at all about the music of Siouxsie and her banshees. I know they had fans–passionate fans if my world were any indicator–and I know they had a lot of success. I bet this song is not indicative of their best, either artistically or in terms of sales, but it’s a historic song for this month of 1988. In the second week of September, Billboard debuted their “Alternative” charts, meant to capture music that was big but not as “commercial.” This was the first #1 song on those charts.

4. “Finish What Ya Started” by Van Halen
Van Halen had become “Van Hagar” in 1985 and still managed to continue their success of the David Lee Roth era. They had a hit album in 1986 (5150, which topped the level of success they had with their monumentally successful album 1984) and followed it up with 1988’s OU812. This was a decline for the band in terms of sales, but it produced a set of hit singles including this late addition to the album. It peaked at #2 on the “Mainstream Rock” charts in early September and then began its quick decline. It’s a catchy song, yes, but it’s also a great microcosm of the kinds of simple masculinity that built big hair rock in the era.

3. “Another Part of Me” by Michael Jackson
Michael was a factory churning out musical success in the 1980s and early 1990s. At his best and most successful, those songs entered the popular cannon of music in ways most artists only dream of. Not all were songs that get a lot of play today, but they were still hits for the time. His album Bad was the first in history to produce five consecutive #1 songs. This was the sixth, which hit the #1 spot on the R&B charts in September 1988 even though it only made it to #11 on the Hot 100, ending his record-setting streak. It was a known song already, having been written and recorded for his 1986 3D Disney movie “Captain EO.” The video gives us none of that (after all, it was still playing at Disney’s parks) but instead goes live to show what Michael loved to show–just how big a cultural phenomenon he was.

2. “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” by Bobby McFerrin
I was a teenager in my sophomore and then junior year in 1988 and, like most teenagers, my friends and I had strong opinions about music. This was one of those songs that you either liked or hated, at least in my little world. At the time, I probably said stuff about it that suggested I was in the “hate” camp. I mean, it was kind of easy pickings for hard rock fans. But I didn’t really hate the song. First, it was catchy–like the kind of catchy that when you hear it it sticks with you for most of the day. Second, lots of people–friends and family–loved the song. But the most important reason was Bobby McFerrin himself. The man was everywhere on TV and he was a really nice guy. Plus, he played all the “instruments” on this song because all of them were just him and the sounds he made with his voice and body. It hit #1 on the Hot 100 in the last week of the month where it stayed for two weeks. And trivia note: it was from the movie Cocktail, starring Tom Cruise.

1. “Sweet Child O’Mine” by Guns N’ Roses
Out of all the songs on this week’s list, this is arguably the only one to have achieved that iconic status. Funny thing is, it only hit #1 on the Hot 100 for two weeks before fading away! Of course, it was a hit on the rock charts, too, but it only peaked at #7 there. Fans were fickle in 1988. That said, the song grew to be the biggest song for a hard rock band that had lots of big songs and, in many ways, it is the 80s hard rock ballad song of the era. It’s a contender for that title because of its “legs” in our culture. Its cultural endurance owes a lot to the video (equally iconic) but also to the blend of ballad tendencies, with pop and hard rock. It’s as solid song as the band ever produced, and it still deserves listening to, 31 years later.

5. “Casanova” by LeVert
LeVert was an R&B vocal trio founded and led by Sean and Gerald Levert, two brothers who were the sons of Eddie Levert, leader singer and founder of the O’Jays. They sat atop the R&B charts in the first week of September 1987 with this song, which also made it to the top ten of the Hot 100. It wasn’t the mot unique song but it was catchy and had some hop to it. You don’t need much more than that.

4. “Dude Looks Like a Lady” by Aerosmith
I suppose this felt like a clever concept song to this legendary hard rock band from Boston, but it felt a little problematic to me, kind of like the anti-“Lola” by the Kinks. Still, this song––which was the first released from their album Permanent Vacation––was popular enough. When combined with the album’s other hit records (“Angel” and “Rag Doll”) it helped to usher in the band’s “comeback.” The song was co-written by Desmond Child, who was hitting the top of the rock charts pretty regularly back then with other groups like Bon Jovi.

3. “Learning to Fly” by Pink Floyd
I knew who Pink Floyd were in 1987, but I wasn’t all that interested in their music. This song––which was released in September 1987 and debuted at #5 on the rock charts––was the first of theirs that I liked. The present-day me thinks it’s not much when compared to their best, but it’s something. It would hit the top spot on the rock charts by the end of the month. I’m not sure about this but it might be the band’s last “hit” record. although since this was the first album without Roger Waters, some purist might say it didn’t really count anyway.

2. “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You” by Michael Jackson and Siedah Garrett
There was no one bigger in the musical world of my universe than Michael Jackson. By 1987, however, it was five years since Thriller and all its accompanying mayhem. But at the end of August that year, Jackson released a new album––Bad––and this was its first single. A love song was an unexpected first release for a new album by the “King of Pop” (although he hadn’t seized that moniker yet) and a duet was even more of a surprise. At the end of this first week of September, it was #2 on the Hot 100 and the R&B charts, on its way to top spot on both in two more weeks.

1. “La Bamba” by Los Lobos
The greatest band from East L.A. covering the iconic song of the most famous Chicano rock ‘n roll singer in history. It almost can’t go wrong, but the brilliance of Los Lobos makes this cover of Ritchie Valens’ 1958 song even better than just good. I remember thinking how they made it more Mexican (no surprise considering their depth of knowledge of traditional Mexican music and they skills with Mexican strings) and more Chicano (it’s got that East L.A. groove they do so well) all at the same time. It didn’t hurt that the song came from the soundtrack of the film of the same name, a biopic of the late, great rock star. Directed and written by famed playwright Luis Valdez, the film was the biggest thing in “Chicano America” since Fernandomania. I still think of it as a kind of “holy” thing. The best part of the cover, however, isn’t in the movie. It’s the little bit of something extra that comes at the end of the song.

First off, for those of you who read this blog or follow me on social media, you know this has been anything but a typical summer. Having the brain tumor and surviving the surgery has been a life-changing event for me and for my family. I wish it was something we didn’t have to go through, but we survived it and that’s something to celebrate. I’m happy to be alive and happy to be able to head back to the classroom to the job that I love.

The other noteworthy thing is that this year marks my 30th in higher education. My first 4 years were as an undergrad at Claremont McKenna College. The next 8 were as a grad student at UC Berkeley. And that means this is the start of my 18th year as a tenure-track/tenured professor. That’s kind of crazy to me, not just in a “time flies” kind of way but also because 18 years is a long time!

I’m so lucky to have been a professor of Chicana/o/x Studies at two incredible institutions in that time. And I’m lucky for all the relationships I’ve made in those years. The past few months——as I received cards, letters, emails, and messages from a lot of the people I worked with and taught in those 18 years——I’ve been lifted up by the love and friendship that’s come from that work. I’m here, right now, in part because of the people that have made those 18 years as good as they were.

So thank you! And happy new academic year to me and to you!

The sounds of those days are etched in my mind in a big way. Here are five songs from the top of the charts in the last week of August 1986.

5. Take Me Home Tonight by Eddie Money
The lead single on Eddie Money’s 1986 album Can’t Hold Back, this single was also the album’s first release. It dropped in August. I bought a Walkman that summer and for some reason this is the song I remember listening to on it. I didn’t know who Eddie Money was at that point but I liked how he sounded. More importantly, I did know who Ronnie Spector was and I loved how she sounded. It was #4 on the rock charts in the last week of August, a harbinger of where it would later peak on the pop charts. (I have no idea why the “official” video is so hard to find in the US.)

4. “Higher Love” by Steve Winwood
Here’s another song by a 70s rock star who, in 1986, I had yet to hear about. It’s also a single that includes vocals by a singer I had heard of, Chaka Khan. “Higher Love” was the #1 song in the country 33 years ago this week, the first chart topper for the veteran rocker from bands like Traffic and Blind Faith, among others. I liked the song in 1986 but not in an obsessive way, it just sounded nice and you didn’t have to work hard to hear it.

3. “Papa Don’t Preach” by Madonna
Every Catholic boy and girl I knew in 1986 (which was kind of the only people I knew) loved Madonna. I didn’t matter what kind of music you were into either. It’s no mystery why, she was a big deal. In a way she was one part of the “holy trinity” that included Michael Jackson and Prince. Though she wasn’t as big as either the other two, those guys could never do what she did. Of course, the pubescent Catholic boys that we were, we loved Madonna for the simple and obvious reason. Her Catholicism and use of Catholic imagery (she often wore a rosary) added to that. It contrasted with her sexual style and lyrics in ways we fell for, though we were oblivious to the obviousness of that attraction. This song (it was #1 on the pop charts earlier in the summer but was at #3 this week) was her most controversial at the time, which is saying something. From what I remember it kind of felt less controversial in the Catholic way, though, but who knows. Side note: the video introduced me to Danny Aiello.

2. “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel
Another rock star who I hadn’t heard of until 1986, Peter Gabriel’s 1986 album So made him a household name for my generation. This was only a minor hit from the album——it was at #3 on the rock charts this week but never got higher than the 20’s on the Hot 100——but it was helped by songs like “Sledgehammer,” whose video was a game changer. The song would grow in popularity over the span of my high school years, aided by its inclusion in the iconic scene from the 1989 movie Say Anything.

1. “Rumors” by Timex Social Club
It was #8 on the Hot 100 this week, its peak position. But for me, it’s the song I most associate with the summer of 1986 and the start of my high school years. It’s not because of the topic. I wasn’t worried about “rumors” at the start of my high school years and those years never gave me a reason to change that. It was just “the” song a the time. One of my most enduring memories of the song was when one of my friend’s dad was driving us home and he was singing along like a pro——”In a camisole, she’s six feet tall, she’ll knock you to your knees!” This song is a time machine for me and it never fails to put me back to another time.

This is moving. This is necessary. This is leadership.

____________________________

Querida Familia Letter
August 16, 2019

https://queridafamilialetter.org/

Querida Familia Latina,

If you are feeling terrified, heartbroken and defeated by the barrage of attacks on our community, you are not alone.

We have been smeared by political rhetoric and murdered in violent hate crimes.

We have been separated from our families and have watched our children caged.

We have been targeted with mass shootings and mass ICE raids meant to terrify us, squash our hope, and break our spirits.

But, we will not be broken. We will not be silenced. We will continue to denounce any hateful and inhumane treatment of our community. We will demand dignity and justice.

Though real pain and fear are sweeping through our communities, we remain powerful. The indignities and cruelty we have endured will never change the truth that the contributions we make to this country are invaluable. Our humanity must be respected. And, we won’t stop organizing for ourselves, our children, and for the soul of this nation.

To our allies who feel our community’s pain, we need you. We cannot make change without your voices and action. We call on you to speak out loudly against hate, to contribute your resources to organizations that support our community, and to hold our leaders accountable.

We ask you to join us in building a better country where we are all safe and valued.

May we turn this time of despair into a time of action. May our love for one another be the guiding light in these dark times.

With our deepest love,

(Signed by over 200 actors, musicians, artists, activists, and labor and civil rights leaders, including José Andrés, Gloria Calderón Kellett, María Teresa Kumar, Sandra Cisneros, Dolores Huerta, Edward James Olmos, Rosario Dawson, Salma Hayek Pinault, Jennifer Lopez, Diego Luna, Ricky Martin, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Nathalie Molina Niño, Janet Murguía, Rosie Perez, Teresa Romero, Gina Rodriguez, Zoe Saldana, Roselyn Sánchez, Tanya Saracho, Bamby Salcedo, Carmen Perez, Tony Plana, Wilmer Valderrama, more)

That said, a few non-1985 things deserve mention today. August 15-18 marks the 50th anniversary of Woodstock. Today——August 16th——is the day Santana played, which is epic in so many ways. I loved learning about Woodstock in my teen years and was blown away by the film when I saw it on the 20th anniversary of the legendary music festival.

Today is also the 42nd anniversary of the death of Elvis. It’s always been a day for me to remember the actual day (unlike Woodstock, I was alive for that). Elvis was only 42 when he died, so in about eight months he will have been dead longer than he was alive.

But today is about 1985. So here are some songs that drip, scream, and ooze that glorious year.

5. “Freeway of Love” by Aretha Franklin
The Queen of Soul even had some hits in the 1980s! This was her last #1 single——it topped the the R&B charts for the entire month of August. It even reached the #3 spot on the Hot 100, where she’d hit #7 later in the year with “Who’s Zoomin’ Who?” Aside from the greatest American singer on the mic, this hit features swinging sax by Clarence Clemons.

4. “Money for Nothing” by Dire Straits
As iconic a song of the 80s video era as there ever was. With vocal assistance from Sting (“I want my MTV…”) and one of the most memorable guitar licks of the 80s, the song was the biggest pop success for a rock band that had been making a name for themselves in the UK since the 70s. The original song and video (below) even features a taste of the homophobic masculinity of a lot of rock. (The “faggot” verse was cut from later airings and radio play.) It hit #1 on the rock charts for three weeks in August ’85 and did the same in late September on the Hot 100.

3. “Power of Love” by Huey Lewis & the News
This hit single was from the soundtrack to the even bigger hit of a film Back to the Future released that same summer. It preceded “Money for Nothing” at the #1 spot on the rock charts (it was #1 for two weeks in July) and stayed in the top 5 there for most of August——the same month it topped the Hot 100 for two weeks. It was the first time the Bay Area rockers topped the US pop charts.

2. “Saving All My Love for You” by Whitney Houston
It peaked at #2 on the R&B charts in mid-August and then dropped to #3 by the end of the month, only to hit the top spot in the first week of September. It would do the same on the Hot 100, but not until October. The second single from her debut album, Houston was just at the start of a career of hits. For my money, this is one of her best and one of my favorites. The song was part of the plot of an episode of the TV show Silver Spoons——the show starring Ricky Schroder——on which she also guest starred. That was one of my shows, but it’s the story of the song (told through the vantage point of “the other woman”) and her vocals that stuck with me even then.

1. “Shout” by Tears for Fears
I put this song at the top of my list specifically because I never really liked it. That’s because at the same time, the song was hard not to hear on Top 40 radio. It was on all the time! And that means I had to think about how much I didn’t like the song frequently, which means it’s a big part of my 1985. When I hear the song today, I don’t change the channel. It’s an alright song (kind of basic but undeniably catchy) that really deserves respect for being a part of most people’s version of 1985. It was #1 on the Hot 100 for three weeks, just before Huey Lewis.

It’s easy for me to be nostalgic about 1984. I turned 12 that year, and even then it felt like the start of a new period in life. In retrospect, it was probably the start of my long teenage period where you’ve got one foot in being a kid and another on the cusp of adulthood. It’s like a stretch where you can never reach the thing you’re reaching for but it also never quite feels out of reach.

The movies that changed my life that year were perfect artifacts of that same dynamic. Gremlins and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom both came out, inspiring the need for the PG-13 rating. Movies like Ghostbusters, Sixteen Candles, The Natural, The Karate Kid, and Romancing the Stone were not only entertaining, they also made me and my friends feel like we were peaking into a grown-up world that was (or would be) for us.

This week I want to capture the feel of August 1984. I have something to say about all these songs, even though I wasn’t a huge lover of all of them. Still, they are each a slice of 1984.

5. “Round and Round” by Ratt
This one would later peak at #11 but it was moving up with a bullet in August 1984. Quiet Riot and their massive hit “Cum On Feel the Noize” dropped the previous year. Early in 1984 Van Halen released 1984 and shortly after the Scorpions released Love at First Sting. That’s the short version of my first steps into the hard rock and heavy metal world. This song sounded harder than pop at the time and even a little harder than the hard rock. Stephen Pearcy’s vocals not only had an edge to them, they communicated a kind of disdain that felt good. Liking this song made me feel “metal” even though it was more in the line of the big hair 80s rock that would explode on MTV throughout the decade. I love it still.

4. “Dancing in the Dark” by Bruce Springsteen
I had never heard of Bruce Springsteen until 1984. The weirdest thing about that was all these people you saw on TV who not only had heard of him, they worshipped him. This song didn’t help me understand that at all, but it was a catchy song that appealed to a lot of us. The first single from his Born in the U.S.A. album (which is one of the best-selling albums of all-time), it peaked at #2 in early summer and was on its way down the charts by August. It was still in heavy video rotation, though. And people couldn’t stop talking about “the short-haired girl” he danced with on stage. If somebody my age sees somebody dance like these two dance in the video (something that doesn’t and shouldn’t happen all that often) they immediately think of this video.

3. “Ghostbusters” by Ray Parker Jr.
It was the cultural phenomenon of the 1984 charts. The theme song to a great comedic film which killed at the box office. It was the second highest grossing film of the year and——at the time——the highest grossing comedy in cinematic history. The song might not have been as financially successful, but it was as big a pop cultural hit. It peaked at #1 for three weeks in August. You couldn’t turn on a radio that summer without hearing it at least once. And everybody was going around asking each other “Who you gonna call?”

2. “When Doves Cry” by Prince
Everybody I knew loved Prince. Many people I knew loved him the way others love Michael Jackson (or the way those older people we saw on TV liked Bruce Springsteen). 1984 was the year of Purple Rain and this song from the album (which was a soundtrack to the film) was the first single released from it. It was Prince’s first number one hit record, topping the charts for five weeks ending the first week of August. I suppose the staying power of the song means it’s kind of timeless for most folks. For me it is, but at the same time it sounds exactly like 1984 to me, too. Musically, it’s just about as perfect as perfect comes.

1. What’s Love Got to Do with It” by Tina Turner
I was raised on a lot of “oldies”——mostly a lot of 50s, 60s, and 70s R&B and soul. Still, I didn’t know Tina Turner until 1984. I probably wasn’t alone. What I remember about the hype surrounding this song (what you heard on talk shows, on entertainment news, and on the radio) was the way it was a comeback for a music artist, one that catapulted her (at the very non-pop star age of 44) to even greater heights than she had known in the past. Her first release from her massively popular album Private Dancer, the song became her first and only #1 and her first top ten single since the early 1970s. Few songs sound more like 1984 than this hit, and few songs demand your attention like it does. When we saw her perform this on TV everyone would always say “Look at her! She’s still got it!” What we didn’t fully understand was that the power of Tina Turner is that she just can’t ever lose it.

As any regular watcher of late-night comedy shows knows, the hosts spend a good chunk of time defending racist-in-chief Donald J. Trump. Today, Brian Kilmeade (who is one of those hosts) had this to say in defense of the wide spread calling out the President for his frequent and habitual use of the word “invasion” when discussing the passage of Spanish-speaking migrants across our border:

What the president has during his two and a half years is a major problem at the border which was not his doing——unless you want to blame President Obama for the unaccompanied minors that streamed through here in 2014. When you have over 110,000 people coming a month, over a million last year and then well over a million this year, if you use the term “an invasion” that’s not anti-Hispanic, it’s a fact. [Source]

The Merrian-Webster dictionary defines the word “invasion” like this:

1: an act of invading (especially an incursion of an army for conquest or plunder)
2: the incoming or spread of something usually hurtful

When you have a million people a year——not one solider but hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children——trying to cross your border and enter your country, the only “fact” is that you are witnessing a refugee crisis. De-humanizing language that portrays poor migrant families in need of refuge as a danger, a threat, and an attempt to “take over” the country are not only wrong, they are openly racist.

Or maybe there wasn’t anything special about it. Maybe it was just the fact that I was 11 and the things that are big when you’re 11 make a big imprint on you. Michael made the world of music into something bigger than an 11 year-old could wrap his head around.

Let’s change it up this week. Instead of five songs from the top five of July 1983, here are five songs from the Billboard Hot 100 for the week ending July 23, 1983——the end of the fourth week of July. There’s a lot of that year’s hits on the charts that month, lots of songs I could write about. I’m going to stick to ones I liked or that had an impact on me.

5. “Beat It” by Michael Jackson
By July this former #1 song (it ruled the charts for three weeks in April and May) only came in at #53. No matter. As part of the Thriller album that made Michael into Michael, it still has never gone away. “Billie Jean” was the bigger hit record, but “Beat It” was the more interesting video——with its street gang subplot——and more interesting song——with Michael going rock and guitar work by the master himself, Eddie Van Halen.

4. “1999” by Prince
It was released in fall 1982 and had made it to #44 on the Hot 100 by Christmas. Re-released in 1983, the song reached #12 in July, its peak position on the charts. The album 1999 was Prince’s first with his band the Revolution and, in many ways, it was the start of the cultural wonder that he would become. While I would always be a bigger fan of his earlier album Dirty Mind, 1999 was the kind of new sound that was undeniable and mesmerizing. The song is iconic, as is the video. For me, it was the start of a “Highlander”-like (“there can be only one”) contest between Michael and Prince. You had to be either. But there was no way not to love both.

3. “Rock of Ages” by Def Leppard
It came in at #22 in July, a few steps shy of its peak position. It was the song my friends and I loved from the album Pyromania, produced by the legendary rock guru Mutt Lange. 1983 was the year of Ozzy’s Bark at the Moon, Iron Maiden’s Piece of Mind, Metal Health by Quiet Riot, and Mötley Crüe’s Shout at the Devil. I was awash in rock and new metal. “Rock of Ages” was a song some people made fun of (and still do).
It was a song I felt I didn’t need to justify. I just liked it. And, after all, it’s better to burn out than to fade away!

2. “Let’s Dance” by David Bowie
David Bowie was a legend to many before I ever heard of him. It’s still an odd thing to me that he became a known figure to me in 1983 because he was experiencing his biggest commercial success with his album Let’s Dance. I’d later become semi-obsessed with his Ziggy Stardust work but at 11 his Nile Roger’s produced pop sounded pretty damn good. This title song peaked at #1 in May for only one week and dropped to #67 by the end of July, far behind his climbing single “China Girl.” The vocals here still grab me in ways the other tracks never did. (The closing guitar was by Stevie Ray Vaughan.)

1.”Puttin’ on the Ritz” by Taco
There are so many good songs that came out in 1983 and this is not one of them. But I was only 11 so my taste can be forgiven. This cover of a 1927 song written by Irving Berlin (once famously recorded by Fred Astaire) hit the #33 spot in July on its way to #4 two months later. Performed and interpreted by an Indonesian-born Dutch singer named Taco, the song was a hit with everyone I knew. We joked about the singer’s name in my house, me and my friends would break dance to the song (it was not a typical break dance song), and it was one of those collective musical experiences of the time. The synthpop sound and simple video were made for the early MTV era. I don’t remember any controversy from the use of blackface in the original video, although it was apparently edited out of later versions.

It was a big year for me. I turned 10 years old in May 1982 and that school year——with the help of my parents, who drove me to the recycling center——I started recycling newspaper. That made me enough money to buy two things that year: a brand-new Atari 5200 that summer and, in the early part of the year, a portable Toshiba radio with a built-in cassette deck.

That Toshiba might be one of the most important things I ever bought. I had already joined Colombia House, a “record club” where you got about 12 albums for one penny in exchange for agreeing to buy another five or so at “full price.” With my new Toshiba my preference switched from vinyl to cassette tapes.

I also started making tapes of my favorite songs recorded from the radio. That was the best thing about my Toshiba and the reason I most wanted to buy it. Before I got it, I had to sit there listening to one or more stations non-stop just hoping that my favorite song would come on. With my Toshiba, I started recording those songs as they came on, giving me the ability to listen to them whenever I wanted.

It was a big time for me. I knew what I liked and what I liked also started to change with both my record club membership and the hits of the time. Most of these songs were on at least one of my homemade cassette tapes.

5. “Ebony and Ivory” by Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder
In some ways time hasn’t been as kind to this hit as you’d expect. Despite the fact that it’s recorded by two musical legends and sat atop the Billboard Hot 100 for seven weeks between May and June 1982, it’s not a song that gets much replay on “oldies” radio today. I think some of that is about the message of the song, something that seems a little trite and basic to our present ears. The sentiment——rooted in a kind of optimistic and uncomplicated idea of race racial oppression, and whiteness——doesn’t hold up well. Maybe the same can be said for the sound. The synthetic melody feels like 1982, and not always in a good way. That said, it was a massive hit record for two major musical figures. To give you some perspective, it was Paul’s biggest hit record of his post-Beatles career and, even without that qualifier, it was his second biggest hit of all time, second only to the juggernaut of “Hey Jude.” I suppose that enough makes it deserve some recognition. For me, in 1982 there was no musical artist for whom I had more reverence and respect than the great Stevie Wonder. He made it legit for me.

4. “Don’t You Want Me Baby” by the Human League
When “Ebony and Ivory” was ruling the pop charts, this synthpop song broke into the top ten. By the end of June it peaked at #2 before hitting the top spot for three weeks in July. None of that captures the fullness of its popularity. It was the biggest single of the year on the UK charts and one of the break through songs in the US for the electronic sound that came to characterize the new wave pop of the 80s. It was also always on the radio. As a kid, I remember liking it but also finding it weird and different, from the lyrics to the sound.

3. “Rosanna” by Toto
Toto might be one of the most famous “studio bands” in history. The guys knew their craft well and made their mark as a studio musicians on a number of other people’s albums. By 1978, they had formed as their own band. 1982 was their peak year. Their album Toto IV was their biggest ever, catapulted to success on the heels of two chart toppers (including this single). Some of the guys were among a group of musicians who played on Michael Jackson’s Thriller, and so this was a big year for them for other reasons, too. I was an okay fan of this hit, which peaked at #2 in June and July, kept out of the top spot by the #5 and #1 song on this week’s list. But I wasn’t a huge fan of it. My appreciation grew with time. When drummer Jeff Porcaro died in 1992 (he was only 38), the stream of drummers who sang his praises elevated my appreciation of the song. Porcaro knew what he was doing, and he was skilled at doing it. While the song hasn’t had the renaissance of their other hit “Africa” it’s a great rock song, with a killer beat, and appealing vocal work by Bobby Kimball and Steve Lukather. It won the 1982 Grammy for record of the year.

2. “Hurts So Good” by John Cougar
I didn’t have to try and record this song from the radio. It was the first vinyl album I bought at full price for my Columbia House record club. I don’t remember why I decided to buy the album, but over the summer of 1982 it grew on me. John Cougar had a sound I liked and his lyrics——sentimental and filled with character and imagery——was made of the stuff I would later become obsessed with via writers like John Prine, Tom Waits, and Townes Van Zandt. The song peaked at #2 on the Hot 100; his follow-up single “Jack and Diane” hit the top spot later that fall.

1. “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor
If there was a song I bought my Toshiba radio for, it was this hit by Survivor. I recorded this song from radio play more times than any other in a quest to get the full song without any voice interruption from the DJ. It wasn’t too hard that summer, since the song was ubiquitous. It was the song from the movie Rocky III, which my 10-year-old self thought just might be the best movie ever made. I saw the movie in May when it was released, and my obsession with the song started immediately after. I’d sing it at the top of my lungs though, to this day, I’m not sure about half of the lyrics. It was the band’s biggest hit. It reigned at #1 for six weeks starting in July and going into August. I still think of Sylvester Stallone and Mr. T every time I hear it. The opening guitar work might just be the musical equivalent of testosterone.

I’m doing well. The swelling is getting better every day and the doctors were as pleased with my healing as I was. My pain is pretty much non-existent right now beyond the occasional headache, which is also good. I am sleeping better with each day, too, which is an important part of the process. Sleeping has also pretty much always been one of my best skills, so it’s nice to know I still got it.

So things are good and moving forward. I’m not back to normal, of course. I’m still really tired. I still need to watch out about lifting heavy things or straining myself. But all that should keep getting easier and better with time and rest.

This is mostly over but it’s also the start of a new normal for me. I’m going to be getting MRIs for the rest of my life. I may have to get radiation if the tumor comes back. There’s a lot of possibilities ahead of us but they’re all better than what we just faced.

So for now, we’ll just keep on keeping on.

During my follow-up appointment on July 3 the doctors decided to admit me to the ICU again to drain fluid from my face. In their estimation, the post-op swelling was reaching problematic proportions. My face was swelling with cerebrospinal fluid (or CSF), which is the stuff that our spine and brain both live in. The presence of that fluid makes it hard for my face to heal from surgery and so it had to go.

The way they got rid of the excess fluid was by installing a drain in my back, kinda like tapping the end of the CSF system. The installation hurt about as much as you would imagine. Nobody wants a needle put in their back, let alone a plastic tube. In this whole process of brain surgery the pain and discomfort I felt when they installed the drain was the worst thing I’ve felt.

There’s still a lot of good stuff to keep in mind. I’m alive and I am still happy to be alive. It amazes me that I live in a time where I had a brain tumor and they were able to remove it while keeping me alive. Also, my swelling is way better. The drain worked and I have that to be grateful for, too.

The downside? I just got home after 11 days locked up in a hospital with a drain in my back. While it worked and saved my life (and is allowing me now to heal from surgery) 11 days away from my wife and kids is one of the worst things I’ve had to endure.

But I’m home now, basking in the glow of my family. I’m resting and sleeping well. I feel great. My pain is mostly gone, the swelling is disappearing, and I feel more like myself everyday. I feel better about the road ahead, too.

But——just in case you were wondering——brain tumors still suck.

Thanks for the love, the prayers/thoughts, and the palpable feeling of community. I know I’ve got a lot of people pulling for me and I’ve felt it every step of the way. I couldn’t be more grateful for it. If there’s a silver lining in all this, that’s certainly it.