David Lee Roth "Just A Gigolo/I Ain't Got Nobody"

It's probably been a long time since you've seen the video for David Lee Roth's "Just A Gigolo/I Ain't Got Nobody."  You might as well watch it first, since it's certainly going to be the most entertaining part of this otherwise shaggy dog post:


See the video on Youtube.

If you remember the video, you probably remember the busty girls or the celebrity impersonators or Dave's particular, peculiar dance moves.

But I wanted to focus on the preamble scene.  The one that takes place on the set of the Cable Channel that "Dave" is the host of.

As Dave is approached by a collection of very, very surreal character actors, one of them (at the :45 mark) says, "You've got charaassma!"

He doesn't pronounce it correctly.

CharISma.

He makes it rhyme with the respiratory condition, asthma.

CharASma.

This song and video came out in 1985, which means I was 16 at the time.  Basically, I was the target audience of this video.

And I loved it.  All of it.

But for some reason, I really thought "CharASma" was hilarious.  So much so, that I started saying it myself.

At first, I'd just use it the way you'd use any movie quote.  The video was ubiquitous enough at the time, that peers would know the reference.

Then I started saying it any time the word "charisma" would happen into a sentence.  I'd just substitute "charASma" in, but I'd say it in a BIG way.  You know, to be ironic.

Then I just started pronoucing the word "charASma."  I mean, even when I wasn't trying to be funny or weird or pop-culturally clever.

To the point where I kinda forgot that the word was actually pronouced "charISma."

This transformation took place over the course of a couple of years, so it had reached the point where mispronouncing "charisma" was a habit I had to break.

I finally did get a handle on it, and after a few months of consciously thinking about it, I no longer had to pause and try to remember, "What's the correct way to say it?  CharISma or CharASma?"

And thus concludes the longest, lamest and least boob-related story about how a David Lee Roth video warped a teenagers brain.

Van Halen "Hot For Teacher"

While I know that there are certainly people who regularly read this blog, I don't get too many posts or comments about it online.  Which is why the comments that are made, stand out.

My friend Scott and I have this running joke, where, if I blog about a song he will comment about it.  And it comment generally ends with ". . . and the girl in the band is HOT!"  Or, if there is no video, his evaluation of the song is qualified, with "Is she hot?"

Last week, Scott did my wife a kind favor.  He posted on his Facebook page, and his work's Facebook page, about my wife's new Art Workshops.

Of course, it was hugely appreciated.  But he couldn't resist baiting me . . .

Hey everyone, a friend of mine is giving private art lessons out of her recently renovated garage this summer (is the paint even dry?). She's super cool, wicked nice, extremely talented...and one other thing, what was it?...(help me out PJ Finn!) Check it out! http://www.facebook.com/theartshed

Okay, so how do you respond?

He's posting this to all his friends.  Most of whom, I don't know.

Do I sound like a douche, if I take the bait and say, "She's Hot!  My wife is Hot!"?

Then, thinking like a businessman, I wondered, if we're trying to promote Art Lessons would potential parents be turned off by the fact that we were promoting the teacher's hotness as a selling point?  It seemed unprofessional, and unseemly.

And then, my Father mode kicked in.  Did I really want to even think about the idea of pre-pubescent boys, oogling their art teacher, my wife?  Do I really want to encourage a "Stacy's Mom" thing?

Because here's the thing, I do think my wife is hot.  After all these years, and the kids, and the daily grind, I can still look at her and think that she's totally beautiful.  And I'm sure I always will.

(My very wise Aunt Peg told me that she and Uncle Joe still find each other attractive after 40-plus years of marriage, because their eyesight has failed in equal proportion.)

I thought about going for broke and responding to Scott by posting the "Hot For Teacher" video, and the thought of it made me laugh.

When this song came out 25 years ago, the Hot Teacher fantasy did run wild in my pre-pubescent brain.  And here I am all these years later, living with a totally hot teacher!

I kept looking at the thread below Scott's post, on and off for a good hour, before I finally settled on a comment that wasn't unprofessional, provocative, douche-y, and didn't miss the opportunity to tweak Scott back:

Does your wife read your posts?

Hear the song on Youtube.

Motley Crue "Home Sweet Home"

I was so glad to read Chuck Klosterman's "Fargo Rock City," because, in a mix of rock criticism/analysis and personal biography, it explored some questions about 80s metal that I had had back, well, in the 80s.

Last week I was writing about liking U2, and how liking U2 (pre-"Joshua Tree" anyway) was not cool with the Cool kids.  No, the Cool kids liked Van Halen (which I liked, but didn't love) and AC/DC (who had a 1/2 dozen songs that were awesome, and a whole lot of dumb shit after that).

In the case of these bands, I felt like not liking them indicated that there was something wrong with me.

Then Hair Metal happened.

And for so many of the kids who had been preaching the liturgy of "For Those About To Rock," latching onto bands with big guitar riffs and lyrics about big lives and skanky girls, made perfect sense to them.

But in the case of these bands, I felt like not liking them indicated that there was something wrong with the rest of the world, not me.

While David Lee Roth could prance, there was no mistaking the fact that he was a manly man on the prowl.  Eddie Van Halen and AC/DC were just pure testosterone.

I understood why 15 year old boys gravitated toward that.

So what was with the bands of dudes dressed like girls, with pounds of make-up and huge, huge hair that had to have been fussed over for hours?  How did that connect to a hormone-driven teenage suburbanite boy?

I can't say that I could have articulated all this in 1986, but on an innate level, I knew it didn't make sense.

Beyond the make-up and hair spray, there was also some kind of cognitive dissonance about the music.

Plain and simple, Eddie Van Halen didn't play any fucking ballads, and Bon Scott would gargle rocks rather than croon a heart-sick love song (and probably did).

But these Hair Metal bands would put out a fluffy, hooky upbeat "rocker" and follow it up with some hokey Moon-June-Spoon weeper.  And while I was not a manly man, nor particularly testorone-y, I couldn't stand this maudlin stuff.

All this, to tell the story . . . whenever I hear Motley Crue's "Home Sweet Home" I think of this one guy I was friendly with.  A group of us were watching MTV, and the room was silent as this song played.  As it got to the fade out, he said, "Man, this is one of those songs that you wish would never end . . . "

Some of the guys nodded, meaningfully, in agreement.

I sat there, quietly imagining the pleasure of gargling rocks.


Hear the song on Youtube.

U2 "Bad"

I read two books in the early Spring, Tina Fey's "Bossypants" and Chuck Klosterman's "Fargo Rock City."

Both books spend quite a bit of time in awkward adolescence, and both books stirred up a bunch of musical memories.  I would write down a note every time some anecdote popped in my.  I've got a good 15 to 20 upcoming posts that stroll down awkward avenue.

"Fargo Rock City" in particular made me think a lot about the music I listened to during high school, as it's part autobiography, part treatise on listening to Heavy Metal in the 1980s.

I was not a Heavy Metal kid.

But Metal, or at least Hard Rock, seemed to be the default position for popular kids in my high school.

Basically, you either liked Van Halen, or you were a fag.

That was the dividing line.  Which side were you going to be on?

(I'll say, that I think this was only really a necessary choice for boys.  Girls could like a much wider range of music and still be cool.)

So I came down on the side of "Yeah, Van Halen is cool."

But I have to admit, that I didn't really get it at all.

"Running With The Devil"?

Guys would go on and on about how great that song was.

I mean, I liked it as much as I liked any dumb rock song.  And I understood why my guitar playing friends were so crazy about "Eruption."  But I just wasn't there, otherwise.

I was a Sophomore in 1984, and while I could fake really liking certain things, to fly under the radar, I was really more interested in all the new music I was ingesting on MTV.

There was this up-and-coming band from Ireland that I and a few of my friends were excited about.  But it wasn't terribly cool to say you liked them.

I can remember being in homeroom, getting ragged on by kids were were cooler (and let's face it, tougher) than we were, for liking U2.  "The Unforgettable Fire" had just come out, and it was starting to get some attention, which, in retrospect, I think rattled these kids and their worldview a bit.

The band was gay.  We were fags for liking them.  It was stupid, fad music that would have no staying power.  It wasn't real Rock N Roll.

It's one of those moments where I wish time travel existed, so someone from the future could have popped into my 1984 homeroom to pass on the information that U2 turned out to be one of the biggest, most popular, most successful, most enduring Rock N Roll bands of the last 30 years.



See the video on Youtube.

White Lion "Wait"

You have a really broad taste in music, don't you?

How do I know this?

Call it 30 years of market research.

I know you think you have a really broad taste in music, because everybody thinks they have a really broad taste in music.

It's a pretty straightforward question, "What kind of music do you like?"

And it's a question I ask pretty regularly to folks, and have for many years.

It's good small talk. And the subject matter is in my wheelhouse.

But I always laugh at the answer to the question, because the response is always essentially the same. The person believes they have eclectic tastes.

Sometimes they do. Often they don't.

How broad your taste is, is a matter of degrees and perspective, isn't it?

Whenever I ask the question "What kind of music do you like?" I always think of this one particular guy.

He was one of the dudes who worked in the circuit board factory that I wrote about on Monday. I little overweight. Mullet. Mustache that was not very full. Always wearing a heavy metal 3/4 black-sleeve t-shirt with a metal band name on the white front.

I was trying to find common ground during a coffee break.

"What kind of music do you like?" I asked.

"Oh, I like all kinds of stuff. I mean, I listen to everything from Van Halen to White Lion."

My face briefly flashed a "are you screwing with me" look, but I realized immediately, that he was sincere.

To him, Van Halen was on the spectrum at a point quite distant from White Lion.

Kind of like Fresno is quite distant from Martha's Vineyard. The two are very far away from each other.

Unless you think about the distance from Martha's Vineyard to The Crab Nebula. Then Fresno is actually pretty close.

But when you are in your own musical world, you're not thinking about The Crab Nebula out there in space. Your vision of your record collection puts the two artists farthest apart on the spectrum, and puts them each on a coast. And you think of yourself as broad.

Try it. Next time you are making small talk with strangers, ask them "What kind of music do you like?" Know doubt, each person will tell you they like all kinds of things.


See the video on Youtube.

Nerf Herder "Van Halen"

Here's another Weekend Post:

After last weekend's Weekend Posts about Pop Power Alterna-rockers, I had this one pop into my head, and for a second, I wondered whatever became of this band.

Then I remembered that beyond having a couple of fun alternative hits, they actually have a secure spot in the Pop Culture Pantheon (with some nice music licensing paychecks that must come at regular intervals). This is the band that does the theme song to Buffy The Vampire Slayer, which is still in syndication and gets National airplay every day.


See the video on Youtube.


Hear The Buffy Theme on Youtube.

How the band Nerf Herder got its name!

See it on Youtube.

Weekend posts are a chance to revisit songs that have happy memories, not of anything in particular, other than just hearing the tunes.

Many of these songs were tracks that I played during my 90s stint as an Alternative/Modern Rock radio show. They're tunes that I hardly hear these days, but are wonderful to revisit.

Click on the "Weekend Posts" label below, to see other posts like this.