Rock Crime: The Cover Art for Duran Duran’s Rio Album

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Apr 052013
 
Ugh!

Ugh!

If you’ve been following Rock Town Hall for even a couple of weeks you probably have an inkling of my severe distaste for the mainstream culture of the 1980s. If you didn’t live through that era and find it “charming” or whatever, I feel slightly worse for the future of humankind. That’s OK, I’m used to feeling that way. What troubles me is how we got to this point considering how great my generation was and how much greater our parents’ and grandparents’ generations were. If we were so great, shouldn’t the youth of today be better?

If you lived through that era and look back on it fondly, I am not-so-secretly jealous of you. I had a lot of youthful energy and love to give to the world at that time, and for all my exquisite taste I would have been happy to spread my energy and love on a mutually appreciative world, as you may have been able to do back then. Bravo, ’80s Mainstream Culture Beneficiaries!

Many of my associations with the ’80s, then and now, were filtered through my not-always exclusive pursuits of rock ‘n roll and girls, as I was young enough to call them through most of the decade. I desired a mastery of both, yet constantly found myself falling short of the mark. Most of the roadblocks encountered were part of my genetic makeup and/or self-erected. I think of all the poor decisions I made and inflexible stances I took owing to my born and bred stubbornness. I did have good taste, however, and I have no regrets about that. The mainstream culture of the 1980s threw its share of roadblocks at me. Perhaps no cultural artifact was a more daunting roadblock than a copy of Duran Duran‘s Rio placed at the front of a stack of albums in a girl’s dorm room or apartment.

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Kurt Cobain’s 19th Mortiversary

 Posted by
Apr 052013
 

Is there an antonym for “anniversary?” As you probably know by now, today is the 19th “mortiversary” of Kurt Cobain. I didn’t fully appreciate Nirvana until their last album. I was barely bright enough to be able to tell that Cobain had something going on when Nevermind exploded, but I never liked the sound of that album, especially that stringy bass. I still don’t like the way those songs sound.

I was living in Hungary when In Utero came out. There wasn’t a lot of good music to be “spotted in the wild,” as our friend Rockodile Hunter might say. EuroMTV was playing some BritPop, which I liked, but mostly more Pet Shop Boys videos than I ever wanted to see. I was getting a little homesick for the straight-up rock ‘n roll from my homeland. When the video for “Heart-Shaped Box” hit, I jumped on it! The bass was heavier. The spooky imagery in the video was cool. The song reminded me of Pere Ubu. All good things. I ended up buying that album, paying the equivalent of $20 for the CD, which was hard for me to fork over. God bless America! God bless kick-ass stoner rock. Nirvana wasn’t so bad after all, even with Cobain’s string of totally annoying (to me, at least) ODs and other attention-grabbing attempts at disappearing. The whole thing came to a sad, crashing end when he shot himself. I don’t get caught up in the mystique of suicide; in fact, I rage against it. I still don’t feel anything alluring about Cobain’s very public agony, but I am glad I had just enough time to get a taste of what the band’s real fans were missing when he split.

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Last Man Standing: The Upbeat Bummer

 Posted by
Apr 042013
 

I got to thinking about The Beatles’ “Tell Me Why” this morning. What a joyous, swinging, grin-inducing song! A song about being in an utterly miserable state! You just can’t help but rock along to it in the car, at your desk, by the washer/dryer, despite the psychic devastation! I’m sure there are many other songs like this out there, but can one knock Tell Me Why off of its pedestal?

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What the Font?

 Posted by
Apr 042013
 

whatthefont

With all the recent threads about Mod’s hate/acceptance of ’80s music, we have neglected to fully discuss the style implications of Mod’s musical choices. (Haircut 100? With their short-on-the-sides-but-long-on-top hair, leg warmers, and prodigious use of artfully draped scarves, this is a band flaunting the styles which Mod has previously railed against.) However, I save that for another day…

What I can offer is this: a thread that I believe 99% of us can get behind. The link/post below provides an opportunity for us to

  1. Learn a little about the incredibly stressful work of a graphic artist
  2. Pat ourselves on the back about what would be our knowledgable and artistic visual choices
  3. Recall some music from the past (if anyone has actually listened to any of these bands or albums, please speak up)
  4. Snicker a little.

Let us all now come together and enjoy this:
http://fontfeed.com/archives/my-type-of-music_april-1st-2013/

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RTH in Review: 25 Characteristically ’80s Songs Not Even Mr. Moderator Was Too Cool to Like

 Posted by
Apr 042013
 
Judd Nelson, Mr Mod's '80s role model and unsuspecting lunch table mate at a burger joint in Portland, Maine, circa 1999.

Judd Nelson, Mr Mod’s ’80s role model and unsuspecting lunch table mate at a burger joint in Portland, Maine, circa 1999.

You may recall our recent effort to help Mr. Moderator identify his list of 25 characteristically ’80s songs even he liked during that era, when he was, by his own admission, too cool for school. Despite rigorous exclusion criteria and the Mod’s artful stickwork in fending off hopeful shots on net, we managed to help him show the world that he was actually not quite as a big a party pooper as imagined. I consider it an extraordinary personal triumph that I was able to get even one song on his Top 25 list.

Attached is the compilation of the Top 25 songs plus all candidate songs and their sponsors.

Mr. Mod’s Top 25 and the RTH ’80s Playlist

A few items of trivia related to the thread:

  • Total submissions, including Mr. Moderator’s top 25: 206
  • Submitter with the highest number of successful top 25 candidates other than Mr. Moderator: alexmagic (5)
  • Top 5 submitters overall: alexmagic (27); ladymisskirroyale (26); Sgt. Peppermint Petty (15); cliff sovinsanity (15); Suburban kid (14)
  • Most frequent first word in song title (other than “I”): Don’t(5)…hmmm, interesting considering the point of the thread.
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