{"id":24382,"date":"2021-07-16T00:20:07","date_gmt":"2021-07-16T04:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=24382"},"modified":"2021-07-16T00:20:08","modified_gmt":"2021-07-16T04:20:08","slug":"rotten-to-the-core-well-not-exactly-rotten","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/rotten-to-the-core-well-not-exactly-rotten\/","title":{"rendered":"Rotten to the Core (Well, Not Exactly Rotten)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>As the surge of hormones ran through my teenage loins, <strong>Pat Benetar<\/strong> appeared on the scene in a a French sailor-style striped shirt and leather pants. I knew that god put her on the scene to turn me on, but I found her to be a complete turnoff. Her music sure didn&#8217;t help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of her hits from her unavoidable debut album was a song called &#8220;You Better Run.&#8221; The main guitar hook was easy enough that even I could play it, as I fumbled with my newly acquired electric guitar. It was as if god put that song on the FM airwaves to turn me on, but I found her singing and the twists and turns the song would take as it hit the chorus to be a complete turnoff. Her objectively cute, petite body in that outfit didn&#8217;t help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Pat Benatar - You Better Run\" width=\"695\" height=\"521\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IvSbQB6-UdY?feature=oembed&amp;wmode=opaque\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>No biggie. There was plenty of FM rock music I couldn&#8217;t stand in the late &#8217;70s. I learned to ignore the music of Pat Benetar and not stress out over the fact that I didn&#8217;t find her appealing, even though I knew she was constructed to appeal to my burgeoning tastes in women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Two years later, when I finally started to figure out how to be remotely cool,  I bought a used copy of the classic Rascals&#8217; greatest hits album and realized that &#8220;You Better Run&#8221; was actually one of their songs. I had no idea. The Rascals were cool, man. Their version must have been the definitive one that Benetar and her guitar-wielding mate Neil Giraldo butchered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--nextpage-->\n\n\n\n<p>For the first couple of years that I owned that Rascals album, I convinced myself that their version was actually cool. In subsequent years, the best I could say was that their version was &#8220;better.&#8221; Today, I heard the Benetar version, remembered how much I disliked it, then went back to the original to see how much better it actually was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s better, but I still don&#8217;t like all the melodramatic builds. The Rascals could pull that Broadway stuff off in &#8220;How Can I Be Sure,&#8221; but I find it inappropriate coming out of such a meaty guitar hook during the verses. It&#8217;s like that fluffy major 7th break in The Nazz&#8217;s &#8220;Open My Eyes.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I spent the rest of the day realizing that &#8220;You Better Run&#8221; is mediocre at the core.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Have you ever gotten excited to discover the original version of a song you didn&#8217;t care for in its popular format by someone else, only toe realize that the original, by an artist you love, is not much better?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"THE RASCALS(VIDEO CLIP)- &quot;YOU BETTER RUN&quot; (LYRICS)\" width=\"695\" height=\"521\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/lmfTx4_QQCc?feature=oembed&amp;wmode=opaque\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n<nav class=\"page-links\"><strong>Pages:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/rotten-to-the-core-well-not-exactly-rotten\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">1<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/rotten-to-the-core-well-not-exactly-rotten\/2\/\" class=\"post-page-numbers\"><span class=\"page-num\">2<\/span><\/a><\/nav>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the surge of hormones ran through my teenage loins, Pat Benetar appeared on the scene in a a French sailor-style striped shirt and leather pants. I knew that god put her on the scene to turn me on, but I found her to be a complete turnoff. Her music sure didn&#8217;t help. One of <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/rotten-to-the-core-well-not-exactly-rotten\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24382"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24382\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}