Sunday, July 26, 2020

Isolation Report, Week #20


[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]


I had to go to the doctor for the first time during the pandemic: apparently, I (probably) have diverticulitis.  My grandmother had this for many years, so it doesn’t surprise me too much.  Now I have to go find a gastroenterologist, and I’m sure there’s a colonoscopy in my future, which is never pleasant to look forward to.  In other sad news, The Mother‘s dad and brother aren’t doing well, so it looks like she will have to undertake a short plane ride in these troubled times, which definitely isn’t pleasant to look forward to.  Our littlest will accompany; neither of them would sleep much otherwise.

We subscribed to HBO Max; it was the same price we were paying for HBO Now, so we figured why not.  Mostly what’s on HBO Max is the same as what’s on regular HBO, but there are a few extra things.  One of which is Doom Patrol, one of those marvelously inventive comic book series (like Preacher or Legion) that is oh-so-much-more than a typical superhero story.  While he wasn’t the inventor of the Doom Patrol (a group which actually preceded the X-Men by a few months, despite seeming like a rip-off of them, which makes it decades old), it’s Grant Morrison we truly have to thank for this bit of Dadaesque surrealism (see also Happy!, on Netflix).  While the core four characters predated him, Morrison gave us Crazy Jane, Danny the Street, and the amazing Willoughby Kipling, expertly portrayed by Mark Sheppard (a character actor who’s made a career of brilliant recurring characters in great series such as Supernatural, Warehouse 13, and White Collar).  If you don’t like shows where you are constantly trying to figure out what the fuck is going on, definitely do not watch this one.

Let’s see ... what else ... we’ve been playing some family board games.  The Wizard Always Wins, Betrayal at House on the Hill, and Bears vs Babies; all highly recommended.  Also some card games—Minecraft Uno and Timelineand of course the littlest one still sucks me into Portal Knights on a semi-regular basis.  That game is for me what I understand Animal Crossing is for other folks during these weird times: we mainly just battle things and go on quests so we can get more materials to build our awesome house.  It’s up to 3 stories now, with a rootfop observatory on top and a vegetable garden and pool out back.  There’s also a large bathroom with a red crystal ceiling, a little marketplace full of vendor stalls out front, and a cannon in the side yard that we occasionaly fire off the edge of the world just so we can watch the flaming cannonball shoot off into the abyss.  We really do spend a lot of time on it ... it’s weirdly soothing, vaguely creative, and surprisingly social.  Plus my kid loves it when we share decorating tips.

So things aren’t too bad on the personal front, although I grow ever more fearful at the state of our country.  While the rest of the world seems to have figured out how this whole virus thing works, we’re traveling backwards in time; as The Daily Show recently pointed out, we’ve now arrived at 1918, when the president said to ignore the doctors and scientists and encouraged large gatherings, people claimed that wearing masks to avoid infecting each other was unconstitutional, and localities triggered a second wave by reopening too soon.  Protests for racial justice continue unabated, but the news seems to have forgotten (or perhaps merely grown apathetic).  In point of fact, we’ve now progressed to the point where our president is sending in secret police to disappear people off the streets, and our system continues blithely on.  Is this what people felt like in Argentina in the 70s? in Russia in the 30s?  (I hesitate to mention Germany in the 40s due to Godwin’s law, but I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t crossed my mind.)  I bet you all those people in all those countries said the same thing we’re all apparently thinking: “obviously that could never happen here.”  I mean, I’m assuming people are thinking that, because otherwise why the fuck isn’t everyone in the country freaking the fuck out right now?  A couple of news stories that faded fast and a few sternly worded tweets from the opposition?  Is that really all the reaction we can get for secret fucking police? kidnapping people?  I dunno, man ... I’m not feeling particularly sanguine about the future.









Sunday, July 19, 2020

Saladosity, Part 15: Autumnal

[This is the fifteenth post in a long series.  You may wish to start at the beginning.  Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]


(If you need a refresher about my salad-making lingo, go back and review our first salad.)

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure why this salad is called an “autumn salad” ... I don’t personally find it particularly autumnal, but I searched online for salads with similar ingredients, and what little concensus there was in the naming of it pointed to the seasonal moniker, so here we are.  Perhaps its because the fruit and nuts we’re going to add are commonly harvested in the autumn ... although, these days, you should have no problems finding any of this stuff year ‘round.  Still, “autumn salad” is what I’ve always called it, once I started calling it anything at all, and that’s what we’re sticking with here.

The Fruit

So this is one of those salads with some fruit in it.1  Hopefully that doesn’t turn you off.  Trust me that this will all work out.

What this salad really should have in it is pears.  However, I dislike using pears for two reasons:

  • I have a hell of a time keeping pears from going bad.  I like this salad quite a bit, but it’s very much a “once in a while” salad.  It’s a bit more of a pain to make, and it does contain some added sugar, so I just don’t eat it as often as the others.  That means that I often don’t get around to the pears before they go bad.
  • Pears are, at least for me, a huge pain to prepare.  They’re annoying to peel, due to the irregular shape, and it’s annoying to try to get the core out.

Now, if you have some secret way to get pears into chunks, and you eat pears often enough that they won’t get bad, I definitely encourage you to substitute pears.  They’ll actually make this salad even better.

If, on the other hand, you’re a mere mortal like me, just use apples.  They keep for-friggin-ever, they’re super easy to peel,2 and, because you bought all the stuff I told you to, you have a corer-slicer which will give you beautiful slices in a matter of seconds.  Once you have the slices, take half of them, cut each one into about four chunks each, and use that for your salad.  Eat the rest: they’re yummy.  Adjust amount and size of apple chunks to your taste.

The other fruit we need for this is dried cranberries.  This is the first place we’re going to have to be okay with added sugar, because I’ve never even seen any dried cranberries that were unsweetened ... and, honestly, even if you could find some, you probaly wouldn’t want to eat them.  Even sweetened, they’re not particularly sweet.  The added sugar just makes them tolerable.

The Nuts

You want walnuts for this.  Now, as I mentioned previously, I personally can’t find roasted walnuts—if I could, I sure would buy them.  If you’re ambitious enough to want to roast the walnuts yourself, again I encourage you to do that.  But we’re trying to keep it as simple and pain-free as we can, so I just use raw walnuts.  They’re perfectly lovely.  You bought the pieces, right?  That saves you having to chop them, and they’re usually cheaper to boot.

You could try other nuts, if, say, you really hate walnuts.  But honestly I think that makes it a whole different salad.  Try it at least once with the walnuts.  (Okay, you’ll most likely have to make it with walnuts several times, to use up the whole bag, but that’s not so bad.)  I think you’ll dig it.

The Dressing

For this one, you’re going to want a slightly sweet dressing.  If you really don’t want to make it yourself, you could try a raspberry vinaigrette, or a balsamic fig.3  But it works best with a good honey mustard.

Now, the primary problem with honey mustard dressing is that you can’t actually buy a good honey mustard dressing.  Oh, sure: you can find some decent honey mustard dip ... I like Ken’s, personally.  But if you have a burning desire to slather a chicken nugget in something, there are several good store-bought honey mustard choices.  For salads, on the other hand, most premade “dressings” are totally infeasible.  They’re too thick and goopy—that’s a great quality for a dip, but not really what you want in a salad dressing.  The answer, happily, is simple: make your own.

And it’s also super easy.  You won’t even need the food processor for this one.  Just a bowl and a spoon and a very small amount of elbow grease.  Although we do have to do a little bit of prep work first.  But don’t worry: this is prep stuff you just do occasionally and then you’re set for a while, not stuff you have to do every time you want to make the dressing.

Lemon Juice

Remember when I told you I was going to tell you how to juice your own lemons and it would really easy?  Okay, now’s the time.

Take your lemons and put them on the cutting board.  Slice them all in half around what would be their equators if they were little yellow Earths.  Now take your handy-dandy juicer that I told you to buy and plug it in.  Use the smaller reamer.  Now, one at a time, just put the lemon halves in your palm, put them onto the reamer, and push down.  That’s literally all there is to it.  But I’ll give you a few extra tips:

  • You can adjust the basket to allow as much or as little pulp as you like, but for this application you’ll probably want as little pulp as possible.
  • Once the pulp starts getting torn out, squeeze the lemon gently to bring more of the pulp into contact with the reamer.
  • A good juicer will spin both ways.  Once you feel like you’ve gotten all you’re going to get, lift your hand up, the juicer will stop, and then push down again.  If you’re lucky, it will immediately begin spinning in the other direction.  (If you’re not, you’ll have to lift up and push back down a couple of times.)  It will only take a few seconds for this second reaming, but you may be surprised how much more you get after you thought you were all done.
  • I mentioned before that lemon juice will keep forever, but it does eventually get so damned sour that you can’t stand it.  Also, it will develop white solids that you should strain out, because they’re sort of fibrous.  But if all that sounds icky to you, just freeze your lemon juice.  They way I love to do it (when I do do it) is in an ice tray.  Ice cube sizes vary according to tray, of course, but in my experience most ice cubes are almost exactly a tablespoon (a.k.a. 3 teaspoons).  I like the ice trays that have little covers on them, because that way the juice won’t pick up stray flavors, but that’s mostly my anal retentiveness showing.
Homemade Mayo

Now that you have lemon juice, making your own mayonnaise is trivial.  Take a mason jar and crack an egg into it.4  Add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice (that’s 2 cubes, if you froze it up above).  Squirt in just a small squirt of mustard: I like brown mustard for this, but any will do.  It’s mainly there for its emulsifying properties.  Toss in a heavy pinch of salt.  Top off with oil up to the 1½ cups line, or maybe a smidge above it.  Many places advise that you let this come to room temperature before proceeding, but I don’t find that it makes much difference (unless you need to wait for the lemon juice cubes to melt, of course).

Now just jam your handy-dandy stick blender (a.k.a. immersion blender) into the jar and turn it on.  Mayonnaise will magically appear.  It’s insane, I tell you.

Tips:

  • You can experiment with different types of oil.  Sunflower is probably the best; canola is terrible for you, and olive and grapeseed just taste bad.  Avocado oil is nice, although you will end up with mayo that has a slightly greenish tinge if you use only avocado.  Personally, I like about half-and-half sunflower and avocado.  Occasionally I’ll go a little heavier on the avocado—perhaps to as much as 2/3—but then again I don’t mind greenish mayo.
  • Until you’ve done this a couple of times, starting with a smaller amount of oil is better.  You can always add more as you’re blending.  Remember: more oil makes it thicker, which can be a bit counterintuitive if you’re thinking of the oil as a liquid.  But the emulsification of the oil is what makes the mayo, so more is thicker in this case.  Basically, start your blending and, if it’s too thin, add more oil.  If it’s too thick ... well, you’re sort of hosed.  Try again.
  • You may need to gently move the stick blender up and down a bit to get the oil on top.  If you’re really good, you can cock the blender at a slight angle and create a vortex that sucks the oil down to the blades, but don’t feel bad if you can’t manage that.  Just plunge up and down a few times (gently) and you’ll achieve the same effect.
  • This mayo is absolutely not just for this dressing.  Use it all the time.  Never buy mayo again.  Seriously: once you figure out how easy it is to make your own mayo, there ain’t no going back.
Put it all together

Ready to make some dressing?  Here’s what you’ll need:

  • 4 big spoons of homemade mayo
  • 1 tablespoon of lemon juice
  • 5 big squirts of yellow mustard
  • 1 little squirt of dijon mustard
  • 4 big squirts of honey
  • 2 heavy pinches of garlic powder
  • 1 heavy pinch of salt

Just throw it all into a big bowl and stir it up.  The end.  Use a funnel to put it into an old salad dressing bottle and stick it in the fridge; it should last a couple of weeks, but don’t wait too long.

Feel free to mix up the ratio of yellow mustard to dijon, or add or subtract honey to your taste.  You should find this version way more tangy than sweet, but still sweet enough that you know it’s honey mustard.  I’ve also experimented with using vinegar instead of (or in addition to) the lemon juice, which makes it super-extra-tangy, but eventually I decided the lemon juice was the better call.

Don’t leave out the garlic powder though.  I was frustrated for months trying to create the perfect honey mustard before I found some recipe that suggested garlic powder.  Like you probably do, I thought this was an utterly insane idea.  Until I tried it.  Trust me on this one.


Autumn Salad

And now you’re ready.  At this point, you’ve already done the hard bits, so this is just assembly.

  • base veggies
  • walnuts
  • dried cranberries
  • feta cheese crumbles
  • apple slices
  • honey mustard dressing (normal)

There’s sweetness in the apples, the sweetener on the dried cranberries, and the honey in the honey mustard.  There’s also tartness in the cranberries, the feta cheese, and the lemon juice and dijon in the honey mustard.  Plus the crunch of the walnuts and the veggies ... this is one of my favorite “dinner” salads.  As I say, it’s not an everyday thing, but once every few weeks or so it’s a real treat.


Next time, we’ll experiment with some “south of the border” flavors.

__________

1 But not a fruit salad.  Totally different head.

2 Although, again, if you enjoy eating apple peels, you don’t even need to bother.  But ... blech.

3 Try Annie’s for some quality pre-bottled dressings: they have both of the kinds I mentioned.

4 You don’t have to use a mason jar, of course, but it’s easiest, because it has lines on it for 1 cup, etc.











Sunday, July 12, 2020

Isolation Report, Week #18


[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]


Well, there was an Independence Day celebration here in the US ... sort of.  We mainly just swam and made s’mores around the firepit.  That’s about as much patriotism as I can muster these days.

The past two weeks all my regular news sources have been on vacation, so I’m looking forward to seeing what the world has been up to tomorrow.  Wait ... did I say “looking forward to”?  Yeah, maybe that’s not the proper phrase.  Come to think of it, I’ve actually been fairly unstressed the past couple of weeks.  Maybe I shouldn’t go back to watching news stuff ...

I continue to be disappointed in how quickly it seems the coverage of racial justice protests seems to be disappearing.  In one panel I watched recently, the folks worried about “ally fatigue.”  I wish I knew what the right thing to combat that was.  But I understand the sentiment.

Critical Role has come back, and Narrative Telephone is also continuing, so that’s the best of both worlds.  I’m blasting through all the TV shows I said I wanted to catch up on ... perhaps sometime in one of the next few reports I’ll explore how much television I’ve blasted through.  Then again, that also might depress me.

I’ve also caught up on nearly all my outstanding podcasts, so I’ve gone back to audiobooks.  I had been behind for a bit, and, at the beginning of the pandemic, I wasn’t doing well even keeping up with new podcasts, since my commute was gone.  But I’ve worked out now how to work some podcast/audiobook time into my schedule, and I just started my first new audiobook in nearly a year.  So that’s ... progress?  Something.

I also took a few days off to turn the 3-day weekend into a 6-day weekend.  I spent a bunch of time fiddling with the code for my Google Sheets GM sheet: that is, the thing I use to help me run my D&D games.  There’s a bunch of products like that out there, but I don’t care for any of them, mostly because I have my own idiosyncracies and house rules.  So of course I continue to write my own.  A few months ago Google Apps Scripts upgraded the version of Javascript they use to run the back-end stuff behind Sheets, so I’m finally getting some features I’ve been longing for—when told the situation, my boss said something along the lines of “welcome to 2017.”  I still don’t like Javascript much, but admittedly this is way better.  Anyhow, I upgraded everything, and that of course caused some problems, and I wrote some brand new systems, which was pretty exciting.  Anyway, that took up nearly a week.  And I lost a few more chunks of time to Portal Knights with the baby girl.

Anyhow, I think that’s all there its to talk about, really.  Next week should be another full post, barring any unforeseen circumstances.









Sunday, July 5, 2020

80s My Way I

"There's a New Wave Coming, I Warn You (1979 - 1981)"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the series introduction for general background; you may also want to check out the mix introduction for more detailed background.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]


Well, it’s only been 3 years since I said I was going to start on this mix, and I think I’m finally pretty happy with volume I.  At this rate, I’ll be done memorializing the 80s in about 2047.  Hopefully I live that long.

This whole mix is trickier than most, for reasons that I outlined—okay, more like belabored—in the intro.  And the first volume is super-tricky, because I’m attempting to epitomize a genre which didn’t really exist yet.  What to include? what to skip?  There’s a lot to consider.

After a lot of agonizing, I decided to include a number of songs which were not really alternative at all, but I consider them (at least in retrospect) as harbingers.  I open the volume with the undeservedly forgotten “My Girl” by Chilliwack, usually considered one-hit wonders here in the US, though less so in their native Canada; I then follow that with Australia’s Little River Band and their guitar-heavy “Night Owls.” Both came out in 1981; the former reached #3 and the latter peaked at #6.  In many respects, these were perfectly normal, straight-up rock songs, particularly the single by LRB: often known for softer, power ballads like “Reminiscing” and “The Other Guy,” this was one time that they just rocked out.  Chilliwack wasn’t much known for anything, but their song also featured some solid rock guitar work.  So why do they appear here?  Well, in between the almost expected hot licks, these two experiment, just a touch: “My Girl” features some beautiful almost-a-capella harmonies backed only by a drumbeat, while “The Night Owls” plays around with dynamics, creating a hint of lonely echo on some of the background power chords.  Throughout this mix, I will not be afraid to throw in songs that I only discovered much later, on the grounds that they should have been part of my 80s, but these are two songs that I distinctly remember hearing at the beginning of the decade, and they were two of my earliest memories that something ... different ... was on the wind.

Also in this camp are the classic “Jessie’s Girl”—possibly more famous for rhyming the word “moot” and confusing an entire generation who didn’t realize it was a word1and Billy Joel’s “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me,” which simultaneously touched on the very edge of the new sound while singing about it, a new level of meta which came to characterize a lot of 80s pop culture.  Joel sang: “Next phase, new wave, dance craze, anyways, it’s still rock and roll to me,” and he was right ... and yet he was wrong.  It was still rock and roll, but just barely, and it was morphing every day.

What were we to make of “What I Like About You” by the Romantics, for instance?  It certainly wasn’t punk, and it absolutely wasn’t new wave,2 but it somehow was something more than simply rock.  And how about “Kids in America” by British pop star Kim Wilde?3  That ain’t pop—Wikipedia wants us to believe that Wilde was “inspired by the synth-pop stylings of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and Gary Numan,” but I’ve got news for you: it ain’t synth-pop either, although that’s closer.  There is a strong synth throughline, and I’m betting that’s clearly a drum machine you’re hearing, at least for part of the song, but it’s also ... more.  It holds on to the standard forms of rock and pop, while going in new directions.  Wilde sings:

Giddyup to East California,
There’s a new wave comin’, I warn ya ...

and any line that prophetic is not to be ignored.4

And there’s even weirder stuff in the mix.  The Easybeats were sometimes called the Beatles of Australia, and they too drifted into the psyschedelic territory that the Beatles trod.  Two of them in particular began a project after the Easybeats were no more that they called Flash and the Pan which went even deeper into psychedelia, and, in 1980, they released an album called Lights in the Night and their first single was a bizarre little track called “Welcome to the Universe,” which combines ambient synth, voice distortion, rock guitar, and a rollicking piano performance that could almost be considered boogie-woogie.  When I first heard this song,5 I had no idea how to categorize it.  Hell, I’m not sure I do even now.

And then we have the real new wave.  There are two songs that will always exemplify the sound of new wave to me: “Pop Muzik,” by M, and “Cars,” by Gary Numan.  Now, “Pop Muzik” is a bit to the left of europop, and it’s got a lot of disco influence as well, but the synth layers, and the way the guitar is used—not licks or power chords, but just individuated notes that seem to vibrate in your head—that’s new wave, baby.  But if I had to describe new wave in one word, that word would absolutely have to be “Cars.” It’s nothing but synth and drum machine, and whatever buzz there is is not provided by guitars at all: it’s just more synth, made jagged-edged and discordant.  “Cars” is the first time I can remember hearing sounds that were essentially sci-fi sound effects used as actual music ... and it works.  A healthy chunk of the entire genre of electronica can be traced back to Gary Numan, as far as I’m concerned, and while I’m not a hardcode Numan fan, there’s no denying the absolute majesty of this song.

Of course, the other two classic new wave bands of the 80s are DEVO and the B-52’s, and both are here, because they were both putting out amazing songs right from the start of the decade.  Sure, including “Whip It” means I can’t6 include “Working in the Coal Mine” or “Girl U Want,” but come on ... “Whip It”?  That was a harbinger of the decade if ever there was one.  Likewise, “Rock Lobster” is here bumping out “Private Idaho” and “Channel Z,” but I decided to include it for a couple of important reasons.  First of all, while the B-52’s are undeniably a new wave band, they’re not synth purists the way some of the others are.  “Rock Lobster” includes some great guitar work that almost sounds like it’s played on a bass guitar (but it’s not).  Again, this echoey, almost ringing guitar sound would become very prevalent in much of the alternative to come.  But one of the most interesting things about “Rock Lobster” is that it was originally released in 1978—and then appeared on 1979’s The B-52’s, when it entered the charts, and finally peaked in 1980.  So I feel fully justified in including it here, but it’s fair to note that this is the earliest song to appear on the mix.  That kind of ahead-of-its-time phenomenon is too important not to celebrate.

But the real reason this retrospective on the 80s actually starts in 1979 is “My Sharona.” Unlike the B-52’s, there was no other option for the Knack, but there was also never any question not to include this iconic track.  If “Cars” single-handedly defines new wave, “My Sharona” does the same for post-punk.7  This track isn’t quite the punk that the Ramones and the Sex Pistols were delivering, but it owes so much to it: you can clearly hear the punk in both guitars and drums.  The harder edges of alternative stem mostly, in my opinion, from this one song.

Of course, another band that is often the recipient of the “post-punk” moniker is Joy Division.  I’m not sure I can entirely see it, though.  Let’s take “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” for instance—their highest-charting single, which, sadly, peaked well after lead singer Ian Curtis was already gone.8  It’s an almost goth tune, with all the sense of melodrama that the word implies, but also containing a fair amount of synth.  Compared to “My Sharona,” this is an entirely different sound, but a no less important one.

Of course, the heavy synth makes sense, as the post-Ian-Curtis remnants of Joy Division would go on to become New Order, one of the most important synth bands of the decade.9  Synth pop, in fact, is one of the most crucial musical components of my 80s, because it’s where most of my all-time favorite albums of the decade truly fall.  And synth pop really starts, in my opinion, with Soft Cell, and 1981’s “Tainted Love.” It may not have been the first,10 but it was the one which exploded onto the scene and changed the landscape in a pretty fundamental way.  The song itself explodes into being too, using sounds which we previously had thought were only useful for laser blasters in Star Wars.  It’s a cover, although most people have never heard the original,11 a rockin’ Motown number.  Soft Cell remakes the song so fundamentally that people will forever think of their version as the way it should be sung (similar to what the Marcels did to “Blue Moon”).  It stayed on the charts for a record-making 43 weeks: nearly a year, all told.12  To my mind, it ushered in a new era that would eventually bring some of the greatest bands of the 80s: Depeche Mode, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Tears for Fears, New Order, a-ha, Naked Eyes, my all-time favories Yazoo—all of whom we absolutely will be hearing from on future volumes.  On this volume, though, the only other synth pop classic from the start of the decade, in my opinion anyhow, is “Don’t You Want Me” by the Human League.  I don’t know that the Human League lives up to the standards of some of those other bands, but at least Dare was a pretty good listen all the way through, whereas Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret is pretty awful apart from “Tainted Love.” Still, while a few other tracks on Dare are pretty cool (I particularly like “The Things that Dreams Are Made Of,” and I have a soft spot for “I Am the Law,” goofy as it is), there’s no doubt that “Don’t You Want Me” is a powerhouse pinnacle that the League would never reach again.

Many of the other choices here are fairly predictable.  Picking only one Police song is particularly painful, especially since Synchronicity was such a major part of the soundtrack of my senior year in high school.  But “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” was the first Police track I ever heard, and it really did have quite a big impact on me.  Picking only one Men at Work song is a bit easier, but there were still several other good choices (“It’s a Mistake,” “Dr. Heckyll & Mr. Jive,” or even the contemporary hit, “Who Can It Be Now?”, which I almost certainly heard prior to “Down Under”).  But, in the end, this is such a great tune, with some impressive flute work from Greg Ham (more typically their sax player).  Likewise, the Go-Go’s present a number of excellent candidates, including “Vacation,” “Head Over Heels,” and, once again, a contemporary song that technically preceded my choice here: “Our Lips are Sealed.” This was a much tougher choice, as I like both songs equally, and I changed my mind several times before settling on “We’ve Got the Beat.” It’s a great example of the dancier side of alternative, and I think it presages stuff as diverse as Animotion and Bananarama.  Finally, the Vapors certainly didn’t give me anything to work with even remotely as well-known as “Turning Japanese,” which, despite its racist overtones, is still such an intrinsic part of my 80s memories that I couldn’t exclude it.



80's My Way I
[ There's a New Wave Coming, I Warn You (1979 - 1981) ]


“My Girl (Gone Gone Gone)” by Chilliwack [Single]
“The Night Owls” by Little River Band, off Greatest Hits [Compilation]
“Welcome to the Universe [single mix]” by Flash and the Pan [Single]13
“My Sharona” by the Knack, off Reality Bites [Soundtrack]
“Jessie's Girl” by Rick Springfield, off Working Class Dog
“It Must Be Love” by Madness, off Complete Madness [Compilation]
“Harden My Heart” by Quarterflash, off Quarterflash
“It's Still Rock and Roll to Me” by Billy Joel, off Glass Houses
“Pop Muzik” by M [Single]
“Cars” by Gary Numan [Single]
“Tainted Love” by Soft Cell, off Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret
“Turning Japanese” by the Vapors, off New Clear Days
“Kids in America” by Kim Wilde, off Kim Wilde
“We Got the Beat” by the Go-Go's, off Beauty and the Beat
“Down Under” by Men at Work, off Business as Usual
“Call Me” by Blondie [Single]
“What I Like about You” by the Romantics, off The Romantics
“Don't Stand So Close to Me” by the Police, off Zenyattà Mondatta
“Generals and Majors” by XTC, off Black Sea
“Don't You Want Me” by the Human League, off Dare!
“Rock Lobster” by the B-52's [Single]
“Whip It” by DEVO, off Freedom of Choice
“Love Will Tear Us Apart” by Joy Division, off Substance [Compilation]
Total:  23 tracks,  84:38



I’m not sure there can be any real “unexpected” or “non-obvious” tracks on a mix like this, but I will address a few of the songs that exist at the edges of alternative.  Let’s start with Madness, who are 100% pure ska.  And yet, they pepper it with just enough pop that a track like “It Must Be Love” can break into the ostensibly rock charts; while it only reached #33 in the US, it got all the way to #4 in the UK and #6 in Australia.  Strangely, this is another cover that I (like, I suspect, most of you) never knew was a cover: the original was a more folksy affair by a British guitarist and poet named Labi Siffre.  I would say the Madness version is better, but perhaps it’s more fair to say it’s just different.14  This track, along with Madness’ other contemporary hit “Our House,” was a big part of what led me to discover and then treasure retro-swing, which of course leads inevitably to Salsatic Vibrato.15

But I would have to say my love of saxophone in particular was engendered by hearing Quarterflash’s “Harden My Heart.” Quarterflash is one of those bands that’s hard to pigeonhole into a style: Wikipedia just calls them a rock band, but that’s so generic as to be useless.  They remind me slightly of Romeo Void16, but also of Scandal,17 which is a bit of a feat, considering how different those two bands are.  Scandal is solidly female-fronted post-punk, while Romeo Void leans hard into the new wave side.  Quarterflash is neither, really, though guitarist Marv Ross has some chops that certainly feel punk-inspired.  But the revelation of Quarterflash is of course Rindy Ross, whose velvet vocals are filled with a longing quality that her gorgeous sax playing only echoes and accentuates.18  Saxophone as part of rock music was nothing new of course; we’d been hearing it since way back on “Get a Job” by the Silhouettes in ‘57, if not long before that.  But the sax in alternative music is different, somehow: less punctuation and more emotional backdrop.  Rindy Ross prepared me for Andy Hamilton’s break in “Rio,” and Kirk Pengilly’s amazing scales in “What You Need.”

The reason Blondie is such an amazing icon of the alternative movement is their refusal to stick with one style.  They’re playing rock, mostly, but each song delivers a different sub-style: “The Tide Is High” gives a little reggae, “Sunday Girl” leans towards an almost loungy jazz, and “Rapture” was the first proper rap that some of us white kids ever heard.19  But “Call Me” is the one I went with here: with its strong disco influences, this track is just a poster child for the transition from 70s to 80s.  I never liked disco, but I love this song.  The fact that Blondie can make me like things I never did before is a testament to their genius, and their influence on the 80s alternative movement.

Finally, I threw in “Generals and Majors” by XTC.  While XTC is a band that not as many folks are familiar with, for me they provided just as many options as the Police: all the way from “Making Plans for Nigel” in 1979 through “Mayor of Simpleton” in 1989.  I suspect that 1982’s “Senses Working Overtime” was the first track of theirs I ever heard, while 1986’s Skylarking is one of my all-time favorite albums, including classics like “Earn Enough for Us” and “Dear God.” But, while I never heard “Generals and Majors” until close to the end of the decade, it’s such a classic XTC tune that I felt like it had to be the one I chose.  It’s poppy, satirical (“generals and majors always seem so unhappy, ‘less they got a war ...”), and most of all layered.  Layers of guitars, layers of percussion, layers of synths, I’m sure, although never too obvious, there’s whistling, and soft vocals, and jangle-pop guitars, and just a touch of post-punk.  There is never any question that XTC should be considered “alternative,” but that’s only because you have no idea where else you could possibly put them.


Next time, we’ll see the first second volume of a pre-modern mix.







__________

1 If you have an older friend who tends to say “the point is prob’ly mute,” it’s entirely Rick Springfield’s fault.

2 Fuck you Wikipedia.  You don’t know squat.

3 We talked about the weird dichotomy of Wilde back on Salsatic Vibrato V: in the US, she’s thought of as a one-hit wonder, while in the UK she’s a mega-star.

4 So much so that I made it the volume title.  Natch.

5 The fact that I ever did, and how that came about, probably deserves its own blog post.

6 According to the rules I set out in the intro, that is.

7 I typically despise terms like “post-punk” or “post-grunge,” as “post-X” just means “the music that comes chronologically after X,” which could describe most anything.  But, then again, the term “alternative” is already pretty generic and meaningless—especially after alternative music became mainstream in the 90s!—so I’ve pretty much given up.

8 I also confess that “Love Will Tear Us Apart” was not a part of my 80s experience at the time: I had to go back and learn about them a bit later in the decade.

9 I predict we’ll see them show up around volume VII or so.

10 Wikipedia wants to credit first Giorgio Moroder, who was of course busily inventing Italo disco, and then Gary Numan, who we’ve already pointed out was the progenitor of new wave.  Then they throw in “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles, which is harder to argue with ... I suppose that’s synth pop, sort of, but I just never really thought it was that good of a song.  Which is why you don’t see here on this volume.

11 I certainly hadn’t, before writing this post.

12 Admittedly, nowadays the record is closer to nearly two years.

13 As always, I hate linking to YouTube.  If you want the 9-minute version of the song, you can find it on Amazon ... but you don’t.  It’s not that good of a song.

14 If you want to hear the original to compare for yourself, as always YouTube is your friend.

15 On which mix Madness have made two appearances: once on volume III and once on volume V.

16 Who we will absolutely hear from when we reach 1984.

17 Ditto.

18 For the ultimate Quarterflash experience, though, you must listen to “Find Another Fool,” where Rindy not only channels Pat Benatar, but also provides us with what has to be the world’s only saxophone-electric-fiddle duet.  Yeah, that video is ultimate 80s cheese; maybe try just closing your eyes and listening.

19 I’m not claiming it was a good introduction, of course.