Provincetown

I'm in Provincetown for the week. It's simultaenously really fun and really gross.

I'm amazed at how often '80s music comes into conversation.

"We went to a step aerobics class. I didn't like it because he played old George Michael, like Wham and stuff."

Of course my heart cried since I still listen to "Wham! Rap" and "Bad Boys", let alone newer Wham! like "Edge of Heaven" which sends me into the stratosphere.

"Lime is New Jersey's best kept secret."

I'm staying in a house with fellow New Jerseyans. 'Babe, We're Gonna Love Tonight" was played in every NJ club ever since it came out in '82. I smell like a malibu bay breeze when I listen to it. They are not NJ's best kept secret. They're from Canada.



It's not '80s, but a dance remake of "Everybody Dance" by Chic is everywhere here. My friend Addam and I had a dance off when it came on at the daily tea dance. Every 8 bars we'd pull a new move. Any excuse to do the Wop, ya know? People appluaded. I was happy.

can you identify this art?

"Gay Type Thang" by Jon Sugar

Jon Sugar is my best friend and life coach. I met him in 1995 after traveling from NYC to SF on the Greyhound with a grand in my pocket and little else. I didn’t have a job or a home, but I had a new friend. As head of GAWK, Gay Artists and Writers Kollective, he stages unpredictably queer shows in the heart of the pasty Castro, and takes his friends and minions to free shows and movies around the Bay Area. He’s the most verbally gifted individual I’ve ever met, and manages to get him and a posse into events three times a week.

“Gay Type Thang” was written in ’80 and recorded in ’84. Jon says it’s the first gay rap record – who’s to contradict that? It got some college radio airplay. It speaks for itself, but a sample of the lyrics is as follows:

I’m a bastard Jew boy in the Promised Land
With a big hairy butt and a pocket full of sand
With the nuts to butts, asshole to belly
Putting crazy glue in my KY jelly

He’s keeping it real. His friend is nice enough to offer "Gay Type Thang" online (click the title of this post). Someday I’ll learn how to do that myself.

blues

There are songs that make me cry every single time I hear them. "Unchained Melody" is one of them - my sister's friend committed suicide in high school and he sang it with a thin, aching falsetto in a talent show a month before that. "Night of the Living Baseheads" by PE is another, only because it's so perfect and blistering.

"Elvis Presley Blues" by Gillian Welch was added to the list today.
I can't stop listening to it and I can't stop crying.

D.I.S.C.O. by Ottawan

Next time you forget to spell disco, play this video and attempt to move your legs like this. I love that she's totally throws herself into the song before the song begins. She is disco, she is high.

drive-bys up and down the thighs

I'm old and out of touch enough that I find out about music I love years after it's released. Whatever. "Daydreamin'" by Lupe Fiasco is Portishead meets Nas. My sister downloaded it from the Fred Flare site, of all things.

I'd like to thank the streets that drove me crazy
and all the televisions out there that raised me

the ending to a verse that goes from making cocaine cool to tiptoeing around the baby to sticking a middle finger to the world. I love him.

And Jill Scott wails.

disco alphabet

Grover's version of the alphabet song lasts about 30 seconds, but I think it's my favorite disco song of all time. The dancing still sends me into fits of convulsion.

quaalude songs - "Ocean Drive" by Lighthouse Family

My boyfriend's Dad is taking us to a Neil Sedaka concert next month. We hada choice between Judy Collins and Neil Sedaka. There are few things shockingin this life, and this invitation was one of them. But I'm really excited for it. I'll be singing along to "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do" but not "She's Having My Baby". Upon research Neil, we discovered he hit the Top 10 with a remake of "Stairway to Heaven".

That's some crazy shit.

There are certain songs that I think of as quaalude songs.  Songs thatinstantly put me at ease with the opening chords.   Songs usually recorded within the '74-'82 window and usually recorded by Los Angeles studio musicians.  Songs you might hear in Duane Reade.   "Africa" by Toto.  "So Into You" by Atlanta RhythmSection.  "You Are the Woman" by Firefall.  Anything by Bread. And definitely "Love Will Keep Us Together" by Captain & Tennille, written by Mr. Sedaka.  If Toni Tennille makes a special appearance at the show, I will be tickled.

This morning I heard my favorite Quaalude song from the '90s – "Ocean Drive" by Lighthouse Family (yes, the youtube video if you click on the title of this post).  A huge hit in Britain, it sounds like Hootie and the Blowfish through the production lens of Breathe.   Right now the song is dripping my tiny computer speaker, and if I close my eyes, it's dripping from a transistor radio in Barbados.

favorite '80s videos. Confusion by New Order

It captures a time and place I never really experienced.