Get Your Fixx

When I was little reading Asterix and Obelix comics I didn't understand why the druid was named "Getafix". My religion forbids embedding youtube links* but you could click this link and watch a really ridiculous 80s video for "One Thing Leads to Another". I have to say I kind of like this song.

At John's urging I listened to an "All Songs Considered" podcast from NPR on "The 80s--were they really that bad?" I believe you can download them all for free at iTunes. It was funny and definitely worth a listen, with deft deployment of evil riffage from "BUILT THIS CITY111! on rock and r--BUILT THIS CITY!" But curiously they didn't mention hip hop at all. I mean, I can see saying explicitly, "we're leaving this whole arena of music out due to time constraints" but just not to mention it? Weird.

*Who among us has not sinned, I ask? And they're too wide for my blog's text column, and it looks wonky when I rejigger it.

Comments

[The Modesto Kid]

Kind of weird that the English translators introduced that joke in his name -- in French his name is Panoramix, which is punny but no drug ref.

[Russell Arben Fox]

Watching pop and rock and New Wave videos from the 1980s on YouTube has lately becoming a consuming passion of mine. Good bands and bad, they all made videos, and they're all there online: Blondie, Johnny Hates Jazz, The Thompson Twins, Go West, Billy Ocean, When in Rome, OMD, Huey Lewis and the News, Kim Carnes, Fleetwood Mac, ad infinitum. I've been able to find everything I can think of except Michael Penn's "No Myth." I know there was a video of that--I can remember it from NBC's Friday Night Videos (nope, we didn't have cable)--but all I can find of the song on YouTube is covers and homemade fanfic videos. It kind of bums me out.

And yes, no rap or hip hop at all in the above list, I realize. I had a very white upbringing; Young MC's "Bust a Move" didn't happen until I was in college. (At least I managed to avoid Vanilla Ice. And I really liked the Run-DMC/Areosmith team-up at the time, if that gives me any cred.)

[Delicious Pundit]

"The 80s--were they really that bad?"

I dunno, let me go look at some of my ties...yes. Yes, they were.

(Although, "Bring The Noise" coming out of car windows in Brooklyn -- quite a thrill for a country boy.)

[ozma]

80s music is one of those things I suddenly came to like, having hated it in the 80s (besides punk, which was actually 70s music, even if it occurred in the 80s or so I claim). It is like my brain developed some module at the time which was activated 20 years later. Sweet dreams are made of this.

[ozma]

80s music is one of those things I suddenly came to like, having hated it in the 80s (besides punk, which was actually 70s music, even if it occurred in the 80s or so I claim). It is like my brain developed some module at the time which was activated 20 years later. Sweet dreams are made of this.

[The Modesto Kid]

There's got to be a name for this way of liking something -- it is how I like much of the music of the 80's, like Peter Gabriel, Genesis, Journey. When Belle mentioned "One Thing Leads to Another", I heard the song in my head and thought, yeah, that's a kind of nice song. Similarly when Ozma says "Sweet dreams are made of this." Either song if I heard it on the radio, wouldn't drive me away; I would listen and enjoy the moment. And then the song would pass completely out of my thoughts. I don't want to say "I like these songs" -- songs I like are ones that I think about and listen to. So how do I describe my relationship to the music?