I love the podcast 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, by The Ringer’s Rob Harvilla. It’s now inaccurately named, having gone beyond 60 songs.
Rob goes on entertaining personal digressions. He has a unique style.
Which, of course, I have felt compelled to parody, like Weird Al doing Eat It or Ridin’ Dirty.
So this is also full of personal digressions that I hope are entertaining. Either that or you’re going to come out of it saying you now know way too much about me.
Enjoy.
PITCH MEETING …
DIRECTOR: So here’s the idea. We have the guys go into this low-rent place in Chinatown. One wants to eat some of the food on the table, but he’s called in to go with the guys to confront some dude. Then a bunch of dudes with swords pop out to surround them, but it turns out all the guys in the band are martial arts experts, so they win a fight.
PRODUCER: Sounds cool. So do they get what they came in for?
DIRECTOR: Yes. They give the guy a dismissive wave and leave.
PRODUCER: So … why were they doing this? Did they bust up a sex trafficking ring or a mob operation or something?
DIRECTOR: Nah. It just looks cool.
PRODUCER: Got it. Hey guys, what do you think?
(Band snorts cocaine)
PRODUCER: OK, never mind. Anyway, can we work in a short snippet of the band playing?
DIRECTOR: Well, it doesn’t fit the story, but OK. How do we make it interesting?
PRODUCER: Tommy does a lot of cool tricks with his sticks and then looks like he’s putting himself in an armlock.
DIRECTOR: That works.
PRODUCER: Tommy? You cool with that?
(Band snorts cocaine)
PRODUCER: It’ll be fine. Here’s a pile of money.
The myth of the reasonable, reality-based Republican died Jan. 15, 2022, in Richmond, Va.
That’s when Glenn Youngkin took office as Virginia’s governor. The Republican businessman won in a tremendous upset in a state that has been comfortably blue in recent elections. Biden won by 10 points, and even in this election, exit polls showed more people identifying as Democrat than Republican. Youngkin, who trailed in the polls until the last few days, won in part due to the usual failure of young people to show up and in part by keeping Donald Trump at arm’s length. He was the reasonable Republican, running alongside a Black woman for lieutenant governor and a Latino for attorney general.
And they’re off to a flying start.
Jason Miyares, the incoming attorney general, made some staff changes, which is typical. Less typical is to give virtually no notice before dismissing people who are holding the line on civil rights like the dudes on the Night’s Watch in Game of Thrones. (Is that the right analogy? I didn’t watch much of that show.)
The Richmond Times-Dispatch especially noted that he fired someone with 20 pending court cases on housing discrimination. Lest you think Miyares is just interested in trampling on civil rights, he also terminated someone who has focused on scams targeting older people — someone who voted for Miyares.
(We’re going to get to Fishbone, I promise.)
Hello, Gen Xers and Gen X sympathizers! Quick note on show notes today — I’m going to start doing these episodes as both a podcast AND a blog post, so you can check them out on the medium of your choice. Here on the site, you can scan through the transcript and see more links and videos, but I recommend listening to the podcast. Especially if you’re driving.
Here we go …
One mistake a lot of people make in looking at 80s music is dismissing pop musicians because they have nice hair or funny videos or whatever. Critics wrote off Duran Duran as pretty boys, only later realizing that John Taylor is a fantastic funk bass player and Nick Rhodes is a keyboard pioneer.
And when you think of the Thompson Twins, the first thing you think of is probably hair.
That’s not fair.
You might also think they were a band that had a superfluous member or two — the classic “What did Andrew Ridgeley contribute to Wham?” question. After all, bands of that era sometimes recruited people specifically for their looks. That was taken to an extreme when the band ABC added a blonde bombshell (who happened to be an irreverent music journalist) and a very short, bald Japanese man, neither of whom played any instruments.
In Thompson Twins, Tom Bailey was the lead singer, the guitarist, the keyboardist, the bassist and the co-producer. Alannah Currie, in addition to having the most eye-catching hair this side of A Flock of Seagulls, sang backup and played percussion. Joe Leeway was pictured with a bass on occasion and played a bit of keyboards live, but he was hired as a conga player and backup singer who came to the band as a roadie after a brief career in theater.
Thompson Twins were a trio (yes, we know, they’re neither Thompsons nor twins — it’s apparently a literary allusion of some kind) after they got rid of all the members of a traditional rock band — two guitarists, a bassist and a drummer.
But just as you can’t write off image-conscious bands, you can’t write off image-conscious members. Watch Thompson Twins videos and live clips, and you’ll see that Currie can play. And if you track their career, you’ll see that they tailed off after Leeway left, which may or may not be coincidental.
Before that happened, they had one of those careers in which they were only big for 3-4 years, but they packed a lot into those years. A LOT.
Let’s take a look. This is X Marks the Pod.
When the Smashing Pumpkins broke up in 2000, the talented, tortured genius of Billy Corgan was on display again in Zwan, a band with the Pumpkins’ monster drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, future Pixies bassist/vocalist Paz Lenchantin, and dual guitarist Matt Sweeney and David Pajo. It’s a pity it didn’t work out.
Links:
Featured photo is from Zwan’s SNL appearance.
A slightly abridged version (no Spotify music) of this episode is also available at or on its way to Apple, Google and Spreaker/iHeart.
Geez, another crap year.
But we had some songs. Check out of 10 of them here:
Links:
Mostly Modern Media 