Pretenders – "Up the Neck" (1980)

 

I remember the way he groaned

And moved with an animal skill

I rubbed my face in the sweat

That ran down his chest

It was all very run of the mill

Several of the artists whose records were chosen for the inaugural class of the 2 OR 3 LINES “SILVER DECADE” HALL OF FAME wrote so many great songs that it was difficult for me to choose just one.

That is true – in spades – of Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders.  And since there’s no rule saying that I can only choose one of her songs for that hall of fame, I’m choosing three.

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I’ve been listening to the Pretenders’ first two albums for 40 years, and they are just as powerful today as they were when they were brand new.  Not every song on those albums is great, but enough of them are to put them head and shoulders above nearly every other album from that era.

The Pretenders' eponymous debut album

Of all the great rock songwriters of the sixties, seventies, and eighties, I think Chrissie Hynde is the one I would pick as most likely to have succeeded as an author of fiction or screenwriter.

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You could say Ms. Hynde’s best songs are about couples, but it’s probably more accurate to say they are about couplings.  

The intersections between men and women that she writes about rarely end well – usually because the man is a disappointment in some way.  Hynde can be quite scornful of the males in her songs – she is a master (mistress?) of cutting vain men down to size.

Her description of the male-in-heat in “Up the Neck” – let’s be honest: when is the typical male not in heat? – deftly captures the contrast between how a man in the throes of passion appears to himself and how he appears to his female partner:

I remember the way he groaned

And moved with an animal skill

I rubbed my face in the sweat

That ran down his chest

It was all very run of the mill

The post-coital tristesse that is typically experienced by couples is depicted in very concrete terms in these lines from “Up the Neck”:

Something was sticky

On your shag rug

If that image isn’t enough to burst anyone’s romantic bubble, I don’t know what is.

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While the male in “Up the Neck” may be deserving of scorn, the singer’s not disappointed in him so much as she’s disappointed by the way things turned out.

She acknowledges that she wasn’t entirely in her right mind when she and her partner came together:

Anger and lust

My senses running amok

Bewildered and deluded

Have I been hit by a truck?

When they first kissed, she had a feeling of innocent bliss comparable to “the time in the womb.”  

But the morning after was a different story.  She “woke up with a headache that split [her] skull,” and “alone in the room.”

It’s sad that things turned out that way because she went into things with the best of intentions – and to be fair to the man, so did he.  But good intentions usually aren’t enough:

I was sure his intentions were sweet

And that mine was as well

But a wish is a shot in the dark

When your coin's down the well

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Click here to watch a live performance of “Up the Neck” from March 1980 – just a few months after the song was released on the Pretenders’ eponymous debut album, which the noted novelist Michael Chabon has called “one of the most astonishing debut albums in the history of music.”  (You can say that again.)

I’ve watched this video several dozen times.  Chrissie Hynde is utterly compelling in it – she has me in the palm of her hand from the beginning to the end.  I have never seen a rock performer who is more naturally charismatic.

Chrissie Hynde in 1980

Actually, I’m not sure “performer” is the correct term for Hynde.  She’s not “performing” in the usual sense of the word.  No one is better than Mick Jagger, but you never forget that he’s performing.  By contrast, Chrissie Hynde doesn’t appear to have planned or rehearsed what she does on stage – she just comes out and is herself.

That may be an incredibly naive statement, but I’m sticking with it.  Whatever it is that makes Chrissie Hynde what she is, I think it’s something that comes wholly from within.  

Do me a favor.  Start watching that “Up the Neck” video at the five-minute mark – which is the beginning of a long instrumental break that leads up to the big finish of the song.  Watch Hynde pace back and forth behind guitarist James Honeyman-Scott and bassist Pete Famdon as they do their thing – she doesn’t engage in any kind of histrionics that takes attention away from them or drummer Martin Chambers.  

(Sadly, Honeyman-Scott died in 1982, and Famdon died in 1983 – both deaths were drug-related.) 

At 5:55, she takes a step toward her microphone, turns to the right until her back is to the crowd, and then does a three-quarter turn to the left so her body is perpendicular to her audience when she ends the instrumental break by singing – moaning? – “ooooohhhhh, oohh, oohh, ooooohhhhh.”  (Whoever edited the video cut in the middle of her move – I wish I could see the raw footage without that edit.)

That seems to have spurred the group to shift into a higher gear for thirty seconds or some before ending the song – and the concert.  (I’m assuming that “Up the Neck” was their encore.  If so, it was certainly a good choice.)

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Click here to hear the studio version of “Up the Neck.”

Click below to buy that record from Amazon:

X – "The Have Nots" (1982)

Here we sit

A shot and a beer

After another hard-earned day

NOTE:  Unlike the singer of today’s featured song – which is the 11th and next-to-last song I’ve chosen to include in the inaugural class of the 2 OR 3 LINES “SILVER DECADE” HALL OF FAME – I was never a shot-and-a-beer kind of guy.  I was more of a beer-and-another-beer-and-yet-another-beer-or-two kind of a guy.  But a lot of my misspent youth was misspent in dive bars like those listed in “The Have Nots.”  The bars I hung out in were great places to get drunk cheap.  They were not, however, good places to meet women.  (No place is perfect, I guess.) 

The following post is a slightly edited version of a post that originally appeared on my wildly popular little blog on April 30, 2019.

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The first line of the chorus of today’s featured song is “Dawn comes soon enough for the working class.”  Ain’t that the truth, bub!

Dawn came soon enough for me when I was a college student and had a succession of summer jobs that started at seven o’clock every morning – unloading trucks, unloading rail cars, driving a water truck on a road construction job . . . you get the picture.

Dawn comes even sooner if you’ve been up until all hours the night before drinking beer at Nina’s Green Parrot in, Galena, Kansas – where it was legal for 18-year-olds to imbibe 3.2% beer.  

The late lamented Nina’s Green Parrot bar

Legally, 3.2% beer was considered to be a non-intoxicating beverage, but let me assure you that if you drink enough – I usually drank two quarts in the bar, and got a tallboy can to go for the drive back home – it does the job.

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I didn’t grow up poor, but almost.  My family had enough to take care of the necessities, but there was no money for luxuries like fancy restaurant meals or vacation trips.  

My parents grew up during the Great Depression, and their families were poor – especially my father’s family.  (My father’s father died in 1934, when he was only 38 years old.  He left behind a widow and eight children – they were aged 15, 14, 12, 11, 9, 6, 3, and 6 months. )

I don’t think my mother – whose family lived on a farm in northwest Arkansas – had it quite as bad.  But the early part of her life was difficult.  (Her mother got pregnant when she was only 16.  She and my mother’s father were married a few months before my mother was born in 1926, but he died in an influenza epidemic before her first birthday.)

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I’ve always been fascinated by books about people living on the margins of homelessness and hunger.  George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London is one such book.

Orwell moved to from London to Paris in 1928, when he was 25.  His economic situation started to become difficult when became seriously ill the next year and couldn’t work.  Then a young woman he picked up and brought back to his lodgings stole his money. 

To get through periods of unemployment, Orwell had to pawn his clothes.  For example, he would pawn his overcoat for a few francs when spring arrived, hoping that he would be able to accumulate enough money to redeem the coat before cold weather returned.

He eventually got a job in a restaurant, working almost eighteen hours a day, seven days a week to earn a pittance of a salary.

Orwell was so poor that he only owned one pair of black socks.  He applied black shoe polish to his feet so the bare skin wouldn’t show through the holes.

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“The Have Nots,” which was released on X’s third studio album (Under the Big Black Sun) in 1982, is about blue-collar types – perhaps unemployed, or perhaps making just enough to get by on – who spend too much time and money in bars.

We’re talking about the kind of regulars who spend so much time drinking that they not only know the barmaids by name, but who play cards with them when the bar isn’t busy.  

(Come to think of it, a friend and I used to play cards at the house where the two cousins – one male, one female – who were bartenders at our regular Kansas bar lived after that bar closed at midnight.  But I was a college student, and the dead-end summer jobs I had would last only a couple of months before it was time to go back to school.  My life was nothing like George Orwell’s.) 

“The Have Nots” is notable for its recitation of the names of a number of dive bars in Los Angeles and elsewhere – most of which have been closed for years.

For example, there’s the One-Eyed Jack, and the Hi-D-Hi, G. G.’s Cozy Corner, the Stop & Drink, the Get Down Lounge, and a Detroit joint called The Aorta Bar – which called itself “Detroit’s Main Vein.”

One final note about “The Have Nots.”  The last line of the song’s chorus – “This is the game that moves as you play” – is the epigraph to the precocious Bret Easton Ellis’s first novel, Less Than Zero.  (Ellis was a 21-year-old college student when his novel was published in 1985.)   

The title of Less Than Zero was taken from Elvis Costello’s famous 1977 song. 

Click here to listen to the “The Have Nots,” which I usually listen to several times in succession when it comes up on my iPod.  It’s just that good, boys and girls.

And click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: 

Soft Cell – "Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go?" (1982)

Once I ran to you

Now I run from you

[NOTE: There were a lot of great one-hit wonders released in the "Silver Decade" (1974-1984) of pop music – "Come On Eileen" by Dexys Midnight Runners and "Video Killed the Radio Star" by the Buggles are two of the most memorable.  But Soft Cell's "Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go?" is the "Silver Decade" one-hit wonder that you have to have if you're having only one.  What follows is a severely edited version of the original 2 or 3 lines post about that record, which was originally published on March 13, 2011.]

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Shakespeare's tragic hero, King Lear, knew what he was talking about when he said:

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is

To have a thankless child!

I might revise the immortal bard's words slightly, and say instead how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless Chief Executive Senior Contributing Editor!

(Look closely)

That job title is very complicated, so we'll need to pick a nickname that's a little less clumsy.  Hmmm . . . let me think . . .  

I suppose we could call her "Linda," since that is her name.  But I think I will call her "Super Bitch From Hell" since that's what she is acting like.

(It's tempting to call her "Hillary," but that would be hitting below the belt – although that expression doesn't really apply when you're talking about women . . . does it?  Not that you should hit a woman above or below the belt!)

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Recently, Super Bitch From Hell (or "SBFH" for short) and I were discussing Scala & Kolacny Brothers, the wonderful Belgian girls' choir that does lovely, ethereal choral versions of pop songs.  I found a Youtube video of them performing a cover of the old Soft Cell hit from 1982, "Tainted Love," in Montreal, and mentioned what a guilty pleasure that song was.

OMG, that set SBFH off on such a rant that you wouldn't believe it:

Don't even get me started on "Tainted Love." One of the worst songs in the history of songdom, IMO. Can't really even put my finger on why I hate it, I just do.  

Very persuasive logic, eh?

Being the a**hole that I am, I couldn't resist egging her on.  I sent SBFH this message:

The Soft Cell "Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go?" medley is probably one of the 10 greatest accomplishments of Western culture to date – will have to write a "2 or 3 lines" post praising it just to annoy you.

To quote David Bowie, I knew I was putting out the fire with gasoline with those words.  And, sure enough, SBFH rose to the bait:

I may have to have a "Soft Cell Sucks" t-shirt made up & post a pic of it right under the announcement of your Soft Cell post. Controversy = more readers, right?

SBFH wasn't done taunting me.  I had told her that Scala & Kolacny Brothers was performing in Washington next month, and that I really wanted to see them but didn't want to go alone.  So she had to taunt me about that: 

You should get [your 16-year-old son] to go to the concert with you.  

Oh sure, like that's happening.  My son's a good kid, but he would rather cut off an arm than go to a concert with his father.  And how pathetic would it be for me to take a 16-year-old to an edgy downtown club because I couldn't find a date? 

 Just tell him it's a bunch of hot Belgian chicks singing rock songs. No need to elaborate on what they actually sound like. Or, why don't you take your hot French g/f?  

I don't think SCFH – oops, I meant to type SBFH – really believes that I have a hot (age-adjusted) French girlfriend.

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I left it at that, figuring that would be the end of it.  But n-o-o-o-o-o-o . . . within hours, SBFH sent me a very intemperate attack on "Tainted Love," which you would think was Hitler's favorite record or something, and dared me to post it.

What could I do?  I couldn't just ignore her -- although I knew the folks in the marketing department would soil their drawers if I told them I was tearing up the FY 2011 2nd quarter posting schedule and inserting an unplanned post on the spur of the moment.  

You would think that SBFH might have a little more concern for the good of 2 or 3 lines – after all, it is the only wildly popular little blog I'm aware of that has given her carte blanche to ramble on about her glory days.

We even let her get away with that disturbing little story about relieving herself in a coffee mug in her minivan.  (Goodness gracious, "Linda," have you no shame?  Wouldn't that story have better been kept to yourself rather than splashed all over the pages of my blog?)

But no, it's a-l-l-l-l about her.  So rather than just deep six her contribution, which would no doubt precipitate a major hissy fit by Ms. SBFH – I so hate it when I'm forced to call Ted, our chief of security, to escort an employee who has misbehaved out of the building – I've decided to turn the other cheek and accede to her desire to unload on "Tainted Love" in 2 or 3 lines. 

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My non-italic comments are interspersed throughout her italicized screed, which begins with the following sortie: 

One of the many benefits of my lofty position with 2 or 3 lines is occasional permission to voice a dissenting opinion.

Am I imagining things, or is there the tiniest hint of sarcasm here?  

Disagreement with upper management, while tolerated, is not necessarily appreciated.  Shameless toadying is the preferred modus operandi for underlings.

I'm pretty sure now that I wasn't imagining that sarcasm.

My hot (age-adjusted) French g/f

In this case, though, I feel compelled to express my complete distaste for “Tainted Love.”  I have a sneaking suspicion that the hot (age-adjusted) French girlfriend must have somehow influenced our fearless leader in his adoration of this song.  How else does one explain such an obvious lapse in judgment?  

Hold it right there, sister.  I've liked this song since it was released in 1982.  (It helped that I didn't own the record and heard it only infrequently on the radio, so I didn't wear it out for myself.)  The French g/f had nothing to do with it.

The squiggly synths and mechanized drum loops, coupled with the whiny vocals, are just completely unappealing to me. I don’t have a problem with synthesizers and drum machines, in principle. A lot of early eighties bands used them and produced great music. The Eurythmics come to mind, as well as Blondie, Devo and Depeche Mode.  

(Depeche Mode produced "great music"?  ARE YOU FRIGGING KIDDING ME?)  

“Tainted Love” just sounds way too sterile and mechanical to me. The accompanying video, a mishmash of togas, tennis outfits (or maybe cricket), and children, is vaguely homoerotic but mostly just silly and not very entertaining. 

Click here to watch that video.  (The guy in the video who's not wearing a toga is wearing a cricket outfit, not a tennis outfit – the fact that he's holding a CRICKET BAT instead of a tennis racket was a dead giveaway, I thought.)  The video is very creepy – but I believe we were talking about the song.  Attacking the video is attacking a straw man.

(By the way, calling this video "VAGUELY HOMOEROTIC" is akin to saying that Sarah Jessica Parker has a vaguely equine appearance.)  

  

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Back to SBFH's philippic against "Soft Cell":

Neither Marilyn Manson nor the Pussycat Dolls, who both covered the song, could make it palatable, either. 

Click here to watch the Marilyn Manson video.  (Watch the hot-tub scenes and tell me they aren't highly palatable!)

Click here for the Pussycat Dolls cover.  (Nothing "vaguely homoerotic" here.)

The Pussycat Dolls

Coil’s version is the most unusual and interesting of the covers. An industrial music band formed in the early eighties, Coil released “Tainted Love”  in 1984. It was the first musical release to have all of its profits donated to a foundation dedicated to AIDS education and prevention. Coil’s video of the song is on permanent display in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

That's all well and good, but one might ask how truly noble it was for a band no one has ever heard of to donate the non-existent profits from a record that nobody bought to a good cause.

Coil's version of "Tainted Love" reminds me of what a 45 rpm record sounded like on my parents' stereo when I accidentally played it at 33 rpm.  And as for the video, my advice is not to view it after a big meal unless you're a bulimic . . . in which case it's perfect.

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I think SBFH may have confused New York City's Museum of Modern Art ("MOMA") with the Museum of Bad Art ("MOBA") in suburban Boston.  MOBA's permanent collection includes 500 pieces of art "too bad to be ignored," according to one critic.

From MOBA's permanent collection, here is an anonymous tribute to the famous pointillist artist Georges Seurat, which the anonymous artist titled "Sunday On The Pot With George":

And here is one more piece from MOBA's collection for those of you who prefer artworks that present the lovely female form rather than anything "vaguely homoerotic."  This painting (also anonymous, not surprisingly) is called "The Itch."  Whether "the itch" is under her right armpit or it is her back that itches isn't clear.

Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion.  Far be it from me to try to take on the title of arbiter of musical taste.  But, Gary, I’m sorry – “Tainted Love” is just . . . wrong!
 

There certainly is something that's just wrong here, but it ain't "Tainted Love."

(I know, that was kind of a weak ending, but the lawyers wouldn't let me talk about taint.)

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Soft Cell's version of "Tainted Love" ranked #2 on VH1's 100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders, but #5 on VH1's 100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders of the Eighties.  Obviously VH1 doesn't take as much care with its lists as it might.  ("Tainted Love" ranks ahead of "Come On Eileen" by Dexys Midnight Runners on the first list, but behind it on the latter list.)

Click here to hear the radio edit of "Tainted Love"/"Where Did Our Love Go?".

Click here to listen to a much longer version that was very popular in the clubs back in the day.

Click below to buy that extended mix on Amazon:

 

Clash – "Clampdown" (1979)

But you grow up and you calm down

And you're workin' for the clampdown

After I chose today’s featured record to be one of the inaugural members of the 2 OR 3 LINES “SILVER DECADE” HALL OF FAME, I learned that Robert “Beto” O'Rourke had quoted its lyrics in a debate with Ted Cruz in 2018, accusing Cruz of “working for the clampdown.” 

(For those of you who don’t follow politics, Cruz – who’s a Republican – is the junior U.S. Senator from Texas.  O’Rourke – a Democrat – is a former congressman from El Paso who unsuccessfully challenged Cruz that year.)

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Beto O’Rourke is the son of a politician – his father Pat was the El Paso County Commissioner before becoming the co-chair of Jesse Jackson’s 1988 presidential campaign.  ("I like the guy. He's entertaining, and he has some magic in him," the elder O’Rourke later said about Jackson.)  But a couple of years later, Pat switched parties and ran for Congress as a Republican – he was obviously quite flexible when it came to political principles.

In eighth grade, O'Rourke became a fan of punk rock after hearing the Clash's 1979 double album, London Calling, which includes “Clampdown.”  O’Rourke later called that album “a revelation.”  

Maybe it was today’s featured song – which is as anti-establishment as all get-out – that inspired O’Rourke to become a member of a computer hacker group called Cult of the Dead Cow, which became famous “for releasing tools that allowed ordinary people to hack computers running Microsoft's Windows.”  (Thanks to O’Rourke’s fierce anti-sexist principles, the group’s members included females – making it perhaps the only hacker group of that era to contain any female hackers.)  

O’Rourke further burnished his anti-establishment rep by stealing long-distance phone service during his teen years in order to use his dial-up modem without paying.  

(I didn't join the cult,
but I did buy the t-shirt.)

Beto also wrote poems and short stories for Cult of the Dead Cow under the pseudonym “Psychedelic Warlord,” a name inspired by a 1974 record by the English “space rock” band Hawkwind.  O'Rourke later apologized that some of his stories were “hateful” – in fact, one was a fantasy about driving down a street and running over children.  “I have to look long and hard at my action, at the language that I have used, and I have to constantly try to do better,” he told reporters.

One of his fans defended O’Rourke, writing that “a lot of people wrote embarrassing stuff when they were 15 and, by the mercy of God, it’s not available on the internet."  

(I didn’t write any stories about murdering children by intentionally hitting them with my car, but I certainly wrote some pretty embarrassing stuff when I was 15 – all in the forlorn hope of getting the attention of one or more cute babes I had my eye on.  Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose . . . )

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Beto seems to have cleaned up his act after his Cult of the Dead Cow days.  

He went to a very posh Virginia boarding school, then attended Columbia University – where he majored in English literature and co-captained the crew team.

O’Rourke stayed in New York City for a few years after graduation, working as a nanny, as an art mover, and as a proofreader for a publisher of reference books before taking a job with an internet service provider owned by his uncle.

After moving back to El Paso, Beto continued to rely on family connections for his livelihood.  He moved into an apartment building owned by his father and got a job at his mother’s high-end furniture store.  He wanted to start a tech company a couple of years later, but couldn’t get financing – so his father took out a loan on his behalf, enabling Beto to get his company up and running.

In 2005, O’Rourke won a seat on the El Paso City Council.  A few years later, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

After three terms in Congress, O’Rourke took on Ted Cruz, who was heavily favored.  Beto made the incumbent sweat a little, but ended up losing.

Cruz and O'Rourke after the 2018 debate

He then ran for the 2020 Democratic nomination for the presidency, but his campaign went nowhere – he ended up dropping out of the race well before the Iowa caucuses.

Now Beto wants to become the governor of Texas.  He’s an underdog, and 2022 doesn’t look like it will be a good year for Democrats – but stranger things have happened. 

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Is it fair to say that Beto O’Rourke grew up, and Beto O’Rourke calmed down, and Beto O’Rourke is “working for the clampdown”?  I think so.  

Of course, he’s not the first privileged child of wealthy and powerful parents to pass through a phase as a wild-eyed radical and then settle down and take advantage of his family’s wealth and power.  And he won’t be the last.

Click here to listen to “Clampdown,” which is only one of the great songs on London Calling – truly one of the all-time great albums.

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: 

Talking Heads – "Psycho Killer" (1977)

Say something once

Why say it again?

Psycho killer, qu’est-ce que c’est?

A lot of rock groups never outdid their debut albums.  

Led Zeppelin is a good example of that – they produced a lot of great music, but Led Zeppelin I is unquestionably their best album.

I’m not sure that Talking Heads: 77 is the best Talking Heads album, but I am sure that “Psycho Killer” (the first track recorded for that album, although not the first track on the album itself) is their best song, although it peaked at #92 on the Billboard “Hot 100” singles chart.  (The record made it all the way to #11 on the Dutch singles chart – those Dutch know a good record when they hear one.)

The Talking Heads’ 1984 concert movie, the Jonathan Demme-directed Stop Making Sense, opens with frontman David Byrne walking on to the stage with a boom box and an acoustic guitar and performing a solo version of “Psycho Killer.” 

If you haven’t seen Stop Making Sense, click here and watch it now.  (Robert Christgau, the most influential music music of his generation, said it was “the finest concert film” ever made.  Pauline Kael, the most influential movie critic of that generation, said it was “close to perfection.”  Both were right.)

“Psycho Killer” was an easy choice for the 2 OR 3 LINES “SILVER DECADE” HALL OF FAME – like Mariano Rivera, it was a unanimous first-ballot selection.

I’m a little surprised I haven’t featured it on 2 or 3 lines already.

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Speaking of Robert Christgau – a/k/a/ “the Dean of American rock critics” – here’s what he had to say about the Talking Heads’ debut LP:

Like Sparks, these are spoiled kids, but without the callowness or adolescent misogyny; like Yes, they are wimps, but without vagueness or cheap romanticism.  Every tinkling harmony is righted with a screech, every self-help homily contextualized dramatically, so that in the end the record proves not only that the detachment of craft can coexist with a frightening intensity of feeling – something most artists know – but that the most inarticulate rage can be rationalized.  Which means they're punks after all.

I don’t know about all that, but I included that Christgau quote to have an excuse for quoting something his wife, Carola Dibbell, said after John Lennon was murdered:

Why is it always Bobby Kennedy or John Lennon? Why isn’t it Richard Nixon or Paul McCartney?

Carola Dibbell: not a McCartney fan

Lou Reed’s live album, Take No Prisoners, includes this rant about Christgau (who gave albums letter grades in his Village Voice reviews):

Critics.  What does Robert Christgau do in bed?  I mean, is he a toe fucker?  Man, anal retentive . . . what a moron. . . . Can you imagine working for a fucking year, and you get a B+ from some asshole in The Village Voice?

Christgau thanked Reed for pronouncing his name correctly, and gave his album a C+ grade.

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Click here to listen to “Psycho Killer.”

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: