Matthew Sweet – "Girlfriend" (1991)

Honey, believe me

I'd sure love to call you my girlfriend

In Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen spoke of "that sanguine expectation of happiness which is happiness itself."  

Jane would have agreed that Friday is the best day of the week.  Why?  Because the anticipation of a pleasurable weekend away from the office is nearly always more enjoyable than the weekend itself.

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How many of you remembered that today marks the four-year anniversary of 2 or 3 lines?  Can you believe it?  (I can't.)

Who'd a-thunk it back on November 1, 2009 (when 2 or 3 lines debuted with a post about The Last's "She Don't Know Why I'm Here") that four years later we'd be looking at 598 posts and (as of 12:01 am today) 408,135 page views.

As the old saying goes, "Tall oaks from little acorns grow."  Or in the case of 2 or 3 lines,  "Big piles of bullish*t from little blogposts grow."

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I write about popular music – at least that's what I write about when I'm not writing about myself.  (Which is rarely).

I think that if you had to reduce the essence of pop music to a single word, that word would be "girlfriend."  

Why do I say that?

I want a lifetime subscription

Although there have been many talented female pop musicians, the vast majority of what I consider to be the best pop songs of my lifetime were written and performed by men.  And what are men interested in above all else?  Women, of course.

And what is the best thing in the world for a woman to be?  

A wife?  HA!  (I'm not being anti-wife here, but remember what I said at the beginning of this post: anticipation is usually more pleasurable than realization.)  

A girlfriend?  Bingo! – as Strother Martin's character in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid said when he successfully spit tobacco juice without fouling his beard in the process.

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A girlfriend is the greatest thing a guy can have.  When you have a girlfriend, either you are young or you feel young – which is almost as good.

(Not really – who am I kidding?  But humor me, please.)

Please note – I said "girlfriend," not "overly attached girlfriend."  An "overly attached girlfriend" – see examples below – is mos' definitely not the greatest thing a guy can have.

Avoid the overly attached girlfriend!

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A girlfriend is all about the future.  A girlfriend has a high upside and very little downside.  A girlfriend is anticipated happiness – the "sanguine expectation of happiness," in jane Austen's words.  

She's like a delicious meal after the first couple of bites – you know it's delicious, and you have so much of the meal left to enjoy that you're not worrying about how depressing it will be when you take that last bite!  

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Please note: I said "girlfriend" – I did not say "girl friend."  A "girl friend" is a very different thing than a "girlfriend."  

Although, of course, a "girl friend" may always turn into a "girlfriend" at some point in the future.  And we were speaking earlier about the anticipation of future pleasure – correct?

Yes, we are.  But in most cases, a "girl friend" turning into a "girlfriend" is a fantasy that will never be realized.  

Matthew Sweet didn't title this song (or the 1991 album of the same name that it appeared on) "Girl Friend," after all – he titled it "Girlfriend."  That's why guys write catchy little pop songs, after all – so they can get girlfriends.  (Surely you don't think my friends and I started the Rogues when we were in 8th grade out of our love for music?)

Matthew Sweet has a "girl friend" who would make an absolutely spectacular "girlfriend": Susanna Hoffs.    

Susanna Hoffs was a member of the great all-girl group from the 1980s, the Bangles.  She is cute with a capital "C" – and let's throw in capital "U," "T," and "E" as well.

And while we're at it, we might as well italicize those letters and put them in bold font and add "super" and some exclamation points:  Susanna Hoffs is SUPER CUTE!!! (And she's a ROCK STAR, for cryin' out loud!  How cool is THAT?)

Click here to see her singing "Hazy Shade of Winter" in a little black dress at SXSW in 2011.

OMG, she is cute, CUTER, CUTEST!  Am I right, or am I right?  

Unfortunately for Matthew, Susanna is married – and married to the guy who directed the Austin Powers movies as well as Meet the Parents, Meet the Fockers, 50 First Dates, and Borat.  

I know, those are all pretty lame movies – but they made a boatload of money, and that goes a long way with some people.  (As my grandmother used to say, "It's just as easy to love a rich girl as a poor girl.")

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Hoffs and Sweet teamed up to record the three Under the Covers albums, which feature covers of great songs from the sixties, seventies, and eighties, respectively.  (I am always on the lookout for opportunities to use "respectively" in this fashion.)  

Sweet is a very talented musician, and Hoffs probably couldn't have found a better collaborator.  But he's got about as much shot as making her his girlfriend as I do.

Click here to listen to "Girlfriend."  Happy birthday to 2 or 3 lines!

Click here if you'd like to buy "Girlfriend" from Amazon.

Bangles -- "Hero Takes a Fall" (1984)

Wasn't it me who said

There'll be a price to pay

Three O'Clock, Rain Parade, Green on Red, Dream Syndicate – does anyone remember the "Paisley Underground" groups from Los Angeles whose music was inspired by the Byrds, the Beach Boys, the Buffalo Springfield, the Doors and the other great L.A. bands their parents had listened to in the 1960s?

Michael Quercio, the lead singer of Three O'Clock (the band's name was inspired by an F. Scott Fitzgerald line: "In the darkest part of the mind it's always three o'clock in the morning"), gave the Paisley Underground genre its name during a radio interview.  

"Basically, we were all record collectors who played music," said Quercio.  Classic pop albums like the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds were "certainly a big deal to us," he added.  

So it should come as no surprise that the Paisley Underground bands played a lot of covers of sixties songs – the songs that their parents had listened to twenty years earlier.  (The Rainy Day album, a collaboration between members of several Paisley Underground bands that was released in 1984, featured covers of songs by Bob Dylan, the Byrds, Neil Young, the Beach Boys, the Who, Lou Reed, and Jimi Hendrix.) 

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The Paisley Underground band that had the most commercial success by far was the all-female group, the Bangles.  All Over the Place, the band's major-label debut album, is one of the great power-pop records of all time.

The second Bangles album, Different Light, featured "Manic Monday" (which Prince wrote for them), "Walk Like an Egyptian" (the first single by an all-female band playing their own instruments to make it to #1 on the Billboard singles chart), and a cover of Big Star's "September Gurls."

But just when the Bangles were blowing up, they blew up.  All four of the group's members were singers/songwriters, but Susanna Hoffs began to attract the lion's share of attention from the media, so the band's record label began to release songs on which Hoffs was the lead singer as singles. 

The Bangles: Susanna Hoffs, Michael
Steele, Debbi Peterson, Vicki Peterson

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Hoffs got all the attention in part because she was featured in the 1987 movie, The Allnighter – a huge box-office and critical bomb that was directed by her  mother, and which also featured Joan Cusack (you remember her from Working Girl) and Michael Ontkean (you remember him from Slap Shot).

Click here to watch the most famous scene from the movie, which features Susanna undressing in front a mirror and dancing around in her knickers.  If the movie has consisted of two hours of this kind of thing, it would have made about a zillion dollars.  Boys and girls, Susanna Hoffs is not only a great pop singer but also a grade-A hottie . . . although it's a little creepy when you realize that her mom directed this scene.

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The Bangles broke up shortly after the release of their third album, Everything, in 1988.  It was a commercial success, and included the group's biggest-selling single, "Eternal Flame."  Hoffs recorded that song in the nude because the album's producer told her that Olivia Newton-John always was naked when she recorded vocals.

(You know, I wanted to be a record producer but my parents would only pay for law school.)

The Bangles got back together ten years later.  They toured extensively last year in support of their 2011 album, Sweetheart of the Sun.  

Susanna Hoffs is still drop-dead gorgeous.  She recently turned 54, but I think she is even more beautiful today than she was back in the eighties.

Click here to watch the music video for "Hero Takes a Fall," the first track from All Over the Place.  It's full of jangly guitars and glorious harmonies and any of you who don't like it are banned from 2 or 3 lines for life.

Click here to take a gander at this live (not lip-synched) performance of the song on David Letterman's show -- Susanna plays a pretty mean rhythm guitar.  (What was Letterman thinking when he got dressed for that show?) 

Click here to buy  "Hero Takes a Fall" from Amazon.