Videodrone #7: Golden Brown

Videodrone is a weekly feature looking at music videos from the last half century. 

Golden Brown (1982)

The Stranglers are one of those bands that never got their due in the U.S. and I'll certainly admit I still don't know enough about them, other than they made a lot of good music that I need to listen to more. The band got its start in 1974 as the Guildford Stranglers in England, quickly becoming part of the growing pub rock scene. 

As punk emerged, the Stranglers opened for the first British tours of the Ramones and Patti Smith and became part of that scene in the U.K. They had hits with songs like "Peaches" and "Something Better Change." But the band, whose members were older and more musically adept than their contemporaries, soon started exploring different sounds. 

In 1982, the band released the single "Golden Brown" off its 1981 album La Folie, which was a concept album about love. The song is very different than anything the band had previously released, a waltz-time ballad written by keyboardist Dave Greenfield and drummer Jet Black, with lyrics by singer-guitarist Hugh Cornwell. It was so different, featuring harpsichord as the primary instrumentation, that the Stranglers' label was hesitant to release it as a single.

"We had to insist on it being released," bassist Jean-Jacques Brunel told Loudersound in 2024. "We'd been taken over by EMI and they thought we were awful--and they hated 'Golden Brown.' They said, 'This song, you can't dance to it, you're finished.'"

But the song was released during the holiday season, along with a video directed by Lindsey Clennell (who has also directed videos by Elton John, the Jam, Big Country and Whitesnake). The song has a double meaning: Cornwell later said it was about both his Mediterranean girlfriend at the time and his fondness for heroin.

The video features the band members as 1920s-era explorers in Egypt and also musical performers for a fictional Cairo radio station. Unlike Duran Duran's much more popular "Hungry Like the Wolf" video--which was also released in 1982, featured the band members as Indiana Jones-esque adventurers filmed on location in Sri Lanka, and was phenomenally successful in the U.S.--"Golden Brown" used stock footage of various Middle Eastern staples such as the Giza pyramid complex, the Great Sphinx, the Shah Mosque in Isfahan and Bedouins riding camels. 

The single reached #2 on the U.K. Singles chart, and Cornwell later said he thought it would have hit the top spot if Burnel hadn't told the press that it was about heroin, which led radio stations to remove it from their playlists. The song also hit the top 10 in Ireland, the Netherlands and Australia. 

But here in the U.S., the new sensation that was MTV never played the "Golden Brown" video when it first came out. It likely showed up on "120 Minutes" when that show premiered a few years later. The song became better known over here when Guy Ritchie used "Golden Brown" during a fight scene in the 2000 movie Snatch. It has been used in the movie Away We Go and the TV shows Black Mirror, The Umbrella Academy and Trust.

As for the Stranglers, they had some success in the '80s with "Always the Sun" and "Skin Deep." Cornwell left the band in 1990 to pursue a solo career, but the Stranglers continued on with various lineups. Although Greenfield and Black died in the last several years, the group is still touring with Burnel as the last original member.

Day After Day #293: Know Your Rights

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Know Your Rights (1982)

It's Election Day here in the good ol' US of A, wrapping up (sort of) one of the most contentious presidential campaigns since well, the last one. I'm not going to get political, but I am going to let the Clash do it. 

The year is 1982 and things are rocky with the Clash. Coming off 1980's triple album Sandinista! in early 1981, singer-guitarist Joe Strummer and bassist Paul Simonon felt the Clash was getting boring and decided to bring back original manager Bernie Rhodes. Guitarist Mick Jones disagreed with the move and was drifting apart from his bandmates, while drummer Topper Headon was full on into a heroin and cocaine addiction.

Working on their fifth album, the Clash recorded 18 songs, enough for a double album, but they were debating whether that would be too much after just releasing a triple album and double before that in London Calling. Jones wanted a double album with longer mixes, while the rest of the band preferred a single album with shorter songs. Strummer and Jones worked with producer Glyn Johns to edit the album, called Combat Rock, down from 77 minutes to 46, dropping six songs.

The opening track and lead single of the album was "Know Your Rights" and it featured Strummer as a civil servant announcing three rights for poor people. The song kicks off with "This is a public service announcement...with guitar!"

"Know your rights/All three of 'em/Number one/You have the right not to be killed/Murder is a crime/Unless it was done/By a policeman/Or an aristocrat/Oh, know your rights."

Musically, the track is reminiscent of the band's earlier, more strident sound.

"And number two/You have the right to food money/Providing of course you/Don't mind a little/Investigation, humiliation/And if you cross your fingers/Rehabilitation."

The song didn't chart in the U.S., but it hit #43 on the U.K. Singles Chart.

"Number three/You have the right to free speech/As long as you're not/Dumb enough to actually try it/Know your rights/These are your rights/Oh, know your rights/These are your rights/All three of 'em, ha."

While "Know Your Rights" didn't click as a single, its followup more than made up for it. The music for "Rock the Casbah" was written by Headon, based on a piano he'd been working on. Strummer reworked the lyrics and the song, accompanied by a Don Letts-directed video, became a huge hit for the Clash, getting to #8 on the Billboard Hot 100. By the time the band made the video, songwriter Headon had been replaced by Terry Chimes because his heroin addiction had gotten out of control.

Strummer ends the song in character, admonishing the poor for wanting more rights. "And it has been suggested/In some quarters that this is not enough/Well, get off the streets/Get off the streets!"

A lot of critics and punk fans wrote Combat Rock off as too commercial, especially when "Should I Stay or Should I Go" became a hit as well. The album went to #2 in the U.K. and #7 in the U.S. and eventually went multiplatinum. Combat Rock also featured "Straight to Hell," a haunting song inspired by Apocalypse Now about the children fathered by American soldiers to Vietnamese mothers and then abandoned after the Vietnam War ended. It served as the main sample in M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes." 

The Clash ended up opening for the Who's on the latter's "Schlitz Rocks America" "farewell tour," which was an interesting choice for such an antiestablishment band. After headlining the New Wave day of the US Festival in front of 150,000 people in May 1983, the Clash never played with Jones again. Strummer and Simonon dismissed him that September and replaced him with two new guitarists. After releasing the decidedly substandard Cut the Crap in 1985, the band broke up. Jones formed Big Audio Dynamite and released several albums.

"Know Your Rights" remains an iconic statement from the Clash.

Day After Day #224: Space Age Love Song

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Space Age Love Song (1982)

It's not easy being labeled a one-hit wonder, especially when you've had more than one hit. Forty-plus years later, A Flock of Seagulls still carry that label. They were known more for their haircuts than their music and have become the stereotypical template of a new wave band. But they had some good songs...and some ridiculous haircuts.

The band was formed in 1979 in Liverpool by Mike Score on vocals and keyboards, his brother Ali on drums and Frank Maudsley on bass. After some lineup shuffling, Paul Reynolds joined on guitar, but the band's sound was definitely synth heavy. They released a single in 1981 and another in 1982 before releasing the EP Modern Love is Automatic, which included the song "I Ran (So Far Away)." The fledgling MTV picked up the low-budget video for "I Ran" and it became a huge hit in the U.S., going to #9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and a number of other charts (Dance/Disco Top 80, Top Tracks), but only #43 in the U.K.

"Space Age Love Song" was the fourth song on the band's self-titled debut. By this point, "I Ran" had established the group as one of the bigger synth-pop acts (dubbed the Second British Invasion by some) going. That song and that video basically defined the band, especially in the U.S. But "Space Age Love Song" was more just a synth-pop song; Reynolds' majestic chiming guitar really carries the tune.

There's not a whole lot to it lyrically. There's no chorus and only like 25 words to the entire lyrics, but the music just captures that vibe of seeing someone across a room and connecting.

"I saw your eyes/And you made me smile/For a little while/I was falling in love/I saw your eyes/And you touched my mind/Although it took a while/I was falling in love."

"'Space Age' was just about intimacy, if you'd like," Score said in an interview with Songfacts. "When you meet somebody there is an instant eye contact if the chemistry is right. If everything is right, you catch their eye...that whole 'across the crowded room/caught your eye' thing. The lyrics explain that: 'I saw your eyes and you made me smile.'"

The song wasn't as huge a hit as "I Ran" but it got up to #30 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #34 on the U.K. Singles Chart. Reynolds said the title came about because the band couldn't think of a title for the song and he suggested it because he thought it sounded like a space age love song. Fair enough. The song was later featured in the movie Career Opportunities.

The Seagulls followed the song up later in 1982 with a new single called "Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You," which was their first song to hit the top 10 in the U.K. Another quality banger, for sure. Meanwhile, in the U.S., they played the MTV New Year's Eve Rock n' Roll Ball. Their next album, Listen, came out in April 1983 and they played at the US Festival in May. They also opened for the Police, but the next three singles didn't do as well.

Struggling with a drug problem, Reynolds left the band in the middle of their 1984 tour. The band was never the same after that. They added Gary Steadman (ex-Classix Nouveaux) for their next album, Dream Come True, but it stiffed. The next Flock of Seagulls album (featuring Mike Score and three other guys) didn't come until 1995, but it also flopped. 

The original Flock of Seagulls lineup finally got back together in November 2003 for one performance on the VH1 show Bands Reunited; they did a U.S. tour in the fall of 2004. Fifteen years later, the four original members reunited and recorded a new album, Ascension, with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. The following year, they recorded an album with extended versions of their biggest hits and then in 2021, they made another album with the Prague Philharmonic, this time performing orchestral versions of their hits (just with less hair; see below). Just last week, the band (Mike Score and three other musicians) announced they'd be releasing a new album next year.

Day After Day #212: Save It for Later

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4). 

Save It for Later (1982)

Sometimes all it takes to write a perfect pop song is a dirty joke and the rest of your band refusing to play on it. That all went into "Save It for Later," the classic song from the Beat (better known as the English Beat to North American fans).

The Beat were formed in 1978 in Birmingham, England, by Dave Wakeling (vocals, guitar), Ranking Roger (vocals), Andy Cox (guitar), David Steele (bass), Everett Morton (drums) and Saxa (Lionel Augustus Martin, sax). The group combined new wave, ska, two-tone and post punk into a fun, upbeat sound that was an immediate success. Their debut, 1980's I Just Can't Stop It, featured hits like "Mirror in the Bathroom," "Twist and Crawl" and "Can't Get Used to Losing You" and went to the #3 on the U.K. album chart. For their second album, Wha'appen, the band toured the U.S. with the Pretenders and Talking Heads. They went by the English Beat in the U.S. and Canada because there was already a U.S. band called the Beat.

The group's third album was 1982's Special Beat Service and the first single was "Save It for Later." Wakeling had written the song before the group even formed, but it didn't appear on the first two albums because of the objections of Steele, who felt it was too old school and didn't fit the Beat's sound. The band's label, I.R.S., insisted that the song be included on Special Beat Service but Steele continued to object and refused to play on the recording, along with some other members of the band. Wakeling and drummer Morton laid down the basic track and the rest of the band eventually gave in and contributed to it. 

As for the dirty joke, Wakeling said in a 2012 interview with the AV Club that the phrase "save it for later" was actually meant to be "save it, fellator." 

"As in, 'Leave it as it is, cocksucker.' But we didn't have the term 'cocksucker' in England at the time. We didn't really learn that one until we came to America. So it wasn't really a put-down, because we really didn't use that term to put down people at the time, and I don't think do very much in England now, either. Anyways, that's the nature of the joke."

I've heard the song a zillion times and had no idea that was the history of it, but it doesn't change the song's brilliance.

"Two dozen other dirty lovers/Must be a sucker for it/Cry, cry but I don't need my mother/Just hold my hand while I come to a decision on it/Sooner or later, your legs give way, you hit the ground/Save it for later, don't run away and let me down/Sooner or later, you'll hit the deck, you'll get found out/Save it for later, don't run away and let me down, you let me down."

The song is sad, yet danceable. Wakefield, who wrote it when he was a teenager, said in another interview that it was about someone in their early 20s trying to figure out their place in the world and not getting much guidance.

"Two dozen other stupid reasons/Why we should suffer for this/Don't bother trying to explain them/Just hold my hand while I come to a decision on it/Sooner or later, your legs give way, you hit the ground/Save it for later, don't run away and let me down/Sooner or later, you'll hit the deck, you'll get found out/Save it for later, don't run away and let me down, you let me down."

After all the drama and opposition to it, "Save It for Later" has become one of the Beat's most beloved songs. Wakeling has said it accounts for about a third of the band's publishing revenue these days. The song hit #47 on the U.K. Singles Chart, but it's shown up in countless movies and TV shows, including Kingpin, Hot Tub Time Machine, Big Daddy and Funny People.

The Beat split up in 1983, with Wakeling and Ranking Roger going on to form General Public and Steele and Cox forming Fine Young Cannibals with singer Roland Gift. Both groups had success, especially FYC. The Beat, minus Steele and Cox, reunited in 2003 for a one-off show. Eventually, there were two versions of the Beat, the Wakeling-led English Beat that toured in the U.S. and a Ranking Roger-led one that toured in the U.K. In 2018, the Beat feat. Ranking Roger released a live album and Wakeling's Beat released a new album called Here We Go Love. In January 2019, Roger's band released a new album, Public Confidential, but sadly, two months later Roger died at age 56 after undergoing treatment for lung cancer. In recent years, both Saxa and Morton passed away as well.

"Save It for Later" was notably covered by Pete Townshend in 1986 on his album Deep End Live! Harvey Danger covered it for the movie 200 Cigarettes. Pearl Jam has covered it in concert and Eddie Vedder's cover of the song is featured in the latest season of The Bear. Not bad for a song that Dave Wakeling's band didn't even want to record.

 

Day After Day #207: The Message

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4). 

The Message (1982)

When "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five came out in 1982, it was hailed as one of the first hip hop songs to focus on social issues instead of having a good time or boasting about being the best rapper. But the way it came about was interesting, given that only person from the group was involved in making the song.

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were formed in the South Bronx in 1978 by Grandmaster Flash, Kidd Creole, Keef Cowboy, Melle Mel, Scorpio and Rahiem. They started out playing parties and quickly established a reputation as the top rap group in NYC. They signed a contract with Sugar Hill Records, which released the first big hip hop single "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugarhill Gang. The group released a few singles and then the live album The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel.

"The Message" was actually put together by studio percussion player Ed "Duke Bootee" Fletcher, who played with Sugar Hill's house band (which included bassist Doug Wimbish, currently of Living Colour). Label head Sylvia Robinson heard Fletcher playing a rhythm on a plastic bottle and encouraged him to record it. Eventually, Fletcher and producer Jiggs Chase were trying to come up with lyrics when Fletcher came up with the song's classic refrain: "Don't push me, 'cause I'm close to the edge. I'm trying not to lose my head. It's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from going under."

The song was intended for the Sugarhill Gang, but they didn't want to do it. And Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five weren't interested, either, because it was too serious. They wanted to stick to party tracks. But Melle Mel stuck around and worked on it with Fletcher on synths and percussion, a drum machine and guitarist Skip McDonald. Fletcher, who wasn't even an official member of the group, took the intro, chorus and two verses and Mel took the other verses. Fletcher's raps were just supposed to be reference vocals for someone else to be on the finished track, but Robinson liked them so much she kept them in the song.

The song kicks off with an iconic squiggly synth line and then Duke Bootee with that intro: "It's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from going under."

Then Melle Mel jumps in. "Broken glass everywhere/People pissing on the stairs, you know they just don't care/I can't take the smell, can't take the noise/Got no money to move out, I guess I got no choice/Rats in the front room, roaches in the back/Junkies in the alley with a baseball bat/I tried to get away, but I couldn't get far/'Cause a man with a tow truck repossessed my car/Don't push me 'cause I'm close to the edge/I'm trying not to lose my head."

Fletcher said he wasn't trying to be political, but hold a mirror up to what was happening on the street.

"My brother's doing bad, stole my mother's TV/Says she watches too much, it's just not healthy/All My Children in the daytime, Dallas at night/Can't even see the game or the Sugar Ray fight/The bill collectors, they ring my phone/And scare my wife when I'm not home/Got a bum education, double-digit inflation/Can't take the train to the job, there's a strike at the station/Neon King Kong standing on my back/Can't stop to turn around, broke my sacroiliac/A mid-range migraine, cancered membrane/Sometimes I think I'm going insane, I swear I might hijack a plane."

Mel ends the song with a verse from Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's "Superrappin'," which came out in 1979. "A child is born with no state of mind/Blind to the ways of mankind/God is smiling on you, but he's frowning too/Because only God knows what you'll go through/You'll grow in the ghetto living second rate/And your eyes will sing a song of deep hate/The places you play and where you stay/Looks like one great big alleyway/You'll admire all the number-book takers/Thugs, pimps and pushers and the big money makers/Driving big cars spending 20s and 10s/And you wanna grow up to be just like them, huh/Pickpocket peddlers, even panhandlers/You say, 'I'm cool, huh, I'm no fool'/But then you wind up droppin' out of high school/Now you're unemployed, all null and void/Walking 'round like your Pretty Boy Floyd/Turned stick-up kid, but look what you done did/Got sent up for an eight-year bid."

At 7:11, the song was unusually long but it was an immediate hit in the dance clubs and on the radio. It went to #4 on the Billboard Hot Black Singles chart (yes, that was an actual thing), #12 on the Hot Dance Club play chart and #62 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was hailed for bringing social consciousness to hip hop, but it also signified that rappers were bigger stars than the DJs in hip hop groups. It was sampled in many songs and even served as an inspiration for Phil Collins' evil laugh in Genesis' hit song "Mama."

In 1983, Grandmaster Flash sued Sugar Hill Records for $5 million in unpaid royalties, despite not appearing on any of the group's studio recordings. The lawsuit resulted in the song "White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)" being credited to Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel; this led Melle Mel, Scorpio and Cowboy to leave after the song became a hit. They formed Grandmaster Melle Mel and the Furious Five in 1984. Meanwhile, Grandmaster Flash, Kidd Creole and Rahiem went to Elektra Records and added three new members, going under the name Grandmaster Flash. They released three albums. In addition to releasing music on his own, Mel also appeared in Chaka Khan's "I Feel for You."

The original lineup of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five reunited for a charity performance in 1987 and then released a new album in 1988, but it didn't do well and the group split afterwards. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, having inspired countless artists over the years.

Day After Day #161: A Million Miles Away

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4). 

A Million Miles Away (1982)

Certain songs become inextricably linked to a certain time or place. In the case of the Plimsouls, their song "A Million Miles Away" will forever be remembered as representative of the early '80s, but it's so much more than that.

Formed in Paramount, California, in 1978 by singer-guitarist Peter Case (formerly of the Nerves), the Plimsouls started as a trio with Case, bassist Dave Pahoa and drummer Lou Ramirez. The Plimsouls played the kind of power pop that was all the rage in the late '70s/early '80s thanks to the success of the Knack. 

The band released a 5-song EP called Zero Hour in 1980, after which they were joined by guitarist Eddie Munoz. The title track was a radio hit in Los Angeles and the band signed to Planet Records and released their self-titled debut album in 1981. After the debut didn't sell well, the band left Planet and self-released "A Million Miles Away" as a single in 1982. It reached #11 on the Billboard Top Tracks chart and was featured in the 1983 movie Valley Girl, which also featured the band playing the song and parts of two other. 

The Plimsouls signed a deal with major label Geffen Records and included "A Million Miles Away" on their major-label debut Everywhere at Once, which came out in May 1983.

Immediately, the song has that classic Rickenbacker guitar sound that harks back to the Byrds' "Eight Miles High" and the Who's "I Can See for Miles." The intro leads into Case belting out the first verse.

"Friday night, I'd just got back/I had my eyes shut and dreaming about the past/I thought about you while the radio played/I should have got loaded, some reason I stayed/I started drifting to a different place/I realized I was falling off the face of the world/And there was nothing left to bring me back/I'm a million miles away/A million miles away/I'm just a million miles away/And there's nothing left to bring me back today."

In a post on his blog, Case writes about working on the song with his friends Joey Alkes and Chris Fradkin, who helped him write a bunch of songs that were on the Plimsouls' first album. Case Fradkin were sitting in a bar after seeing the Germs play and Case started writing some lyrics.

"We talked about the words, and each kicked in some lines. I was remembering something from a long time back and the feeling was pouring into the song. I'd been having an affair with a girl I really thought a lot of, and that had just broken off. Something of my childhood was in it, too. A lyric was taking shape based on all of this."

They went over to Alkes' place and he came up with the chorus. They taped it on a cassette and forgot about it until it later became a stone cold classic.

The song has so much angst about lost love, but it rocks furiously.

"Took a ride, I went downtown/The streets were empty, there was no one around/To a place that we used to know/Been to all the places that we used to go/I'm at the wrong end of your looking glass/Just trying to hold onto the hands of the past and you/And there was nothing left to bring me back/I was a million miles away."

The song's placement in Valley Girl was huge, with the film becoming a hit. It focused on a Romeo and Juliet-esque romance between a valley girl (the term was popularized by Frank and Moon Unit Zappa's song of the same name) and a punk played by a young Nicolas Cage. In addition to the Plimsouls, the soundtrack was full of new wave hits include Josie Cotton's "Johnny Are You Queer?", the Payolas' "Eyes of a Stranger," Modern English's "I Melt With You" and Men at Work's classic "Who Can It Be Now?"

"A Million Miles Away" was re-released as a single in 1983 and got up to #82 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The album reached #186 on the Billboard 200 chart, which was 33 spots lower than the debut album. The band broke up in 1984, with Case pursuing a solo career. A young band called the Goo Goo Dolls covered "A Million Miles Away" on their 1990 album Hold Me Up and a re-recorded version ended up on the soundtrack to the movie Speed.

The Plimsouls reunited in 1986 without Ramirez and recorded an album called Kool Trash, with Blondie's Clem Burke on drums. It got decent reviews but didn't sell well. The band has reunited a few times to play shows since then. In 2016, Munoz registered a trademark for the band's name and toured as the Plimsouls without the other three members, who filed for trademark infringement against Munoz. Pahoa died last fall, but his family continued the case. Last month, a three-judge panel held that the Plimsouls partnership owned the band's name and Munoz didn't have an individual right to the trademark. 

Day After Day #159: You've Got Another Thing Comin'

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4). 

You've Got Another Thing Comin' (1982)

When you get as old as I am, you realize that there's no such thing as guilty pleasures. Either you like something or you don't. In my teen years, I was a huge metalhead, but once I got into my 20s, I turned my back on it. A lot of us did in the early '90s, when Nirvana and alt-rock effectively banished heavy metal to the hinterlands. It was dumb and uncool and I just stopped listening to it. 

But around 2006, a co-worker got me back into Iron Maiden and I realized I really liked this stuff. I didn't grow a mullet and start wearing jean jackets with patches or anything, but I started revisiting some of the old metal bands I used to dig as a kid. One of them was Judas Priest. 

Around 1982, I had already been into metal for a few years but didn't know much about Priest until I saw the video for "You've Got Another Thing Comin'" on Night Flight. By this point, we were living in Richland, Washington, where the FM radio situation was dire (only one "rock" station that played stuff like Steve Miller's "Abracadabra" on a goddamn loop) and our cable system didn't have MTV on it. But when I saw this video, I was bowled over.

Judas Priest formed in Birmingham, England, in 1969 by singer Al Atkins and bassist Brian Stapenhill, who were joined by John Perry on guitar and John Partridge on drums. The name came from the Bob Dylan song "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest." The band recorded a demo and got a contract with the label Immediate, but the label went defunct before an album could be made and the band split up in 1970. Atkins had teamed up with a hard rock band called Freight that featured guitarist K.K. Downing and bassist Ian Hill, but quit the band in December 1972. Vocalist Rob Halford joined soon afterward and a year later, Priest added guitarist Glenn Tipton. Halford's voice transformed the band as he was able to range between a deep growl and a glass-shattering falsetto.

The band's debut, Rocka Rolla, came out in 1974 on Gull Records, featuring a straightahead hard rock sound. Priest released Sad Wings of Destiny two years later, and it features the beginning of the band's heavy metal style. Displeased with their label support, Priest broke their contract and signed with CBS. Over the next few years, the band started to build their audience internationally and their albums started to sell well. They also started to record shorter, more commercial songs like "Breaking the Law," "Living After Midnight" and "Heading Out to the Highway" and became an arena rock draw, known for their leather-and-studs look. 

But it wasn't until 1982's Screaming for Vengeance album that Priest really broke through commercially. The album was heavier than their previous release, Point of Entry, which some fans had derided as too commercial. "You've Got Another Thing Comin'" was a last-minute addition to the album and became the band's signature song. The video, directed by Julien Temple, also brought a lot of attention to the song.

It's a classic driving song, with a powerful riff chugging along as Halford sings about fighting through adversity.

"One life, I'm gonna live it up/I'm takin' flight, I said I'll never give it up/Stand tall, I'm the kind of proud/I'm on top as long as the music's loud/If you think I'll sit around as the world goes by/You're thinkin' like a fool, 'cause it's a case of do or die/Out there is a fortune waitin' to be had/If you think I'll let it go, you're mad/You've got another thing comin'."

The song is a big middle-finger to critics who thought the band was toast after Point of Entry, as well as to the ones who thought they sucked to begin with.

"That's right, here's where the talkin' is/Well, listen, this night there'll be some action spent/Drive hard, I'm callin' all the shots/I've got an ace card comin' down on the rocks/If you think I'll sit around while you chip away my brain/Listen, I ain't foolin' and you'd better think again/Out there is a fortune waitin' to be had/If you think I'll let it go, you're mad/You've got another thing comin'."

The song went to #67 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #4 on the Mainstream Rock chart, but more importantly, it drove the album to go double platinum (and hit #17 on the Billboard 200 album chart) and made Priest one of the hottest metal bands going. They toured the U.S. with Iron Maiden, another band that was breaking through in '82. Priest also made a big splash on the Heavy Metal Day of the US Festival in 1983. 

Priest was huge in the '80s; the fanaticism of their fans was displayed in hilarious glory in the amazing documentary Heavy Metal Parking Lot, which documents fans in the parking lot of a Priest show in Landover, Maryland in 1986. The band was named in a civil suit in 1990, alleging that they were responsible for two fans shooting themselves after listening to the Priest album Stained Class; one died immediately and one disfigured himself but died three years later of a suspected drug overdose. Their families sued, claiming that subliminal messages in the band's cover of Spooky Tooth's "Better by You, Better Than Me" caused the men to kill themselves. A judge eventually dismissed the lawsuit.

In 1991, Halford formed a thrash metal band called Fight as a side project; he left Priest in May 1992. Priest famously hired Tim "Ripper" Owens, who had previously sung in a Priest cover band, as Halford's replacement in 1996. The band released two albums with Owens. Meanwhile, Halford formed an industrial band called 2wo and then a metal band called Halford, which released four albums. 

In a 1998 interview with MTV, Halford came out as gay. It was shocking at the time, but not so shocking when you thought about the biker getups he used to wear. He was worried about negative backlash, but was surprised at the support he received after the announcement. Halford returned to Priest in 2003 and the group has released five studio albums, including one this year. The lineup has changed over the years, with Halford and Hill remaining as full-time members. Tipton is still a member of the band but is not touring because he has Parkinson's disease. Downing left the band in 2011 and was replaced by Richie Faulkner; in 2019, Downing formed KK's Priest with Ripper Owens on lead vocals.

I saw the band in '88 at the Worcester Centrum and then again 30 years later in Worcester. The band still puts on a great show, and Halford can still belt out the classics. Clearly, I don't listen to metal all the time, but I still like to crank up some every now and then. 

Day After Day #128: Sailin' On

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Sailin' On (1982)

One stereotype of early punk was that because anybody could do it, the bands couldn't play their instruments. While some certainly fit that bill, that definitely wasn't the case with Bad Brains. In addition to being killer musicians, the band also mastered a variety of genres, including hardcore punk.

The band started in 1976 in Washington, D.C., as a jazz fusion band called Mind Power, inspired by Return to Forever and Mahavishnu Orchestra. The lineup included Dr. Know (aka Gary Miller) on lead guitar, Darryl Jennifer on bass and brothers Paul Hudson (who later went by H.R.) on rhythm guitar and Earl Hudson on drums. Singer Sid McCray got the band into punk rock, after which they changed their sound and name to Bad Brains (after the Ramones song "Bad Brain"). McCray left soon afterward and H.R. switched over to lead vocals.

Their ferocious live shows helped Bad Brains grow their audience, although they were banned from many Washington, D.C. clubs because their fans tended to cause a lot of property damage (inspiring the song "Banned in D.C." on their first album. They moved to New York City in 1981 and helped grow the city's hardcore scene.

The band's self-titled debut came out in February 1982 on cassette only on Reachout International Records (ROIR), with its iconic cover art showing a bolt of lightning striking the Capitol building in D.C. The album itself showcased the band's chops, whether it was Dr. Know breaking out hard rock riffs and lightning-quick solos or the rhythm section's ability to shift between thrash to reggae and back in the same song. Bad Brains was all about dynamics, able to rock furiously, play love songs or howl against injustice. H.R. was a terrific frontman, able to dominate the stage with a collection of backflips, splits, spins and other moves; he could just as easily adapt his vocals to whatever style the band was playing. He's also credited with coming up with the term "moshing" about the punk dancing style that grew out of punk venues in D.C. in the early '80s, although he was saying "mashing" and was misunderstood because of the Jamaican accent he was using.

The debut album is full of amazing songs, including "Pay to Cum," "Attitude," "Banned in D.C.," "F.V.K. (Fearless Vampire Killers" and "Big Take Over." The leadoff track is "Sailin' On," in which H.R. sings about moving on after a relationship.

"You don't want me anymore/So I'll just walk right out the door/Played a game right from the start/I trust you, you used me, now my heart's torn apart/So I'm sailin', yeah, I'm sailin' on/I'm movin', yeah, I'm movin' on/Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on/Yeah."

These aren't necessarily original sentiments, but they're delivered at breakneck speed by both H.R. and the band that you can't help but get fired up. Dr. Know then fires off a hot solo and the band thrashes any residual depression right out the window.

"Too many years with too many tears/Too many days with none to say/How will we know when there's nowhere to grow/And what's the facts of life to show?"

The song was re-recorded (along with several others from the first album) for the band's follow up, the Ric Ocasek-produced Rock for Light. It's a little cleaner and about 10 seconds shorter, but essentially the same song. I just gravitate to the original version because that's one I had first and it smokes.

The band signed with SST in 1986 and released I Against I, which is also excellent. H.R. sang the vocals for "Sacred Love" over the phone from jail, where he was serving time for a cannabis charge. The following year, the Hudson brothers quit to focus on reggae. Bad Brains continued on with Taj Singleton on vocals and Cro-Mags drummer Mackie Jayson; that lineup recorded the band's next album Quickness, but the Hudsons returned and H.R. redid the vocals. The lineup changes continued, with Chuck Mosley and Dexter Pinto taking over on vocals at different points. 

After Bad Brains-influenced acts like Living Colour and Fishbone had some success, Epic Records offered the band their first major label deal, with the album Rise coming out in 1993. The Hudsons once again returned in 1994 and the band opened for the Beastie Boys on the Ill Communication tour and released an album in 1995 on Maverick Records called God of Love. H.R. was starting to have some issues, both onstage and off and ended up in jail again. The band toured for a few years as Soul Brains because of some legal issues before taking their original name back. They released albums in 2007 (produced by Adam Yauch) and 2012, but have only performed sporadically since then. 

I never saw Bad Brains, but when I think of good uses for time machines, one would be to travel back to D.C. or NYC in the early '80s and see them in their heyday. The footage is just amazing.

Day After Day #60: Don't Change

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Don't Change (1982) 

The 1980s were a ridiculously long time ago. There was a lot going on, but one thing that's almost forgotten 40+ years later is that INXS was consistently one of the best bands going for most of that decade. They weren't trying to save the world like U2 or Peter Gabriel, they weren't larger than life like Michael Jackson, Prince, Bowie, Madonna or Springsteen, they were just a damn good band. 

INXS could play new wave, pub rock, dance music or mournful ballads, but their secret weapon wasn't so secret: it was frontman Michael Hutchence, who looked like a male model and could move like a combination of Mick Jagger and Jim Morrison. Formed in 1977 in Australia, the band released two albums down under before their third album, Shabooh Shoobah, was released internationally in October 1982. The first single, "The One Thing," became a top 30 hit in the U.S., with the video getting a lot of play on the then-new MTV. 

The band toured the U.S. for the first time in the spring of 1983, opening for Adam and the Ants, the Stray Cats, the Kinks, Hall & Oates, Men at Work and the Go-Gos, as well as on the new wave day of the US Festival.  

"The One Thing" is the big hit from that album and the band's first foray into pop stardom, but the second single, "Don't Change," has the most lasting impact. It's different from a lot of INXS's party rockers in that it's a more philosophical-leaning song. Andrew Farriss begins the song with a majestic synth line before the rest of the band kicks in.

"I'm standing here on the ground/The sky above won't fall down/See no evil in all directions/Resolution of happiness/Things have been dark for too long/Don't change for you/Don't change a thing for me."

"Don't Change" is big and anthemic, with Hutchence and Kirk Pengilly on the chorus providing an added boost that launches the song into the stratosphere. Unlike a lot of the new wave acts that were popping up at the time, INXS had been playing pubs and honing their chops for years, so by this point they were a well-oiled rock machine: in addition to Hutchence, there were three Farriss brothers (Andrew on keys, Tim on lead guitar and Jon on drums), Pengilly on guitar and sax and Garry Gary Beers on bass. 

Whereas many of the songs that were hits in the early '80s are very of their era, "Don't Change" has a timeless feel. It soars and as the last song on Shabooh Shoobah, it served as a launching off point for a very successful decade for INXS.

The band built up steadily, releasing The Swing in 1984 with hit singles "Original Sin" and "I Send a Message"; the album went platinum in the U.S. Listen Like Thieves followed in 1985 and was an even bigger hit, going double platinum with four songs getting radio play; "What You Need" went to #5 on the Billboard Hot 100. That led to the biggest INXS album, 1987's Kick, which had four top 10 singles, including "Need You Tonight," which went to #1. The band was all over MTV and on top of the pop world.

I had been a fan since "The One Thing" came out but didn't buy an INXS album until Listen Like Thieves. A group of us from my college newspaper were in New York City for a conference during spring break of 1988 and were walking past Radio City Music Hall, where INXS was playing a sold-out show the next night. Arthur, our arts editor (who got me in to see The Pursuit of Happiness and Duran Duran a year later), casually mentioned that he had tickets to the show and asked if one of us wanted to go with him. Everyone thought he was joking, but I said sure and a day later, we were sitting in the middle of 6,000 screaming teenage girls. Public Image Ltd. opened the show and it was quite enjoyable watching this crowd try to figure out what John Lydon was all about. Then INXS came out and just slayed; they were a masterful live act (a few years earlier, Rolling Stone had proclaimed them the best live band going). I ended up seeing them a few more times, at UNH on the Kick tour and in Worcester on the tour for their follow-up album X).

Released in 1990, X was less successful than Kick, but it would have had a tough time surpassing an album that went six times platinum in the U.S. alone. Also, three years had passed since Kick's release and musical tastes were changing. Still, it went double platinum in the U.S. and got up to #5 on the album chart. There were three more albums in the '90s with diminishing returns, the last being 1997's Elegantly Wasted. In November 1997, Hutchence was found dead in his hotel room; the coroner ruled it a suicide but some have speculated it was accidental. He was 37.

After a year or so, the band played some shows with a variety of singers, including Jimmy Barnes, Terence Trent D'Arby and Russell Hitchcock of Air Supply. Then in 2004, they participated in a reality show called Rock Star: INXS in which contestants competed to become the band's new lead singer. Eventually, a Canadian singer named J.D. Fortune was named the winner. They recorded a new song and then released an album, Switch, in 2005. They toured together for a few years before firing Fortune in 2009 and then bringing him back a year later. Ciaran Gribbin, a singer from Northern Ireland, became the band's new singer for a tour in late 2011. A year later, INXS announced it would no longer tour.

Despite the cheesy last few decades, INXS left behind a strong body of work that was probably underappreciated in the long run.

Day After Day #33: Senses Working Overtime

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Senses Working Overtime (1982)

A few days ago, I wrote about the woefully underappreciated Big Star. Another act that fits that description is XTC, although they certainly lasted a lot longer and got much more attention than Big Star ever did. But the XTC story is full of ups, downs and controversies as the band navigated a 34-year career. 

Formed in 1972 in Swindon, England by guitarist Andy Partridge and bassist Colin Moulding, the band was originally known as Star Park, then the Helium Kidz. They went through a glam phase before rebranding in 1975 as XTC. They cut their hair and started writing punchy, short songs and were lumped into the punk/new wave scene in the U.K., although they chafed at both labels. Their first album, White Music, came out in January 1978 and a followup, Go 2, was released in October of that year. 

Adding guitarist Dave Gregory after their keyboardist left, the band recorded Drums and Wires with producer Steve Lillywhite and released Drums and Wires in August 1979. The first single, "Making Plans for Nigel," had a big guitar and drums sound that was very "new wavy" and got attention across the pond. It was a big hit on the radio in Toronto, where I was a young twerp at the time; both me and my little brother loved it. The song ended up hitting #12 on the Canadian singles chart and hit #17 in the U.K. The group's next album, 1980's Black Sea, also did well, with "Generals and Majors" getting a lot of airplay; the album hit #41 on the Billboard 200 in the U.S.

XTC did an extensive stadium tour opening for the Police and Partridge was struggling with mental problems as a result. For their next project, Partridge decided to create a more complex album that would result in less pressure to tour. English Settlement came out in February 1982 and its lead single "Senses Working Overtime" was an immediate hit. The album was a double LP in the U.K. but only released as a single LP in other territories including the U.S. 

The Partridge-penned "Senses Working Overtime" became the highest charting single XTC ever had in the UK, reaching #10 as the album hit #5. The hook was based on Manfred Mann's 1964 song "5-4-3-2-1." It was a lot different than the band's previous singles, opting for a more acoustic, poppier direction. It's just a brilliant, sunny joy ride of a song that never fails to get yer head bobbing; a real toe-tapper, as the olds say.

"And all the world is football-shaped/It's just for me to kick in space/And I can see, hear, smell, touch, taste/And I've got one, two, three, four, five/Senses working overtime."

Of course, it's not all sunshine and moonbeams. Ever the snarky lyricist, Partridge draws a distinction between the "innocents" and the "guilty ones," who he says can "all sleep safely" early in the song. Later, he sings the innocents "can all live slowly" while the guilty ones "can all die slowly." Partridge said in an interview that he wrote the song about how all five senses are working overtime taking life in, and it's too much. He stumbled on a medieval-sounding chord and then wrote the song so the person is struggling with life's woes but still in wonderment at the world around him.

Unfortunately, XTC was unable to capitalize on the popularity of the single and album. The band had scheduled its first headlining tour but Partridge's stage fright caused an English tour to be canceled and later, the same happened with the U.S. tour. The cancellation left the band in debt, at which point they realized their manager had been ripping them off, taking loans from Virgin Records and borrowing against XTC's royalties. The band's inability to tour didn't help matters and ultimately, they never saw any publishing royalties over the course of their 20-year contract with Virgin.

After Partridge took time off to recover, the band became a studio-only entity and resumed making albums. They scored some radio and video hits over the years and for 1989's Oranges & Lemons, they did an acoustic U.S. radio tour and even played "King for a Day" on Late Night With David Letterman, their first performance in front of a live audience in seven years. There were only three more albums released over the next 11 years and the band partnership remained intact from a business perspective, but Partridge and Moulding went their separate ways as musical partners. Moulding and drummer Terry Chambers released an EP in 2017 under the name TC&I and played a couple of shows. 

XTC had a long, strange trip, but thankfully, they left behind plenty of great music to remember them by.

Stuck In Thee Garage #426: May 27, 2022

Forty years in the wilderness. To get an idea of what was going on 40 years ago, the Millennial generation didn't even have a name yet, E.T. was using a landline to phone home, and the world was introduced to a badass named Mr. T. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played music from 1982 in hour 2 and it was a great and glorious affair.

Laugh it up, playlist:

Hour 1

Artist - Song/Album

Porridge Radio - Birthday Party/Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky

Interpol - Toni/The Other Side of Make Believe

The Smile - Pana-vision/A Light for Attracting Attention

Bodega - How Can I Help Ya/Broken Equipment

Pink Mountaintops - Muscles/Peacock Pools

50 Foot Wave - Black Pearl/Black Pearl

Mister Goblin - Over the Moon/Bunny

Pillow Queens - Hearts & Minds/Leave the Light On

Craig Finn - The Amarillo Kid/A Legacy of Rentals

Adulkt Life - Country Pride/Book of Curses

Fontaines D.C. - How Cold Love Is/Skinty Fia

Cave In - Heavy Pendulum/Heavy Pendulum

Sasami - Call Me Home/Squeeze

PUP - Relentless/The Unraveling of PUPtheband

Guided By Voices - Climbing a Ramp/Crystal Nuns Cathedral

Hour 2: 1982

The Clash - Straight to Hell/Combat Rock

Peter Gabriel - I Have the Touch/Security

The Cure - The Hanging Garden/Pornography

Bad Brains - Big Take Over/Bad Brains

Mission of Burma - Learn How/Vs.

Lou Reed - Waves of Fear/The Blue Mask

Prince - Delirious/1999

Gang of Four - I Love a Man in Uniform/Songs of the Free

A Flock of Seagulls - I Ran (So Far Away)/A Flock of Seagulls

Berlin - The Metro/Pleasure Victim

Missing Persons - Walking in LA/Spring Session M

Kim Mitchell - Kids in Action/Kim Mitchell

Van Halen - Where Have All the Good Times Gone?/Diver Down

Robert Plant - Burning Down Side One/Pictures at Eleven

Husker Du - M.I.C./In a Free Land

Completely Conspicuous 558: Steppin' Out

Part 2 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey as we discuss our favorite albums of 1982. Listen to the episode below or download directly (right click and "save as").

Show notes:

- Recorded via Zoom

- Phil's #5: Steely Dan singer goes solo

- Jazzy feel is a logical extension from Gaucho

- Jay's #5 and Phil's #3: R.E.M. makes its debut with iconic EP

- Influential on many bands who followed

- Different sounds coming out of the underground

- Phil's #4: His image has been tarnished, but Michael Jackson released a monster album

- Videos from this album broke a lot of ground

- Being mistaken from MJ

- Jay's #4: Peter Gabriel stays weird but starts breaking through in the U.S.

- Dark subject matter and interesting sonics

- Set himself up for huge commercial breakthrough in a few years

- Jay's #3: Mission of Burma's first full-length album

- Wasn't well-known, but very influential on alt-rock artists

- Played with U2 in Boston

- Jay's #2: Another influential debut release, this time from Bad Brains

- Ferocious live performers

- One of the great album covers of all time

- Phil's #1: A jazz-influenced masterpiece from Joe Jackson

- No guitar to be found

- Very cosmopolitan feel

- Phil's #2 and Jay's #1: Prince breaks through to the mainstream

- Prince didn't care what anybody thought about him

- In the middle of an incredible run of great albums

- When mixtape songs are taken too literally

- Favorite songs: "Breaking Us In Two" (Phil), "Delirious" (Jay)

Completely Conspicuous is available through Apple Podcasts. Subscribe and write a review!

The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.

Completely Conspicuous 557: Senses Working Overtime

Part 1 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey as we discuss our favorite music of 1982. Listen to the episode below or download directly (right click and "save as").

Show notes:

- Recorded via Zoom

- Callback to the CompCon eps looking at '82-2000 with Brian Salvatore a while back

- My lists changed since then

- In '82, Jay turned 15, Phil turned 13

- Jay: The only full year I spent in Washington state

- Jay: Was big into hard rock and metal, which I listened to on my Walkman

- John Belushi died; the woman who sold him the drugs had ties to the Band and Gordon Lightfoot

- Top single of the year was Olivia Newton-John's "Physical"

- Phil's non-top 5 picks: Pete Townshend, Led Zeppelin, Neil Young, Jerry Garcia, Lou Reed, The Who, Tom Petty, XTC, Talking Heads, Billy Squier, Genesis, Duran Duran, Rush, Dire Straits, Elvis Costello, Robert Plant, English Beat, The Clash, Men at Work, Stray Cats

- Senses Working Overtime was almost the name of this podcast

- The power of MTV to make or break artists back in the '80s

- Phil had a connection to Lee Rocker of the Stray Cats

- Jay's non-top 5's: Iron Maiden, Van Halen, Judas Priest, Misfits, Scorpions, Phil Collins, The Cure

- To be continued

Completely Conspicuous is available through Apple Podcasts. Subscribe and write a review!

The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.

Ye Olde Hit Parade: Run to the Hills

1982: Iron Maiden - Run to the Hills

After the major changes of the previous year, 1982 was pretty stable for our family. We had moved into a decent-sized house across town in Richland, Washington and I began the second half of my freshman year at a new high school. It took a little while to make friends, but I did eventually.

World events were interesting: The 10-week Falklands War between Argentina and the United Kingdom kicked off, seven people died in Chicago of Tylenol poisoning and a guy named Lawn Chair Larry flew 16,000 feet above Long Beach, California, in a lawn chair with weather balloons attached. In addition, the first CDs were manufactured in Germany.

But I didn't know about CDs. I was all about cassettes, since I got a Sony Walkman that year. I was still buying vinyl, but I would tape albums onto cassettes so I could listen to them at school. The recordings were of extremely shitty quality because I didn't know squat about proper recording techniques, but the portability was awesome.

Musically, I was getting more and more into hard rock and metal, and there was plenty of it to listen to: There were new releases from Iron Maiden, Van Halen, Led Zeppelin (an outtakes collection), Rush, Robert Plant, Scorpions and Judas Priest. I had to seek out this stuff on my own, because we didn't have MTV yet and the one "rock" station in town stuck to top 40. I quickly got sick of stuff like Steve Miller's "Abracadabra," Olivia Newton John's "Physical," "Ebony and Ivory" by Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson because it got played to death. I also remember being very disappointed by the debut album from Asia, a so-called supergroup comprised of people from bands I liked such as Yes and Emerson, Lake and Palmer. On paper, it should have been good and proggy, but man, did it suck.

Another place I found out about music was Night Flight on USA Network, which would play concerts by the likes of Neil Young and Cheap Trick, but also would play videos like Judas Priest's "You've Got Another Thing Comin'. I discovered rock magazines like Circus and Hit Parader, as well as Rolling Stone, so that's where I got a lot of my information. And there were a couple of record stores in town, so I spent my allowance on music and comic books. I was aware of Iron Maiden and had picked up their live EP Maiden Japan while I was still in Toronto, but now they had a new singer named Bruce Dickinson and a new studio album called The Number of the Beast. Now I had been raised fairly religiously by my Christian mom, so I knew all about Revelations and the Anti-Christ and all that jazz. So I was a little freaked out by the new Maiden record at first. But as I read about the band and realized the cover showed their mascot Eddie controlling the devil, I came to the conclusion that they weren't devil worshippers; it was more like a horror movie. Nevertheless, when I bought the album, I made sure my mom didn't catch sight of it. She probably would have called an exorcist or something.


The lead single was "Run to the Hills," a galloping beast of a thrasher about the first European settlers arriving in North America and attacking Native Americans. I didn't see the video until years later and I never heard it on the radio, but between my vinyl and the tape copy, I listened to it constantly in '82. That summer, we drove up to Seattle and took a ferry over to Vancouver and while we were in the car, I heard a radio interview on Seattle's KISW-FM with members of the band, who were in town to play the Kingdome that night.

The single only charted in the UK and Ireland, but the album was a huge success for the band. It got to #33 on the U.S. album charts, but it hit #1 in the UK and has sold more than 14 million copies worldwide since its release.

I kept my metal fandom to myself mostly, although it's not like I had a ton of friends, anyway. The guys I did hang out with were more into stuff like REO Speedwagon and Survivor, which didn't really interest me. But thanks to my trusty Walkman, I could blast Maiden or Ozzy whenever I wanted.

Honorable mentions: Judas Priest - "You've Got Another Thing Comin'"; Rush - "New World Man"; Van Halen - "Pretty Woman"; Scorpions - "No One Like You"; April Wine - "Enough Is Enough"; Robert Plant - "Burning Down One Side"; Led Zeppelin - "Wearing and Tearing"; Joan Jett and the Blackhearts - "I Love Rock N' Roll"; Tom Petty - "You Got Lucky"; Aldo Nova - "Fantasy"; Coney Hatch - "Devil's Deck"; A Flock of Seagulls - "I Ran (So Far Away)"; The Clash - "Rock the Casbah"; Iron Maiden - "The Number of the Beast"; Peter Gabriel - "Shock the Monkey"