“Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.”
- Quinten Crisp
It's Friday, time to talk about a few words from songs that got our attention and stuck in our brains. Lines that show up in our heads at the oddest, most random times. Sometimes when they pop into our noggins we reflexively say them out loud and people we're with look at us with blank expressions. “Sorry" we say, "It's from a song. Never mind.”
Welcome to the Boomtown/David and David: The duo of David Baerwald and David Ricketts only put out one album, Boomtown in 1986. If you're going to drop just one record, a jewel like that is the way to do it. Welcome to the Boomtown is the first track. It's a snapshot of the soulless place that was Los Angeles in the 80s. Does anyone imagine that it's better now?
Handsome Kevin got a little off track/He took a year off of college and he never went back
Now, he smokes much too much, got a permanent hack
Deals dope out of Denny's, keeps a table in the back
He always listens to the ground/Always listens to the ground
So I say “Welcome…Welcome to the Boomtown
Pick a habit, we got plenty to go around"
Don't Fight It/Red Rider: Once out of the Marine Corps and back in college in the early 80s, I frequented a record store near campus. When I could scrape together a few coins, I'd go in and always come out with a thing or two. When there was no money, I'd just go in to browse and talk with the owner about music. He was a cool cat of a guy who should have been cast as one of the music geeks in High Fidelity. I wish I could remember his name, and the name of the store too.
He always had a record playing as most record stores did. One day the one that was blasting through the speakers caught my attention: “I'm white hot/I can't take it anymore/I'm white hot/By the Somalian shore.”
“Who is that?”
“Red Rider, man. Great band.”
Well, I knew the name because their song Lunatic Fringe was all over AOR across the land. The owner assured me that this album, As Far as Siam, kicked from top to bottom, but the band's first one did as well. I left with both.
Red Rider was a Canadian outfit led by Tom Cochrane. After they broke up in the mid-80s, he went on to a fine solo career. He wrote Life is a Highway. You might have heard of it. The song here is the title track from their first record, Don't Fight It.
She likes her fever/She says take it like a man
And we fight combat sometimes/But we don't fight it hand-to-hand
Movin' On/Rascal Flatts: Like dysentery, I try to avoid just about anything out of mainstream Nashville. There are a couple of exceptions, Miranda Lambert, mostly, but, by and large, no thank you. Every once in a blue moon, though, something from that slick city will break through my force field. This one did. And, they did a pretty nice job with Life is a Highway, too.
I sold what I could and packed what I couldn't/Stopped to fill up on my way out of town
I loved like I should and lived like I shouldn't/I had to lose everything to find out
Maybe forgiveness will find me somewhere down this road
I'm movin' on
What say you?