This week I got some Radio-Friendly Canadian Rock of the 80s. Hopefully it kickstarts some very cool memories for you. While almost everything else on lovehatethings is Creative Commons, this is not, and if the CRIA or any of the artists order me to take this down, I'll gladly comply. But until then, if you dig it, maybe you'll go and buy it, which will make everyone happy in the end.
Who would've thought that class warfare could be so elegantly reduced down to a two minute video clip from a 1980's television comedy? I looked for a transcription of this and, as I couldn't find it, devoted 10 minutes to transcribing it myself. Who needs Marx and Engels when you've got Tarlek and Nessman? This clip is an allegory for all that's gone bad in society... well, maybe not, but then again, I wear dungarees.
HERB TARLEK:
The whole world is in revolution. And not just here, but everywhere. And you know who's at war? It's The Dungarees v. The Suits. The whole world is in two armed camps. Over here you have The Dungarees and over here The Suits.
Remember the rise in the 50s? It was The Dungarees v. The Suits. And then Watergate. Those guys arrested were wearing dungarees and who suffered for it?
LES NESSMAN:
The Suits.
HERB TARLEK:
Exactly.
LES NESSMAN:
There are issues Herb.
HERB TARLEK:
The issues, Les, are a smokescreen.
Now listen. When a son disobeys his father, what's he wearing?
LES NESSMAN:
The son? um... dungarees!
HERB TARLEK:
And what's the father got on?
LES NESSMAN:
Probably a suit!
HERB TARLEK:
You see what I mean Les? And you know what's worse? The fathers are beginning to wear dungarees too!
LES NESSMAN:
That's right!
HERB TARLEK:
So are the mothers!
LES NESSMAN:
It's just like the Body Snatchers.
HERB TARLEK:
Exactly! The Body Snatchers! The Dungarees are forcing The Suits right off the face of this earth!
But we can't allow this to happen!
LES NESSMAN:
What do we do Herb?
HERB TARLEK:
We've gotta get tough. I've got an idea that'll turn this whole thing to our advantage. Get us back some of the jobs that we used to handle around here. I mean Travis cannot cut us out of everything.
I remember well when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles issue #1 came out. It was exactly 2 months before I started collecting comics in the 80s, and when the limited run of the first Eastman and Laird classic shot up in price, I was priced out. Being a completist, since I wasn't going to be able to afford issue #1, I forsook the series completely. But, even then, being the stalwart pop culture kid, I wanted in on this martial arts/animal meme.
I scrounged the comic racks and bins for my very own mutant animal fighters. While I'm sure I didn't find them all, I did find the following:
Cold Blooded Chameleon Commandos
Geriatric Gangrene Jujitsu Gerbils
Mildly Microwaved Pre-Pubescent Kung Fu Gophers
Pre-Teen Dirty-Gene Kung-Fu Kangaroos
and my favorite...
Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters
Just to prove I am not making these up, I have included scans of the issue #1 covers from my dusty archive. I've also included an issue #1 cover of Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters 3D.
I'm not saying these were great literature. I'm admitting some sad geek status in owning them. And I'm wondering if ANY of you remember ANY of these or if I own the only copies left in existence.
Pardon my nostalgic waxings. I've got to put my bags and boards away... if you don't know, you won't know.
As a child, my family would go camping 5 or 6 times each summer for weekends. We'd haul the camper behind the Oldsmobile for hours until we found a spot that that had an arcade and vending machines... after all, there's gotta be something for the kids to do that didn't involve "nature" stuff.
One of the things I started to do was collect beer bottles. I was nowhere near old enough to drink yet, but I would raid campsites all over Ontario and try to focus on license plates that were from out of province. Sometimes I'd trade so as not to rip someone off of ten cents. Other times I'd just sneak onto their campsite late and abscond with a forgotten empty laying on the grass around the fire.
In yet another walk down memory lane, I offer up pictures of many of the stubbies in my collection. I wish I could take the credit for the pictures, but they come from a site I heartily recommend you visit - www.Stubby.ca Go there for a few hundred pictures of timeless bottles from all over Canada. Seriously, go there now!
Even if you're from nowhere near the Great White North, perhaps you can find something in the design aspects of some genuine works of art that were the beer labels of the 70s and 80s.
BTW, I'm not even start on my collection of some of the US stubbies I have... after all, when I lifted them from cross-border travelers I may have run the risk of causing an international incident and I don't know what the statute of limitations is on Stubby Theft.
Every kid likes candy. If you didn't like candy, it's because you lost your taste buds in a horrible smelting accident. I remember growing up with candy type that I just can't find anymore, or, if they are around, they don't seem as cool as they used to be. Now I'm not talking chocolate bars here; that's its own special category. I'm talking compressed, molded sugar of various artificial flavors.
Gold Rush Gum
The packaging is what made this gum desirable. If memory serves, the gum was crap. But what kid wouldn't love a cool little candy bag with a drawstring to keep when the were done. P
erhaps this same design ploy was attached to Crown Royal as I got older.
Koo Koo
This Neopolitan Choco-Vanilla-Strawberry striped taffy was all the rage for a short time and was visually appealing because for the same price as a package of smaller candy, the surface area alone would draw you in. The taffy was about what you'd expect in a mashed down strip wherein the "flavors" really didn't taste to different from each other. I, in fact, once rolled up the taffy into a ball to prove to a friend there really wasn't a tremendous value in this landing strip confection. Now that was a helluva taffy ball chew to get through.
Bottle Caps
Bottle Caps were absolutely awesome! Here was a candy, shaped like bottle caps, that actually had a lingering taste of the pop they were supposed to represent. I can imagine the marketing wizards sitting around a table coming up with these: "Here's an idea! Let's pack some solid sugar together to taste like liquid sugar!" If parents tell their kids not to drink too much pop, they can enjoy Bottle Caps instead.
Sweet Tarts
Not much deception in the name here. They were sweet. They were tart. They were different colors, but the colors seemed inconsequential. You would inevitably be enjoying the sweet flavor with mild amount of sour along the way until you got down to where you bit the candy. Then it was all over. You could rarely stop from making the "sour" face as the powdered explosion hit your taste buds. Happy times!
Pop Rocks
Still legendary. The source of many a mythological horror story about the kid who put 8 packs of Pop Rocks in his mouth and drank a can of Coke. It was kin
d of like the candy version of Bloody Mary. In fact, the myth went so far as to claim it cost the life of Life Cereal spokeskid Mikey: "His head blew up! Hey Mikey!" The taste was meaningless. Pop Rocks were the Mexican Jumping Beans of your mouth. How much cooler could it get?
Popeye Candy Cigarettes
Screw health and political correct candy. If I was too scared to get caught smoking, I certainly wasn't too scared to pretend I was with candy cigarettes. The sad thing is they forced a name change to "candy sticks". Really? Did they honestly that candy sticks shilled by the ugliest sailor on the high seas was going to be a "gateway" snack to a nicotine fix. I mean, it's not like the character had ever been used before to shill something equally distasteful like vegetables or something... wait... never mind. Forget about smoking. The candy itself probably had more damaging substances than the average cigarette. Check out the ingredients on that package: corn starch, sugar, corn syrup, palm oil, gelatine, artificial flavors and colors... REALLY? ARTIFICIAL? Who would've guessed this wouldn't have the all natural tastes of tar and tobacco?
Hubba Bubba
Yeah, Bubblicious was cool as well, but Hubba Bubba had a name that rhymed, and for a single-digit aged kid, that's all it took. The bubble were no-stick as well. In as much as I loved Double Bubble and the enclosed comic strips growing up, Hubba Bubba was that next-gen late 70's breakthrough of square gum that burst on the scene with a bunch of groovy commercials.
Starburst Fruit Chews
Alright, I know that any candy that has fruit in the name should never pass a kid's lips, but that was the ploy of the name. By putting the word "fruit" in it, not only could you tell your parents you ate fruit with lunch, but you could also live under the illusion that your logic in convincing them that the "real" fruit in the flavoring MUST be healthy for you.
"Capsule" Candy
This is more of a category wrap up than an individual candy. The pill-like confections in boxes like Mike and Ike's, Goodies, Good & Plenty, and Hot Tamales were much more of a threat than Popeye cigarettes. These "pills" allowed you to "be like mom" in popping your candy valium or Contact C for the day. Lookie like every "diet pill" that was ever made, in many of the same colors, it's a small wonder these were allowed to live on. Maybe if they called them Betty Boop's Secret Pill Stash Candy, they would've been outlawed.
Life Savers
We had a Life Saver factory in my hometown of Hamilton, Ontario. The Life Saver Christmas Book, containing ten rolls, was the most popular gift during the in-class gift exchange growing up... although 8 year-olds have a hard time getting past Butter Rum. Life Savers crossed over in pop culture in a huge way when the inspirational "Have a Life Saver, maybe it'll make you feel better" was used as one of the greatest punchlines on Happy Days. Wayda go Mr. C!
Okay, right off, if you don't know who Pete Frame is, let me drop some science on you (I feel so lame saying that!)
I first discovered Pete Frame through my love of 70's progressive rock. Frame became known for laying out elaborate family trees of musicians and bands to throughout different lineups and generations. 60's and 70's music was almost incestuous in nature. The concept of the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon as it relates to film, could almost be distilled down to the Two or Three Degrees of Bill Bruford or John Wetton when it comes to progressive rock. But Frame laid out every type of pop music: folk, rock, funk, metal, etc..
The great thing about rock family trees is they told a story. If you had a favorite guitar player or drummer and wanted to find out where they came from, you could go to a family tree and track their career back to bands you'd never heard of before. Such a journey opened up the possibilities to music you never knew existed but were willing to take a chance on buying a cassette or album due to the tenuous links set out before you on paper. The ink link had become a recommendation engine that was based on career tracking of musicians.
I'll never forget when the first Asia album came out and the geek in me fell hypnotized to the Roger Dean fantasy dragon on the cover and hearing about this supergroup of musicians I had never heard of before. I had no older siblings and never was initiated into much of the music of the early 70s. My formative years were spent listening to AM radio and top 40 hits. But when that Asia album broke, and it was the biggest selling album of 1982, I fell in love with it and started to research this supergroup's origins. With no world wide web or older siblings to turn to, I happened upon Pete Frame's book of Rock Family Trees.
I learned that Asia was comprised of Steve Howe from Yes, Carl Palmer from Emerson Lake and Palmer, Geoff Downes from the Buggles [remember Video Killed the Radio Star?] and John Wetton from almost every other 70's group combined. I also learned that Yes had a ridiculous amount of lineup changes from the early to late 70s which included Bill Bruford who went on to play drums for King Crimson with John Wetton. Geoff Downes was in the Buggles with Trevor Horn (who would soon produce Frankie Goes to Hollywood), but before that they joined Steve Howe in Yes for a single album. Carl Palmer had played with crazy psychedelic outfits like The Crazy World of Arthur Brown and Atomic Rooster before joining Emerson Lake and Palmer. ELP's Greg Lake came originally from King Crimson which, after he left, counted John Wetton and Bill Bruford among its members (this surrounding a short stint Bruford did with Genesis). Lake ended up touring with Asia on a Japanese tour in 1983 for an ailing Wetton. Wetton also played with Roxy Music and Uriah Heep. Keith Emerson played with a band called The Nice before ELP and The Nice's Davy O'List joined a band called Refugee with Patrick Moraz (who also played with Yes for an album). Rick Wakeman of Yes also played with The Strawbs, and Alan White, who took over on drums for Bill Bruford, played with John Lennon, Eric Clapton and friends in the Plastic Ono Band.
Before wikipedia or the worldwide web, I had an incredible two page resource that distilled down the stories of dozens of musicians into a digestible format. I went on a spending spree buying up all the used albums I could find. Pete Frame had unwittingly become the Digg of the early 80s. If music companies want a tool that would be great to take digital music into the future, they should join together to allow users to generate their own family trees. One could track their favorite band back through time, or sideways through side projects to discover new artists. I suppose one of the biggest problems with modern music is that we'd have to eliminate the "feat." appearances from many modern recordings lest the connections become too unwieldy. And I also fear that most teenagers today have lost the ability and desire to commit to a band's infrastructure, much less an entire CD or discography. And I know that iTunes has a Genius and Amazon has a "people who've bought this have also bought" section at the bottom of every page, but these systems don't tell a story. They don't give a musician's evolution. I would always prefer discovering something on my own (or at least have the illusion of it) than buying related goods just because other people have.
Wherefore art thou Pete Frame. Music needs you again.
I don't think it's uncommon for many teenagers to grow up thinking that a job in a music or video store as being somewhat cool. You get to surround yourself with pop culture all day, every day, and (at least when I was growing up) had the ability to exercise that music snobbery so effectively portrayed by the clerks in High Fidelity or Empire Records.
And for a period of time, I had the opportunity to work in a video store when I was around 18 years old and going to university. While I enjoyed the job immensely, and planned on staying there for a period of time, I never thought that Patrick Swayze would cost me my job.
In as much as the part-time staff at a video store is made up of students trying to make supplemental education money, and the full-time staff (save the occasional owner/operator) is someone who is there as a way station, the average employee really lives by the basic tenet of: do as little as you can while still pulling in the minimum wage salary that's keeping you out of a fast food kitchen. From this general rule comes a couple of key realities: 1) anyone who shows any initiative whatsoever is a likely candidate for assistant manager, and 2) 15 to 18 year-old guys only show initiative for one thing, and it's not organizing a VHS inventory "fun day".
And so it came to pass that I was working in a video where the two "adult" managers had decided that the two "assistant" managers would be teenage girls. Now, let it be clear that I never coveted the job or begrudged the young women forced to oversee the occasional evening shift of the general ne'er-do-wells. I was quite happy slumming at the register, restocking the shelves or feasting on a slice of greasy pizza for dinner on the picnic table out back.
The one thing that did absolutely drive me insane however, was that both of the assistant manager were absolutely in LOVE with all things Dirty Dancing. When they worked the film played non-stop, sometimes for eight hours a shift. Maybe Bill Medley had the time of his life recording soundtrack fodder for the trite piece of cinematic drivel that was Dirty Dancing. But I wanted to sharpen a pencil and jam it in my ear after the third hour. I worked there for a year and the film never changed. Dirty Dancing from shift beginning to shift end whenever the young women were "managing". If enough of us ganged up and whined enough, we could arrange the occasional showing of Adventures in Babysitting when they went off on break... not much better I know, but a far cry from Swayze and Baby.
I soon learned that Swayze was the real culprit. For soon after the onslaught began Patrick Swayze pictures and posters started going up in the break room and magazines with his picture were left conspicuously under the register. I, through a complete lack of tactless honesty, had let it be known of my distaste for the film and everything to do with it. I could, therefore, never get away with destroying the store's dozens of copies or mangling the posters.
I would have to assert my revenge in another way.
You're probably wondering, at this point, how Swayze actually cost my job.
There was an unwritten rule in the store that once someone put a tape in, it would be allowed to finish. The tape choice was also decided by store rank. While I never was around long enough to hold such a position, the only time I had say over which tape was in the machine was 8:30am Sunday morning. The overnight guy was cashing out and I manned the front counter alone for half an hour before the "assistant managers" came in to help with the ongoing build of the post-church crowd that crescendoed around noon. One of those mornings I scoured the store, not only for something that I could live with, and was rated PG or lower, but something that disgust and revolt any of the Dirty Devotees.
I settled on a concert film. I settled on Pink Floyd at Pompeii.
For six glorious months of Sunday mornings I cranked the volume to eleven and freaked out many a church-goer and their children to the demonic strains of One Of These Days I'm Going To Cut You Into Little Pieces and Careful With That Axe Eugene. The psychedelic volcanoes exploding over the Italian ruins were enough send many a customer away from whichever section was nearby. I have to give credit to my assistant managers as they clearly hated my weekly selection, but respected the unwritten law. Although I knew I was in for three straight showings of DD when Floyd was done, Pompeii gave me a sense of poetic justice.
And we all were quite willing to grin and bear it until one Sunday morning the "adult" manager came in early and saw David Gilmour playing an acoustic guitar while a dog howled accompaniment in a studio clip. Said manager decreed that Pink Floyd at Pompeii was not an appropriate film to be shown at nine o'clock on a Sunday morning.
I calmly retorted that "Dirty Dancing was not an appropriate film to be shown to anyone with an I.Q. above 50, yet I was forced to watch it three times a shift."
He replied, "No one's making you watch it. You should be working anyway."
I tried to argue that my productivity suffered at having to be lulled into a soma-like trance by the horrible sappy music and hackneyed storyline.
He stammered that I should really consider if I truly wanted to be a proud family member of the store's staff.
Turns out... "no".
If it wasn't for Patrick Swayze's hunky good looks to all the teenage girls, I could've been king of the video store... not the most impressive title for sure, but how many kings do you know?
Whenever I used to dub my vinyl over to cassette, I found that, in having an hour to 90 minutes, my time might be better spent doing some artwork instead of just track listings. I offer a few of my collection of 20-25 year-old cassette art.
"Screws fall out all the time, the world is an imperfect place." - John Bender (The Breakfast Club)
Upon the passing of John Hughes, who most of us remember as a director, it behooves us to think back to his writing output that extended up until 2008. Hughes only directed eight films, including many 80's teen classics, and even though many of his scripts could be deemed silly, populist, or juvenile, there was an undeniable ability to tell a story and reach niche audiences.
As you peruse the following list, there are certainly some films that you may regard as "stinkers", but you'll have heard of almost all of them if you are a fan of Hollywood productions.
I know that John Hughes is not often referred to in the canon of great directors or Hollywood writers, but his are some of the most loved stories of a generation. He was master of the youth archetype. He married contemporary music with interwoven plot. His characters exuded fun, angst, and shared in conclusions of poetic justice. I daresay that had I the energy or inclination, I could draw parallels between Hughes' plots and The Bard.
John Bender as the tough guy with a heart of gold. Samantha Baker as the tortured teen who's fantasies come true. Gary Wallace as the quintessential 80's tech geek. Ferris Bueller as the untouchable Puck who we all wanted to be.
He inspired us to fight authority, have fun, be individualistic and fight for what believed in. He was an icon of pop culture and there was a time when his name attached to a film meant, at the very least, an entertaining character-driven romp.
We'll miss you Mr. Hughes. I can think of no better eulogy than the contemplation of the following:
I know some of these clips will seems ridiculous to anyone who did grow up with them, but these are the video games of my childhood. Not to say I didn't drop ton of quarters into arcade machines every week, but a video game at home was the holy grail. And I guess for some it still is.
