Stuck in a Moment

Clear skies again, after the deluge of last week. It was a beautiful day.
Listening to U218 on AOL now, with first track being ... . A year or two before I joined the recording retail business, I actually had a cable TV connection. MTV was, maybe, ten dollars extra a month, so I wouldn't pay it. But a regular channel featured videos to grab the school kids whose parents wouldn't let them have the-then controversial vid channel. (Remember "I want my EMMM TEE VEEE!"? Came out the year I started selling records for a living.) I remember what the early 80s music scene was like -- the sync dancing, low-rez synths, mic headsets and hair mousse just started (Remember Flock of Seagulls?) and word was getting around that this was the future of the industry forever.
U2 started out as an Irish Duran Duran with the costumes and hair gel to match. Except instead of the required keyboard synth, they used Edge's digitized guitar effects. That got them two albums of material their label liked. I found out later, when I started in music retail, that most bands usually got a three-album deal. Profits from the first one went largely to the label, money from the second went to promoters and middlemen, and the third's loot went to the band. So naturally, the label hires an ace producer and gets the best material together for the first one, the second gets a "fix-it-in-the-mix" producer and material the band writes from the road while they're touring to promote the first one. Then, if the band still exists by that time, they get to go to, maybe, somebody's barn with some second-hand recording gear to go be "creative" for the third.
U2 recorded good synth-pop (kind-of) for U2 and Boy, and then they reportedly were turned loose on their own* for number three. Did they churn out some moody-broody mess that nobody bought? Not exactly. War was recorded (and it's Let It Be-style rooftop vid's) on a budget -- but they apparently were waiting for the chance to break it open. "War" was topical, rocked the daylights out of American radio, and gave the band a world-class reputation. No hair mousse or synchronized dancing, either.
My U2 fave album is Joshua Tree. My fave U2 song is "Where the Streets Have No Name."
One record that came out the year I worked the record register was totally different from the rest, yet was commercial. Everything else that year was some kind of imitation of Thriller -- minor-key synth motif, image-heavy lyrics (for the vid), thump-ka-thum-thum backbeat and the rest we're all familiar with. Everybody from Springsteen to Knopfler (see above) was doing something to fit that mold. But there was one from some band nobody'd ever heard of, with nobody's picture on the front or back, and songs from the 50's. It was called "The Honeydrippers." Robert Plant and company made a really memorable bit of music fluff that was great listening, if all you had otherwise was "Like a Virgin" or "When Doves Cry" (bleah).
"Come with me, my love, to the sea ... the Sea of Love ... ." The sea is, of course, is a rock music metaphor for sex, but it's also a Jungian archetype for the unconscious mind, even the collective unconscious. Well, I thought it was cool, anyway.

___
*War was not self-produced. Steve Lillywhite was the ace in that department. I amended that in a re-post some years later.


LJ orig.: 11/26/06