“I’ll give you a million dollars to go and record another album. This is not happening, this is shit.”- The initial reaction of Doug Morris, then-president of Atlantic Records, after listening to what became INXS’s Kick album
The late Michael Hutchence of INXS was born on this date in 1960. A handful of the group’s songs are included on today’s playlist.
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One night in December 1994 my friend Kathy and I attended the WDRE Acoustic Xmas show at New York City’s Beacon Theater. There were multiple artists on the bill, each getting a short slot to perform three or four songs. The acts were The Go-Go’s, Big Audio Dynamite, Jesus and Mary Chain, frente!, Love Spit Love, Black 47, G. Love & Special Sauce, and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood. I looked up online who performed, as the only act I recall seeing there were the Radiohead guys. The band had one album out at that time, 1993’s Pablo Honey. Kathy and I just wanted them to do their hit – “Creep” – and then skedaddle. They didn’t play “Creep.” They played some song about plastic trees and one about an iron long and some other mess. Kathy and I knew this band would never be heard from again.
Oops.
Radiohead’s Thom Yorke was born on this date in 1968. Lots of Thom’s work on today’s playlist.
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Upon its initial release, The Clash’s “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” reached number 17 on the UK singles chart. Following the song’s inclusion in a Levi’s commercial, the single was reissued in 1991 and this time went to number one on the UK singles chart, knocking out Bart Simpson’s “Do The Bartman.” That in a nutshell is the UK singles chart.
The Clash’s Mick Jones turns 68 today. Showing him some love on today’s playlist.
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“Pretty In Pink,” The Psychedelic Furs’ 1981 song about a woman named Caroline who sleeps with different men who mock her for being so “loose,” became the title song to a 1986 movie scripted by John Hughes about a teenager named Andie who “must choose between the affections of dating her childhood sweetheart or a rich but sensitive playboy.” I pulled that from IMDB, as I’ve never seen the movie. At the time of this movie’s release I had already seen two other movies based on Hughes scripts, Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club, both of which he also directed, and didn’t care much for either, the performances of Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall notwithstanding. (Make that three previous Hughes scripts. Looking at IMDB, I notice that he wrote Class Reunion, a movie I saw only because my dad was an investor in it. It wasn’t good.) I’ll give Hughes this – the music used in his films was, for the most part, winning. So while the song “Pretty In Pink” resembles the storyline of the movie Pretty In Pink as much as I resemble Janelle Monae, it is a good one.
The Psychedelic Furs’ Richard Butler turns 67 today. A couple of his bands songs are included on today’s playlist, including the original mix of “Pretty In Pink.”
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Today’s playlist celebrates the November 19 birthdays of Spiritualized/Spacemen 3’s Jason Pierce, Spacemen 3’s Sonic Boom, Crystal Waters, Ofra Haza, and Tommy Stewart; and the November 20 birthdays of Future, Beastie Boys’ Mike D, The Allman Brothers’ Duane Allman, Purity Ring’s Megan James, Norman Greenbaum, Frightened Rabbit’s Scott Hutchinson, Eagles’ Joe Walsh, Nu Shooz’s Valerie Day, Russian Red, King, and Esquerita.
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Inspired by the August 12 birthdays of Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler, Kid Creole, Sparks’ Ron Mael, Buck Owens, Porter Wagoner, Sir Mix-a-Lot, Tanita Tikaram, Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Joe Jones, Pat Metheny, Infernal’s Lina Rafn, and Michael Ian Black.
Inspired by Black Music Month, LGBTQ Pride Month, and the June 26 birthdays of The Clash/Big Audio Dynamite’s Mick Jones, The 5th Dimension’s Billy Davis Jr., Ariana Grande, B.T. Express’ Louis Risbrook, Chris Isaak, Mr Hudson, The Sundays’ Harriet Wheeler and Wannadies’ Pär Wiksten.
The B-52’s 1980 single “Private Idaho” made Pitchfork’s list of the “500 Greatest Songs from Punk to Present,” present being 2006. In his capsule review, Nitsuh Abebe wrote “Those who dismiss the B-52’s as silly or kitschy should live in fear of the frenzied last half-minute, which sounds like it’s out to track those people down, lock them up in cages, and make them go-go dance until they cry for mercy.”
Every Friday, Tunes du Jour tries to make you dance to welcome in the weekend. This week’s dance playlist kicks off with The B-52’s’ “Private Idaho,” featuring the vocals of Fred Schneider, who turns 65 today. (By the way, the B-52’s first performed in Idaho in 2011.)
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