30 on the 30th: Cloud Nine and "That's What It Takes"

Well, it's my birthday; I'm 49 years old. Looking forward to hitting the half-century mark in just a year's time, I'm wondering a lot about how I got here, and where I'm going to go, and whether I have the strength or time or resourcefulness to get there. And so, of course, in a mystical coincidence that George Harrison himself wouldn't have been surprised by in the least, I end this journey through albums of 1987 that still mean a lot to me 30 years on with a beautiful, reflective, wise, and ultimately upbeat work that was released late in the year, one that I listened to endlessly as winter settled in all around me towards the end of my first semester at BYU: Harrison's awesome Cloud Nine.

I wasn't a huge Beatles fan as a kid, but I heard them; they formed part of my earliest rock and roll consciousness, listening to the radio and being overwhelmed by music from these bands and performers that, in later years, I'd come to recognize as giants. Of the solo work by the individual Beatles, I probably was more likely to identify something by McCartney or Lennon than Harrison. I really didn't know much about him, truth be told. But then this album hit, and "I Got My Mind Set on You" was all over the radio, and I had to give it a listen. And what an ear-opener it was. By turns jangly and smooth, atmospheric and blusey, echoing all of (what I later came to recognize as) Harrison's loves from rockabilly to Indian mysticism, I adored it. Most of all, I guess, I loved how song after song struck rueful, introspective, but never despairing tones. This was an album that owned up to the passage of time, the passing away of things--yet kept its eyes focused straight-ahead nonetheless. In the decades since 1987, as small triumphs and smaller tragedies have piled up and shaped me, this album's sounds have meant more to me all the time.

How to pick one song off it? I'll go with "That's What It Takes," a song I can't find any live recording of anywhere, but whose sound--with Eric Clapton and Harrison trading guitar solos, and Gary Wright's keyboards, under Jeff Lynne's direction, providing a dreamy synthetic undercurrent throughout--is one of the greatest pop creations I've ever heard. "Don't let it stop / never fade away" indeed.

30 on the 30th: Nothing Like the Sun and "Straight to My Heart"

Coming almost to the end here of my series of great albums that I still listen to, 30 years on. I started with U2 in March, then there was Prince in April, Suzanne Vega in May, Level 42 in June, The Grateful Dead in July, Def Leppard in August, INXS in September, and Bruce Springsteen in October. And what now, on the 30th of November, as winter finally begins to really set in here in Kansas? Sting's majesterial Nothing Like the Sun.

Yes, that's right, Gordon Sumner himself: Sting. You liked him, once. Oh, I know, you don't believe you ever did; you've forgotten, or you might even actively insist that you remember hating the man. Especially late 1980s Sting, with his seemingly aristocratic flirtations with Latin American and North African rhythms and jazz instrumentation, with his oh-so-enlightened devotion to protecting the rain forests, with his casual referencing of how his records were banned in Chile by Augusto Pinochet, and most of with his long hair, right? I swear, Sting probably even beats out U2's Bono for the title of major recording star whom everyone insists they never liked these days.

Well, anyway, the point is, you're delusional. You may not have been the man's greatest fan ever, you may have never really forgiven him for breaking up The Police, but you bought his albums, and put up with his world-beat noodling and mediocre poetry and jazz affectations because the results were so much more than the sum of their parts. This album, in particular, was fantastic, filled with clever, engaging, challenging, fun, moving, thoughtful music. Everyone was listening to it, myself included, and we kept on doing so, even as tastes changed, because some of its tracks were just so infectious. And then, I guess sometime around 1995 or so, everyone suddenly decided Sting was a pretentious hack, and had always been a pretentious hack, and the love we all had for this album dropped out of sight. (The only time I saw Sting was when he was on tour for his later album, Mercury Falling, in 1996, when we were living in Washington DC, and I can still remember the gleeful, vicious snark that the Washington City Paper employed in talking about his show. Which was awesome, by the way. Natalie Merchant opened.)

Anyway, here we are, 30 years on, and I love this album still. What track to choose? My favorite (or, at least, my favorite original composition from the album; I confess I really adore Sting's cover of "Little Wing" on Nothing Like the Sun, as overplayed as it definitely became), "Straight to My Heart." Something about this tune just grabbed the college-freshman me: it was a goofy paean to a surprisingly ordinary romance ("Come into my door / Be the light of my life / Come into my door / You'll never have to sweep the floor"), and yes, sure, it made me feel sophisticated and worldly and fine. Watch Sting sing it live from 1988 in Verona; maybe all the annoyance will come rushing back--but the coolness of the song will too.

30 on the 30th: Tunnel of Love and "Tougher Than the Rest"

The year so far (with apologies for having missed the first couple of months) in my list of 30 year-old albums I still listen to: The Joshua Tree (March);  Sign 'o the Times (April); Solitude Standing (May); Running in the Family (June); In the Dark (July); Hysteria (August); Kick (September). And October? Bruce Springsteen's somber, beautiful Tunnel of Love.

I was in my first year at BYU, leaving on my own for the first time, experiencing at least a small dose of adult independence for the first time as well. And if you know anything at all about BYU's Mormon-marriage-happy social culture, it shouldn't be hard to figure out that dating and romance was both strongly expected of everyone but also fraught with all sorts of weirdness. No doubt many tens of the thousands of students over the years--mostly my co-religionists, but one old good friend of mine, a man who was at the time completely irreligious, attended BYU, with a dorm room right next to mine our freshman year, and he had a grand time dating all the Mormon girls--have enjoyed themselves immensely in that environment, but I didn't. Almost from the start, I found myself vaguely confused and disturbed by the mix of romantic motivations all around me--and, of course, being a mixed-up not-quite-20 year-old myself, I could hardly be expected to make any sense of it anyway.

But I could spot good music--and when Springsteen's latest album hit the airwaves in the fall of 1987, and I borrowed a copy from another student who worked out BYU's student newspaper (which I volunteered at that first year, later worked for, and then was fired from, but that's another story) and listened to the whole thing through, I knew I'd found some. I hadn't been a huge Springsteen fan before, though it's probably just about impossible to be a white American male in the 1980s and not have at least enjoyed some of the cuts off his monster success, Born in the U.S.A. Tunnel of Love, though, convinced me in way the previous album hadn't that Springsteen was a tremendous talent, a man who could plaintively sing one sad, defiant, humble, dark, yet powerful even perversely hopeful love song after another, the whole album through. It spoke to me. I think the whole thing is brilliant; in my opinion, there isn't a single weak track on it, which Springsteen hasn't ever accomplished, I'd argue, on any other album he's ever released. Does that mean I think this is his masterpiece? Kind of, yeah.

What track to choose? Any of them, of course. But how about this?

30 on the 30th: Kick and "Need You Tonight/Mediate"

Six months now of 30-year-old albums that, I think at least, are still worth listening to--and that I still do: U2's The Joshua Tree; Prince's Sign o' the Times; Suzanne Vega's Solitude Standing; Level 42's Running in the Family; The Grateful Dead's In The Dark; Def Leppard's Hysteria. And for September? Another great rocker that stands the test of time: INXS's Kick.

The half-dozen people or so who still read this blog probably already know the story, but just in case, here it is one more time. In the fall of 1987 I was a freshman at BYU, and one of the many things I found I loved about college life (yes, even in Provo, UT), was the music. Specifically I loved college radio stations, and even more specifically the groups of people who listened to them, and who thus were able, through their enthusiasm, to inculcate into newbies like myself the ways of a wider world of music. I've detailed this at greater length elsewhere, but suffice to say, the only problem with my musical horizons opening was that, having grown up with a passion for pop music but without any real knowledge of where its various 1980s currents--whether New Wave or synthpop or post-punk--began or ended, lots of this new stuff I was hearing at dances and from roommates, even the stuff that was cracking Top 40 radio (as Kick definitely did!), kind of left me confused. Who played that? They're from where? I was drinking from a fire hose, and there was no internet in those days to help me straighten out the streams. So, to cut to the chase: I knew about this terrific Australian band called "In Excess," and I also knew about--because I'd seen their albums on sale at the BYU Bookstore--another Australian band, that was apparently doing really well, called "Inks," which the weirdly spelled "I-N-X-S." Cool, huh?

I'm pretty sure it wasn't until months after Kick was released, maybe not even until the summer of 1988, when someone finally took pity on me and explained my mistake.

Oh well. It was, and is, an awesome album, one that induces in me no embarrassing flashbacks whatsoever besides this one, and considering that most of my freshman year was just one long embarrassment, that's saying something. Enjoy this live performance; these guys were certainly something, back in the day.

30 on the 30th: Hysteria and "Animal"

My Remembering 30-Year-Old Albums on the 30th Tribute List:

March: U2, The Joshua Tree.
April: Prince, Sign o' the Times
May: Suzanne Vega, Solitude Standing
June: Level 42, Running in the Family
July: The Grateful Dead, In The Dark

And now, August? It was the end of summer, 1987, and what did I do? I drove our family's brand-new (or almost new; I can't quite remember) pick-up truck all around Spokane as fast as I could, listening to my tape cassette of Def Leppard's latest collection of head-banging pop, Hysteria, as loud as I could. And what was my favorite track? The one that sums up exactly what that kind of loud rock is all about, of course: young men fantasizing about sex with girls. The summer before I left for college, that seemed like a fine use of my time. And it still is, sometimes, though my fantasies are somewhat different these days. (Hey, it's long drive to Kansas City; you need something to help the miles go by.)

30 on the 30th: In the Dark and "My Brother Esau"

Continuing my year-long (or nearly so) journey through albums from 1987 that I still listen to and enjoy today, following The Joshua Tree, Sign o' the Times, Solitude Standing, and Running in the Family: before July finishes up, let's salute the Grateful Dead's unexpected pop gem, In the Dark.

I'm cheating a little with this one, as I did with Level 42's small masterpiece last month--while I was familiar with their (first ever!) pop radio hit, "Touch of Grey," I wasn't by any stretch a Dead-head when this album hit during my senior year. And I never really became one, even after--once again!--someone I knew on my mission to South Korea a year or two later, a cool guy who had brought his guitar with him and would spend evenings playing James Taylor, Rolling Stones, and Grateful Dead tunes to a lot of us in the apartment, got me thinking about who these odd folk-rocking guys were. But he did at least convince me to give them a try, and first chance I got after returning to the U.S., I picked up a couple of Dead cassette tapes: the compilation album Skeletons from the Closet and this one. And fell in love.

I wasn't alone; there was a small, dedicated group of Dead-lovers at BYU back in the early 1990s, and anytime anyone in Provo, UT, aspiring to pretend that the city was a "real" college town like we imagined, scheduled some live music on campus or off, and an acoustic guitar was involved, you could be sure that "Friend of the Devil" or "Uncle John's Band" would make an appearance. Some of these folks were more devoted than me; they made the road-trips to Las Vegas or San Francisco, and became fully initiated into the Grateful Dead's happy cult. But I just listened--so much that my original cassette eventually died. Which was a terrible loss, because one of my favorite Dead songs, "My Brother Esau," was for some reason left off the CD version of the album. It's such a strange, wonderful, peppy, Old-Testament rock-and-roll tune, with Bob Weir's refrain "shadow-boxing the Apocalypse / wandering the land" haunting the whole number. Watch this live video, and you get the whole range of mid-late-stage Dead: Weir in his short shorts, the Mick Jagger-esque frontman (even though he doesn't dance); Jerry Garcia, wearing his sweats and flannel shirt, looking at his friend and the world in general with curiosity and bemusement; Brent Mydland hyped up, jamming out on the keyboards; Phil Lesh, playing his bass from some other planet entirely. That's all you need to know, right there.

30 on the 30th: Running in the Family and "It's Over"

March 1987 was all about U2; April 1987 gave us Prince; May 1987 brought Suzanne Vega. For late June of 1987, I toast the 30-year-old memory of that minor masterpiece, Running in the Family, by the fantastic (and too often forgotten) English funk-jazz-pop outfit, Level 42.

I'm cheating with this release in at least two ways. First, I've almost certainly missed it's U.S. release date; the album hit in March of 1987 in the U.K., and while it wasn't released simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic, I doubt it was this late. But hey--so much good stuff came out in the spring of that year that something had to be pushed back if I was going to keep myself to just one a month.

Second, I didn't listen to this album in 1987. I knew the radio hits--"Lessons in Love," most obviously--but I didn't have any real appreciation of this band, much less this album, until a mission companion of mine in South Korea a couple of years taught me something about funk and R&B music (which, as my entry on Prince a couple of months ago made clear, was far from thorough at the time!), and that inspired me to pick up Level 42's Level Best as an interesting example of what can be done with the style. That compilation album became one of my scriptures in the months that followed, and I couldn't wait to get back home and find out all the other tunes of theirs that I missed out on. Which I did--and now, 27 years later, while this doesn't have my absolute favorite Level 42 numbers on it (that would probably be "Heaven in my Hands" and "Tracie" from the following year's Staring at the Sun), it's an overall delight, one which never fails to take me back to memories both soulfully old and brassily kick-butt.

Which track to celebrate? How about this version of "It's Over," which is synth-heavy, but which also shows the way Level 42, and bandleader Mark King in particular, could very nearly create an authentic slow jam/quiet storm feel, when they wanted to.

30 on the 30th: Solitude Standing and "Gypsy"

March was The Joshua Tree; April was Sign o' the Times. For May, something much softer, more introspective and haunting: the 30th anniversary of Suzanne Vega's Solitude Standing.

Was I, as a high school senior, just preternaturally mature and world-weary and reflective, way back then? Not necessarily--I'm sure (and, if necessary, my memory can drag up more than enough evidence in support of the claim) that I was pretty much just as selfish and immature and oblivious as any usual 18-year-old; probably more than usual, actually. But I do think that maybe, just maybe, my seemingly inborn critical tendencies, the fact that I could from a very young age separate myself from a situation and ask existential questions about it may have set me up to receptive to the whole "sensitive singer-songwriter" phenomenon, years before I came to recognize what was going on in those James Taylor and Cat Stevens songs I loved so much. It's easy to dismiss this kind of vibe as a product of teen-age moodiness, a pretentious yearning that's been parodied by far too many Saturday Night Live sketches to possibly count. But defensible or not, Suzanne Vega spoke to me, made me feel sad and wise and thoughtful--and those are good feelings to have, in their place.

For this album, it was--radio-listener that I was and am--"Luka" and "Tom's Diner" that first caught my attention. But years later, listening to it again (along with what I consider to be her best album, 99.9F°), it is "Gypsy" that sums up the appeal of someone like Vega so well. This is a live performance from "Austin City Limits," and really, nothing more needs to be said. Just listen.

30 on the 30th: Sign o' the Times and "Strange Relationship"

Following up on last month, April's entry into the class of 1987: Prince's stupendous Sign o' the Times.

Did I buy this album as soon as it hit the stores? No way; it was a double-album, and I was much too cheap to spend that kind of money on a Prince album. But I had friends who did buy it, and I listened to it whenever I could, to try to dig into the rich catalog it displayed beyond the radio hits ("U Got the Look" most especially). Growing up as I did in a conservative but not particularly controlled family environment, it was easy to be scandalized by Prince, and there were various comparisons that I, like many others, made in my head between him and Michael Jackson. This Slate article captures some of that (and yes, I do remember watching that Billy Crystal skit on SNL), but for me in particular there was a kind of Buddy Holly vs. Elvis Presley quality to it: Prince was terrifically talented, sure, but he also was dangerous, probably corrupt, at the very least a provocateur for the sake of provocation. Better to stick with the safe, good kid from the Jackson 5 (or so it was easy for a white 18-year-old kid to believe at the time).

But the tracks on Sign o' the Times challenged all that, or at least started to. Yes, my musical tastes at the time were pretty limited, but still: I was aware of Parliament Funkadelic, I'd heard of James Brown, I watched Soul Train on occasion. Listening to "Sign o' the Times," "Starfish and Coffee," or "I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man," I realized: this man was coming up with original, cool takes on all sorts of soul and R&B, not to mention rock and roll. It would take me years to fully articulate this opinion, but I think it was with this album, way back during my senior year, that I realized that Prince wasn't just some brilliant, oversexed weirdo, but rather was actually one of the most talented pop songwriters and performers of the second half of the 20th century, up there with Bowie and Dylan. Michael Jackson? A great and culturally important entertainer and singer, for certain, but that's all. Prince, on the other hand, really was The Artist, and Sign o' the Times was the proof.

What track to play? "Strange Relationship," a funky, upbeat love song with just a touch of Prince's ever-present naughtiness. This is a live performance from Las Vegas, and I love the horns.

30 on the 30th: The Joshua Tree and "Running to Stand Still"

A few days ago, while listening to a local radio station, a series of songs, all from the year 1987--my senior year and my first year of college, a year fully three decades distant from me now--sent me on a nostalgia trip. Of course, when it comes to pop music, I do that rather easily. But a quick bit of Googling started me thinking as well: whatever social and psychological reasons may account for the affection I felt for that music, and for so much else that was on pop radio that year, the fact simply remains: 1987 was a tremendous year for solid, rocking, blusey, folky, loud, funky, brilliant, powerful pop tunes. Running through the list of albums released that year, albums that I have played to death (as both cassette tapes and compact discs) over the past 30 years, convinced me: this is a series worth putting on the blog.

So, while I missed January and February, beginning today, on the 30th of every month, through the end of the year, I'm going to highlight one of those great 1987 albums, and one track in particular from it that I remember and love. I'm not a music critic, so this is just going to be a personal reminiscence: 10 albums that are 30 years old (and I'm going to try to note them as close as possible to their actual release dates), that I still can happily listen to all the way through (and so should you).

First up, probably the biggest of them all: U2's The Joshua Tree, released in early March, 1987. An album that became so anthemic, so iconic, that of course it now attracts all sorts of revisionist criticism and contempt...but no one, not even the people who voice such attitudes, actually believe them, because the songwriting, the instrumentation, the vocals, the guitars, the drums, the whole package of American blues, Irish folk, barely sublimated Christianity, and focused rock and roll power, remains overwhelmingly excellent. With the possible exception of "Trip Through Your Wires," which is a pretty straightforward makeshift blues tune, there isn't a dud on the whole album, and fully half of the tracks are out and out masterpieces. For all that, it's not my favorite U2 album (I'm one of those oddballs that love the mix of apologetic pretension and self-indulgence on Rattle and Hum). But it is, probably, their one utterly essential recording. I can remember driving through the backwoods of central Virginia, in the summer of 1993, getting completely lost while looking for a friend's house during a weekend off from my internship in Washington DC, and playing this tape over and over--and somehow, in those hot green woods, the moody, passionate anthems of U2 were exactly what I needed to hear.

What track to play? "Running to Stand Still," the most beautiful tune on the album, a wonderfully humble collection of lyrics about love and self-destruction that carries across the decades all the more effectively for that simplicity. This is the live performance from Rattle and Hum, of course.