And this bird you cannot change
I’m feeling a bit nostalgic tonight as I’ve just come from Nephew2’s graduation from the very high school I attended. Unlike most people who weren’t very popular, I actually did enjoy HS very much. I had good friends, I did well academically for the first time in my life, and, well, the music was fabulous!
So I thought it would be a good time to highlight the following song which can’t be an iPod Song of the Week because it isn’t available on any legal online source. You know how sometimes you forget a song even exists in the universe until some spark trips a switch in your brain and suddenly the song is there? That happened to me last week! I’ve said before how terrestrial radio here blows but sometimes I need radio and I’m not near my computer where I can hear XM. Places such as the bathroom (yes, I have a music source in every room of my home). When I am brushing my teeth or sticking in my contact lenses, I listen to the classic rock station because it gets decent reception and I just don’t need the greatest song in the world to wash my face to, anything familiar will do. If you have listened to an hour of Q104, odds are good that you will have heard either Carry On My Wayward Son or Freebird. The other day it was Freebird. I don’t know why, but that switch just clicked and the opening chords to Freebird jogged my gray matter into remembering another, more dance-oriented, percussion-laden song with that exact chord sequence starter. And it went… it went… yes! Get off my case!
And then I went a-Googling. And then I found them. The Comateens! The Comateens, whom I only knew from this one track in 1983 (before high school – but memories are just a big stew, aren’t they?), turned out to be a NY band and still together and recording. Who knew? They have their own YouTube page and there, in all its dated, rolled up jacket-sleeved, skinny-tied, mullet-haired, guy playing bongos and smiling in the train station, 80’s glory, is that song I once knew, totally forgot, and then unburied.
And so, I now share it with all of you. Also the fact that one of my teachers came running up to me tonight and shouted, “I love this girl!” Is it any wonder I remember high school fondly?
[youtube width=”425″ height=”335″]http://youtube.com/watch?v=Dj52Jjr0nrs[/youtube]
I never heard the song, and it was only in the final moments that I got the “case” pun, referring to the suitcase.
I like the song, but the pun is a bit corny …
I did enjoy looking at the true 1983 backgrounds and styles though!
I never heard this song, either. In 1983 was the middle of the Al the Redneck Boyfriend years, when I listened to country music if he controlled the radio dial (hey now, Willie and Waylon and the boys aren’t bad at all) or WAXY 106 if I did (playing the hits of the sixties, seventies and today!). Delivering newspapers in the steamy South Florida night.
WAXY played Skynyrd and Kansas. And ABBA. But no Comateens.
In addition to the skinny ties and the hair, how about this other blast from the past: CARRYING a suitcase! When’s the last time you saw anybody do that?
Some time around 1983 I got my first wheeled suitcase. It had four wheels (one at each corner of the long, narrow face that rested on the ground when the handle was up), and the wheels could all swivel 360 degrees like the wheels on a desk chair. You could pull the suitcase along by a 24-inch strap (made of the finest vinyl), but with all those wheels swiveling whatever direction, you had virtually no control over what direction the suitcase would go. Sadly, for years I resisted getting a suitcase with two nice roller-blade-type wheels and a rigid retractable handle because I kept telling myself, “I had a wheeled suitcase once, and it wasn’t all that.”
I may not know much about music, but I sure can appreciate advances in suitcase technology.
Also, I am sure I speak for other old people when I say, “What do you mean 1983 was BEFORE HIGH SCHOOL?”
heh heh, I had graduation in my sights by then! 1983 was probably one of the best years of my life.
I can also relate to the wheeled suitcase thing. I had one in the early 90s. Picture a square suitcase like the old fashioned ones you carry, but with 4 little wheels on each corner of the bottom. I was so proud of my acquisition … until I went on a true trip through a couple airports. By the time I got back home, every single wheel had worn down to the metal caster.
kb, I thought it was clever! For the first five seconds.
Sarpon, but WOXY played the Comateens. That’s similar, right?
Alex, and about the train porter you say nothing?
PS, I still carry my own suitcase. It’s easier than hoisting a wheelie up and down a hundred subway stairs.
I graduated in 1983! I received one of those suitcases from grandma as a graduation gift. It was like Alex’s except I didn’t have the deluxe model with the swivel wheels. I burned my wheels off to the metal castors too.
I don’t think I remember this song either. When I think back to 1983 I always remember Duran Duran’s Rio. I am curious about dancing lady feeding the bongo player ice cream off her finger.
I’d never heard that song either. I love cheesy 80’s music, though. Even Dexy’s Midnight Runners. That’s right! I said it!
Too-Rye-Ay!
Gotta love any video that takes place at the choo choo station.