SOUND & FURY: THE CURSE OF "TAKE ON ME"

The musical equivalent of a Dixie Cup full of air.

I've bitched before about my almost pathological hatred of Eighties pop hits and made mention of a-ha's number one hit "Take On Me" as being quite high on my list of songs that I think should be banned by the Geneva Convention, but this weekend I was once more reminded of just how much that fucking song sends me into a state of berserker fury (which I suppose is only appropriate since the song is a product of Norway).

During a trip to the supermarket around the corner — a place that irritates me for a number of reasons but mostly because the staff refuses to listen to anything other than eighties music or shit like B-Rock & D Biz's "My Babydaddy" (a song that set black people back by at least seventy years) — the dreaded "Take On Me" issued forth from the store's speakers and I felt my eardrums tighten in an attempt to cause spontaneous hearing loss. I was in and out of the store fairly quickly but the damage had been done: the song was stuck in my head and it would not go away, no matter how I tried to exorcise it with healthy (?) doses of GG Allin's "Ass-Fuckin' Butt-Suckin' Cunt-Lickin' Masturbation" (believe it or not, a real song), Cannibal Corpse's cover of Sabbath's "Zero the Hero" or even Hurricane Smith's "Oh, Babe, What Would You Say?"

When "Take On Me" came out it scored huge thanks to its admittedly creative hit video as seen eleventy-million times on MTV and elsewhere, and if not for the video I'm willing to bet the song would have been largely ignored at the time and totally forgotten now. Have you ever paid attention to the song when separated from its visual component? Here are the lyrics:

Talking away
I don't know what I'm to say
I'll say it anyway
Today isn’t my day to find you
Shying away
I've been coming for your love O.K.

(chorus)
Take on me (take on me)
Take me on (take on me)
I'll be gone
In a day or two.

So needless to say I'm odds and ends
But I’ll be, stumbling away
Slowly learning that life is O.K.
Say after me,
“It's no better to be safe than sorry.”

Take on me (take on me)
Take me on (take on me)
I'll be gone
In a day or two.

Oh the things that you say yeah
Is it a life or just to play
My worries away
You're all the things I've got to remember
Be shying away
Oh I'll be coming for you anyway.

Take on me (take on me)
Take me on (take on me)
I'll be gone
In a day …

Take on me (take on me)
Take me on (take on me)
I'll be gone (take on me)
In a day …

Take on me (take on me)
Take on me (take me on)
Take on me (take on me)
Take on me …

I know that pop music is not necessarily high art, but come on. This is not a song. This is bullshit.

If you were born any time before 1989 you've probably seen the video and if born later you've probably encountered it on one of the installments of shows like "I Love the '80's For No Apparent Reason," but for those not familiar with it here's the skinny: Some blonde chick is sitting in a coffee shop reading a sparsely-illustrated comic book apparently about auto racing. Suddenly a rotoscoped hand pops out of the comic and beckons her into the 2-D landscape. Once there, she meets lead singer Morten Harket, a leather-jacketed pretty boy with one of those puffed-out hairdos (or don'ts) common to the era, who when I first saw him I thought was a skinny, butch lesbian.

As the inane lyrics marshmallow their way through the song's running time, the video's narrative revolves around this vile human stick insect (who bears a shocking resemblance to the young Cliff Richard) trying to woo the girl while the two attempt to evade a couple of racing-helmeted bad guys who understandably want to cave in the singer's head with a lug wrench. After much unsuspenseful mishegoss the girl escapes back to reality after the cartoon hero confronts their assailants, and when she gets home she opens the comic to find him lying unconscious, unfortunately neither dead nor being eaten by starving wolverines as one would have hoped. The guy picks himself up off the floor and throws himself against the comic's panel borders. Miraculously, he appears as a drawing in her hallway and bashes himself against the walls, ALTERED STATES-style, until the transitions between rotoscope and live-action stabilize with him as the girl's newfound squeeze.

"Talking away/I don't know what I'm to say/I'll say it anyway/Today isn’t my day to find you Shying away...What the fuck am I talking about?!!?"

Admittedly the video was a step away from the mostly uninspired fare generated for MTV and on the strength of that video the single sold a gazillion copies, ensuring it a torturous duration on the airwaves, both radio and TV. And while there were plenty of eighties hits that got played to death and made me want to go on a sadistic killing spree, none set me off like "Take On Me" thanks to it being quite literally the pop music equivalent to elevator music. You've read the lyrics, so imagine if the song had these words instead:

Blah gawgaray
I zubbazagga-zig-zig floofa poppity doo-dah
On the good ship Grilled Cheese Sandwich
I want to eat Cheez Waffies
In a day or twoooooooooo...

I fail to see a qualitative difference and while I fucking hate "We Built This City," "We're Not Gonna take It" and "Come On Eileen" with a fervency usually reserved for child molesters or organ thieves, none of those contain the sheer, unadulterated sugar water slightness of a-ha's biggest international hit. And somehow these fucksticks were allowed to record what may be the very worst of the James Bond movie themesongs, "The Living Daylights," and considering that Rita Coolidge's "All Time High" (from OCTOPUSSY) and "The World Is Not Enough" by Garbage exist, that's really saying something. (There are those who make a strong case for Duran Duran's "A View To A Kill," but I let that one slide because the music's pretty good.)

Then the late-1980's happened and it looked like "Take On Me" was finally being put out to the pop culture pasture, never to be heard from again...that is until it began to pop up all over the goddamned place as one of the songs absolutely guaranteed to be included on the many "Weren't the '80's Fucking Awesome?" CD compilations that were churned out without mercy. As I've often noted, pop music tends to get recycled and the music of the 1980's has been resurrected with a strength previously unimagined, or at least that's been my experience of it. "Take On Me" has proven to be a favorite of those two decades my junior and I have no clear idea as to why, other than that it can be seen as one of the progenitors of much of the past fifteen years' wimped-out musical confections, there to be absorbed briefly before the next pack of dildoes/heroin addicts shows up to lip-synch their hits on the People's Choice Awards.

I suppose the realization that you hate pop music after a certain period in your life is the moment when the generation gap really gets started and you run the risk of being labeled an old fart or a curmudgeon, but if that be my fate, then I accept it with pride. Just so long as I can preach for the complete and total eradication of the blight that is a-ha's most well-known product, and I do mean "product."

SOUND & FURY: THE CURSE OF "WE BUILT THIS CITY" (and other Eighties throwbacks)

About a week ago I was hanging out at a certain bar (that you may have read about on this blog from time to time) where the sweet new bartender, a cutie just six months past twenty-one, was playing selections from her ipod in an attempt to lend the place a fun late night atmosphere. Unfortunately, like many her age, she's apparently fascinated by some of the more egregious examples of 1980's pop music, songs that when even a few moments from them are played send me into a murderous rage.

I have no idea how twenty-somethings became turned on to the musical horrors generated in the eighties, and those whom I've asked about it don't claim nostalgia as a motivating factor. In fact, very few of them recall tunes like "Take On Me" or "Total Eclipse Of the Heart" from their formative years, instead somehow stumbling upon them in their late adolescence. Having long ago given up on pop music radio, I have no idea if eighties tunes were at some point during the last fifteen years returned to heavy rotation, but it truly blows my mind to see the soulless "classics" of 1980's rock-as-product resurrected from the grave of mediocrity and cherished by a new generation, all without a trace of irony. Can any of you younger readers who listen to and enjoy this stuff explain it to me? Please?

So anyway the music in the bar was a cavalcade of aural torture, elicting loud cries of protest from myself, the kitchen guy, and the regulars, most of whom had experienced and hated the bartender's musical selections the first time around. Eager to please and somewhat confused with our very vocal revolt, the bartender was kind enough to skip past the songs that caused us to wail loudest, but eventually the hour grew late and the older crowd gave way to a twenty-something throng, leaving me as the lone protester. I realized that my own agony would be ignored in favor of those of a like mind to the bartender, so I behaved myself and endured, engaging a few of the remaining regulars in conversation.

Until "We Built This City" came on.

What hath MTV wraught?

Regularly topping the list in surveys of the worst pop songs of all time, "We Built This City" stands as the epitome of corporate rock and a tragic example of a once-great group of performers fucking themselves in the ass without the benefit of Astroglide. Including some former members of the Jefferson Airplane ("White Rabbit," "Somebody To Love") in their roster, Starship (formerly Jefferson Starship during the 1970's) churned out this appallingly bad anthem to the rockin' awesomeness that was Los Angeles in the early 1970's, and it has gone on to garner much negative press and inspire the brutal drinking game "Built This City," in which each participant is handed a sixer of Budweiser tall boys and is expected to consume all six within the time it takes for "We Built This City" to be played in its entirety. If the six packs are not finished, each player is given another six pack, the song is started once again, and the unlucky participant must now finish the first sixer as well as the new one, or else the cycle begins anew, ad infinitum. "Beer Hunter," eat your heart out.

When the odious tune began to play in the bar, I yelled "No! NO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!" until the bartender reluctantly skipped to the next song, which turned out to be the agonizingly mediocre and unwelcomely overplayed "Gloria" by Laura Brannigan. With that I realized I could take no more, so I put on my coat and beat a hasty retreat, calls of "Please don't leave" following in my wake, nearly drowned out by about fifteen soused barflies yelling "Guh-loria! I think I gotcher nuh-um-buh!!!"

Yet more evidence that the predictions made in the movie IDIOCRACY are coming closer and closer to becoming reality.

SOUND & FURY: THE CURSE OF "WE'RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT"

Having been savagely awakened at Jesus o'clock in the morning by a bunch of drunk chicks squalling Twisted Sister's 1984 mega-smash hit "We're Not Gonna Take It," I haven't been able to get the fucking thing out of my head, its relentless chorus echoing through my brain while I attempted to read my CINEMA SEWER book on the subway to work.

The 1984 album featuring "We're Not Gonna Take It."

"We're Not Gonna Take It" stands out in my estimation as the epitome of pop/faux metal, featuring a repetitive/annoying hook, lyrics that are a tad vague as to who the singer is bitching about and exactly what the "it" he's not gonna take anymore is, all delivered by a guy who looks like a butt-ugly, post-apocalyptic drag queen.

Once seen as an anthem that railed against oppressive family values, when looked at today one realizes that interpretation largely hedges on one having seen the iconic and endlessly overplayed video, featuring Mark Metcalf — superb as ROTC uber-asshole Doug Neidermeyer in NATIONAL LAMPOON'S ANIMAL HOUSE — portraying an over-the-top cartoonish douchebag of a dad who loudly chastizes his son for any number of infractions, most notably objecting to his son's love of Twisted Sister, a band that at the time was barely known outside of their frequent gigs as a New York bar band (I still rmember the radio ads for them from when I was in high school that described them as "Twisted Sister! The band that will unfreeze your face!!!"). Once the kid expresses his desire to "rock," he strikes a chord on his cheesy guitar and blows daddy out the second story window, at which point the kid is magically transformed into lead singer Dee Snider (the aforementioned post-apocalyptic drag queen). The ensuing slapstick so offended certain protectors of public decency that the video became one of the first works to find itself on the hit list of what would eventually become the Parents Music Resource Center, better known as the PMRC (not nearly as catchy as SPECTRE, but that was already taken). If ya ask me, that's proof positive that those stuffy old senatorial wives didn't know what the fuck they were talking about.

These dudes fuckin' RAWK!!!

The mild public outcry against the song is really amazing, especially considering just how innocuous "We're Not Gonna Take It" actually is. It always struck me as what a twelve-year-old with delusions of "rebellion" would have penned; overblown, lacking much in terms of actual musical merit, and wholly appropriate for a cheesy Broadway musical show-stopper wherein the hero rouses the peasants to storm the castle. If it were me staging such a stirring scenario I'd have pretty much the whole cast put their all into it, exhorting the audience to sing along in a show of solidarity, only to have the characters mercilessly gunned down by heavily-armed military police, with an actor in Dee Snider gear and makeup being the first to get capped in the knees.

Snider has described the Twisted Sister musical aesthetic as attempting a fusion of Slade and the Sex Pistols, but if that was truly the intent the band utterly missed the mark, instead sounding like product designed to be gobbled up by adolescents (what a shock!). You can say what you want for the occasionally adolescent aspects of the Sex Pistols, but at least their vinyl rebellion sprang from something real, namely the shit conditions to be find in the UK during their time, but what did Twisted Sister have to gripe about? They were from Lawn Guyland, for fuck's sake! What's the worst they had to endure? Irritating accents and the ever-present threat of encroaching Negroes? Spare me.

And considering its ubiquity on both TV and the radio, I'm shocked that "We're Not Gonna Take It" peaked at a mere #21 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. But that makes no nevermind since the song has now achieved iconic status as one of the "classics" of Eighties music, right up there with "Take On Me," "We Built This City (On Rock 'N' Roll)," and "Don't Worry, Be Happy," and it's often used in commercials, thus raking in untold residual greenbacks for Dee Snider.

Making matters even worse is the way pop culture tends to recycle itself every twenty years or so, and the teens and young adults today are now the new standard-bearers for some of the most obnoxious and artistically void music in the history of the pop medium, reviving the aural horrors of the MTV generation and ensuring that those songs pollute the minds of even younger listeners. Or the once-slumbering minds of curmudgeonly forty-somethings such as Yer Bunche.

I'd like to be able to say I'm not gonna take it anymore, but it looks like that fucking song is here to stay, so I'll just have to keep on taking it, and not in a good place.

Twisted Sister: the possible inspiration for S.O.D.'s "Douche Crew?"