What message is being sent?

I had completely forgotten this INSX video from 1984.  It baffled me then, and does now - not because of the headphones and sock feet.  The band was filmed in an ancient Buddhist temple in Tokyo, Japan, and they couldn't make any noise, so mimed in time with music played in their ears.

I am a bit puzzled about the geisha and her handlers, but then, I am no expert on the Willow World.


I also don't know why this video is only available at Daily Motion.  In these days of cultural appropriation, is it considered inappropriate?

Did I dream this?

In one of the more surreal videos from the eighties, here's Breeding Ground in Toronto from about 1986. Molly Johnson was guest-singing with them, and this was, I think, my first exposure to her.

And as things fell apart, nobody paid much attention

I re-visited this video this summer. It was always one of my favourites, not least because it includes the late great Kirsty MacColl on harmonies.

Nowadays and especially after last week's demonstrations, it's depressing how pertinent the video remains, although I imagine some of the figures have changed - probably in the wrong direction.

But I can stand a little pain

 CBC Radio "Mornings" has introduced a "Question of the Week".  This week, because everyone is pushing for summer (but how loud will they complain when it gets here?), they're after candidates for the quintessential Canadian summer song.

Their two top contenders are "Summer of '69" and "Call Me Maybe".

Here's my choice:

Well it's hot and it's sticky, 
Think I'll get myself a micky
I'm so parched and dry...

Yep.  I can wait for summer...

I just thought we locked the gate

 Sometimes when I'm getting up and listening to the radio, a song will make me dive toward the speaker to listen, then fumble for my phone, where I've bookmarked the playlist for CBC Radio Morning.

Lately, I've been diving for this bouncy little ditty from Vampire Weekend (a group I've always rather liked) with rather depressing lyrics.  Seems to be the thing these days.

This evening while I was looking up the video, I couldn't believe my luck when I spotted a Jimmy Fallon video featuring a recent appearance by Vampire Weekend -- with Haim (another favourite) singing back-up!


Here's the official video which, sadly, doesn't provide the lyrics, but looks a bit like some of my high school biology labs.


This one reminds me of an absolutely gorgeous video by Talk Talk, which makes me shiver like an early morning when I watch it.  The high definition in this night-time imagery was really quite a startling thing in the eighties.

And the lyrics are a tad more upbeat.

Save it for later

Elder daughter sidled up to me in the kitchen last week and inquired, sotto voce: "How did you do it?"

We've been struggling over the past few weeks with younger daughter's descent to the breakfast table. The descent has been occurring later and later, until she was missing breakfast more often than not and worse, making her lift idle in the bus stop in front of our house. Our lives for the past half-dozen years have run on the theme of "Is it adolescence or autism?", so any attempts to reason with her were loudly rebuffed.

Finally, I remembered reading somewhere that writing is not nagging, so I wrote her a letter detailing the problem and making some suggestions, leaving it on her bed. We did hear an indignant "How dare they?" from behind her closed door, but, wonder of wonders, she has been down to eat breakfast in plenty of time for a week and a half.

This means, among other things, that we also have plenty of time to listen to the radio before she leaves. This was playing this morning:

I don't remember The Beat (known as the English Beat outside of England), although I do recall General Public, their next incarnation. Cute though, isn't it? The Beat in a fifties beat club which still manages to look thoroughly eighties. Maybe it's the hair.

While we're at it, here's Pete Townsend doing an acoustic version some years later:

Townsend offers a prize for anyone who can tell him what the song means. There's an unsavoury theory that the title and chorus are a play on words. I really hope they aren't.

What about me?

Whoops.  Nearly out of time again.

Here's a quintessentially eighties video by Belinda Metz. Fortunately, with a good dollop of humour: