Ventura Highway - America

I'm very wistful about this song and America's sound. It came out in 1972 and was played heavily on AM top 40 radio throughout the rest of the 70s.  I fell in love with pop music at this time.  The song seems injected with 70s ambivalence.  I still think the 70s are the least understood decade of the past several.  This sound brings both nostalgia and mystery...

This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) - Talking Heads

Watched (most of) the sequel to Wall Street this evening. This song was in both movies.  The introduction and instrumental parts have huge narrative content.  The song was one of the things that really made me like the first movie.  The second movie references a lot of the specific little details of the first.  I guess I didn't expect that.  It was an OK movie.

Gate and Garden - Stevie Nicks

I really liked this ballad, which is not one of her radio hits, in high school.  It hasn't aged incredibly well. The verse is rather uneventful.  The chorus is better.  The progression is a speeded up version of the Fleetwood Mac mega hit Sara.  It was good to hear this song after a lot of years...

My Head's in Mississippi - ZZTop

[link] One of my favorite songs of theirs.  Silly, like most of their stuff.  But the guitar lines are so juicy, and the chords are minor (I think).  So... gotta love it. Also, eye candy aside, visually, Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill, especially in their prime in the 80s, had such perfect visual, living-cartoon images going, they are really hard to dislike .

Aqua Teen Hunger Force

I was sort of amused by this show about ten years ago.  The intro theme is fun.  But this show and everything on [adult swim] from Cartoon Network became so nihilistic, I became not only uninterested, but actually saddened by it.  Haven't watched it in years.  The best show, which actually had a point (nostaligia for comics and SF) was Venture Brothers.  Very funny and very intelligent.

Duel - Propaganda

From 1985. By the mid 80s over-production and homogenization was taking the life out of a lot of British pop (see e.g. Rick Astley, Johnny Hates Hazz, and many others). Unfortunately Propaganda fell into this pattern as well. "Duel" is an example of a song with only one good idea, the chorus, and that is over used and has its impact squelched by the production.

I'm Not Perfect (But I'm Perfect For You) - Grace Jones

A great, bouncy little dance song.  Grace has both vocal chops and a theatrical flare.  She is stunning to look at in all ways. She co-wrote this (1986) song with Bruce Woolley of the Buggles (another of my faves).  Produced by Nile Rodgers, who perfected disco with Chic and >50% invented Madonna.

fun lunch

Had a burger and a beer off campus today with Steve S, former member of Megachild from back in the day.  We reminisced a lot.  Those were fun times...

gigs

I probably won't do the department post-retreat party like Megachild has done for a while.  So the only upcoming gig will be SBU Earthstock in April.  That went pretty well last year and I think I can do a better job this year.

East of Eden - Big Country

[link]1984's "Steeltown" is one of my all time favorite albums and one of the hidden gems of the 80s, since it did not have any US hits.  The songs are intense, the playing and vocals are really good.  I listened the hell out my cassette of this album back in the day.

Escape - Journey

Title song from my favorite album of theirs.  Powerful hard rock.  Perry's pipes were the best among all rock vocalists of the time, in my opinion.  And they could really play their instruments.  This song, like a lot of their stuff, has multiple profound hooks.  They can go on one hooky structure for half the song and switch to entirely different hook for the rest of the song.  Rock/pop songwriting at its highest level.

Not much time

for uke work lately.  Some quick practice or jamming here and there; that's all.  Parenting has been pretty intensive.  Going OK.  Work is pretty demanding these days as well.

Little By Little - Robert Plant

[link] Plant's first three solo albums are among my very favorite of anything in rock.  This was one of the radio hits from Shaken 'n' Stirred.  Love the tempo.  And the guitar work (Robbie Blunt).

Another way to think about it

Antagonistic pleiotropy in senescence is "good first"; "bad later". What I was thinking about in the previous post is the opposite: "bad first"; "good later" (but still before/during reproduction).  Generally, the bad aspects of juveniles during development are made up for by parenting.  The parental contribution masks what would otherwise be an essentially lethal fitness defect in the developing offspring.  But that parenting can go easy or hard.  The parents want to maximize the efficiency of their contribution, so the best offspring to have are "easy" offspring that don't cost a lot of effort.  The "bad" in the converse antagonistic pleiotropy would be aspects that run up against the maximum threshold of effort the parents are willing/able to give.  Still more thinking to be done on this...

Sole Survivor - Asia

My best friend in junior high/high  school Scott was a huge Asia fan.  Their radio hits were mostly pretty good.  This is my favorite of theirs.  (I also loved their album covers - and the Yes ones that are in the same vein).

Antagonistic Pleiotropy

Pleiotropy is when one gene has multiple functions and is very common in development, physiology, and life history of multicellular organisms.  Antagonistic pleiotropy describes situations in evolution when an allele has function(s) that are advantageous as well as function(s) that are disadvantageous.  Two conceptually well known types of antagonistic pleiotropy are in loci thought to be responsible for aging (senescence) and in loci that are advantageous in one sex and disadvantageous in the other sex (sexually antagonistic pleiotropy).  The reasons why these genes/alleles increase to fixation (100%) in populations is that the advantage of their "good" function outweighs the disadvantage of their "bad" function.  For example, many alleles thought to be responsible for senescence are thought to have been selected for their advantages earlier in life, such as in increased juvenile fitness or increased fertility and fecundity.  Since reproduction occurs before aging, then evolution cannot "see" the disadvantages that accrue later in life from alleles that are really good to have earlier in life, so those alleles increase to fixation in populations.  Today I thought about a converse kind of potential antagonistic pleiotropy: genes that are disadvantageous (at least mildly so) early in life and turn out to be advantageous later in life (but not too late, so still before or during reproductive maturity).  I don't know what to call this yet, but of course what inspired me are the many traits of small children that are so hard to deal with but are the by-products of a developing brain that when mature yields tons of advantages later on in life.  I need to do more thinking about this concept and relate to the evolution of neoteny and parental care.  Perhaps more on this down the road...

Not much time

For uke playing lately. Parenting and running the household.

Stand Back - Stevie Nicks

[link] I grew up singing along with Stevie Nicks.  She and I love the same chord progressions (really just one progression).  This was a time when people did not shun synthesizers.  So she was perfect for me as a keyboardist.  The enchantress imagery was also cool, but not the main draw for me.

Life of Surprises - Prefab Sprout

Another great one by them.  This one is all about the big chord progression hook in the verse.  Love it.

Golden Calf - Prefab Sprout

[link] Here's an earlier one with a more conventional pop structure than most of their stuff.  Clearly they are soul influenced but they take it in a different pop direction than say Style Council, which was roughly contemporary.  The instrumental production is really atmospheric.

Appetite - Prefab Sprout

[link] One of my favorite bands.  The Thomas Dolby production is a clear connection to my tastes.  The vocals are great.  Some of their stuff is a bit too on the jazzy side for me, and they have a tendency to sacrifice pop structure for composition and concept (and concept albums), but they have some brilliant songs.  This is one.

Rhythm of the Night - Corona

Staying with this vein - this song is also total candy.  The verse is a very nice cascading vocal.  The chorus is the main hook, of course.  The bouncing synth line as a counterpoint to the chorus vocal is another nice touch.  It's totally understandable why songs like this are so accessible to people on dance floor.  Hooks rule.  It's kind of what this blog has always been about.

Be My Lover - La Bouche

[link] There is something to be said for this pure candy dance music from the 90s.  It has my chord progression throughout.  And is pretty good with the atmosphere.  I can do without the rap part.  But the rest of it is pretty damn good...

Down in the Park - Gary Numan

[link] No one sounded like Numan.  It's a pure embrace of the future, of techno/synth sounds.  His voice becomes another synthetic thing, willingly.  It's not an optimistic vision, but it is a total atmosphere.  It's there for escape.

Silver Rainbow - Genesis

[link] I always liked the trippiness of the opening of this song.  It then becomes a more conventional rock song.  One of the less noticed songs on probably the last quality album from Genesis.  Takes me right back to 1983.

Straight Into Darkness - Tom Petty

Great great song.

Small Talk - Scritti Politti

From 1985. One of the staples from my early college days.

Feels So Good - Chuck Mangione

[link] Growing up in school bands in the Rochester, NY area meant that you idolized Chuck Mangione. My older brother was a trumpet player at the time, so we had Chuck's popular albums of that era and played them quite a bit. I only now realized looking at his Wikipedia page that Chuck is about the same age as my parents. I always imagined him as younger than that.