Automatic - the Pointer Sisters

[link] This is a hell of song.  From 1984. It's the arrangement and production that really does it.  This was the peak of synth pop.  The verse is so restrained and the thing just explodes in the chorus.  The chorus is the same music as the verse but it adds the high harmony and the over the top juiciness of the keyboards. The instrumental part I could do without. Brock Walsh co-wrote and co-produced the song and must have been the main force behind it, from what I read.  Genius pop. I love the old Soul Train footage as well.

Myrrh - The Church

[link] The Church are not a shoegaze band but in many ways the atmosphere of their sound is similar to that evoked by SG. Especially this song and others from the Heydey and Reptile. They are describing the same landscape as SG, in my mind. A gray, not quite apocalyptic place.

Tralfaz Christmas Song Playlist

Here is a link to my entire playlist of 34 Christmas songs. There are still a lot of Christmas songs that I'd like to try to learn. Not sure if I'll get to that this year. In the future, I'm thinking about volunteering to lead holiday sing alongs at local nursing homes.  We'll see if I have time to pursue that.

A Tralfaz Christmas - Part IV

Here Comes Santa Claus
White Christmas
It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
I'll Be Home For Christmas
Feliz Navidad
Ding Dong Merrily on High
I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
What Child is This?
Do You Hear What I Hear?
We Three Kings
Walking in a Winter Wonderland
Silent Night
Here We Come A-Wassailing
The 12 Days of Christmas
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

Sleeper - Malory

[link] Shoegaze (Nu-Gaze) from Germany. Pretty controlled compared to some of the other current stuff. The high female vocal on top of the miasma is almost a requirement it seems. That goes back to founders of the sound Cocteau Twins and to some extent My Bloody Valentine.  Even in the bands without a female vocal, there's a cloudy, blurry quality to the vocal track (and a lot of effects and track duplication, as well as multiple vocalist tracks in unison).

Happy - Sugar Plant

[link] On the mainstream (Asian) pop side of Japanese SG, which makes it an interesting fusion. The vocalist has an almost English accent and sings in English. Very smooth and sweet. Definitely channeling Cocteau Twins, but to capture the sweetness of CT, not their complexity.

Leech - Alison's Halo

Really really enjoying this stuff.
Leech

The cover art for the eyedazzler 1992-1996 album I believe is a trace from a particle accelerator collision.  Really beautiful.

Bittersweet - New Model Army

[link] I've had this song on a gothic rock CD compilation. It's a really great song.  The bass and guitar are superb, driving, and precise.  The vocal adds a lot of the goth component. I should investigate the full oeuvre of this UK band who have been around since the punk era and are still cranking.

Dozen - Alison's Halo

[link] From back in 1995, the late golden age of shoegaze in the West (it could be argued that the golden age of shoegaze in Japan is now). That sparkling female vocal like the matron deity Cocteau Twins. Full, fulsome even, noise-juice in the guitar track. The pacing, the atmosphere, all there.

Loved - Cruyff in the Bedroom

[link] A pretty conventional heavy shoegaze sound from Japan.  Most of the major influences are in here. The tempo is too fast IMHO to have the impact the genre typically goes for. Just a bit too bouncy for the rest of it.

Common Reactor - Silversun Pickups

[link] Here's a different take on nu gaze.  Upbeat and more minimal. Again, not much hookiness here.  The vocal is also pretty far off from SG. I don't need to hear this particular track again.

Hearts - I Break Horses

[link] A nu gaze band. Which I think is newer bands trying to do shoegaze and adding their own signatures.  This is sleek and heavy, piercing in spots. Doesn't have the hooks that my favorite SG has.  Rhythmically, it's very machine like, in the sense of whirring motors.

Halcyon - Lemon's Chair

[link] This band goes for it with a wall of raw sound.  A howling, plodding bludgeon.

Fake Lights in the Sky - Last Leaf Down

[link] Downtempo atmosphere.  I really like the grinding baselines of the bridge. Very haunting keyboard lilting through it all.  This song has some power. Great band name too.

Flirtation - Burrrn

[link] On the punk side of shoegaze but not gratingly so.  The real SG element is the bass/chord combination in the 2nd phrase of the verse.  That is a signature with a lot of narrative content. I'm beginning to be convinced that the poetics of these simple musical elements set the entire atmospheric for SG.  It's not post-apocalyptic.  But it's a spent, urban, suburban, or heavily disturbed rural landscape.  It's bleak.  But as with gothic poetics, there is extreme romanticism present.  Still working articulating this...

Pastel Blue - Ariel

[link] Here's some deeply atmospheric Japanese shoegaze. The hook grind of some of the other songs I've been posting doesn't quite arrive here. The far-away-ness is good though.

Yukari - Yule

[link] Fantastic shoegazish pop.  And I love watching her lay down the vocal and keyboards in this video.  Mesmerizing.

A Tralfaz Christmas part III

Holly Jolly Christmas

I Saw Three Ships

I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

Let it Snow!

The Christmas Song

O Christmas Tree

A Tralfaz Christmas part II

Jolly Old Saint Nicholas

Up on the Rooftop

Good King Wenceslas

Silver Bells

We Wish You a Merry Cristmas

Blue Christmas

Found a shoegaze internet radio station

DKFM from Fresno, CA.  Good stuff from current bands and classics. Only listened to a little while before but it sounds really good.  Will be spending a lot of time with this station from now on...

Away - Maikotobranco

[link] Anthemic.  Bombastic, even, for shoegaze.  Pretty heavy stuff.  But also seems to bounce off the surface.  Doesn't go deep.

A Tralfaz Christmas part I

A Tralfaz Christmas part I

Santa Claus is Coming to Town
Frosty the Snowman
Deck the Halls
Jingle Bells
Silver and Gold
Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer

Flipper - Pasteboard

[link] The laid back side of shoegaze from Japan.  Wistful. Could accompany a romantic montage. Very listenable.

Brownsugar/Love Scene - Sugardrop

[link] Uptempo, hooky shoegaze.  Fuzzy guitar phasing in and out. High narrative content, even without the vocal.  But the vocal is a nice addition. I like this whole thing a lot.

Dracaena Sanderiana - Oell

[link] More Japan Shoegaze.  This one is delicate, sounds a bit like the Pale Saints.  Has some complex interweaving vocals and has some quaint, amateurish production/arrangement, which doesn't detract from the artistry.  The guitar work borders on prog. Interesting.

Rosoku - Civic

[link] A lot of things going on in this one.  Very free, noisy guitar, kind of like windy rain hitting your window.  Both low and high female vocals coming and going in and out of the rain. Emphasizing some of the creative possibilities that exist in the genre.  Nice stuff. And I like a band named after a car ;-)

My Dead Girlfriend - Kinoshita Fuyou

[link] Very My Bloody Valentine intro and break with a breathy high vocal. Two shoegaze staples. For some reason, the SG idiom has taken on really well in Japan.

Silver Screen (Shower Scene) - Felix da Housecat

[link] Another seminal electroclash single.  Pretty cool.  Seems highly influenced by industrial. Video is pretty interesting as well.

Feels Like Summer - Sing Sing

[link] Emma Anderson's band after Lush.  Different and not quite shoegazey, but you can hear some of the retro-ish styling that some of the later Lush material had.

Space Invaders - Are Smoking Grass - I-F

[link] Discovered the genre of electroclash when I was researching Lady Gaga, who Ru-Jun is starting to get into thanks to her dance class. This music came out in the late 1990s and the genre spanned the turn of the millennium. It's really atmospheric and has the abstractness that I really like.  This is the first of the genre I've listened to (and according to the Wikipedia entry was the first electroclash single).

Low Key - Pastel Blue

[link] Continuing with Japanese Shoegaze. Slow and spacey. A fuzzy throb of grayish color.

Sun House - Evil Daddy Dirt

[link] Continuing the Japanese shoegaze thread. More synthy and proggy than straightforward Shoegaze. I haven't ventured into much instrumental Shoegaze before. It's different, since the vocal is often part of the standard shoegaze layering.  But this is interesting; many layers and has narrative content.

Pirate Shows

One of Ru-Jun's favorite shows right now if Jake and the Never Land Pirates on Disney Jr. It's a pretty fun show with really good music, by two members of the band Captain Bogg and Salty (Loren Hoskins and Kevin Hendrickson) who are also depicted as Captain Hook's hapless crew members in the show. Meanwhile I continue to enjoy One Piece.  I am about to finish the Amazon Lily arc (episodes 408-421). Really good stuff.

Black coffee

I didn't really start drinking coffee until college.  At that time I couldn't drink it without cream and sugar.  I gave up sugar as part of a sort of unstated new years resolution about 10 years ago.  In the last year I started drinking it black. Now I prefer it that way (although Dunkin Donuts coffee with cream is still excellent).  Don't have to worry about keeping creamier around (which spoils quickly) or non dairy creamer (which is not food) or leaving space for cream at Starbucks (was always a pain). I always wondered why people liked it black.  This co-occurred with me starting to drink a lot of tea, which is now a daily habit.  I think the thing that did it was that tea has such a weak flavor, anything with strong flavor is a nice contrast to tea.  I like both.

Garden - Mash

[link] This sounds more western (I think it's in English).  Pretty good. Both more poppy and definitely more hard rockish than some of the other stuff I've been posting. Has some non-shoegaze in its bloodline.

See the Brightest Star - Clams

[link] Continuing to mine the Japanese Shoegaze vein. This is very smooth and sweet. The bubblegum pop aspect is quite a prominent part of the composition and production here.

Kisses Bloomed - Purple Bloom

[link] Another recent Japan shoegaze discovery.  Harder edged and more emphatic of the instrumenal sound than Bertoia.  But I like this song a lot.  The guitar and bass lines work together well.  I think the vocal could be turned up more; it's just an accent in this mix.

Some pics of Bertoia

Bertoia

I have fallen in love with this band.  They've been around for a few years in Japan and they do really sublime shoegaze.  And their videos are really fun and well made.

Here is all of there stuff that is on youtube

AnthRelax
Under Water (live) 2012 Tokyo Japan Shoegazer Festival
Under Water (live)
Snow Slide
Snow Slide (audio without cinematic video)
Monotone
Monotone (live)
Glass Bird
Color of Sound
Monotone ~ Glass Bird (live)
murmur/MONOTONE (Bertoia's cover)(2011/10/09 live)
1974 LAB./Under Water (live)
MODERN SYNTHESIS CM (not sure what this is intended to be; it's a 15 sec clip from Monotone)
MODERN SYNTHESIS Alubum Digest (previews of all the tracks from the Modern Synthesis album)
 
An interview with the band [in Japanese] (maybe not an interview; they are introducing their CD, it appears)

Madame Butterfly - Malcolm McLaren

[link] I don't know anything about the opera but always liked this pop version.  Jeff Gold used to play it quite a bit on Saturday mornings on WXDU.

Grandelinquent / Ritch in a Ditch - Klark Kent

[link] I love Stewart Copeland. Not only the drumming but the whole rhythm section and the way his songs are arranged.

Three alt dancefloor classics

Three alt dancefloor classics from back in the day (ca 1990)

There is No Love Between Us Anymore- Pop Will Eat Itself

Supposed to Have Sex with You - Tonio K.

People are Still Having Sex - LaTour

Def. Con. One - Pop Will Eat Itself

[link] A blast from the late 80s past (1988).  Pretty big alt pop hit. Referenced various pop emblems from the previous two decades. Sampling was pretty big at that time and being integrated into a lot of different genres, mostly of dance music.

Glittering Prize - Simple Minds

[link] One of my favorites from one of my favorite albums of all time (New Gold Dream 81.82.83.84).  Atmospheric and beaty in mid tempo.  The keyboard lines cascade down. The lyrics are abstract.  I never learned what this song was about but it doesn't matter. One of the main tracks on the soundtrack of my intensely self absorbed late teens in the mid 80s.

More on the nostalgia

That particular nostalgia has to do with the perception of being in an ideal situation and wanting time to freeze so that I can stay there.  The beginning of summer.  School year over.  Toward the end of my high school years I was very comfortable with my small circle of friends.  Looking back, it was only an ideal situation in that it was simple.  Nothing was required of me. I didn't have any particular cares, or any wisdom. I thought I did.  But the stuff I cared about was trivial.  The stuff I thought I knew something about I didn't.  I didn't know how to be a good friend or a good person.  I longed for romantic love but I had know idea how to love someone. So really in the end there is nothing to be nostalgic about. These days I cringe more than any other reaction to the way I was in those times.  It's a thought refuge for me, but I am alone there.  I take comfort in the fact that I am probably the only one who remembers anything about me in those days.

The nostalgia I was talking about

Here are two songs that are sort of emblems for me. Both by Seals and Crofts: Summer Breeze and We May Never Pass This Way Again. When I was in high school, on "Moving Up" day toward the end of the school year in June, there would be a slide show by the graduating seniors.  These two songs were frequently used as music.  It was the whole memories thing, summer coming, a great time but a completely ambiguous time in terms of who I thought I was (I was totally off, not even a person at that time; I don't know what or who I was; I wouldn't start to know or start to be a real, loving caring person, for another almost 15 years). Those two songs in particular are the pure essense, which is poison, of this feeling of paralyzing nostalgia. I avoid them.  I didn't listen to them (not for one second) just now when I was looking up the links.

Does Caroline Know - Talk Talk

A classic (starts with a line from Mirror Man, another classic). The dainty little keyboard riff defines the main line of this song. Great to see them doing this live from back in the day.  Wish the bass was turned up - it's a nice bouncy little line. Best atmospheric pop I've ever heard.

Nostalgia

I'm a really nostaligic person and maybe because of this I realize how lethal nostalgia, and nostalgic items, can be, to the psyche.  So in my latter adult life I have avoided engaging in too much specific nostalgia about my life, especially with items. It's weird why I am nostalgic about things from my childhood and young adulthood.  Maybe it's just innate.  But I wasn't the person then I am now.  I wasn't really even a person at all. I certainly wasn't worth remembering, and I am glad that most people don't remember stuff from back then.  It's a world that only really exists in my mind.  It never existed for anyone else.  They have their own version, if they have such a thing at all.

Right Time of the Night - Jennifer Warnes

A blast from the past (1977). I was 10 and this was about the time of my musical awakening.  Always liked this song a lot. The instrumentation and arrangement here are country but it's really a rock song.

Flowers - Galaxie 500

[link] These guys were huge on the 90s college rock scene. Shoegaze aficionados consider them in the genre. The sound has really good atmospherics and some things my own band here has done over the years approaches this texture.  It's good stuff.

Colourless Dream - Sad Lovers and Giants

[link] From 1982.  Which puts them right with the Cure in the sort of quintessential, slightly goth (although not nearly as much as the Cure), post-punk alternative pop. They should have had as much success as the Cure as their sound is just as good. From their Wikipedia entry, it looks like they were only really known in Europe.  They were around (with varying lineups) in the early-mid 80s and then more recently after being mostly inactive in the 90s.  I need to get all of their stuff, I think.

Aquarian Angel - Blue Six

[link] I really like the groove of these guys. Jazz, soul, and house influenced. They took Sade's vibe and carried it forward (although she is still grooving as well; actually Sade is officially a band named after Sade Abu, the lead singer). The vocals here are done by Lysa Aya Trenier (Aya). Upon Googling, I see that a lot of people compare Aya and Sade.

Things We Never Did - Sad Lovers and Giants

[link] I love everything about this song and this band's sound. Atmospheric, moody.  The guitar harmonics are really really cool. Beautiful use of keyboards.

To Live and Die in L.A.

[link] Great song. (Terrible movie).  Wang Chung deserves to be know from more than just their couple of big hits that everybody knows about. Interesting version of this song.  Good to see them still together recently.

Gunning for the Buddha - Shriekback

[link] Exotic, atmospheric, and very nice pop.  I've always liked these guys.

Prove - Ric Ocasek

[link] One of my favorites off his first solo album, Beatitude.  Summer of 85 I listened mainly to this album, Forever Now by the Psychedelic Furs, New Gold Dream 81-82-83-84, and Panorama by the Cars. All on cassette of course.

Crimson/Red - Prefab Sprout

[link] Quite a nice little song.  Hadn't heard it - from the more recent era.  Paddy McAloon has a wonderful, whispery pop voice and a terrific pop instinct.

We Came to Dance - Ultravox

[link] One of my favorites of theirs.  Atmospheric and even a little gothic around the edges.

Rock of Ages - Jobriath

[link] Didn't really know anything about these guys until I read about them on Wikipedia when looking up glam rock.  They were one of the major American glam acts.  There is a dissonance here between the music, which is pretty conventional hard rock that looks somewhat forward to some aspects of punk and metal, and the look, which is conceptual and futuristic. In my mind, they don't go together.

Rain on the Scarecrow - John Mellencamp

[link] Really great song.  Mellencamp is a modern American classic and has a lot of great ones.  This is one of my favorites.

Four Engines Burning Over the USA - Screaming Blue Messiahs

[link] Always had a thing for SBM. America reflected back to us through British, 80s, punk (and who knows what else) addled, male, eyes.

I Still Do - Cranberries

[link] One of my favorite bands of the 90s and one of my favorite songs of theirs.

Applause Applause - Lady Gaga

[link] Ru-Jun dances to this in her hip hop dance class and she saw it in a Kia Soul commercial.  I haven't followed Lady Gaga closely but she has a couple of good things that I've heard and this is one of them.  She's about more than the music, the whole pop/celebrity package, like Madonna is/was.  And in a pretty sophisticated way. Madonna got a lot of help on the musical side and maybe Lady Gaga does as well, I don't know.  Gaga seems to exploit stock dance/pop chord progressions more than Madonna, but she does a good job with them.  She's interesting, but I'm a bit repulsed by her strictly because of her popularity.  Maybe that's my loss, or maybe there's not much there there.  I probably won't ever study it enough to figure that out.

I Do the Rock - Tim Curry

[link] Fun to see him working live.  Fun guy at a fun time. (on edit: although this is likely to be lip-synched b/c no monitors, and it sounds a lot like the studio track; and the fadeout).

Totally novel ideas

in dreams, that I never would have thought of awake always fascinate me.  Had another one last night; not going to mention what it was.  Why (and how) does the brain do that?

Transponder snails

Just one of the examples why I love One Piece.  Bizarre and wonderful creativity.

Criteria for a good Halloween costume

1. warmth (for trick or treating or outdoor Halloween parades in these parts and where I grew up)
2. no makeup (it's a pain in the ass)
3. no masks (uncomfortable)

A Woman Needs Love - Ray Parker Jr. and Raydio

The pop charts in 1981 were still a miasma of 70s influences; this song is an example.  Very light fare. Bouncy.  Things weren't so severe back then.

Welcome Back Kotter theme/opening

[link] This was a great song (by John Sebastian) and intro.  The show was one of several classic 70s pop cultural attempt's at social progressivism (like Good Times, and All in the Family). The 70s ended with the dawn of the conservative era that we are currently still in, which was a fear- and hatred-based reaction to social progress of the 60s and 70s.

Biology doesn't have this problem

I like reading about quantum physics even though I don't have a feel for the mathematical side of the theory. All of the non-intuitive stuff, like entanglement, is really fascinating. What's also fascinating is that all of it is subject to a bewildering number of (and number of kinds of) interpretations and even though there are now realms of experimental data supporting the predictions of quantum mechanics, there is not yet a consensus on what the theory means in the real world.

Cat People (Putting Out Fire) - David Bowie

[link] Couldn't find the studio version from the Let's Dance album, which is better than this version, IMHO.  I don't remember seeing the movie, but I may have seen it back in the 80s sometime.  This is a great song (from a great album). Extremely atmospheric.  I'm not a huge Bowie fan except for the Let's Dance album, which I think is one of the best 80s albums. Bowie's detached vocal sound works perfectly in this song.

fashion

In terms of what I wear, I have two goals: (1) comfort, and (2) timelessness, which is that it would not look out of place in any of the last few decades.

Every Breath You Take - The Police

This is of course an ironic song.  It is about the creepiness of stalking.  It is not a romantic song.  People who think it's romantic are not intellectually mature enough to autonomously understand irony.
And, as overplayed as the song has always been, it's still a powerful piece of pop on the musical side.

Faded Flowers - Shriekback

[link] A dark and beautiful song.  No one was better than these guys in setting up an organo-SF atmosphere.  The beautiful melodic-romantic edge that makes goth, although Shriekback wasn't primarily known as a goth band (that I know of). Saw them open up for Simple Minds at Buff State College in 1985 (or possibly early 86).  They were great, especially the backing singers.  Good show.

Warcraft

I was really into Blizzard's real-time strategy game Warcraft.  But went to role playing in World of Warcraft, they lost me.  I don't have time for that kind of gaming these days; I really like real time strategy.  Just playing the against-the-computer modules was fun enough; I never played much against other people.  I tried Starcraft but the visuals were too dark; I literally couldn't see anything.  I liked the bright visuals of warcraft.  Warcraft III is available as the continuation of the Warcraft real time strategy game but I don't really have time to check it out.  It probably has a lot of changes.  I wonder if it still plays like Warcraft II.

You Might Recall - Genesis

[link] This is an immaculate song.  Genesis purists tend to like the earlier Peter Gabrial material.  But Phil Collins was supremely good and they cranked out a whole bunch of excellent songs right through the yellow eponymous shapes album in the early 80s. Collin's solo stuff was also pretty good right into the mid 80s.
I love how this song consists of this large cycle.  The driving bass line, the arpeggiating guitar with keyboard backing it.  The whole thing is really driving.  Then there's the key change toward the end.  These guys fused amazing pop out of art rock.

Come to My Aid - Simply Red

[link] Wasn't much better soul-pop than Simply Red in the mid 80s. The UK and Europe kept the 70s alive so that the US could rediscover everything about them in the 90s and after.

All For Leyna - Billy Joel

[link] I really liked this 1980 song. Piano driven like most of his stuff. It's in tune with the new wavey inflences that were trickling through rock at the time.  Still sounds pretty good.  Lots of interesting chords and changes.

Stumblin' In - Chris Norman and Suzi Quatro

[link] I had a thing for this 1979 song, which was played incessantly on the radio. It was kind of one of those annoying songs that grew on you. It holds up now only has a historical piece, really. Music was different then.

Imagination Movers - Magic

This is a really great song from Imagination Movers, which we watch in the morning while Ru-Jun wakes up.  Really good show with lots of good songs.  These guys are good.

Doc McStuffins - Halloween song

This is a really great song. Doc Mcstuffins is one of Ru-Jun's favorite shows.

Deeper and Deepr - The Fixx

[link] The Fixx in their highest period of popularity and guitar synthy wonderfulness. The 80s equivalent of art pop. Really liked this then and still pretty good now.

Organimodality II

Daily life is like moving through a two dimensional space filled with force vectors, like wind gusts, of various directions. Some days it may seem that all of the vectors oppose you. But really they are all in different directions and cancel out, providing no net opposition or assistance to your journey through them.

Standing in the Doorway - A Flock of Seagulls

[link] One of their more obscure tunes.  But I really like it.  It has an edge that their better known songs don't.  The instrumental part at the beginning is a really nice contrast. This band is more complex than the pop cliche that they became lets on.

Into the Fire - Sarah McLachlan

[link] I still remember exactly where I was when I heard this amazing song for the first time. I was at an impressionable age, in an impressionable time, and this song melted all over and through me.

Mirror Man - Talk Talk

[link] One of their very early songs and one of my favorites.  These guys are pop geniuses and I am one of the army of musicians who counts them as major influences. There are a lot of elements, the melody line and Mark Hollis's delivery, the hooks in both verse and chorus, the keyboard figures driving the whole thing, the entire atmosphere (really effective live), the building of the song.  All really singularly great here.

Tony Adams - Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros

Link below. Really nice song named after a soccer player. Heard it on WFUV the other day, which is a bit like WXYC was back in the day, very eclectic. 

http://youtu.be/EEEWarLHymI

The Magnificent Seven - The Clash

[link] I've always loved this classic of theirs. It's done with a nonchalance that's infectious. Not sure what the heck the song is about, but it's nevertheless attractive and rewards lots of listens.

organimodality

This is a term I thought of today (it only has 1 google hit) to describe a way of living I've been considering (and perhaps following, at least somewhat) in the past few years, ever since my life changed in 2010.  It involves letting the random, instantaneous variation of the world partially steer one through one's day, taking care of many decisions (e.g. where to park or which way to go home) that don't really matter to one's larger goals.  If I have time and articulateness going forward, I'll try to detail my thoughts on this.

The Living Daylights - A-ha

[link] I think this is my favorite Bond theme.  And the movie is in my top 5 favorites in the Bond series.  Helps when the lead singer has a lot of narrative quality just in the tone of voice, which Morten Harket has in spaces.  The chord progression and changes are really nice here, even within the constraint of the spyish motifs needed for Bond themedom.

Head of the Class

Liked this show ca. 1988.  Had a think for Sarah, played by Kimberly Russell, who strikingly is 3 years older than me (I didn't know at the time; I was in college and she was playing a high school girl).

Wide World of Sports intro

Also loved this intro music. I researched this and the In Search Of theme a few years back.  Both were written for the respective TV shows by obscure TV music composers. Just goes to show that really good music can come from anywhere and often is not appreciated by the musical world proper.

In Search Of

Watched this a lot in the 70s.  The Bigfoot episode scared the crap out of me. Loved the intro/outro music.  I think this show is the reason why I have a continuing fascination with the phenomology of people's sightings of the paranormal, even though I have no belief in paranormal/supernatural phenomena.

Project UFO TV series

[link to intro] This is a later series that I also did not watch, but I remember friends talking about it.  Sort of the first X-files. Very late 70s.

1970 UFO TV series

[link to intro] I was too young for this and never saw it.  But it looks both corny and (for TV) slick for its time. OK, well maybe if it were 1950 it would be slick.  The episodes appear to be on youtube, so maybe I'll check it out.

Emotion in Motion - Naked Eyes

[link] I love the high sweeping verse of this song.  Naked eyes could do synth pop with the best of them.

William It Was Really Nothing - the Smiths

[link] Great jangly moving song. The chorus is really sweeping. I really like the way the Smiths have rallies in their song, like the chorus into the 2nd (last) verse. 

O My God - the Police

[link] Another great life statement by the Police. And another great groove.  These songs are immortal...

When the World is Running Down... - the Police

[link] Really amazing groove. Prescient in its time, how much truth in it.

Wishing Well - Bob Mould

[link] Mould was huge on college radio in the late 80s and early 90s. This is great pop.  And I really think his voice was a prototype for the likes of Eddie Vetter and scores of other calculated low-gravelish (hard to describe), overproduced male vocal sounds that came after.