Fortress Around Your Heart - Sting

When the Police broke up ca. 1985, I was pretty bummed.  Sting's first solo album, Dream of the Blue Turtles (1985), eased the pain a bit.  Sting's later work is far inferior, in my opinion.  Fortress Around Your Heart, is one of the more conventional rock songs on the album, and my favorite.

Bringin' on the Heartbreak - Def Leppard

The 1983 album Pyromania was overplayed yet under-appreciated as a pop masterpiece. This song was one of several high points. None in the hair band coterie that came later ever achived anything like what Def Leppard and producer Mutt Lange achived multiple times on this album.

Happy Boy - the Bolshoi

link
A very good and underappreciated (in the State) band from the 80s. Kind of combines the goth-ness of the Cure with the techno-ness of Depeche Mode and their ilk.
This song is bass-driven with a cure-esque held augmented minor guitar chord in the verse.  Song structure pretty effectively builds from verse to B part and then back down. Very atmospheric.

After the Gold Rush

Here's my cover, recorded in a free moment this morning.

Goodbye To You - Scandal

A fun, chord driven song I've always liked. Call it a guilty pleasure.

Sundown - Gordon Lightfoot

Recorded this tonight.  With special appearance by Baby T.

Scarlet Begonias - Grateful Dead

Really nice song.  Never got into the Dead, but never really tried to. The few songs I heard all sounded a bit the same.  Didn't really like the jam form, and frankly I wasn't attracted to the stereotypical deadheads.  But their songs are well written, especially the lyrics.  They are well suited to the folk-rock form.

Fast Car - Tracy Chapman

From 1988. always loved this song. Tight coupling between verse chords and lyrics. Powerful rallying chorus. Hooks throughout. A poignant slice of life if there ever was one. Probably couldn't pull it off solo on the uke because of the lead in the verse and the chorus being driven by the rhythm section.

De Luxe - Lush

link
My favorite band from the 90s, as I've discussed previously.  A wall of sound but in a controlled range of frequencies, not the whole board like so much of today's stuff.  The product with the vocals is a carefully cultivated sound and feel.

Baritone Banjo Ukulele

Thinking about buying one of these.  It's a beautiful instrument and it would be fun to have this sound.

I Wanna Be Adored - The Stone Roses

From 1989.  Simple, throbbing, a song to lose oneself in, as the video seems to illustrate.

A Girl Like Jesus - Right as Rain

link to video
Possibly the most perfect pop song ever. This was from 1998, the band being from the Atlanta scene, which along with Athens ruled the college/alternative pop sound at that time. I got exposed to this song when I was a grad student at Duke from 1989-1995, when I listened avidly to WXDU and WXYC. I might pick this up for my rapidly expanding uke set.

Mental song jamming

I was working on Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush" and then Ru-Jun asked me to play "Sundown", which I haven't played in a while. The first line of the verse is similar to "After the Gold Rush", so I couldn't do "Sundown" without listening to it. As a solo performer, it's sometimes hard to get a song clearly into my head enough to start playing it. This happens more often with particular songs than with others.

Subterranean - The Fixx

This band was in popular decline in 1988 when the underappreciated album "Calm Animals" came out. Subterranean is one of my favorites on this very listenable album. I listened to this album as a habit whenever I drove home to Palmyra from the University of Rochester and the song still gives me strong recollections of that time.

Hunter and the Hunted (Live) - Simple Minds

Not quite sure how they pulled this off live so well.  Best song on my favorite album of all time - New Gold Dream 81/82/83/84 (1982).  Saw them live in 85.  I don't think they played this song in that show.

Folson Prison Blues

Here's my cover of the Johnny Cash classic, Folsom Prison Blues.  I have to credit my old bandmate Eric, from Seed Pod 17 and U-Pump, in the Madison days, for my knowledge and appreciation of this song.  He does Johnny much better than I can.

She's Lost Control - Joy Division

A classic, very bass driven.  Probably can't work this up for the uke, though.

Working on learning...

a couple of classics

Clapton's Layla and CSN's Southern Cross

don't know if they'll turn out yet...

Indian Summer - Dream Academy

Thought of these guys for some reason while in the grocery store today.  Very wistful sound from the mid/late 80s.  Here's Indian Summer from 1987.  I remember listening to this while home from college on vacation.

Illegan Alien - Genesis

Some songs are really good despite what their lyrics are about.  Case in point: Illegal Alien, by Genesis.  This was on their eponymous 1983 album, which was extremely good and for represents the high point of the Genesis brand of (by then very poppy, but still original and idiosyncratic) art rock.  It was meant as a lampoon of peoples' stereotypes, and the video really goes over the top with the concept.  This was all OK in the early 80s in both the US and the UK. But I imagine they could not put this out, at least as a band as prominent as they were in the charts back then (a totally different time in pop with totally different chart dynamics, of course).  And the song probably does not get very much air play these days because of the political correctness angle.  Which is too bad, because musically it is a really excellent and inventive piece of pop.