"In The Air Tonight"
The quiet moody intro still builds palpable tension and that thunderous drum explosion gets us every time even though we know exactly when it will occur. Great song to start or end a mixtape. I know there is an official music video for the song but for our money, the scene from the Miami Vice premiere episode where Crockett and Tubbs are cruising the streets while the song plays is the definitive music video for the song.
"Ride Like The Wind"
This galloping track would also make a great beginning to a mixtape and it's a fine beginning to side two of the album. One little nit we have with this track is the excellent guitar solo played by Cross himself buried in the mix at the end of the song. (Groovefunkel fleshes that solo out nicely in their reworking of the track.) If I were making this tape today with the fully operational HERChives at hand, I'd be tempted to start the mix with Dave Lee's tasty Extended Disco Mix from 2016 which kicks off the second disc of his Remixed With Love Vol. 2 album.
"I Heard It Through The Grapevine"
Okay, I see what I did there. Changing up the tempo and dialing the music back a couple of decades. Still riding its Big Chill bump from 1983 along with nearly every other Motown hit, this song simply simmers, allowing Marvin Gaye to do what Marvin Gaye did best: sing.
"Affair of the Heart"
The girl I made this tape for was a huge Dr. Noah Drake fan. We attended Springfield's concert on November 27, 1984, which was filmed as the basis for Beat Of A Live Drum, a concert video interspersed with music videos. The film was the directorial debut of David Fincher. (Yup, THAT David Fincher.) "Affair Of the Heart" was the fourth song Springfield performed that night if I recall correctly though I think one of the first three tunes might have been performed twice for the sake of the special. Nocturnal, sunglasses aficionado Corey Hart opened the show but is not in the film and you don't have to look very far to see my girl and me in the opening scenes - we're the ones with our lighters in the air. We had purchased a two-pack of Bics (one yellow, one blue) at Circle K on the way down to the show.
"Gold"
One of those songs that sounds best to me under dark skies. Can we take a moment to marvel at the tracklist of the pictured album which was the tape's source for "Gold". With the lone exception of Linda Clifford's disco-fied version of the Simon & Garfunkel standard, each of the songs was my favorite song during their respective chart runs and I bought each of them as a 45. Cannot say that about any other album in the HERChives.
"It's Still Rock and Roll To Me"
She loves this song and I really, really enjoy it as well. The entire first side of the Glass Houses album is as solid as they come. About six weeks after I made this tape, I bought a pair of tickets to the local stop of Billy Joel's The Bridge Tour to be held on November 18, 1986. Neither one of us would rank The Bridge as one of our favorite Joel albums though she did like the track "Modern Woman" and she was a big Billy Joel fan. (We had attended a previous Joel show together: An Innocent Man date on my 18th birthday in 1984.) As things turned out, we were going to miss an episode of Moonlighting that Tuesday night in 1986 to attend the concert so I had my folks record it for me. They had never let me down, previously recording episodes of Miami Vice and the entirety of the Live Aid broadcast. Imagine my surprise when I watched the tape and it had a couple of Billy Joel songs in the episode including a dance production number set to "Big Man On Mulberry Street" from The Bridge and "New York State Of Mind".
"Run Runaway"
I got lucky one day at Al Bum's and scored the promo-only twelve-inch single pictured above in the Fresh bin. Dubbed the track to a tape over and over and over during my obsession with the song. I wrote about my relationship with this song and how it played a prominent part in my daily routine as a high school senior HERE - scroll down to the fourth album listed to read that gripping story.
"I Love Rock and Roll"
Hey, it's the second song on this tape that references rock and roll. Coincidence? Yeah, probably. If I were intentionally doing a theme, it would be painfully obvious as me and subtlety are complete and total strangers. Whenever my lady would see this album cover she would comment "I really love the color of Joan's jacket". About 12 years ago in 2012 or 2013, I bought her a wool coat that is nearly the same exact color. I still regularly play this song on our house and car mixes and we both still shout along with much attitude. As our grandchildren have recently begun saying, "It's from the olden times."
"Shake Me"
Pretty sure she didn't really have an opinion on this song so it's not one of her Greatest Hits but it is one of my favorites. And it seems like one of my trademark not-so-subtle hints about how she made (and makes) me feel. We'd later see Cinderella open for Bon Jovi on their Slippery When Wet tour in January 1987. Singer Tom Kiefer's raspy, growly vocals still sound good to me though I wouldn't want to hear current-day Tom try and sing this song. The years probably haven't been kind to his unique voice.
"Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young"
What a great song to end the first side of WW. I introduced her to this song on a previous mixtape. Because I saw the movie in the theaters with someone else, it would be another year or two before I would be able to share the movie with her. This song is definitely more my Greatest Hit than hers but she has indulged my love of this film and its soundtrack for dang near forty years now, including attending two big-screen revivals and watching monthly in-home 4K screenings.
"Maneater"
The sinewy bass line, clean drum sound, and crooning sax riff make "Maneater" a big HERChive favorite. I know she loved it because I'd hear her humming the melody for hours after the song played. Cannot explain why I used Rock 'N Soul Part 1 to dub "Maneater" though I may have used Number One On The Streets, a great-sounding compilation album that says right on the cover that it has 90 minutes of the hottest extended mix dance music. "Maneater" was merely the album version, like four other tracks. Given the song's strong musical elements, our hopes were high for a great remix but the hard-to-find (at the time) 12" US Special Extended Club Dance Mix (or whatever they called it) by Mike Thorne was a major disappointment when we finally got our hands on it. DJ DiscoCat did the song remix justice in 2017 and we absolutely adore their Purrfection Version.
"Tainted Love"
She really likes it, I really like it so it easily qualifies as a Greatest Hit for our purposes. Two stations we listened to in 1983 occasionally played this 1981 song. I remember hearing it on the weekend mix shows. Since then, radio programmers have elevated "Tainted Love" to a daily must-play on several formats including AC, classic hits, Triple A, classic rock, and adult hits. It still stands out among the other songs being played. The leading AC station in town spins "Tainted Love" a little over once a day while our local classic hits station plays it more than that. We tried spinning it on The Drive a few times over the past five years but each time, our Boomer audience reacts negatively.
"The Heart of Rock and Roll"
Another song about Rock and Roll? We saw Huey and the News shortly before Valentine's Day 1985 and this one was their opening song. The sound of the heartbeat fading in makes it a natural opener; it kicks off the group's 1983 album Sports as well. After listening to this mixtape I noticed we didn't have any News tracks on the house and mobile mix yet so I asked her what her favorite tracks were. She rattled off half a dozen titles and I quickly added them to our daily soundtrack.
"Lights Out"
"Lights Out" came into our lives in what was our usual way back before smartphones. One of the little things I used to love about my wife - and this started before she was my wife so it went on a while - is the way she'd hum songs for me to figure out. She'd come home from work, get settled, and say she heard a new song and it sounded like so and so. Then she'd start humming it for me and maybe half the time I'd figure it out. Now, she just asks Siri to identify any song. I told her that I missed when we used to do that and she promised that the next time she heard a song she wanted to identify, she'd hum it for me.
"Shock The Monkey"
My girl and her sister moved out of their family home and got an apartment with their friend sometime in 1984. They were the first people I knew who got cable and had MTV. It was there in that apartment one night that I saw the music video for "Shock The Monkey", though it may have been on Friday Night Videos and not MTV. It was weird and exactly what I thought of the song. The lyrics are inscrutable so I mostly focused on the music, the rhythmic chaos, which remains unlike anything else I've ever heard. She would come to appreciate and like later Gabriel tracks but I'm pretty sure this one is just for me. I was obsessed with Gabriel's music in 1985 and it only continued into 1986 and the release of So.
"Old Time Rock & Roll"
Maybe there was a deliberate effort to include songs about rock & roll. She knew and liked the song because her older brother used to play the album. I knew it because Dad also played the Stranger In Town album quite a bit. So it was already a favorite of mine when one night in late summer 1983 just after I started working my first job I was sitting in the theater watching a movie titled Risky Business and the song came on, soundtracking what would become a popular scene in the film. Then radio began playing "Old Time Rock & Roll" again in 1983 as the song climbed back on the charts, breaking into the Top 50 only to surface again in 1986 just as the classic rock format was beginning. It's still on classic rock though it gets more spins on classic hits stations now and has become Seger's most-played radio song by a 2-1 margin.
"Kayleigh"
Neither one of us can recall the first time we heard "Kayleigh" but we both agree we loved it. It is one of just a few songs I prefer the single edit to the full album version. We even had the name Kayleigh as one of the two possible girl names for our first child in 1987 though we went with the other name once she arrived. Two weeks ago, I was at Sonic picking up a quick dinner and my server was named Kaylee. I asked her if she knew the story of her name and she said her parents had told her they got it from the TV series Firefly in the early 2000s. I asked if she had ever heard the song "Kayleigh" and she said she hadn't so I told her to look it up and gave her the alternate spelling and the artist's name. You're welcome, Kaylee.
"You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)"
She liked this song a lot and I loved the way it sounded on car stereos. I had purchased the twelve-inch single with the Murder Mix and am pretty sure I had featured it on a previous mixtape for her. Didn't have the shorter version of the song until I picked up this album (and the one up above) in September 1985. When I later picked up the original album that "You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)" appeared on (Youthquake) I realized that the shorter version is the album version. Neither one of us likes the way the single/album version just jumps right into the song and our preference between the Murder Mix and the Performance Mix is the former.
"The Heat Is On"
We had seen Beverly Hills Cop together and she may have picked up the soundtrack on cassette soon after so she could enjoy it in her car. A few months passed before I picked it up on vinyl at the end of February 1985. "The Heat is On" was more of a Greatest Hit for her as I preferred the two Patti LaBelle tracks and the "Axel F Theme" from the album more then and now.
"The Bird"
This was a hot track featured in the film Purple Rain and somewhat belatedly released as the third and final single from The Time's album Ice Cream Castle in February 1985. We picked up this cool twelve-inch single in April 1985 and liked that it was a remix and still shorter than the album version. The weekend that Purple Rain opened, I went and saw it ten times. I saw the earliest showing on Friday by myself and then saw it three more times that day with a different person each time. Cannot recall when I took my girl to see it (we both remember seeing it together back then) but I know the last of three times I watched it Sunday, it was at the drive-in with my parents. It's not that it was a great or even good film; it's the musical performance scenes I wanted to share with pretty much everyone I knew. While she likes this song well enough, it is undoubtedly more my Greatest Hit than hers.
"I Love Lucy"
"The Ballad of Jed Clampett"
Looks like I came up short programming the second side of WW and turned to a couple of TV themes to fill out the time. The first song is the rare vocal version of the I Love Lucy theme performed by Desi Arnaz in the May 1953 episode "Lucy's Last Birthday". The second song was the full version of the Beverly Hillbillies theme song. For the show, it was split in two with the first verse and the chorus playing over the opening credits while the second verse played over the closing credits. I had no idea if she had ever heard these songs let alone liked them. The album I dubbed the songs from was an early 1986 pick-up. It is an early predecessor to Rhino's later three CD series Tube Tunes, which covered TV themes from the 70s and 80s.
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