though I love you unclean

From the January-February 1988 issue of Nintendo Power comes this token effort toward music journalism...

(Click to be like Wham! and MAKE IT BIG!)
It's written in the same hyperbolic hard-sell tone employed by the periodical to foist such quality gamepaks such as Ghost Lion and the California Raisins game onto the impressionable youth of late 1980's America, which is quite disconcerting considering the choice of artists featured. Of the three, only Debbie Gibson was an actual chart success at the time (though I still am unable to understand how that came to be). Huey Lewis and the News had already taken the first steps on the road to state fair appearances, and Julian Lennon, living proof that talent (unlike appearance) can't be genetically transmitted, had already basked in his necrotic fifteen minutes of public fascination a few years prior.

I assume the decision on which artists to spotlight came down to least offensive denominator, so as not to scare off the parents who actually paid for the games pimped in the pages of Nintendo Power, hence no South of Heaven or Locust Abortion Technician. I can understand that line of reasoning, but there must have been other acts able to meet Nintendo's vetting process, ones with proven tweener appeal and whose hypetastic "Sound Waves" blurb didn't require committing "...and clearly shows he is following in the footsteps of his talented father (late Beatle John Lennon)" to immortality via the printed page.

Or involve Huey Lewis at all

It's not like I would have noticed, anyhow. The period from roughly 1985 to 1989 was something of a pop interregnum for me, a time when I effectively unplugged myself from the contemporary music grid. My burgeoning appreciation for 60's pop, rock, and especially soul music, combined with the death of V-66, a local music video station and my main means of keeping up with music trends, worked to suspend my interest in anything recorded after 1972.

I apparently didn't miss much, either:

Granted, the pop charts are inherently weighted toward the crap end of the spectrum, and show only the narrowest view into an given era's musical legacy. There was plenty of outstanding stuff released during those years, but even if I wasn't bopping to the backbeat of some mid-60's Stax recording, the chances I'd have discovered gems like XTC's Oranges and Lemons or New Order's Technique or Billy Bragg's Worker's Playtime on my own back then were pretty much nil.

My peers at the time were either budding juvenile delinquents or (worse) Dungeons & Dragons enthusiasts. The musical tastes of both groups ran the wide gamut from hard rock to heavy metal, and took every iota of willpower I possessed to resist indoctrination. Seriously, I was this close to thinking that Rush was a brilliant band before I managed to pull myself back from the all-consuming abyss. The handful of kids in Woburn who were hep to what was then called the "college rock" scene didn't run in the same circles as I did, and, truth be told, they also tended to be pricks and not really the type of folks I'd take listening advice from.

It wasn't until I got into punk (by way of thrash metal) that I again started listening to music that wasn't recorded before I was born. The ready availability of cheap used vinyl made it easy to play catch up and discover most of what I missed out on the first time around (and then some) and take chances on things that I'd have otherwise passed up on checking out. I don't regret the hiccup in development of my musical tastes at all. If anything, I appreciate the advantage in approaching commonly known material as a outsider has conferred on several occasions. Nostalgia's lens flare tends to throw off one's ability to focus properly.

For the musical portion of today's program, here are three tracks released in 1988-89 from bands that did not earn a blurb in Nintendo Power, but have earned my (belated) Seal of Approval:

Babes in Toyland - He's My Thing (from Spanking Machine, 1989) - If Siouxsie Sioux fronted the Cramps...

My Bloody Valentine - (When You Wake) You're Still In A Dream (from Isn't Anything, 1988) - Spike-heeled shoegaze.

Orchids - If You Can't Find Love (from Lyceum, 1989) - Live twee or cry.