Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

krisis

Krisis has been creating Crushing Krisis since 2000, writing songs since 1996, and reading comics since 1991. He is a Customer Success and Digital Brand Strategy executive, serial organizer, parent, and feminist, among other things. Based in Philly through 2017, he now resides in Wellington, NZ.

#MusicMonday: “Hot Stuff” – Donna Summer

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One of my favorite things about attending my friends’ weddings is dancing with a group of people with whom I would typically never share the floor.

As E can tell you, my typical first concern after the couple has their first dance is, “when do the fast songs start?” I want to get some dancing in before the entree arrives, and for at least an hour after. Anything less constitutes a failure, no matter how beautiful the venue or good the food.

While I am not typically a musical Luddite eschewing new stuff for golden years, when it comes to dancing most newer tunes (Gaga aside) simply can’t get my body moving on the floor like oldies. I’m not even talking about the 80s. Motown and disco, that’s what makes me want to shake my groove thing.

The wedding we attended last night featured a seven-piece rock band. I typically don’t like wedding bands, because they have cheesy singers, nothing is in the right key, and everything turns into a medley. However, this was a real rock band, and when they played something funky the band got downright dirty.

I’m known for being an uncontrollable freak on the dance floor to begin with, but last night when the band medley’d out of “Disco Inferno” into “Hot Stuff” it was like someone flicked a switch in my brain. I went into berserker mode. I was breaking out moves I probably last saw my mother do in our living room in 1984 – things that always seemed to defy the laws of anatomy and physics. It was like I was Neo in the Dance Matrix.

As great as almost all Donna Summer songs are for dancing, re-listening to “Hot Stuff” makes me realize it has something more. It’s not just that scorching riff, but the overall rock stomp of it. It’s disco, but it’s heavy.

(Also? Extremely satisfying to hear a live band seamlessly segue from “Express Yourself” into “Born This Way” as if the latter was written for that specific purpose.)

30 for 30 Project, 1984: “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” – Wham!

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Apparently, 1984 is the point when the 80s were completely gay.

Note that from me that label is never meant as slander. Here it’s about the celebration of all things glamorous and fey being totally mainstream, and it’s the only explanation I have for Wham’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” hitting number one in the same year as “Karma Chameleon” from Culture Club.

Hell, the number one album spot spent over half the year occupied by Thriller and Purple Rain, neither especially a symbol of restraint and masculinity. In 1984 it was totally cool to be a over-wrought, over-styled, over-the-top male vocalist.


(Watch me cover “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” on YouTube. For more info on my 30 for 30 Project, visit my intro post.)

1984 is also a year that I have some vague musical recollections from, and I’ll tell you that in my house we are all about gay 1984. We had all four the LPs mentioned above, and songs from each are encoded on my DNA. I even had a somersaulting routine set to the prior year’s “I’ll Tumble 4 Ya.” [Read more…] about 30 for 30 Project, 1984: “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” – Wham!

30 for 30 Project, 1983: “Hungry Like the Wolf” – Duran Duran

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There are certain bands – significant, important bands – that I grew up completely ignorant of.

This was surely my parents’ fault. My father, as has been established, brooked with no current music. My mother was all about her Motown, disco, and glossy 80s dance pop.

There was no middle ground for New Wave or 80s rock, so I grew up assuming both were either non-existent or unspeakably terrible.

(Watch me cover “Hungry Like the Wolf” on YouTube. For more info on my 30 for 30 Project, visit my intro post.)

As a result, I know some bands less as artists and more as totems of their time. Duran Duran is one such band. I’m sure I saw an occasional video on MTV growing up, but they’re largely a band I know about in retrospect as a symbol of New Wave acts that lasted long enough to constitute a small genre of 80s rock that wasn’t all about Americana. [Read more…] about 30 for 30 Project, 1983: “Hungry Like the Wolf” – Duran Duran

30 for 30 Project, 1982: “Back on the Chain Gang” – The Pretenders

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My fascination with the Pretenders began with a television commercial.

I’m sure you remember it. Barbie and G.I. Joe racing around in a toy Corvette to the vamped drum intro of “Message of Love.” It was an awesome commercial. My mother is ace at identifying older tunes tapped for commercials, and in the pre “just Google it” age it was her who told me the song was by The Pretenders.

I knew of this group and their bang-èd singer Chrissie Hynde, but had never bothered to pick up any of their LPs until after the commercial. As is my way, I decided I’d rather get to know The Pretenders album-by-album than via greatest hits, and bought all three of their first LPs on New Years Eve 1999.

To my surprise, I actually knew a lot of the songs. Seemingly all of them – even the non-singles. It was like they were already tattooed on my brain. But the one that really resonated – which, of course, I had heard a hundred times before – was “Back on the Chain Gang.”

There was something about the simplicity of that first line, “I saw a picture of you.” All it took was a single wistful glance at that forgotten photograph to hijack the narrator’s world and sent her crashing into the sepia-tinged realm of memory, where she rages against and eventually resigns herself to her lot in life as a broken-hearted survivor. [Read more…] about 30 for 30 Project, 1982: “Back on the Chain Gang” – The Pretenders