Due to Stephanie's inspired inclusion of the video for "She's Gone" in the comments section yesterday, I decided that I had to get this included into a proper post. It's an amazing video, and if there's ever been a better reaction to meeting The Devil, I'd like to see it:
"She's Gone"
On an unrelated note, has "shame" ever been personified better than in this picture of Eliot Spitzer during his press conference on monday? It's an absolutely perfect mix of contrition, embarrassment, and awkwardness. As Stephen Colbert pointed out on his show last night, it looks like he wants to eat his face:
Just in case you, the reading public, are going through the same unquenchable Hall and Oates phase right now, I thought I'd pass along the YouTube clip of their classic video for "Maneater":
What is it about this band that makes them so irresistible? This is exactly the same mix of surprise and a surprising lack of embarrassment that I felt when I started getting heavily into Fleetwood Mac a couple years ago. Is it just that I was too much of a snob in the past to give some of the most popular acts of the past a chance? Possibly. For that matter, what is it about a band like Hall and Oates that makes them seem so fundamentally uncool, which other bands from that time period, such as Duran Duran, have always been acceptable in a "a good song is a good song" sort of way? Heavy questions, yes, but here are some possibilities:
Hair. I mean, c'mon, look at these guys. Aren't they basically everything you didn't want to look like if you grew up in the 90's ? They're so tethered to the 80's it would have taken a lot of confidence, more than I apparently had, to like them growing up .
Their lack of "Englishness." One of the reasons that bands like Duran Duran and Inxs can always get some credit in the States is because of the simple fact that they're not from this country. As such, we can like what we want about them and dismiss away anything weird as some sort of English quirk that we don't get. But Hall and Oates? C'mon, those dudes are from Philly!
Oates's mustache. Oddly compelling, but ultimately too much to handle:
Too popular with the wrong people. Aha- finally we get at the biggest problem. Much like Fleetwood Mac, there are just too many people with terrible taste that like these guys. As a young snobby kid still sorting out what was good and what wasn't, it was just about impossible for me to listen to a band like this on it's own terms and look past the fact that you could like the same band as your parents. This is something that, thankfully, I've been able to get over. Because I'm sorry, if you can listen to "Rich Girl" and not think it's just about the best thing you've ever heard, you might still have some work to do.
