30 day music meme, day 17
Jun. 24th, 2017 11:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkit17. A song that you would sing as a duet on karaoke
I don't sing in public. But if I did, I might pick this song, preferably with two accomplices rather than one. (What's the word for a three-person song? Anyway, in the case of this song, "threesome" is probably as good a term as any.)
Mitch Ryder got famous doing blue-eyed soul in the 60s, then nearly tanked his solo career in 1979 when he released How I Spent My Vacation, which is mostly about his sexual and romantic relationships with other men.* He continued to release music but as far as I know it sold very badly. In 1983, he made a "comeback" album, Never Kick A Sleeping Dog, produced by John Mellencamp, which includes this song.
*A lot of Ryder's music is not really my cup of tea. He first appealed to me because of the queer element, which I learned about around the time NKASD was released; astonishingly, within a couple of months I found a vinyl copy of HISMV in a secondhand store in the very small town where my family did its shopping** and listened to it over and over again on the sly. I only loved it for its queerness, but that was enough.*** I do genuinely like much of Never Kick A Sleeping Dog, though, and especially the following.
Mitch Ryder with Marianne Faithfull and John Mellencamp, "A Thrill's A Thrill"
**We didn't live in a town. We lived in the country about 40 miles away and only came to town for shopping and other necessary things.
***A queer element was how I discovered a lot of music as a teenager. The Smiths, for example, and David Bowie (like a lot of queer boys I wanted to be Ziggy Stardust; I just happened to want it a decade too late) and the Jam (via Paul Weller's later project the Style Council and the swirling rumors, all too vehemently denied by Weller, that he and bandmate Mick Talbot were a couple).
Speaking of the Style Council, have another video. I thought I had linked to this before--I know I've talked about it--but I can't find it. Anyway, this is why everybody thought Weller and Talbot were boyfriends. (I still think they were. sorrynotsorry)
ETA: Just watched this through and it's a different version! Still plenty homoerotic, but now I need to try to find the one where they stroke each other's ears.
ETA2: Wow, the original version is gone. This means that at some point since 2012, the video was recut, taking out the ear stroking and adding some No Homo elements--e.g. the shot of Talbot lying on the ground by himself, which has a weird, aggressive, almost gay-bashing feel to it--that I don't remember from the original, though they must have been filmed at the time. Presumably it was Weller who had this done (he seems to have gotten increasingly upset by the "accusation" of gayness over the years), and it honestly sickens me. I haven't listened to Weller's new music in years, and I think maybe I don't like the person he's become. (By the way, here's a post from 2012 that talks about the ear-fondling scene, so you know I'm not imagining it. Note that the embedded video there does not contain any ear fondling, so the original version was literally replaced on YouTube with the No Homo one.)
ETA3: Okay, I've now seen an online discussion in which someone says that the original video was "banned and replaced with a clean version" around the time of its release. But that doesn't explain why I used to be able to find the original online and now I can't. (The original version can be found on a Style Council video DVD that can be bought from Amazon or rented from Netflix, if you're sufficiently interested. I am fighting the urge to buy a copy just so I can always be sure the original video still exists.) I'm still annoyed, though less inclined to blame Paul Weller personally. He could still shut the fuck up about how he's Totally 110% Not Gay, though.
I don't sing in public. But if I did, I might pick this song, preferably with two accomplices rather than one. (What's the word for a three-person song? Anyway, in the case of this song, "threesome" is probably as good a term as any.)
Mitch Ryder got famous doing blue-eyed soul in the 60s, then nearly tanked his solo career in 1979 when he released How I Spent My Vacation, which is mostly about his sexual and romantic relationships with other men.* He continued to release music but as far as I know it sold very badly. In 1983, he made a "comeback" album, Never Kick A Sleeping Dog, produced by John Mellencamp, which includes this song.
*A lot of Ryder's music is not really my cup of tea. He first appealed to me because of the queer element, which I learned about around the time NKASD was released; astonishingly, within a couple of months I found a vinyl copy of HISMV in a secondhand store in the very small town where my family did its shopping** and listened to it over and over again on the sly. I only loved it for its queerness, but that was enough.*** I do genuinely like much of Never Kick A Sleeping Dog, though, and especially the following.
Mitch Ryder with Marianne Faithfull and John Mellencamp, "A Thrill's A Thrill"
**We didn't live in a town. We lived in the country about 40 miles away and only came to town for shopping and other necessary things.
***A queer element was how I discovered a lot of music as a teenager. The Smiths, for example, and David Bowie (like a lot of queer boys I wanted to be Ziggy Stardust; I just happened to want it a decade too late) and the Jam (via Paul Weller's later project the Style Council and the swirling rumors, all too vehemently denied by Weller, that he and bandmate Mick Talbot were a couple).
Speaking of the Style Council, have another video. I thought I had linked to this before--I know I've talked about it--but I can't find it. Anyway, this is why everybody thought Weller and Talbot were boyfriends. (I still think they were. sorrynotsorry)
ETA: Just watched this through and it's a different version! Still plenty homoerotic, but now I need to try to find the one where they stroke each other's ears.
ETA2: Wow, the original version is gone. This means that at some point since 2012, the video was recut, taking out the ear stroking and adding some No Homo elements--e.g. the shot of Talbot lying on the ground by himself, which has a weird, aggressive, almost gay-bashing feel to it--that I don't remember from the original, though they must have been filmed at the time. Presumably it was Weller who had this done (he seems to have gotten increasingly upset by the "accusation" of gayness over the years), and it honestly sickens me. I haven't listened to Weller's new music in years, and I think maybe I don't like the person he's become. (By the way, here's a post from 2012 that talks about the ear-fondling scene, so you know I'm not imagining it. Note that the embedded video there does not contain any ear fondling, so the original version was literally replaced on YouTube with the No Homo one.)
ETA3: Okay, I've now seen an online discussion in which someone says that the original video was "banned and replaced with a clean version" around the time of its release. But that doesn't explain why I used to be able to find the original online and now I can't. (The original version can be found on a Style Council video DVD that can be bought from Amazon or rented from Netflix, if you're sufficiently interested. I am fighting the urge to buy a copy just so I can always be sure the original video still exists.) I'm still annoyed, though less inclined to blame Paul Weller personally. He could still shut the fuck up about how he's Totally 110% Not Gay, though.
