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Althouse Conjures Up Some Bad Music.

She asks:

“What band claimed to have ‘built this city on rock n’ roll’?”

If you don’t know the answer, it’s the band Starship. If you don’t know the song, BE GREATFUL!!!

“We Built This City” – What a wretched piece of garbage that song is. A little bile comes up in my throat just thinking about that song. And wasn’t it just soooooo cute that each large market city (San Diego, Chicago, etc.) had a version of the song with it’s name inserted in the lyrics.

Jefferson Airplane was a very good band (Jack Casady is a fine bassist). Even JS had their moments, though in hindsight you could see where things were going. It was all about the record sales, and by the late 80’s, big, unchallenging, mindless, by the numbers,  ghost-written-by-commitee finger painted songs were being churned out by the industry. When bands devolve musically to this point, we give them the “Phat” label. The term derived from the 80’s version of Heart, and no, it had nothing to do with Ann Wilson’s size. It was based on that huge, booming, cookie cutter song writing template they adopted after they found their 70’s success had faded. This sound became typical of “comeback” bands during the 80’s. This metamorphosis brought us “What About Love” and the catchy titled “All I Wanna do is Make Love to You”. You had Phat Chicago playing “Stay The Night”, Phat REO Speedwagon with “I Can’t Fight this Feeling Anymore”. Genesis, though not a comeback band, gave us “Invisible Touch”.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the 80’s. There were some great new bands – Mr. Mister, Crowded House, Oingo Boingo to name a few, and some of the older guys were recording good stuff – Don Henley, Peter Gabriel, Sting all shined during this period, but man, some of the stuff that emanated from my radio just makes my head hurt.