Much like yesterday's Never Found artist The Mighty Mofos, Urban Guerrillas were very much a Minneapolis phenomenon. They never generated much national attention, but did open for such big time acts as U2 and Cyndi Lauper. Also much like The Mofos, Urban Guerrillas were a lot of fun to see perform live.
Urban Guerrillas was a personal favorite of mine to watch. I saw them several times. On one occasion the drummer got mad enough to quit the band and walk off stage during their show. I don't think his quitting lasted long. I've heard of a show they did once in the 7th Street Entry in which they laid sod on the dancefloor so everyone watching could dance barefoot in the grass. I wasn't at that show.
I'm not sure if I was at the show in the main room from which today's live performance comes, but it is one of my favorite of their songs. The song is Freeway Picnic Party and just look at all the 80s dancin' going on! The performance is circa 1986.
Urban Guerrillas broke up in 1987 and the members just sort of disappeared. …
I know everyone feels old when I share the 30th anniversaries of movies we loved in the ‘80s. So how about I make things worse and share this: Here’s a list of top 10 movies that were released this month 35 years ago:
Are you kidding me? If you wanted to rank them by box office performance to date, here’s how they’d rank:
1. Raiders of the Lost Ark ($248 million) 2. Superman II ($108 million) 3. Stripes ($85 million) 4. The Cannonball Run ($57 million) 5. For Your Eyes Only ($54 million) 6. Cheech & Chong’s Nice Dreams ($37 million) 7. History of the World Part I ($31.6 million) 8. The Great Muppet Caper ($31.2 million) 9. Clash of the Titans ($30 million) 10. The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia ($14 million)
Continuing our look at Minneapolis bands performing live at the legendary nightclub First Avenue & 7th Street Entry we find The Mighty Mofos. The Mofos were (and are still) the quintessential bar band.
Led by the Batson brothers (Ernie on guitar and Billy on lead vocal), they cranked out a blast of a live show, but never found any of their songs on the charts in the '80s or any other decade. They were heavily influenced by '60s garage rock and bands such as MC5 and The Stooges. In fact, the last time I saw them play was when they were opening for rock icon Iggy Pop.
The song is Mind Reader and the performance is from 1988 in the main room. And the clip also solves the mystery as to who was responsible for digging the trench for the toilet in the restroom of the 7th Street Entry.
According to their Facebook page, the Batson boys and the Mofos are still at it!
It's another week of live performances of Never Found musical artists from our favorite decade. This week the focus will be on Minneapolis' legendary nightclub First Avenue & 7th Street Entry. There was plenty going on in the Minneapolis music scene of the '80s and First Avenue was at the center of it all. Not just a showcase for the far too soon departed Prince, First Avenue & 7th Street Entry was the venue to play for up and coming artists: local, national, and international.
First Avenue & 7th Street Entry is two live music venues in one: The main room (First Avenue) has a capacity of about 1,500, while the smaller venue (7th Street Entry) can hold about 250. This week I will focus on five local musical artists who never found their way onto the Top 40 playlists in the 80s, but they did find their way onto one of those stages. …
Is Back to School one of the underrated comedies of the ‘80s? Released June 13, 1986, Back to School did score $90 million at the box office, making it one of the top 10 movies of the year. And yet, it’s not name-checked nearly as often as other '86 classics such as Top Gun, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Aliens or even Crocodile Dundee.
Maybe it lacked the panache of its theatrical competitors. Or maybe Back to School is a whole lotta movie for one comedian, Rodney Dangerfield, to carry on his shoulders. (God knows he didn’t get much help from Robert Downey Jr., who was stretching himself thin by appearing on Saturday Night Live while filming the movie.)
What’s not to love about Back to School? It features a performance by Oingo Boingo, a score by Danny Elfman and a villain played by William Zabka. It has all the pedigrees necessary to be an ‘80s classic.
Was it the beer?
If you hadn’t noticed, every beer featured in Back to School is Miller Beer. Ever wonder why? It’s because Dangerfield had a contract with the Miller Brewing Co. as part of his appearances in Miller Lite TV commercials. Every beer in the movie HAD to be a Miller beer. The more you know…
Here are four other things you probably didn’t know about Back to School on its 30th anniversary.
1. Does the room in which Thornton Melon takes his three-hour oral exam look familiar? It’s the same room where Alex Owens performs her big dance audition finale in 1983’s Flashdance.
2. Watch carefully when Dangerfield is under attack by Sam Kinison’s crazed professor character. He’s laughing. Turns out there wasn’t a single take where he didn’t bust up so it was decided just to use a long distance shot where the laughing wasn’t as noticeable.
3. Speaking of Kinison’s character (Professor Turgeson), the role was at one point intended for comedian Bob Saget, a good friend of Dangerfield’s. But eventually it was decided Saget was too young for the part.
4. Terry Farrell, who played the lovely Valerie Desmond in the movie, would enchant Star Trek fans decades later when she played Lt. Commander Jadzia Dax on TV’s Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. …
There’s not a lot we don’t know about Ferris Bueller 30 years after John Hughes’ classic flick hit theaters. Released June 11, 1986, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off introduced an “ambassador” to the ‘80s.
He was the guy who passed out at 31 Flavors last night. A kid with clammy hands. The sausage king of Chicago. Someone who would leave cheese out in the wind. A would-be clarinet player. A hero. A righteous dude.
And yet I learn something new every time I watch the movie. Here are five things I swear I didn’t know about Ferris Bueller’s Day Off on its 30th anniversary, according to IMDB.com.
1. Bill Paxton was offered the role as the garage attendant after working with Hughes in Weird Science. He declined, saying it was too small a role. Hughes would never offer Paxton a role again.
2. Edie McClurg improvised many of her lines as Grace, the school secretary, including her imitation of Rooney and her signature quote: “He's a righteous dude.”
3. The line Ferris says at the French restaurant about Cameron's house - “It's very beautiful and very cold, and you're not allowed to touch anything” - wasn’t originally written for this movie. It was a line to be spoken by Allison (Ally Sheedy) in The Breakfast Club about her own home life.
4. Ferris’ interaction with the clarinet and the “coughing” keyboard were improvised by Matthew Broderick.
5. Although we always think of Ferris Bueller as the hero, an earlier version of the script had Ferris cashing in a bond his dad had purchased him in order to finance his “day off.” The scene was filmed but later deleted because it made Ferris look like a thief instead of a lovable teen who just wants to stop and look around once in a while. …
We started our French Week with FR David and we end it with him as well. All though we all know the French word for goodbye is Au Revoir, FR David spares us translating and just tells us in English Don't Go.
While Words is the definitive song for FR David, he was no one-hit wonder and produced many hits and videos including the stylish Don't Go from 1987. While the video to Words was very plain, David's Don't Go is a big budget affair with chases in pajamas throughout the streets of France and odd encounters at the urinal. If it doesn't make sense - it doesn't have to - after all, it's French.
David released his most recent album Midnight Drive in 2013.
Over the years there had been a stereotype created that the French can't stand us ugly Americans, but the good about the French stereotype is their contempt is not just for Americans, but everybody who is not French. When you look at French new wave artists in the '80s, you don't have to go far to find disgust with the world - you just have to find Indochine and Les Tzars.
Indochine is the French word for Indochina and the name of a French new wave band that featured twin brothers Nichola Sirkis (lead singer) and Stephane (guitar/keyboards). But in the mixed up world of rock geography, Asia and China Crisis were from England and Indochine was from Paris.
The video for Les Tzars is pretty cool with your host, a stop-motion lizard dressed in a suit offering the rotoscoping of all the questionable leaders of the 20th century. The song is sung is French, but the lyrics boil to what you would expect from seeing the Les Tzars video - a scathing portrait of corrupt leaders, dictators and czars all from the observation of the country that gave birth to democracy.
As far as untouchable '80s franchises go, Uncle Buck ain't one of them. The 1989 movie was one of the weaker offerings by director John Hughes. Propped up by the late and always lovable John Candy, the movie told the tale of a slacker adult (Candy) who is called upon in a pinch to babysit his brother's kids during a family emergency. The movie had a few great movie lines - all John Candy's - but otherwise felt a little watered-down.
ABC now is rebooting Uncle Buck as a TV show, starring Mike Epps, beginning June 14. Watch the trailer and decide for yourself if it's a worth successor.
Truth be told, this isn't TV's first attempt at Uncle Buck. CBS gave it a go back in 1990 with Kevin Meaney in the title role. (In that show's stories, the kids parents actually die. Wow. Huge laughs). It was canceled before even finishing its first season.
Frankly, the trouble is the original material. Even famed movie critic Roger Ebert wasn't impressed with the 1989 flick, giving it only 1 1/2 stars while writing: "The movie is filled with good intentions and good feelings, but they seem to conceal another side of Uncle Buck - a side that makes the movie feel creepy and subtly unwholesome."
A remake of 1984’s Splash is now in the works, according to Slashfilm.com. It turns out that producer Brian Grazer, who co-founded Imagine Entertainment with Ron Howard (who directed the original flick), thinks it’s time for a contemporary reboot.
“I’m actually doing Splash, and I can’t say [anything more],” Grazer told CNBC. “I’m actually going to do it from the point-of-view of … I can’t say anything about it. There’s a movie star that’s going to be involved, [but] I haven’t announced it.”
Ugh. So let’s see if we can point the pieces together. The original film starred Tom Hanks, who plays an unlucky-with-love nice guy who falls for a mermaid (Daryl Hannah). Hmm. But was the story told from the point of view of Tom or Daryl? You could argue it both ways.
My bet? The twist that we now have a “mer-man.” But I’ve been wrong before. Frequently.
However (he says with a shout), Metro.co.uk also reports that Grazer bought a script back in 2009 called … yep, “Merman.”
Benjamin Franklin had it almost right a few hundred years ago: Fish and remakes smell after three decades.
Our first two days of French Week, we have stuck to songs in the English language, we today we brave the actual French language. You are in for a treat today as we tackle Sabine Paturel and her smash hit Les Betises and I boldly give you the SIT80's double money-back guarantee that this will be worth the curiosity of a foreign language post.
Allow me to be your interpreter for Les Betises, which translates into Stupid Things. If I could persuade you to watch twice. First just watch the video and listen to the sweet child-like voice of Sabine Paturel and the jubilant expressions on her goody two-shoes face. Then watch again with the reading the loosely translated lyrics below.
One of the things I like best about '80s music was the ability to put something unique out there rather than a safe record. In a decade that brought us oddities like The Safety Dance and One Night In Bangkok, let me introduce you to the best sing-along song from the '80s that you probably haven't heard - Susanna from the Art Company.
The Art Company was a Dutch band known in their home country as VOF De Kunst. Outside of the Netherlands they were called the Art Company. In 1984, their first single Susanna became a European smash, hitting No. 1 in eight countries including six non-consecutive weeks in France (only Relax by Frankie Goes To Hollywood with nine weeks spent more time at number one in France in 1984).
It did not chart in the U.S. and that was America's loss as Susanna with its irresistible sing-a-long chorus would have fit in just fine with songs like Come On Eileen that did well in the states. The video for Susanna plays out the lyrics of the song as lead singer Nol Havens tries to sweet talk a beauty named Susanna into romance with a roomful of spectators that help with the catchy chorus. The video also contains some strong mustache action.
Can we make a whole week of French-related '80 music videos on Lost and Found? Oui! But why? Because we know you like the French. You like Frawnch Fries, Frawnch Dressing, Frawnch Bread and Peru. Okay, so we are not so great with our spelling and pronunciation of the French language, but with the help of FR David maybe we can improve our Words.
In fair disclosure, my eldest daughter is leaving today for France on a school trip and to distract me from idea that I am now penniless (rather euroless), I thought that collectively '80s Nation could all expand our horizons to learn about artists and songs that burned up the French music charts in the '80s. F.R. (Robert Fitoussi) David was born in Tunisia, but was making music in France without much success since the '60s until 1982 when he released Words.
With English lyrics, Words was a smash all over Europe, including hitting No. 2 on the U.K. Charts and the song even made the U.S. pop charts reaching No. 62 in the summer of 1983. In total, the single Words clocked in with sales of eight million worldwide. The video for Words is simplistic with David only holding his guitar and wearing sunglasses, which became his trademark look.
SpaceCamp could have been one of the big movies of 1986. Released June 6, 1986, the film had a solid cast (Kate Capshaw, Lea Thompson, Kelly Preston, Joaquin Phoenix, Tate Donovan, Tom Skerritt). It was inspired by the real-life Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama - a facility that few of us probably even knew about back in the mid-‘80s. And it a had a family-friendly story: A group of teenagers go to camp at Kennedy Space Center in Cap Canaveral, Fla., for the summer to lean about NASA and the shuttle program.
And then Jan. 28, 1986, happened. When the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded, so did the marketing plan for SpaceCamp. The film was moved to a summer release date and everyone rightfully felt that a movie about a near-disaster with the shuttle was just “too soon.”
“Our thoughts about the space shuttle will never be the same again, and our memories are so painful that SpaceCamp is doomed even before it begins,” the late Roger Ebert wrote in his review for the Chicago Sun-Times. “The time is not right for a comedy thriller about a bunch of kids who are accidentally shot into orbit with their female teacher. It may never be right again.” …
Even in 2016, the George Michael influence is still everywhere in pop culture. Movie blockbusters like Deadpool paid homage to Wham! and the recent comedy Keanu has whole scenes built around a cat-loving George Michael fanatic. If you needed a little help from Michael in the '80s, George was there to help - just ask Deon Estus who scored with his hit Heaven Help Me.
Detroit native Deon Estus latched on a the bass player for England's Wham! just in time for their landmark 1984 China tour. When Michael went solo, Estus became his bass player playing on all four of his consecutive No. 1 solo hits like Faith and Father Figure. When Estus branched out on his own, Michael was there to assist co-writing and singing backup on Heaven HelpMe which reached No. 5 on the pop charts in 1989.
The video for Heaven Help Me is pretty tame with Estus mulling over supermodels. Even after scoring a Top 5 single and an album (Spell) that made the Top 100, Estus never released additional solo material but has continued to be in demand as a producer and session player.
Relive the '80s music, movies and culture with Tampa Bay Times correspondent Steve Spears. A teen during the greatest decade ever, Steve is obsessed with everything from Duran Duran to Journey, John Hughes to John Cusack, and parachute pants to big hair.
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