Stranger Things Soundtrack: Season 1 Episode 2 - The Story of Reagan Youth, Jingle Bells, I Melt With You and More!

<v Speaker 1>Hello, Shirley fans.
<v Speaker 2>For the last three years, Jason and I have been
<v Speaker 2>bringing you the stories behind all of your favorite movies
<v Speaker 2>from the eighties. But today we begin a new series.
<v Speaker 1>In twenty sixteen, the Duffer Brothers introduced the world to
<v Speaker 1>Stranger Things. This show not only changed the way we
<v Speaker 1>all watch television, but surprisingly also truly impacted the music
<v Speaker 1>we listened to, from Africa to Running Up that Hill.
<v Speaker 1>Stranger Things has brought back songs of our past and
<v Speaker 1>introduced them to a whole new generation.
<v Speaker 2>So The Shirley You Can't Be Serious Podcasts begins a
<v Speaker 2>new series bringing you the stories behind the songs of
<v Speaker 2>Stranger Things.
<v Speaker 1>Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Shirley Can't Be Serious podcast.
<v Speaker 1>Today we are diving into season one, episode two of
<v Speaker 1>Stranger Things.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, and like we said before, we're only covering the songs.
<v Speaker 2>I don't think we'll do another recap rap today. I
<v Speaker 2>think Doctor Fresh is on tour right now. But just
<v Speaker 2>as a quick reminder, this is the episode where Mike
<v Speaker 2>hides eleven in his house while the parents are at work.
<v Speaker 2>Nancy is trying to get busy with Steve. Barb gets
<v Speaker 2>involved and it doesn't go well for her by the end.
<v Speaker 1>This episode, to me is basically forty five minutes of
<v Speaker 1>people run around going WHOA.
<v Speaker 2>Right, Well, there's a little bit more going on that
<v Speaker 2>we will touch on all of those plot points as
<v Speaker 2>we go through the songs of Stranger Things.
<v Speaker 1>Sounds good, let's do it. So.
<v Speaker 2>An interesting bit of trivia on this particular episode is
<v Speaker 2>that one day while they were filming this episode, Millie
<v Speaker 2>Bobby Brown, the girl who plays eleven Yeah, showed up
<v Speaker 2>covered head to toe in glitter okay, and they had
<v Speaker 2>to stop production to clean her up. I don't have
<v Speaker 2>the explaining story, okay, but Caleb Today told me a joke.
<v Speaker 1>I would you like to hear it? Yeah, let's hear it. Okay.
<v Speaker 2>So this guy dipped his balls and glitter. Pretty nuts,
<v Speaker 2>thank you? Yeah that's now. Listener, if you want pretty nuts,
<v Speaker 2>you don't have to dip your balls.
<v Speaker 1>And where you can go visit.
<v Speaker 2>The webpage of our sponsor today, manscaped dot com.
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<v Speaker 2>sure and go check out our wonderful sponsor who helps
<v Speaker 2>bring you this episode today, and it helps us with
<v Speaker 2>them if you go and order some stuff.
<v Speaker 1>So go do that. That's right, wack it? Okay.
<v Speaker 2>So to start off, this episode is called the Weird
<v Speaker 2>on Maple Street. Okay, this is kind of the ET episode.
<v Speaker 2>Do you notice the connection here, Like, I mean, the
<v Speaker 2>whole series is ET ESK. But you've got Et and
<v Speaker 2>Elliott making a connection in the movie, but you've also
<v Speaker 2>got Mike and Eleven making a connection in this episode.
<v Speaker 2>He fakes being sick just like Elliott did. She explores
<v Speaker 2>the house just like Et did. He shows her his toys,
<v Speaker 2>including his Star Wars figures and Yoda. I mean, it's
<v Speaker 2>all very This is probably the most ET of all
<v Speaker 2>of the episodes. And then of course she's also men'smerized
<v Speaker 2>by the TV, and you've got this weird scene where
<v Speaker 2>she walks by suddenly as the family's having dinner. All
<v Speaker 2>super etesque. That's true, But let's talk about the name
<v Speaker 2>real quick.
<v Speaker 1>Okay.
<v Speaker 2>The weirdo on Maple Street could be a couple of
<v Speaker 2>different things, all right, Okay, So there's a Twilight Zone
<v Speaker 2>episode called The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street which
<v Speaker 2>has a lot of fear and anxiety going on, much
<v Speaker 2>like this episode does. I'm thinking maybe this might be
<v Speaker 2>a Stephen King the House on Maple Street reference be
<v Speaker 2>any number of these things, Okay, but there's a lot
<v Speaker 2>of throwbacks on Maple Street, not on Elm Street, and
<v Speaker 2>now I was really hoping to be Elm Street. Yeah no,
<v Speaker 2>But enough about that. Let's jump into the songs.
<v Speaker 1>Now.
<v Speaker 2>The first song that we have to talk about is
<v Speaker 2>on for about three fourths of a second. It comes
<v Speaker 2>in at sixteen thirty three. Jonathan is driving in his
<v Speaker 2>car and we see he's heading out of Hawkins.
<v Speaker 1>Well literally is playing in such a short amount of
<v Speaker 1>time you may not recognize it.
<v Speaker 2>Ladies and gentlemen. That is a song called go Nowhere
<v Speaker 2>by Reagan Youth.
<v Speaker 1>Uh, huh.
<v Speaker 2>Now, as short as that part is in this episode,
<v Speaker 2>I got all kinds of stuff to talk about on.
<v Speaker 1>This When you called me up the other day and said,
<v Speaker 1>have you heard this story, my mind literally popped out
<v Speaker 1>of my head on the floor. Okay.
<v Speaker 2>So, as we said, this song is by a group
<v Speaker 2>called Reagan Youth. They were a punk group in the eighties.
<v Speaker 2>They formed when Reagan took office. Basically, and the components,
<v Speaker 2>the founders of the group, if you will, are a
<v Speaker 2>couple of guys named Dave Rubinstein and Paul Bakija, but
<v Speaker 2>they went by the names Dave Insurgent and Paul Cripple
<v Speaker 2>because that's what punk guys do, right.
<v Speaker 1>Sure, we've talked about that in our Civil Minds episode
<v Speaker 1>on our Patreon. If you haven't heard that, you had
<v Speaker 1>spunky names in the band before they became Civil Minds, Right,
<v Speaker 1>Sid Syphilis, Sid Syphilis our favorite one. So back to
<v Speaker 1>Reagan Youth. You've got Dave Insurgent, You've got Paul Cripple
<v Speaker 1>the name of the band. These guys were some like
<v Speaker 1>anarchist leftist guys. And so it's this idea of Reagan
<v Speaker 1>as Hitler and the Hitler Youth, right, and so that
<v Speaker 1>was their deal. Now they would do satirical like skinhead songs,
<v Speaker 1>except that the skin didn't get the joke, and they
<v Speaker 1>would show up to the shows and Dave Insurgent, Dave Rubinstein,
<v Speaker 1>would call these guys out as they're singing the song
<v Speaker 1>and just like, this is for you, you stupid. His
<v Speaker 1>parents they were survivors of the Holocaust. Yes he was Rubinstein,
<v Speaker 1>shockinglyn Jewish. They were Holocaust survivors who immigrated over to
<v Speaker 1>the US, and he is a first generation American. So,
<v Speaker 1>as it turned out, the group did okay, but they
<v Speaker 1>never really hit it big. They toured with a lot
<v Speaker 1>of big names, but by the end of the Reagan
<v Speaker 1>era the band split up. Bush Youth really just doesn't ring.
<v Speaker 1>Got an entirely different connotation, entirely different and way more inappropriate.
<v Speaker 1>All right, So these guys split up, and Dave Insurgent
<v Speaker 1>by this time had started doing heroin, And when the
<v Speaker 1>band splits up, he becomes a heroin addict. He also
<v Speaker 1>starts selling it. And I say that with the caveat,
<v Speaker 1>he really ends up using the product that he should
<v Speaker 1>be selling, right, exactly right. Yes, he starts dating a
<v Speaker 1>quote unquote stripper who actually turns tricks to bring drug
<v Speaker 1>money in for the both of them. Her name is
<v Speaker 1>Tiffany Bresciani. She does magic tricks. She does magic tricks
<v Speaker 1>where she goes to a car, makes somebody happy and
<v Speaker 1>then comes back. Oh, turning tricks. She's a prostitute. She
<v Speaker 1>is what we call a street walker.
<v Speaker 2>She is a lady of the night. Yes, they're both
<v Speaker 2>significant heroin addamts. Yes, right, yes, and so, as I
<v Speaker 2>mentioned before, Dave has a bad habit of using what
<v Speaker 2>he should be selling, and so one of his dealers
<v Speaker 2>becomes pretty upset when he comes to him wanting more
<v Speaker 2>drugs with no money for the product he got before.
<v Speaker 1>Are you telling me that heroin addict is a bad
<v Speaker 1>businessman in this particular situation. Yes, okay.
<v Speaker 2>But instead of realizing the errors of his ways, Dave
<v Speaker 2>Rubinstein's drug dealer decides to teach him a lesson. Yeah
<v Speaker 2>you know the story on this.
<v Speaker 1>Well, here's what I know. The drug dealer got upset
<v Speaker 1>and decided to make a point with a baseball bat
<v Speaker 1>and beat him very severely, so much in fact, that
<v Speaker 1>he had to go to the hospital and get a lobotomy.
<v Speaker 2>I had to call my dad about this because I'm like,
<v Speaker 2>when does a lobotomy help you? Like, how is that
<v Speaker 2>going to save your life?
<v Speaker 1>Right?
<v Speaker 2>And basically the idea is your brain is swelling, which
<v Speaker 2>if it's swelling against your skull, it can kill you.
<v Speaker 2>And so he said, probably his frontal lobe was so
<v Speaker 2>badly damaged that they just said it's not going to
<v Speaker 2>be of any use anyway, let's cut it out and
<v Speaker 2>that relieves the swelling. So the lobotomy literally saves his
<v Speaker 2>life once again.
<v Speaker 1>This is the lead singer of Reagan Youth. Yeah, by
<v Speaker 1>the way, when he showed up at the hospital, his
<v Speaker 1>eyelid was drooping so much it was touching his upper lip.
<v Speaker 1>Oh my gosh. So you've got this guy walk in
<v Speaker 1>the street with this. I've seen her pictures. Pretty young girl,
<v Speaker 1>Pretty young girl, twenty two.
<v Speaker 2>He has a scar from one ear to the other
<v Speaker 2>from this lobotomy and probably is not operating on all
<v Speaker 2>cylinders anymore, considering that some of his frontal lobe is missing.
<v Speaker 1>That's true.
<v Speaker 2>But what happens is a car comes up, This blue
<v Speaker 2>Toyota car drives up and stops to talk to them.
<v Speaker 2>Now inside of the blue Toyota is this guy named
<v Speaker 2>Joel Rifkin, and he's interested in more than just seeing
<v Speaker 2>her with her clothes off. And so she says to Dave, hey,
<v Speaker 2>give me twenty minutes, I'll be right back and then
<v Speaker 2>we can go get our stuff, right, And so she
<v Speaker 2>gets in the car with this guy.
<v Speaker 1>They leave.
<v Speaker 2>Twenty minutes goes by, and she's not back right, and
<v Speaker 2>then thirty and then an hour, and then multiple hours,
<v Speaker 2>and Dave is freaked out and he goes to the cops,
<v Speaker 2>and surprisingly the cops are not super concerned about a
<v Speaker 2>missing prostitute.
<v Speaker 1>This, by the way, is June twenty fourth, nineteen ninety three.
<v Speaker 2>And so four days later, a cop sees a Mazda
<v Speaker 2>truck with its license plate missing. Okay, so that's a
<v Speaker 2>small violation, right, Yeah, let's pull him over and see
<v Speaker 2>what he's doing. Yeah, So turns on his lights to
<v Speaker 2>pull him over, but he doesn't stop. He continues to
<v Speaker 2>go this person in the Masda truck. It's a slow
<v Speaker 2>chase for a while, but the cop won't leave him alone.
<v Speaker 2>And so because they don't do that, they don't just
<v Speaker 2>give up usually, especially on slow chases.
<v Speaker 1>So it turns into a fast chase, turns into a
<v Speaker 1>fast chase. He ends up going almost one hundred miles
<v Speaker 1>an hour at one point, and then this truck wrecks
<v Speaker 1>into a stop light and the cop comes running up
<v Speaker 1>to the car and is overwhelmed by a stench, and
<v Speaker 1>when he gets to the driver of the car, he
<v Speaker 1>sees that the driver has Vic's vapor rub smeared underneath
<v Speaker 1>his nostrils, and when he shines his light in the
<v Speaker 1>back of the car, he sees what he believes to
<v Speaker 1>be a dead animal wrapped up in a rug. As
<v Speaker 1>it turns out, it's the body of Tiffany Bresciani, wrapped
<v Speaker 1>in a blue tarp.
<v Speaker 2>Joel Rifkin, the guy who's driving the truck, the guy
<v Speaker 2>who picked her up, the stripper club patron. Yes, turns
<v Speaker 2>out this is not his first kill. His intention was
<v Speaker 2>to take her and dispose of her body. And when
<v Speaker 2>he started getting chased, he just thought, I'm going to
<v Speaker 2>try to run this into the water and then swim
<v Speaker 2>away and hopefully that'll do it. But once he ultimately
<v Speaker 2>wrecked the car, the cop said he just had his
<v Speaker 2>hands up, not threatening. Got in the police car and said,
<v Speaker 2>can you turn the air conditioning on? Because I don't
<v Speaker 2>think There's going to be a lot of air conditioning
<v Speaker 2>where I'm going, and the cops like, Okay, this sounds weird,
<v Speaker 2>and within a few hours of interrogation they discover that
<v Speaker 2>Joel Rifkin is the most prolific serial killer in the
<v Speaker 2>state of New York, seventeen victims. Wow, so naturally I
<v Speaker 2>had to go down the rabbit hole with Joel Rifkin.
<v Speaker 1>Right right.
<v Speaker 2>I watched the A and E biography on this guy.
<v Speaker 2>He is one of the few examples of a serial
<v Speaker 2>killer who did not have a significantly disturbed upbringing. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>he had a very normal life as a child. He
<v Speaker 2>was adopted, but he was adopted when he was like
<v Speaker 2>two weeks old, and his adoptive parents were loving and
<v Speaker 2>really the middle class family, not bad at all. The
<v Speaker 2>problems that he had growing up is that he was
<v Speaker 2>slow and heavy, and his dad, who was a big
<v Speaker 2>sports guy, was disappointed and get frustrated because he wanted
<v Speaker 2>his kid to be good at sports. And then the
<v Speaker 2>kids at the school would mercilessly bully him, call him turtle,
<v Speaker 2>call them lard ass.
<v Speaker 1>You know.
<v Speaker 2>So, over the course of six years, he ends up
<v Speaker 2>murdering a total of seventeen women and Tiffany Bresciani is
<v Speaker 2>the last of those.
<v Speaker 1>That's incredible. So you're talking about Dave Rubinstein having a
<v Speaker 1>bad few weeks here, right, He gets beat up with
<v Speaker 1>a baseball bat yep, so severely that they have to
<v Speaker 1>lobotomize him in order to save his life. Yes, he's
<v Speaker 1>hooked on Heroin. His girlfriend gets abducted and murdered. That's
<v Speaker 1>June twenty fourth, nineteen ninety three. Oh, by the way,
<v Speaker 1>on June thirtieth, nineteen ninety three, his dad accidentally runs
<v Speaker 1>over his mother with the car and kills her. Oh
<v Speaker 1>my gosh, guess what. Dave Rubinstein committed suicide that very week, July.
<v Speaker 2>Third, Dude, that is a crazy story. That is a
<v Speaker 2>day Night Fincher plot right there. Yes, amazing ladies and gentlemen,
<v Speaker 2>Chirley fans. That's what you get for a point seven
<v Speaker 2>to five second clip.
<v Speaker 1>Of a song. Okay.
<v Speaker 2>Then Jonathan is listening to the radio as he's driving
<v Speaker 2>in his car. He hears the end of go Nowhere.
<v Speaker 2>Interesting title, by the way, to throw in with Will
<v Speaker 2>being in the upside down. A nice relationship there, and
<v Speaker 2>then it goes into another kind of punky song. Punky
<v Speaker 2>song that a whole lot more folks know goes into
<v Speaker 2>the song should I Stay or Should I Go?
<v Speaker 1>But we're not going to talk to you about that today.
<v Speaker 1>Let's hold off on that one. Guys.
<v Speaker 2>This is a great song and we are excited to
<v Speaker 2>talk about it and excited to talk about the clash,
<v Speaker 2>and it is used multiple times throughout this episode. Really
<v Speaker 2>all season, yeah, all season for sure. But it's a
<v Speaker 2>big hitter and one of just a couple of songs
<v Speaker 2>in episode seven. So be sure and hit the subscribe button,
<v Speaker 2>hit the follow button so that you will get notified
<v Speaker 2>whenever we release episode seven, and we talk about should
<v Speaker 2>I Stay or should I Go?
<v Speaker 1>In detail? Okay, d So, the next song in episode
<v Speaker 1>two of Stranger Things is a little song you may
<v Speaker 1>have heard of called Deck the Halls by Chicks with
<v Speaker 1>Hits Okay.
<v Speaker 2>In the credits, this song is said to have been
<v Speaker 2>sung by Chicks with Hits Okay. For the life of me,
<v Speaker 2>I cannot find that version out there. I don't know
<v Speaker 2>where it is, but that's what they say. I can
<v Speaker 2>tell you that Chicks with Hits is a group composed
<v Speaker 2>of Terry Clark, Pam Tillis and Susie Bogus. They toured
<v Speaker 2>together under that name Chicks with Hits, because they had
<v Speaker 2>thirty six top ten singles between them. Okay, that's a
<v Speaker 2>good title for them, But I can't find this version.
<v Speaker 2>Seems like the only time that you're gonna hear it,
<v Speaker 2>Ladies and Gentlemen, is at eighteen minutes and thirty seconds
<v Speaker 2>into this episode, when Joyce is driving to her workplace
<v Speaker 2>and she just gets in and walks in the door.
<v Speaker 2>That's the song that's playing over the pa.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, well, I've got some stuff for you on Deck
<v Speaker 1>the Halls. Okay, inform me my friend. Okay, so we
<v Speaker 1>know Deck the Halls as this traditional Christmas carol, right,
<v Speaker 1>but the melody is Welsh, dating all the way to
<v Speaker 1>the fifteen hundreds. It's first found in a musical transcript
<v Speaker 1>by Welsh harpist John Perry v. John Perry, John Perry. Okay, okay,
<v Speaker 1>the harpist, yes, the harpist exactly. So this is like
<v Speaker 1>in the seventeen hundreds. It's like seventeen ninety four, and
<v Speaker 1>then poet John Sierrog Hughes wrote some song lyrics. Now
<v Speaker 1>get this, this is the seventeen ninety four lyrics. You're
<v Speaker 1>ready for this. This is the English version. Okay, Oh,
<v Speaker 1>how soft my fair ones bosom fa la la la
<v Speaker 1>la la la la la, Oh, how sweet the grove
<v Speaker 1>in blossom? Hello, fa la la la la la la. Oh,
<v Speaker 1>how blessed are the blisses? Words of love and mutual kisses? Okay, right,
<v Speaker 1>all right, so now then you like that's great? Okay.
<v Speaker 2>Tipper Gore would not be a fan of this song.
<v Speaker 1>So I know exactly right. Later on down the road
<v Speaker 1>in seventeen seventy eight, Mozart actually used this tune in
<v Speaker 1>the eighteenth violin sonata. Okay, so Mozart takes it and
<v Speaker 1>it becomes very popular. Bro, you're blowing my mind here, Oh,
<v Speaker 1>deck the holes, deck the halls. So also later on
<v Speaker 1>in seventeen ninety four, it's published as nos Galan, which
<v Speaker 1>is a Welsh term. Okay, now then listen to these lyrics. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>deck the hall with bowls of holly falla la la
<v Speaker 1>la la la la lahtis the season two be jolly.
<v Speaker 1>Follow la la la la la la la Fill the
<v Speaker 1>mead cup, drain the barrel, follow la la la la
<v Speaker 1>la la trowl the ancient Yule Tide Carol follow la
<v Speaker 1>la la la, la la la. So it's a drinking song,
<v Speaker 1>right right, Okay, I love it. Yeah, Fill the mead cup,
<v Speaker 1>drain the barrel. Yeah, okay yeah. Now, then in eighteen
<v Speaker 1>seventy seven they drop all the drinking references and it
<v Speaker 1>becomes a Christmas eighteen seventy seven, eighteen seventy seven, so
<v Speaker 1>they scrub it of the drinking lyrics. And then finally
<v Speaker 1>and then eighteen ninety two it becomes plural deck the Halls.
<v Speaker 1>That's when they add utiltiede Carol, and you have deck
<v Speaker 1>the Halls that we seeing Fira rah rah every Christmas. No, no, no, no, no,
<v Speaker 1>ba la la la la. There you go.
<v Speaker 2>How about that smiling it? Okay, dude, you you have
<v Speaker 2>given me a history of a magical Christmas song that
<v Speaker 2>I did not know the history of. And as it
<v Speaker 2>turns out, just a few seconds later, when Joyce has
<v Speaker 2>got her phone. By the way, also eighty three is
<v Speaker 2>about the time that they had the trust bust with
<v Speaker 2>AT and T and that you could actually go to
<v Speaker 2>a store and buy your phone instead of having it
<v Speaker 2>given to you by the phone company. Oh well, and
<v Speaker 2>so she's trying to buy it and she's asking for
<v Speaker 2>an advance.
<v Speaker 1>H my son is missing. That's such a tool. He
<v Speaker 1>is a tool.
<v Speaker 2>But what's playing is at that transition we hear jingle bells,
<v Speaker 2>and that's at eighteen fifty three in the episode. Now
<v Speaker 2>the jingle bells, we could play it for a year. Oh,
<v Speaker 2>this version is being sung by the Canterbury choir. Now, Jason, Yes,
<v Speaker 2>I am not going to give you a history of
<v Speaker 2>jingle bells, but I can tell you something about Canterbury.
<v Speaker 1>Ready, ready.
<v Speaker 2>Canterbury has the oldest currently operating school in the world.
<v Speaker 2>It's called the King's School. Okay, and it's where Orlando
<v Speaker 2>Bloom was born. Okay, also Christopher Marlow. But I thought
<v Speaker 2>Orlando Bloom was it. And that is all I have
<v Speaker 2>about Canterbury. Now, I know that they have a choir,
<v Speaker 2>and I know that that choir sang jingle bells, and
<v Speaker 2>I know that the Duffer Brothers used that music in
<v Speaker 2>this episode.
<v Speaker 1>You got more for me. I've got some stuff on
<v Speaker 1>jingle bells for you. Ready for this? Tell me? All right?
<v Speaker 1>So the song jingle Bells was not originally.
<v Speaker 2>Called jingle e really.
<v Speaker 1>It was first published in eighteen fifty seven under the
<v Speaker 1>title the one Horse Open Sleigh Okay, written by this
<v Speaker 1>guy named James Lord Pierpont. Now his nephew's name is
<v Speaker 1>John Pierpont Morgan. Have you ever heard this guy, John Pierpont Morgan. No,
<v Speaker 1>JP Morgan as in the bank guy. As in the
<v Speaker 1>bank guy, that's my bank. There you go. Wow, So
<v Speaker 1>got a little famous connection there. Yeah. Jingle Bells is
<v Speaker 1>literally one of the most famous and most commonly sung
<v Speaker 1>songs in the history of the world. It was written
<v Speaker 1>in eighteen fifty seven as a thanksgiving song. This guy
<v Speaker 1>named James Lord Pierpont is in the Songwriting Hall of Fame.
<v Speaker 1>Jingle Bells is also the first song sung from outer space. Nice.
<v Speaker 1>In nineteen sixty five, two astronauts on Gemini six smuggled
<v Speaker 1>sleigh bells and harmonica and while they were talking to Houston,
<v Speaker 1>ching ching ching ching jing, jingle bells from space. Pretty cool, right,
<v Speaker 1>that is awesome. They also sort of played a prank
<v Speaker 1>on Houston and said we see an unidentified flying object
<v Speaker 1>low trajectory coming out of the North Pole. This happened
<v Speaker 1>on Christmas. Yeah, yeah, this is like December sixteenth of
<v Speaker 1>nineteen sixty five. It is brilliant. That is brilliant. So
<v Speaker 1>there you have it, the story of Jingobells. Fantastic man,
<v Speaker 1>how about that? I love it.
<v Speaker 2>Well, I'm excited to see what you have to say
<v Speaker 2>about our next song. Okay, the next song comes in
<v Speaker 2>at twenty seven minutes in nineteen seconds, as Jonathan is
<v Speaker 2>arriving at his father Lonnie's house. It's again, he's still
<v Speaker 2>listening to the radio and there you catch a little
<v Speaker 2>bit of clip of a song, and the name of
<v Speaker 2>that song is Dark Stars by Mark Glass. Tell me
<v Speaker 2>what brace yourself?
<v Speaker 1>Yes, I can't find Jack Squat on this on the internet.
<v Speaker 1>I researched by brains out trying to find who Mark
<v Speaker 1>Glass is and what Dark Stars is, and I can't
<v Speaker 1>find it. Literally, nothing that I can find is that little,
<v Speaker 1>tiny one and a half second clip that he's as
<v Speaker 1>he's turning off the radio to come into the house. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I couldn't find anything.
<v Speaker 2>Well, the good news is that we transition almost immediately
<v Speaker 2>from that song at twenty seven minutes and nineteen seconds
<v Speaker 2>into the next song we're going to talk about at
<v Speaker 2>twenty seven minutes and fifty seconds, and that song is
<v Speaker 2>called I'm taking off by space Knife.
<v Speaker 1>Okay. I watched the video on this, yeah, and it
<v Speaker 1>was awesome. It was like I was transported back to
<v Speaker 1>nineteen eighty three. Yeah, he looks like he's performing this
<v Speaker 1>on the Star Trek next Generation Holidack.
<v Speaker 2>The eighties are blaring all over the place. It's not
<v Speaker 2>as though he's got actual eighties it's just in the
<v Speaker 2>style of you've got the window blinds opening up to
<v Speaker 2>see the pretty girl in all of her eighties makeup
<v Speaker 2>and hairstyle, and it is synth gold. Is synth gold,
<v Speaker 2>it is Okay. Now, what we need to know is that,
<v Speaker 2>just like on our last episode where we had a
<v Speaker 2>song that sounded just like a Madonna song, sounded just
<v Speaker 2>like a Kylie Minogue song out of the eighties, this
<v Speaker 2>song didn't happen until the twenty first century. It's crazy,
<v Speaker 2>and I can tell you that it was on YouTube
<v Speaker 2>as early as June of twenty thirteen. That's three years
<v Speaker 2>before the release of Strange Things.
<v Speaker 1>Wow.
<v Speaker 2>So somebody in the world loved this guy. He's not
<v Speaker 2>on a record label. I'll tell you. If you'd like
<v Speaker 2>to go check out the rest of his music, you
<v Speaker 2>can find it at spaceknife dot band camp dot com,
<v Speaker 2>which is bandcamp dot com is where a lot of
<v Speaker 2>unsigned artists go to release their music. And I've listened
<v Speaker 2>to his stuff.
<v Speaker 1>It's good. It's good stuff.
<v Speaker 2>He's got his first album on there is Early Singles Okay.
<v Speaker 2>It came out in twenty eleven. The next album is
<v Speaker 2>called The Greatest Hits, Volume one is the second album
<v Speaker 2>is the Greatest is on that that came out in
<v Speaker 2>twenty thirteen. That is the one that has this song
<v Speaker 2>on it. It is a great homage to new wave
<v Speaker 2>and eighties videos.
<v Speaker 1>Like I literally listen to this and it makes me
<v Speaker 1>want to go get on my BMX bike, ride to
<v Speaker 1>the arcade and eat Reese's pieces. Yeah, it really does.
<v Speaker 2>You know, this guy is out of Atlanta, Georgia. You
<v Speaker 2>should definitely go check him out. His other songs on
<v Speaker 2>that album, If a girl with space, she'd be you
<v Speaker 2>and Alien Love okay. And as we mentioned, the name
<v Speaker 2>of this song is I'm taking off Shield your Eyes
<v Speaker 2>And there's this great moment in the YouTube video where
<v Speaker 2>like the girl is watching him and then like she's
<v Speaker 2>having to shield her eyes because he's literally.
<v Speaker 1>Taking off like a rocket. This he didn't go cheap
<v Speaker 1>on the baby either sit No, she's a good look
<v Speaker 1>at girl.
<v Speaker 2>The interesting thing is this YouTube video actually appears on
<v Speaker 2>the TV in the Stranger Things episode Oh Wow. As
<v Speaker 2>Jonathan is coming into Lonnie's house, He's getting confronted by
<v Speaker 2>Lonnie's girlfriend and you can hear it through the doorway.
<v Speaker 2>And then when he kind of bursts through the door,
<v Speaker 2>he walks by a TV and you see that eighties
<v Speaker 2>esque video playing on an old eighties style TV.
<v Speaker 1>How about that? It's gold Man. I love it. Hey,
<v Speaker 1>this is a great song. I'm a fan, me too.
<v Speaker 1>I checked on his YouTube. He only has like six
<v Speaker 1>hundred subscribers.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, his band camp and his Facebook are just a
<v Speaker 2>few hundred folks. But I would encourage all of our
<v Speaker 2>listeners go check this guy out, go follow his page.
<v Speaker 2>It's got some good eighties styles.
<v Speaker 1>I liked it. I dug it.
<v Speaker 2>Now jumping ahead to our next song. Just like the
<v Speaker 2>last song, this is a song that sounds really a
<v Speaker 2>and it sounds really specifically eighties. This is a flat
<v Speaker 2>out copy of another eighties song. The name of this
<v Speaker 2>song is Body Language.
<v Speaker 1>Wends of.
<v Speaker 2>This song is composed and performed by Alexander Baker, also
<v Speaker 2>known as Ace and Claire Mario. This comes in the
<v Speaker 2>episode at thirty three minutes and seven seconds when Nancy
<v Speaker 2>is talking to Barb on the phone. So once again,
<v Speaker 2>Nancy's in a room and we've got music that sounds
<v Speaker 2>like it's from the eighties. But this is another twenty
<v Speaker 2>first century song. And this song doesn't just sound kind
<v Speaker 2>of like a Madonna song. This song sounds.
<v Speaker 1>Almost exactly like a depeche Mode song. Yeah, the song
<v Speaker 1>is enjoy the silence. Listen here.
<v Speaker 2>Obviously, I mean very very close, right, say, I mean
<v Speaker 2>the guys got the same sounding voice, the instruments that
<v Speaker 2>are being used are identical. The melody is just a
<v Speaker 2>rearrangement of the same notes. I mean, it is so
<v Speaker 2>much Depeche Mode it's crazy, right, And that's what they want.
<v Speaker 2>They want you to think that Nancy is listening to
<v Speaker 2>some Depeche Mode in her room, but it's really body
<v Speaker 2>language by Alexander Ace Baker and Claire Mario. Now, as
<v Speaker 2>we've talked about, this episode came out in twenty sixteen,
<v Speaker 2>I sent you a video from a show that was
<v Speaker 2>called XPlay and it is a video game talk show. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>they would talk about whatever the latest releases are Okay,
<v Speaker 2>some of our listeners may be familiar with this explay thing.
<v Speaker 2>But they got a lot of requests to go do
<v Speaker 2>a review on some retro games, and so they called
<v Speaker 2>this episode the Breakfast Game Club, right, And there's a
<v Speaker 2>great scene at the end where the two hosts are
<v Speaker 2>playing the parts of the members of the break this
<v Speaker 2>Club and if you listen, you can hear this song. Well,
<v Speaker 2>this episode was released in March of two thousand and six,
<v Speaker 2>so this song had been around for ten years before
<v Speaker 2>they used it in Stranger Things. So nobody went to
<v Speaker 2>a band and said, hey, we need a song for
<v Speaker 2>this show that we're doing that sounds like a depeche
<v Speaker 2>Mode song. They found it, right, And there are a
<v Speaker 2>lot of people if you look at the comments on
<v Speaker 2>the YouTube video of this song, there are a lot
<v Speaker 2>of people who are like, I didn't know that they've
<v Speaker 2>used this on Stranger Things. I've been looking for this
<v Speaker 2>thing for ten years trying to find it. I would
<v Speaker 2>watch the end of that show over and over because
<v Speaker 2>I loved this song.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's great, man.
<v Speaker 2>I just want to go guys, go listen to depeche Mode.
<v Speaker 1>Hey, you know what, when you need depeche Mode, and
<v Speaker 1>you need a song that sounds exactly like depeche Mode,
<v Speaker 1>but you need it on the cheap.
<v Speaker 2>I guess you cal Alexander Baker.
<v Speaker 1>I guess Ace. Yeah, he's done.
<v Speaker 2>Some other music for some other shows as well, and
<v Speaker 2>he didn't get any credit on the video game talk
<v Speaker 2>show Play.
<v Speaker 1>I could not find the credit on there. By the way,
<v Speaker 1>that episode that you showed me was really funny because
<v Speaker 1>it was like the reveal at the end of the
<v Speaker 1>Breakfast Club where Ali comes around the corner and Andrew
<v Speaker 1>is like blown away by what he sees, but it's
<v Speaker 1>rocketed up like Wayne's world, like yeah, yeah, and she's
<v Speaker 1>a babe o Mattic in that one for sure. Yes.
<v Speaker 1>So that show was called XPlay, hosted by Adam Sessler
<v Speaker 1>and Morgan Webb. It's still around, so.
<v Speaker 2>I encourage you guys to go check it, at least
<v Speaker 2>that episode out. He came out, as I said in
<v Speaker 2>two thousand and six, season six, episode twenty five, last
<v Speaker 2>minute and a half of the episode.
<v Speaker 1>That's cool. Hey, By the way, I've just got something
<v Speaker 1>I want to throw in real quick, quick shout out
<v Speaker 1>to a friend of mine. Yeah, and longtime listener. I
<v Speaker 1>was in chick Fila this morning, okay, waiting on my breakfast.
<v Speaker 1>I was standing in the lobby, okay, and the chickil
<v Speaker 1>A manager came up to me and said, are you
<v Speaker 1>Jason Colvin? Like yues, she's like the celebrity Jason. I'm
<v Speaker 1>like now. And apparently my buddy Blaine Peterson was going
<v Speaker 1>through the drive through and put the manager up to that.
<v Speaker 1>That's hilarious, Like, that's awesome. Yeah, thanks Blaine, you made
<v Speaker 1>my day. I was really confused, so that was great. Great.
<v Speaker 1>I almost went to chick fil A this morning too.
<v Speaker 1>I would have seen you there. Maybe you have been
<v Speaker 1>in double sighting. It's been great for her. That would
<v Speaker 1>have been really cool. Okay, are we ready to move
<v Speaker 1>the next song? I'm ready to move on to them.
<v Speaker 1>Are you excited about it? Yeah?
<v Speaker 2>I am actually okay. So next song on our list
<v Speaker 2>is tie a Yellow Ribbon round the Old Oak Tree.
<v Speaker 2>How can you say those words and not just sing them?
<v Speaker 2>They just roll right off the tongue.
<v Speaker 1>It's great.
<v Speaker 2>Before we go into the story behind the song and
<v Speaker 2>tell everybody. This comes in at thirty seven minutes and
<v Speaker 2>seventeen seconds when Nancy and Barb are sitting in Barb's
<v Speaker 2>car outside of Steve Harrington's house deciding, you know, to
<v Speaker 2>go in and what to do, And at the end
<v Speaker 2>of the conversation, Barb says, is that a new bra Yeah?
<v Speaker 1>Well, tie the little rim of round three hits been free.
<v Speaker 1>So this song is being sung by Brotherhood of Man, Yes,
<v Speaker 1>but they are not the group that made it famous.
<v Speaker 1>That's right. Brotherhood of Man formed in nineteen sixty nine
<v Speaker 1>and it was just a creation of an umbrella title
<v Speaker 1>for a changing lineup of session singers. Okay, but by
<v Speaker 1>nineteen seventy that idea had kind of worn out. They
<v Speaker 1>had a big hit called United We Stand, which was
<v Speaker 1>the closing theme for The Brady Bunch Hour. Okay, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>Their biggest success is in the UK. They had three
<v Speaker 1>number one hits and four top twenty albums, none of
<v Speaker 1>them were Tie a Yellow Ribbon round the Old Oak Tree.
<v Speaker 1>Though the Tony Orlando version is literally the biggest song
<v Speaker 1>of nineteen seventy three. It is the biggest song. As
<v Speaker 1>a matter of fact, it hit number one in the
<v Speaker 1>US in the UK for four weeks starting in April
<v Speaker 1>of nineteen seventy three. Now four weeks starting in April
<v Speaker 1>of nineteen seventy three. I feel like that's an important event.
<v Speaker 1>It's like November fifth, nineteen fifty five. That's exactly right.
<v Speaker 1>This May fourth, nineteen seventy three. What happened? This was
<v Speaker 1>the number one song in the United States the day
<v Speaker 1>I was born nineteen seventy three. Fantastic this song right here.
<v Speaker 1>You were born on May the fourth. I was born
<v Speaker 1>May the fourth.
<v Speaker 2>You have a Star Wars but I do have a
<v Speaker 2>Star Wars birthday, which.
<v Speaker 1>Is fantastic because I love Star Wars. Time. It's been
<v Speaker 1>three lines. Du still Lizzy. This song has been played
<v Speaker 1>three million times.
<v Speaker 2>It's one of the biggest songs of all time.
<v Speaker 1>It reached the top ten and ten countries. It's interesting
<v Speaker 1>because this song. I thought this song was like an old,
<v Speaker 1>old song, right, and it's got an old story behind it.
<v Speaker 1>Like the idea behind the song is a guy has
<v Speaker 1>been in prison and the work bus will drive by
<v Speaker 1>his old love's house, right, And so he's wanting to
<v Speaker 1>know once he's released, is he welcome to come back
<v Speaker 1>and see her or not?
<v Speaker 2>And if he is, then she needs to tie a
<v Speaker 2>yellow ribbon around the old oak tree. Right, and you
<v Speaker 2>know happy ending to the song, there's like a ton
<v Speaker 2>of yellow ribbons around the old oak tree.
<v Speaker 1>It pulls at your heart.
<v Speaker 2>Great story, kind of sweet, and yet it was turned
<v Speaker 2>down by multiple record executives saying this song is ridiculous.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, now listen to this. I've got this. This is
<v Speaker 1>gonna blow you away here. Okay, yes, okay. So Tony
<v Speaker 1>Orlando and Dawn they sang this song in nineteen seventy three.
<v Speaker 1>Tony Orlando built the Yellow Ribbon Music Theater in Branson, Missouri,
<v Speaker 1>in nineteen ninety three, Branson, Missouri.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah that's what you and I like. Oh yeah, it's
<v Speaker 2>kind of a fun place.
<v Speaker 1>But here's the kicker. You ready for this? Yeah. In
<v Speaker 1>nineteen seventy six, during the Republican National Convention, Tony Orlando
<v Speaker 1>danced to this song with Betty Ford. Wow. Yes, wow,
<v Speaker 1>And according to him, this was Nancy Reagan's favorite song
<v Speaker 1>at the time. This song has been covered by Ben Crosby,
<v Speaker 1>Jim Nabors, who is Gummer Pyle In case you didn't
<v Speaker 1>recognize that shows I am Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Lawrencewell,
<v Speaker 1>Dolly Pardon, Harry Connick, Junr and Andy Kaufman. Did you
<v Speaker 1>say Andy, Andy Kaufman covered this Andy Kauf all right,
<v Speaker 1>man in the moon, all right, yes, okay.
<v Speaker 2>So we have a wonderful progression of this very almost
<v Speaker 2>I wouldn't I have to say, goodie, goodie kind of
<v Speaker 2>song right into another song. As Barb and Nancy come
<v Speaker 2>up to Steve Harrington's house, it's such a great scene.
<v Speaker 2>He busts the doors open thirty eight minutes thirty four
<v Speaker 2>seconds and booming from out of the house is a
<v Speaker 2>song called Raise a Little Hell.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know how this got by me, Like I
<v Speaker 1>don't know this song. So this song is by a
<v Speaker 1>group called Trooper, and they are a British Columbia Canadian band.
<v Speaker 1>It was hard for Canadian bands to get hits in
<v Speaker 1>the US honestly at this time, and this one came
<v Speaker 1>out in the seventies, and so it's seventy eight, I think,
<v Speaker 1>so five years later Steve could be listening to this song.
<v Speaker 1>But let me tell you a little bit about Trooper first, okay, okay,
<v Speaker 1>So Trooper was started by Ray McGuire and Brian Smith
<v Speaker 1>aka Smitty, who were from Vancouver. Could shout out to
<v Speaker 1>our good friends Addie Ayachino and Cameron Eckert are Canadian
<v Speaker 1>Patreon members who are probably huge fans of Trooper. I
<v Speaker 1>don't know. Yeah, there you go.
<v Speaker 2>Yep, you guys will have to tell us all your
<v Speaker 2>stories of seeing Trooper and talk. So these guys started
<v Speaker 2>out as a band called winters Green in nineteen sixty seven.
<v Speaker 2>They had a song called are You My Monkey? Big hit,
<v Speaker 2>big hit in Canada. It was very the door sounding song. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>winter Green became apple Jack. They started touring in British
<v Speaker 2>Columbia and they were playing at that time, playing this
<v Speaker 2>song raise a little Hell. So while they're touring, they
<v Speaker 2>get heard by this guy named Randy Bachman. Have you
<v Speaker 2>heard of him only because you pointed it out to me. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>he was Bachman Turner Overdrive, that Bachman, right, he was
<v Speaker 2>before that he was in the Guests Who And if
<v Speaker 2>you don't recognize the name of that band, let me
<v Speaker 2>play you a little guitar lick that he did that
<v Speaker 2>will ring the.
<v Speaker 1>Bell American woman. Yes, absolutely so.
<v Speaker 2>Ray Bachmann sees Trooper and he says, you know what, guys,
<v Speaker 2>I want to sign you to my label. He's got
<v Speaker 2>his own little label and it's called legend, and so
<v Speaker 2>he became their producer for their next five albums. First
<v Speaker 2>album was Trooper, which came out in seventy five. Second
<v Speaker 2>album was Two for the Show, which came out in
<v Speaker 2>sixty six, and by this time they had gone with MCA.
<v Speaker 2>Their third album was called Knock Them Dead, Kid, and
<v Speaker 2>this reached what they call Canadian platinum. And when I
<v Speaker 2>saw that, I had to go, well, what is Canadian platinum?
<v Speaker 1>Right?
<v Speaker 2>Well, do you know what the US platinum is?
<v Speaker 1>Million?
<v Speaker 2>Million is correct? Five hundred thousand is gold in the US.
<v Speaker 2>In Canada, fifty thousand is gold and one hundred thousand
<v Speaker 2>is platinum. So they've got a Canadian platinum ahead with
<v Speaker 2>their third album. Fourth album comes out in nineteen seventy eight.
<v Speaker 2>Thick as Thieves Goes double platinum. Has the only successful
<v Speaker 2>single in the US. And do you know what that
<v Speaker 2>single is?
<v Speaker 1>Raise Little Hell You Got It? Rolling Stone ranked this
<v Speaker 1>as number seven on the Top ten Sports anthems of
<v Speaker 1>all Time.
<v Speaker 2>It's fantastic, It's great if you listen to the harmonies
<v Speaker 2>on this, the dynamics of the song. This is a fantastic,
<v Speaker 2>freaking song and it is the perfect song to play
<v Speaker 2>when Steve Harrington opens those doors right.
<v Speaker 1>And I told you when I first watched this season,
<v Speaker 1>I was watching with my kids. Of course they had
<v Speaker 1>seen season two, three, four when I watched season one.
<v Speaker 1>So Steve Harrington to me was jerk boyfriend. I hated
<v Speaker 1>his guts. Yeah, well everybody did that first season. That
<v Speaker 1>first season, he was Jerk' boyfriend. By the way, in
<v Speaker 1>a case of terrible timing, Trooper released an album in
<v Speaker 1>nineteen ninety one called ten.
<v Speaker 2>Oho maybe good timing. Who knows that's true? How many
<v Speaker 2>people looking for Pearl Jam ended up with a Trooper?
<v Speaker 2>A Trooper that had been playing together for thirty years
<v Speaker 2>ended up with that album.
<v Speaker 1>Can I please have a ten CD? Please? Grandma? I
<v Speaker 1>don't know what you got. This is not even flow. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>need take this back.
<v Speaker 2>So these guys they stayed together, I mean yeah, like
<v Speaker 2>you said, they were recording still in the nineties and
<v Speaker 2>actually less than a year ago. Ray and Smitty both
<v Speaker 2>called it retirement.
<v Speaker 1>By the way, for our Ottawa Senators fans from the
<v Speaker 1>years nineteen ninety two to nineteen ninety six, every time
<v Speaker 1>they scored a goal, raised a little hell was played.
<v Speaker 1>It's great, it's great. I love it. Okay, all right,
<v Speaker 1>moving on, we are finally once again. I mean so
<v Speaker 1>many songs that we've gone through. Their musical budget obviously
<v Speaker 1>wasn't super.
<v Speaker 2>Huge, but they managed to get a piece of gold
<v Speaker 2>or two in each of the episode.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So the song that we get next is one that
<v Speaker 2>you will all know, ladies and gentlemen, I Melt with You.
<v Speaker 1>Okay. So this song is.
<v Speaker 2>By a band called Modern English.
<v Speaker 1>It comes in in the.
<v Speaker 2>Episode at forty two minutes and fifty nine seconds. This
<v Speaker 2>is just as Jonathan is taking pictures. He hears a scream.
<v Speaker 2>He runs over to the pool and it turns out
<v Speaker 2>it's because they're horsing around Steve Nancy and poor Barb
<v Speaker 2>is sitting there.
<v Speaker 1>Like a lump, poor Barber.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, but they're listening to I Melt with You by
<v Speaker 2>a band called Modern.
<v Speaker 3>English, you say, says on the side.
<v Speaker 1>Totally appropriate for the setting of the show. Nineteen eighty three.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so this song came out and did pretty well
<v Speaker 2>because it was associated with a big movie of the
<v Speaker 2>time movie called Valley Girl.
<v Speaker 1>Valley Girl has Nick Cage, Devorah Foreman, E G. Daily
<v Speaker 1>I E. Dottie from Peebe's Big Adventure Joyce Heiser and
<v Speaker 1>Coling Camp. I mean it's a eighties iconic movie. That's
<v Speaker 1>how I know it is from that movie, one of
<v Speaker 1>Nick Cage's first big roles. It reached number seventy eight
<v Speaker 1>on the Hot one hundred that's where it peaks out at,
<v Speaker 1>and then they re released it in nineteen ninety it
<v Speaker 1>gets to number seventy six. It did reach number seven
<v Speaker 1>on Billboard's Mainstream Rock charts in nineteen eighty three. But
<v Speaker 1>as far as the Hot one hundred, this is like
<v Speaker 1>a slow burn like. It has been played a bazillion
<v Speaker 1>times since then and has become eighties icon gold. But
<v Speaker 1>at the time, for whatever reason, didn't.
<v Speaker 2>Climb the charge very high, right, And so this was
<v Speaker 2>a success for them. This was an entirely different style
<v Speaker 2>than they were used to. So Modern English started as
<v Speaker 2>a group of high school friends, Robbie Gray and his buddies, yep,
<v Speaker 2>And they just they had one buddy who could kind
<v Speaker 2>of play the guitar, and they said, let's.
<v Speaker 1>Form a band. Yeah, good idea.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, punk is the new thing right now, so
<v Speaker 2>why don't we do that. This song, of course, is
<v Speaker 2>not at all punk, This is very new age, right. Well,
<v Speaker 2>when they, I mean ultimately they learned to play some instruments,
<v Speaker 2>They did gigs. They ultimately got a recording studio and
<v Speaker 2>recorded the song. But as he was singing this song,
<v Speaker 2>this is part of an album. So he was singing
<v Speaker 2>this song, the producer said, how about instead of screaming this,
<v Speaker 2>you just sing it right? Well, even less than that,
<v Speaker 2>you talk it. Yeah, And so this kind of soft
<v Speaker 2>talkie song. It changed the rest of the album. They
<v Speaker 2>went from a kind of a punk yell into a
<v Speaker 2>much more smooth, new wave pleasant to listen to. Right,
<v Speaker 2>And like you said, this song has stood the test
<v Speaker 2>of time. It wasn't like it was definitely a big
<v Speaker 2>hit for some guys who didn't have anything else going on, right,
<v Speaker 2>But it was something that kind of, like you said,
<v Speaker 2>people realized how good it was as time went on.
<v Speaker 2>And I still hear it today here also all the time,
<v Speaker 2>all the time. I heard it this morning as a
<v Speaker 2>matter of fact.
<v Speaker 1>So Robbie Gray said, he wrote this song in two minutes. Wow.
<v Speaker 1>In two minutes. Wow. It was just kind of a
<v Speaker 1>stream of consciousness. He just kind of wrote down some
<v Speaker 1>stuff and if you listen to the lyrics, I thought,
<v Speaker 1>this is really cool. Yeah, it's about a couple making
<v Speaker 1>love when the nuclear blast goes off, right, and they
<v Speaker 1>melt together, like physically melt together. It's gross, but it's catchy.
<v Speaker 1>It is catchy. He said he didn't want to write
<v Speaker 1>a song where it's boy meets girl, they fall in
<v Speaker 1>love and they get married and happily ever after they're
<v Speaker 1>having sex, the bomb goes off and they melt How
<v Speaker 1>about that now, I did think it was interesting. They
<v Speaker 1>made this video for MTV. He said. They made it
<v Speaker 1>for like a thousand pounds Canadian which is nothing, but
<v Speaker 1>MTV played it all the time.
<v Speaker 2>It's great, a great song. It very It seemed like
<v Speaker 2>it had more popularity on MTV than it did than
<v Speaker 2>it was getting radio play.
<v Speaker 1>For sure. We've seen this before where a radio station
<v Speaker 1>in America picked it up, started playing and it just
<v Speaker 1>sort of calm dance clubs and MTV. Yes, when they
<v Speaker 1>were recording it, the producer went to Robbie Gray and
<v Speaker 1>I keep in mind Robbie Gray is a punk guy,
<v Speaker 1>and he's like, this part right here, I think you
<v Speaker 1>should hum, and Robbie Gray's like, I'm a punk guy.
<v Speaker 1>I don't hum. He's like, well, you're gonna hum on
<v Speaker 1>this one, and you're humming right here, and this part
<v Speaker 1>right here, he hums, and it's beautiful. It is great.
<v Speaker 1>It's eighties gold YEP ranked number seven by VH one
<v Speaker 1>as the one hundred greatest one hit Wonders. It's one
<v Speaker 1>of the biggest one hit wonders of the eighties. Here's
<v Speaker 1>a list of movies that this song is featured in.
<v Speaker 1>Fifty first dates, Mister and Missus Smith, not another teen movie,
<v Speaker 1>sky High. It was on Glee. Burger King used it,
<v Speaker 1>Eminem's used it, Taco Bell used it.
<v Speaker 2>There was a movie made called I Melt with You
<v Speaker 2>that had Rob Low in it.
<v Speaker 1>Wow. They re recorded it for that movie. That's crazy,
<v Speaker 1>and it never got past seventy six in the Hot
<v Speaker 1>one hundred. It's crazy. It was crazy. Okay.
<v Speaker 2>So our song that we mentioned before, Should I Stay
<v Speaker 2>or Should I Go? Comes up again at this point
<v Speaker 2>in the episode. It becomes a big plot point. At
<v Speaker 2>this point in the episode, we had heard Jonathan listening
<v Speaker 2>to it in the car. We had then trained transition
<v Speaker 2>to where he was talking to Will as they were
<v Speaker 2>talking about their dad and how difficult that was, and
<v Speaker 2>he was talking to him about how good this music was,
<v Speaker 2>and so it's a real major plot point. And then
<v Speaker 2>after I'm Out with You, we see Joyce get a
<v Speaker 2>phone call like she got before, and then she gets
<v Speaker 2>led down the hallway and we hear it start to
<v Speaker 2>blare from his room. It's as though he's trying to communicate,
<v Speaker 2>which is why this song is so important. So be
<v Speaker 2>sure hit subscribe, hit follow, and we'll talk to you
<v Speaker 2>about it in episode seven. That brings us to the
<v Speaker 2>final song of the episode, and they have saved the
<v Speaker 2>best for last.
<v Speaker 1>The way this song is used is so perfect. It's
<v Speaker 1>like a sadness that's masked by rock and roll. That
<v Speaker 1>song is called Hazy Shade of Winterless I'm bangling my
<v Speaker 1>head here, I am bangling my head that opening chan
<v Speaker 1>chan chun and that sort of minor tone right there. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So this version of this song came out thirty five
<v Speaker 2>years ago, November nineteen eighty seven. Yep, the Bengals had
<v Speaker 2>been performing this song since March of eighty three. I
<v Speaker 2>know this was a song they did live on stage right,
<v Speaker 2>and they got hit up to do a song for
<v Speaker 2>this movie called Less Than Zero, had James Spader and
<v Speaker 2>Robert Downey Junior as an almost prophetic drug addict, like
<v Speaker 2>literally right before Robert Downey Junior got arrested for drugs.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, it is a crazy movie.
<v Speaker 1>I can't let you go without mentioning Andrew McCarthy and
<v Speaker 1>Jamie Gertz. Yes, right, as it turns out, this is
<v Speaker 1>not originally a bangle song, right now. I was very
<v Speaker 1>familiar with Simon and Garfunkel when this song came out,
<v Speaker 1>but it was like their greatest hits, familiar, right. I
<v Speaker 1>don't think that I knew until I heard this song
<v Speaker 1>that it had been originally done by Simon and Garfunkel.
<v Speaker 1>Paul Simon wrote this song in sixty five when he
<v Speaker 1>was in England and he felt like he was kind
<v Speaker 1>of in this repetition of seasons and it just things.
<v Speaker 2>Weren't going anywhere, which is where you get that line
<v Speaker 2>of that repeated line of look around, leaves are brown
<v Speaker 2>and the sky is a hazy shade of winter, Like
<v Speaker 2>it's not a happy memory for him, right. So, and
<v Speaker 2>so he and Garfunkel had recorded this song when they
<v Speaker 2>were recording Parsley Say Drowsmary in Time, which is fantastic
<v Speaker 2>album and also a great recipe for a room if
<v Speaker 2>you're interested in that.
<v Speaker 1>Okay.
<v Speaker 2>What they did was the next year they decided they
<v Speaker 2>were going to release it as a standalone single. The
<v Speaker 2>song did so well that they decided to put it
<v Speaker 2>on their next album, which was called Bookends. Okay, another
<v Speaker 2>great album. So, as I mentioned, the Bengals as a
<v Speaker 2>new group seventeen years later start performing this live on stage.
<v Speaker 2>Then they get this offer to do a song for
<v Speaker 2>the Less Than Zero soundtrack. Now I'm going to ask
<v Speaker 2>you when I say Bengals, was the first song you
<v Speaker 2>think of luck like an Egyptian And that's probably the
<v Speaker 2>song that broke up the band. So they had a
<v Speaker 2>producer named David Kahn for that album, and their experience
<v Speaker 2>in doing that with him was miserable and they put
<v Speaker 2>them in a bad enough spot that eventually they fell apart.
<v Speaker 2>But he was not the one that produced a hazy
<v Speaker 2>shade of Winter. You're nod in your head because I
<v Speaker 2>know you know the answer, and def Dave, I hope
<v Speaker 2>you're listening.
<v Speaker 1>Let's go. The producer on this album.
<v Speaker 2>Was DJ Double R, mister Rick Rubin himself.
<v Speaker 1>How about that? Yeah, it's fantastic, Rick Ruben. Go back
<v Speaker 1>and listen to our Beastie Boys episode where Rick Rubin
<v Speaker 1>was vital to their.
<v Speaker 2>Success and run DMC and run DMZ.
<v Speaker 1>That's right.
<v Speaker 2>And so he actually let them do a lot of
<v Speaker 2>the production on this one.
<v Speaker 1>And and Michael.
<v Speaker 2>Steele, the bassist, will tell you that song sounds the
<v Speaker 2>most like they sound as a band. And she said,
<v Speaker 2>if we hadn't been in such bad shape and had
<v Speaker 2>such a bad experience with David Kahn, that song might
<v Speaker 2>have saved us, but it wasn't enough to save us.
<v Speaker 1>That's fantastic. Okay. So here's what I got for you.
<v Speaker 1>You're ready for this? Yeah, Okay, We're not going to
<v Speaker 1>dive too far into the Bengals, but here's the top
<v Speaker 1>ten for February sixth, nineteen eighty eight, when this song
<v Speaker 1>hits number two. Okay, And I'm going to touch on
<v Speaker 1>these because a lot of these we've talked about. Okay.
<v Speaker 1>Number ten, I could never take the place of your man,
<v Speaker 1>Prince Sure off the Sign of the Times episode. Go
<v Speaker 1>back and check that episode out. Number nine, Tunnel of
<v Speaker 1>Love by Bruce Springsteen. Number eight, Say You Will by Foreigner?
<v Speaker 1>Number seven What Have I done to deserve This? By
<v Speaker 1>the Pet Shop Boys. We actually talked about that in
<v Speaker 1>our Patreon So okay, Number six Hungry Eyes by Eric
<v Speaker 1>Carmon off the Dirty Dancing soundtrack. Right. Number five I
<v Speaker 1>Want to Be Your Man by Roger Don't worry about
<v Speaker 1>that one, okay. Number four Seasons Changed by expos A. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>Number three Need You Tonight by in Excess off their
<v Speaker 1>Kick album. Okay yep, cover that one too, yep. And
<v Speaker 1>number two Hazy Shade of Winter of course by the Bengals. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>and then the one the only Tiffany with could have
<v Speaker 1>been must have been? No im, Sorry, Hazy Shade of
<v Speaker 1>Winter is a way better song than that one. Absolutely.
<v Speaker 2>Now, as I mentioned this, this song, this Hazy Shade
<v Speaker 2>of Winter thing was based on experience that Paul Simon
<v Speaker 2>had and somebody made a contrast to another song that
<v Speaker 2>was big at that time by the Mamas and Papas
<v Speaker 2>called California Dreaming.
<v Speaker 1>Right.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, they're very similar kind of ideas, but almost like
<v Speaker 2>the other side of the coin. Right Yes, California Dreaming
<v Speaker 2>will come up again in this series when we get
<v Speaker 2>to season four and it's not the Mamas and the
<v Speaker 2>Papas version.
<v Speaker 1>Once again.
<v Speaker 2>Def Dave, I hope you're listening it's the Beach Boys.
<v Speaker 1>So we talked about how Hazes Shada Winter was recorded
<v Speaker 1>quickly to get it on the Less than Zero soundtrack.
<v Speaker 1>We talked about that movie It's all about drug used
<v Speaker 1>by young twenty somethings in California. During Less than Zero,
<v Speaker 1>there is a person who gets a cameo as like
<v Speaker 1>an extra, was paid thirty eight dollars to be there.
<v Speaker 1>His name Brad Pitt. Get out of town. Brad Pitt
<v Speaker 1>is in less than Zero. Brad Pitt is just a
<v Speaker 1>dude at a party in less than Zero. Wow, paid
<v Speaker 1>thirty eight bucks. Awesome? That is awesome. How about that?
<v Speaker 2>Okay, that is our last song? And before I leave,
<v Speaker 2>I have to tell you it comes in at fifty
<v Speaker 2>two minutes and forty two seconds into the episode. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>it's just when Nancy is asking for privacy and then
<v Speaker 2>asking for Steve to look at her as she takes.
<v Speaker 1>Off her shirt. Yes, is that a new bra? Yes?
<v Speaker 2>And poor Barb is sitting alone on the diving board
<v Speaker 2>outside over the pool.
<v Speaker 1>Dropping blood drops into the pool.
<v Speaker 2>And it's this very poignant moment. And interestingly, just a
<v Speaker 2>little while earlier in the episode, you see a Jaws
<v Speaker 2>poster on the wall, Blood in the Water, and then
<v Speaker 2>we see our very first glimpse of the Gorgon just
<v Speaker 2>before she screams, and Jonathan doesn't pay any attention because
<v Speaker 2>he thinks it's just them horsing around again. The next episode,
<v Speaker 2>which we will cover on our next episode, huh is
<v Speaker 2>heartbreaking when we see what happens to Barb fantastic, So guys,
<v Speaker 2>be sure and hit the subscribe button, hit the follow button,
<v Speaker 2>make sure you hit notifications if that's an option, so
<v Speaker 2>that you will see when our next episode drops, and
<v Speaker 2>we of our episode three of season one, the Songs
<v Speaker 2>behind Stranger.
<v Speaker 1>Thanks guys. If you like what you hear, go to
<v Speaker 1>our Patreon page. We drop a Patreon episode one time
<v Speaker 1>a month on one hit Wonders of the seventies, eighties, nineties,
<v Speaker 1>anything in the MTV generation, and I think some of
<v Speaker 1>our best episodes are over there. Yeah, for five bucks
<v Speaker 1>a month, you can get these. It's great, right, And
<v Speaker 1>if you're listening on the podcast app, be sure and
<v Speaker 1>go check out our YouTube page where you can see
<v Speaker 1>that we look awesome and attractive and there's no charge
<v Speaker 1>for awesomeness or attractiveness.
<v Speaker 2>It's funny Thank you, but if you want to donate,
<v Speaker 2>we would truly appreciate that.
<v Speaker 1>Guys, we will see you next week. See you next week.