Comments on: I am a foreignor

By: Robin

Robin — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 10:02:29 +0000

Hey Justine!

I remember all those bands but luckily not the songs. They were all big on Countdown and 3XY. Bands like Toto, Foreigner, Boston, Kansas, America, ( I always wanted to start a world conquering band called “Geelong” but I have no musical talent} As I remember those bands often had records with ELO-type spaceship covers.
In the 80′s I really started to hate a lot of the popular music and started looking way back to the 60′s when songs were good… I started with volume 5 of the Atlantic Rythym and Blues and then went further back to some of the 50′s stuff. I am still back there pretty often and it was the best musical thing I ever did.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 00:05:20 +0000

Leaving the Jarvis Cocker concert last night, I overhead a woman saying that Jarvis’ Black Magic sounded ‘like one of those terrible 80′s band like Boston…you know, that song More Than a Feeling’. Eeh!

Actually, it was Crimson and Clover (re-done 80′s style by Joan Jett) tghat Jarvis was channelling. For Boston rip-off you would be wanting Aussie 80′s legends Hunters and Collectors who reissued the song under the title Holy Grail. Without prejudice, your honour.

By: John H

John H — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 15:25:30 +0000

Colleen: I’m class of ’86 too, and of course I enjoy the music we grew up with. That doesn’t mean I can’t recognize its crappiness.

Have you seen the video for Separate Ways lately? It really is embarrassing…

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 22:49:00 +0000

Justine,

At moments like that I am reminded of the scene from Th Unbearable Lightness of Being in which someone complains to the waitress that he is “eating food while listening to sh*t”.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 22:47:06 +0000

It is still entirely possible to go to young folks’ parties in Melbourne today and hear the beautiful strains of Toto. Don’t ask me why.

Journey may have had one hit hear, Foreignor were like head lice and Toto, well, enough said.

(The eighties…Gang of Four, The Smiths, The Smiths, The Triffids…sigh)

By: Colleen

Colleen — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 21:52:20 +0000

Okay, go ahead and hate me but I went to jr high, high school and college in the 80s so this music you are all dissing so shamelessly is MY MUSIC!!

Damn you all for your cruelty!

First – everyone of you who says they don’t know Kansas will recognize Carry On My Wayward Son the minute they music starts and you know it.

Second – Open Arms by Journey was playing at the 8th/9th grade school dance when my best friend Caryn Robinson was slow dancing with her boyfriend Danny Matarazzo and he dumped her – in the middle of the flipping song! She ran to the bathroom crying hysterically (“Why? Why? I thought he loved me??!!!) and we spent the rest of the night in there cursing all men forever. I haven’t spoken to Caryn since 1985 (or so) but I hear that song and I’m right back there with her all over again.

I really miss that girl.

Third – I Want to Know What Love Is by Foreignor – lyrics written on the bottom of a note sent to me in the 11th grade by my boyfriend Dan Snead. It made me smile for days if not weeks. Foreignor will forever be Dan, a very nice guy I dated in high school and broke up with only to date again in college – and he broke up with me. He’s in the army now and very happily married with two kids. I hoped to see him last year at our 20 yr reunion but he was in Iraq.

Fourth – We could discuss forever how the songs were meaningless, the outfits deplorable, the hair frightening, the politics isolationist and the lack of environmental awareness pathetic but at the end of the day, all of us in the US at that time loved it and that’s the truth.

I’m never going to be so hip that I say the music of my teenage years sucked. It doesn’t mean I don’t love all kinds of other music now even more, but nostalgia is a good thing sometimes, and I won’t denounce the songs that kept me sane (and drove my stepfather crazy) a long time ago.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I plan to blast some Springsteen, Mellencamp, Madonna and Fleetwood Mac (Not to mention Def Leppard, Guns & Roses and Led Zepplin) for the benefit of my little boy. It is important that he learn to love this stuff while he’s young!

By: John H

John H — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 15:32:24 +0000

Malcolm: Kansas had two well-known songs – Carry On Wayward Son and Dust in the Wind. They also had a few lesser-known hits – Play the Game Tonight, Fight Fire With Fire and Hold On…

Justine, just remember:

Someday love will find you
Break those chains that bind you
One night will remind you
How we touched and went our separate ways

If he ever hurts you
True love won’t desert you
You know I still love you
Though we touched and went our separate ways

(yeah, the lyrics are wretched – but so were the ’80s…)

By: Delia

Delia — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 04:31:19 +0000

I missed the 80′s entirely, owing to Bad Life Time Warp. Ellen has tried to fill in my education, but she’s more Madonna and the Eurythmics (who I like very much) than those other bands you mentioned, whose names I’ve never heard before.

Sounds like I haven’t really missed anything after all.

By: Justine

Justine — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 17:02:21 +0000

Amy Fiske: Skeet target . . .

By: amy fiske

amy fiske — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 16:56:32 +0000

Coaster, frisbee, or skeet target. My vote is for skeet target.

Thank god for college radio in the 80s or I never would have made it to adulthood…

By: Justine

Justine — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 10:59:47 +0000

And I’m totally using it as a coaster, Scalzi. Or a frisbee. Depends on what mood I’m in.

By: John Scalzi

John Scalzi — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 10:56:56 +0000

I’m totally buying you Journey’s Greatest Hits. Don’t stop believin’, Justine!

By: Robyn Hook

Robyn Hook — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 09:38:19 +0000

yes,we did know Foreigner and Toto here in oz in brisbane they played the songs africa and rosanna all the time on telly and radio,cheers and can’t wait to read books 2 and3 together

By: Peter Hollo

Peter Hollo — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 08:00:31 +0000

I know of Journey, only because it’s what Foreignor became. I know Foreignor as one of those bands to detest… And most Aussies would know of ‘em I’d think – even the enlightened ones who don’t really listen to commercial radio…
Toto are of course famous for “Africa” at least, which is a song I can certainly stand, annoying though it is. I’ve heard of Kansas and Styx and stuff but wouldn’t know anything of them.

I am 33, I’m an Australian, and this is my story.

By: Nicky

Nicky — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:14:15 +0000

See this brings up long repressed memories. I tried to block them out. Then I had an evil conductor who insisted on us doing concert band versions of them. I was one of the lucky ones, who didn’t have to do Africa (only the bigband got that). I still remember the xylophone noise. Dang nabit, I worked so hard at repression.

By: chris barnes

chris barnes — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:40:49 +0000

I know *of* those bands, but know nothing about them.

By: Lucy Anne

Lucy Anne — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 04:21:16 +0000

My Boy (he being from Melbourne by way of Garvoc) says he wasn’t familiar with Journey before I’d mentioned them to him. While the other Corporation Rock bands made the crossing, Steve Perry and colleagues got lost up in South Detroit.

Meanwhile, Australia kept back The Birthday Party and The Go Betweens and sent us Pseudo Echo. In the end, you did get the best of the deal.

-la

By: Robert Legault

Robert Legault — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 02:08:12 +0000

Justine, I know all the bands you mention all too well. They’re all pretty sucky. Foreigner have a few OK songs, but all of the hits by all the bands are played relentlessly even today. I suspect that if, God forbid, someone were to tie you down and subject you to their music, you would more than once say, “Oh, THAT…” with disgust. But believe me, you’re better off being ignorant.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 01:54:44 +0000

Justine: For insight into the kind of mind that appreciates Journey, and some background re the band’s significance to American teens of the ’80s, check this blog posting.
Simmone: Loverboy was Canadian. As a ‘merican I refuse to take responsibility for that noise.
Malcolm: Kansas was indeed real. Big hits (from the latter ’70s, actually) were “Carry On, Wayward Son,” “Point of Know Return,” and the soul-drainingest, kill-me-now, most depressing pop song ever recorded, “Dust in the Wind.” It was huge against the Bee Gees.

By: Ez

Ez — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 00:49:17 +0000

I’m Australian and have a secret fondness for “Hold the Line” by Toto.

I’m not much for ABBA, but rather enjoy two particular Swedish musicians: The Hives and Jens Lekman.

Have a lovely day!

By: lili

lili — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 00:29:42 +0000

i currently hate 80s music, having just spent half the night lying awake listening to My Sharona on high (and LOUD) rotation by my neighbours at, you know, 3am on a monday morning.

actually, i think my sharona is late 70s.

i quite like the ‘africa’ song by toto.

and kevin: john farnham (or, as we like to call him, farnsey) is generally pretty crap, but ‘you’re the voice’ is a classic. any man who can have bagpipes in his rock power ballad gets my vote. it’s time to turn the pages over, baby.

By: benpeek

benpeek — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 00:22:02 +0000

i’m free and safe from alla that

By: Malcolm

Malcolm — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 23:52:16 +0000

I remember most of those bands (“Kansas” don’t sound like a real band, though — I think you made that one up). I wasn’t a big Countdown watcher, but I was in high school in the mid-80′s, so a bunch of songs by those bands are associated with girls and Saturday night dates. They bring back good memories; I can’t hate them, although they do sound a bit dated now.

Now, where are my “best hits of the 1980′s” CDs? I need to put on some memories…

By: simmone

simmone — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 23:31:44 +0000

i will go on record as saying that i love midnight blue by Lou Gramm (He was foreignor’s frontman – he had wild frizzy hair and high tight denim jeans worn thin around the ‘basket’. His face was never in repose. You can also add Loverboy to the list of singletted, sweaty one-name US bands. I don’t remember Journey being huge here but for a while there they racked up irony points for being ryan’s fave rave on the OC. Also anyone getting sniffy about Boston should remember that ‘More than a Feeling’ is only one chord removed from Nirvana’s ‘Smells like Teen Spirit’.

ps – I’ve never heard anything by Kansas.

By: Justine

Justine — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 22:54:56 +0000

Hezaa: And your life is better for it.