The End of the Eighties, Track 28

“That’s What I Get”
Nine Inch Nails
Pretty Hate Machine
1989

Once again, it’s all about the flow within the playlist here. “Batdance” somehow fits perfectly against the synthesized steel drum percussion opening Nine Inch Nails’ “That’s What I Get”. It’s a song that is musically stark, devoid of softness. The only real emotion is conveyed by Trent Reznor’s vocals. Interestingly, though, the beats of Pretty Hate Machine’s leadoff single, “Down In It”, suddenly appear in the latter half of this song.

Thematically, “That’s What I Get” is all about the nihilistic place I found myself in between Pam leaving and my further self-exploration at Bowling Green in 1989. It’s as if every word of this song was ripped from my heart as I tried to navigate my victimized feelings over Pam’s departure. 

Just when everything was making sense

You took away all my self-confidence

Now all that I’ve been hearing must be true

I guess I’m not the only boy for you

That’s what I get

How could you turn us into this

After you just taught me how to kiss you?

I told you I’d never say goodbye

Now I’m slipping on the tears you made me cry

That’s what I get

Why does it come as a surprise

To think that I was so naïve

Maybe didn’t mean so much

But it meant everything to me

The song’s sentiment is echoed in hundreds of different variations throughout my writings of the era. Portrait of a Tortured Punk Poet as he attempts to find his way through both his feelings and the larger world, dressed in black, smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, and approaching his freshman college responsibilities more as “guidelines” as opposed to requirements.

The End of the Eighties, Track 27

“Batdance”
Prince
Batman (Original Soundtrack)
1989

Alright, this one might be hard to justify on an alternative soundtrack to the late ’80s, but hear me out…

Ten albums, including three soundtracks, one of the most infamous bootlegs of all-time, and a stunning complement of B-sides. Prince’s work from 1980 to 1989 is an untouchable musical evolution that spans R&B, funk, dance, new wave, pop, and rock. From guitar-soaked sex to lilting spirituality, Prince mastered the decade artistically and commercially.

In truth, I could have picked virtually any track from any Prince album from the ’80s, and it would have been appropriate here with regards to personal influence. Under the Cherry Moon was a foundational movie for Pam’s and my relationship, giving Parade an edge. John and Jen can tell you how I used to camp it up in the dorm room to Controversy’s “Jack U Off” when we were just hanging out. But the Prince track that probably most deserves to be on this playlist (but isn’t) is “Bob George”. Pam gave me my first copy of The Black Album on cassette tape in early 1989. Within a year I was laying down $50 for the bootleg CD at Madhatter Music Company in Bowling Green. For whatever reason, it was onto “Bob George” from that album that I transferred all my fury over Pam’s move to San Francisco to be with her ex-boyfriend earlier that summer. The distorted vocals, the self-deprecating references, the overt violence… it’s a track that completely encapsulates “dirty” Prince.

For the sake of playlist flow, however, I went with the Batman single, “Batdance”. Part of a campaign that changed the way blockbuster movies are marketed in the same way Jaws defined the summer tent pole nearly 15 years earlier, goth auteur Tim Burton’s Batman was ubiquitous in the summer of 1989. The movie worked for both the alternative culture denizens who worshipped at Burton’s quirky Pee Wee’s Big Adventure/Beetlejuice alter, and the hegemonic mainstream.

The collection of songs Prince offered up as accompaniment to the movie range from excellent funk workouts (“Electric Chair”) to downright silly (“The Arms of Orion”), and marked the beginning of the end for any level of consistent quality output from the artist. “Batdance” is a sample-heavy track (fitting in nicely next to Front 242’s “Welcome to Paradise V1.0”) that cleverly intertwines the words of Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson, and Kim Basinger into the song. The omnipresent nature of both the movie and this song in 1989 resulted in snippets of the movie’s dialog permanently etched on the brains of virtually anyone consuming pop culture that summer – John and me included.

So maybe “Batdance” doesn’t fit perfectly under the “alternative” umbrella, but within the flow of the playlist and as a signpost for the end of the eighties, I’d be hard-pressed to find a more fitting inclusion.

The End of the Eighties, Track 26

“Welcome to Paradise V1.0”
Front 242
Front By Front
1988

Before I packed up all my worldly belongings and moved to Central Florida in the Summer of 1990, I threw a party. It was one of those amazingly cool events where all my worlds collided on one now-very hazy night. My parents were out of town, and I took that opportunity to throw a good-bye bash for myself. High school friends were there, co-workers from Warehouse Club showed up, and friends from Bowling Green all drove in town for the party.

I’m going to plead “hazy details” in order to avoid incriminating myself or anyone who was in attendance, but I remember playing DJ that night. Deep into industrial, Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Nitzer Ebb, Severed Heads, and Front 242 were staples in my musical diet at the time. And, as much as I associate NIN’s Pretty Hate Machine with New Year’s Eve 1989, I associate Front 242’s “Welcome to Paradise V1.0” with my going away party.

The band brilliantly subverts samples of televangelist Farrell Griswold into twisted mini-treatises on sex, poverty, and religion. At the time, I just loved the shock value of the content (much in the same way NIN’s “The Only Time” and “Get Down Make Love” rocketed to the top of my Catholic Upbringing Rebellion playlist), but as an adult I see there was depth to the provocative challenges. “Welcome to Paradise V1.0” is a criminally underrated track that took what Brian Eno and David Byrne were doing with samples at the beginning of the decade on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and exploited it to take on everything from ’80s consumerism to the hypocrisy of religion in five-plus minutes of buzz saw synths and jackhammer percussion.

The End of the Eighties, Track 25

“Get Down Make Love”
Nine Inch Nails
Sin Maxi-Single
1989

It’s kind of shocking to me that Nine Inch Nails’ “Get Down Make Love” was nowhere to be found on either of the original playlists. It’s probably my favorite NIN song alongside “The Only Time”. The first time I heard “Get Down Make Love” was at the Phantasy Theater on the Pretty Hate Machine Promo Tour at the end of the decade. I attended the show with coworkers from the CD store I worked at, and when my boss (a classic and prog rock dinosaur) yelled over the din, “This is a Queen song!” my mind was completely blown.

It was a crazy thing to see Nine Inch Nails live in the late ’80s. Surrounded by anger and bathed in aggression, those early shows were physically demanding of both the band and the audience. The ferocity of the performance lent an unpredictable air of excitement to the proceedings. It was antagonistic. It stirred you, pulled you in. I’m not a big guy, but this is the music that could draw me into the fray. Jostled and bruised, you would emerge from the cornstarch haze of the venue and head out into the Northeast Ohio night carried on an adrenaline surge. 

This was the first of an inspired list of Nine Inch Nails’ covers, leading directly to Pigface’s “Suck”, Adam & the Ants’ “Physical”, Joy Division’s “Dead Souls”, and beyond. Recorded or live, “Get Down Make Love” feels so much more raw than the rest of Pretty Hate Machine. This song is all about attitude. Opening with a sampling of the insistent sexual history interrogation from 1962’s The Cabinet of Caligari (co-starring Glynis Johns of Mary Poppins fame!), the slow menace of Queen’s original is transformed into a spiraling nightmare. There is a sense that this shit was just thrown together – the raging percussion, the screaming chorus. It’s all open wounds and bloodied knuckles. And, frankly, some of the best industrial pop you’ll ever hear.

The End of the Eighties, Track 24

“Her Way of Praying”
The Jesus and Mary Chain
Automatic
1989

A polarizing album, Automatic is The Jesus and Mary Chain one that finds the Reid brothers acting as a duo, splitting vocal duties and fleshing out their sound via drum machine and a synthesizer for bass. Embracing late ’80s bombast, the album sounds big and encompasses everything from fuzz-laced feedback to acid-fueled trips. “Her Way of Praying”, though, has always been my favorite JAMC song.

The sex-as-prayer analogy of “Her Way of Praying” fell right into my religious-questioning, lust-craving late teenage wheelhouse. It’s a song (and album) I have always associated with Maria, who I dated after my relationship with Kari imploded. Here’s what I’ve said about Maria previously…

That fall semester at BG, I took a music appreciation class of some kind (it’s a little fuzzy at this point) in the Moore Musical Arts Center. The first day of class, this cute girl and I chatted briefly and began a classroom friendship, but neither pursued anything beyond that until the end of the semester rolled around. Through small talk in class, we realized we were both from Northeast Ohio. She went to Central Catholic and grew up right in the geographic center of my high school social world. We decided to get together while home for the holidays.

I was at the peak of my punk phase at the time... my hair dyed jet black or blue-black or maroon or purple depending on the week, eyeliner, black nail polish and lipstick, my ears pierced a half-dozen times. She had a simple, girl-next-door beauty. And a boyfriend. Despite my appearance and her ties, her parents and I got along well-enough, and Maria and I spent a large part of those weeks home together. There were many late nights getting to know each other while we drank bottomless cups of coffee and I chain-smoked Marlboro Lights in a booth at the Denny’s on Everhard Road, and hanging out at her parents’ house.

Perhaps not the healthiest of relationships, in retrospect I suppose that’s what dating and youth are all about – the mistakes are a means to an end for finding one’s identity.

Automatic was released just a few months before the holidays, and I was hot and heavy on it through the winter. It got plenty of airplay while home for break and well into the spring semester back at school. All of this plays into the notion that a current album by an artist while you’re deeply immersed in a genre is more important than any other album that artist will release, and that is certainly the case for me and this collection of songs from 1989. While another track from this album will appear later on the playlist originating on the Thursday’s compilation, this album track will always evoke Bowling Green and those Northeast Ohio nights while home for the holidays.

The End of the Eighties, Track 23

“Lips Like Sugar (12” Mix)”
Echo & the Bunnymen
Just Say Yes
1987

Surprisingly, Echo & the Bunnymen’s “Lips Like Sugar” is the only Bunnymen song on the playlist, but like Xymox’s “Blind Hearts”, it was originally found on both the Thursday’s and Bowling Green mix CDs. This track definitely earned its spot on both collections, though. Echo & the Bunnymen was a staple among my Akron friends Jen and Nancy and me on those Northeast Ohio nights spent driving around, as well as out on the dance floor at Thursday’s.

As for my Bowling Green associations with the song, well, that’s a somewhat longer story…

I’m pretty sure Labor Day weekend was the first time my college friend Jen took me home with her. During that period, my relationship with my parents was still pretty rocky, so instead of trying to find a ride back to Northeast Ohio or asking my parents to come pick me up, I accepted Jen’s offer to come home with her for the long weekend. She had a beat-up Datsun 210 dubbed “Bob” that she kept at school and drove us down to her mom’s house in Columbus in it.

I can still see the interior of her mom’s old house, and I remember Jen walking me through it and how it just sort of spiraled upwards as we made our way from the ground floor up to her attic room. We passed an ironing board in the room at the bottom of the attic stairs (that I’m fairly certain was wood paneled) that had one of those old 12x12, heavy stock record cover art posters used in record store displays. I’m not certain, but I think it was either Prince’s Lovesexy or a Depeche Mode album cover.

On the drive from her mom’s house to the Short North for the monthly gallery hop that end-of-summer Saturday night, we cranked Echo’s “Lips Like Sugar” and sang along at the top of our lungs. That night at the gallery hop, we met up and hung out with many of Jen’s local friends from Columbus’ alternative scene, but here’s where details get hazy… I know we ran into one particular girl Jen had gone to high school with, and, for whatever reason, Jen and I both broke into “Lips Like Sugar” after we parted ways with the friend. I think it was something goofy and (embarrassingly now) maybe slightly derogatory or mean-spirited on our part, but I’m not certain all these years later. I just know that it cracked us up for the rest of the weekend, and carried over with us back to campus when we returned to BG.

This version of “Lips Like Sugar” was originally available on the US 12” release in August of 1987, but I found it on Just Say Yes: Sire’s Winter CD Music Sampler released a few months later. (Sire’s music samplers produced seven volumes between 1987’s Just Say Yes and 1994’s Just Say Roe. By and large, they were treasure-troves of alternative music rarities, where you could find everything from remixes to non-album tracks.)

The song itself comes from the Bunnymen’s self-titled album from the same year. Arguably, their most commercially successful album, it’s a collection of songs that captures the jangly neo-psychedelic, synthpop of the Liverpool post-punk scene that also spawned Big in Japan, The Teardrop Explodes (including extensive cross-pollination and acrimony with Julian Cope), Dalek I Love You, and Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark. Echo & the Bunnymen contains the playful “Bedbugs & Ballyhoo” and the shimmering “All My Life”. The latter – a sort of spiritual successor to The Beatles “In My Life” – was a song I played extensively that year at BG, letting it inspire me and my writing with its beauty.

Taking the notion of the unattainable girl to swirling pop heights, it’s clear why “Lips Like Sugar” was the biggest hit from the album. Ian McCulloch’s vocals are melty, and when combined with Will Sergeant’s luminous guitar work the result is a near-perfect song of unrequited love.

The End of the Eighties, Track 22

“Closedown”
The Cure
Disintegration
1989

Like Siouxsie’s Peepshow album, the Cure’s Disintegration was blasted far too loudly from my dorm room that freshman year at Bowling Green. It sets a mood, to be sure, and that mood was often the morose, brooding, angsty mindset of a gothy punk poet on the verge of young adulthood.

“Closedown” is the album track that really gets the blood churning, and I had this to say about it in 2011:

The liner notes on the original album say “THIS MUSIC HAS BEEN MIXED TO BE PLAYED LOUD SO TURN IT UP,” and the opening tribal drums of “Closedown” are relentless. You feel them thrumming in your chest with urgency at any volume. The immediacy of those four minutes of music – one of the shortest songs on the album – is underscored with a mere 11 lines of lyrics compacted into 40 seconds of song, making every turn of phrase, every word matter. The lyrics are well within lead singer Robert Smith’s doom and gloom wheelhouse, but the music feels uncharacteristically hard. While Cure songs of the era are typically dense, “Closedown” actually seems to apply pressure, actively pushing the air out of the listener’s lungs, suffocating them.