Let's Go Upstairs & Read My Tarot Cards

I was naughty today. I purchased six CDs: Joy Division, B-52s, Donovan, U2, and the two Depeche Mode CDs I didn't own (until now). But at least five out of six of my CDs were on sale for an impressive $7.99 at Tower Records. That's right. But walk, don't run: The $7.99 sale extends intil early January, so you have plenty of time to figure out how you want to spend your rent/bills money. Besides, it's icy out there. If you run you might slip and break your neck.

That out of the way, I would like to devote the rest of this post to the awe-inspiring ROD STEWART. NOT American Songbook Rod of the '00s; rather, sexy young Rod of the '70s and '80s. While I would like to claim I've been a fan since birth, it's simply not true. As a kid, I thought, like anyone, that the overplayed hits "Hot Legs" and "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?" were just goofy novelties, and it probably wasn't until I was a teenager that I started really understanding these songs as the thoughtful meditations on all-night cocaine binges and promiscuous sex of the disco era that they are.

When Rod performed with The Faces, they enjoyed a hit song with the casual sex anthem "Stay With Me" (I uploaded the MP3 HERE just for you because I think this tune is so great, really terrific). Tell me you can listen to this song, which was co-written with Ron Wood (it's even trashier than the Stones' sleaziest songs), and refrain from pouring yourself into your skintight white leather pants and hitting the discotheques in search of an over-sexed redhead named Rita; Rod will even let you use his best cologne. I mean, Rod's sexily hoarse vocals and his yelps of "Guitar!!!" and "Get yourself home!" and "Sit down, get up, get out!" and "Whooo!" accompanied by alternating screechy/bluesy guitars is enough to make me want to drink a shot of tequila and yell "ROCK AND ROLL!" before falling to the floor in a messy heap. If you're not sassy enough to listen to the tune, at least read the lyrics HERE.

Moving on. From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, Rod was all over the radio/VH1 and MTV. In a few hours of listening/watching, you could probably catch old and new hits like "Reason to Believe," "Havin' a Party," "Forever Young," "Have I Told You Lately," "Some Guys Have All the Luck," "Infatuation," "Rhythm of My Heart," "The Motown Song," "This Old Heart of Mine," and Rod's cover of Tom Waits' "Downtown Train." (SEE ALL OF THE VIDEOS HERE and HERE).

This was probably about the time my inexplicable, short-term freakish obsession with Rod began.

I had all but forgotten about aforementioned freakish obsession until a few weeks ago when I saw Rod's video for "Young Turks" on VH1 Classics -- a song I have loved for a long time but hadn't seen the video since probably the late 1980s -- and then I realized that the reason for my adolescent obsession with Rod was likely because, in the early '80s, ROD STARTED MORPHING INTO SIMON LeBON'S DOPPELGANGER. Just watch the video for "Young Turks," and Rod's bleached, tousled hair and hand-snapping shuffle lend an awful lot of evidence to my Rod-Simon theory. While Rod, like the boys of Duran Duran, publicly expressed his love of gallivanting with models throughout his career, I imagine Rod, by the early 1980s, felt he was aging and needed to channel younger, hipper British musicians to retain his image. Just look at THIS PHOTO OF ROD, 1981; now check out THIS PHOTO OF SIMON from the same year. Or THIS PHOTO OF SIMON, from a year EARLIER than Rod's video. Coincidence??? DOUBTFUL.

I recently rediscovered another great Rod tune from the early '90s entitled "Lost in You," whose video features a sexed-up Rod who falls in love with one of the strippers who dances at the club where he bartends. The video, while sleazy, is given at least a smidgeon of class because it's shot in black and white (albeit probably to disguise Rod's graying hair and un-spring chicken looks).

I recommend: Rod Stewart, The Story So Far double-CD collection. Yeah, I own it, jealous?

[Also posted on Fireballs & Tsunami]