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  • I’m Not Gonna Take It: Bayer Pharmaceuticals Ransacks the 80s with its Yaz Ads

    It’s probably safe to assume that when Dee Snider and his pals formed their band – a glam metal outfit they called Twisted Sister – back in the early 70s, that, despite their name and their gimmicky image which drew from drag culture and low budget horror in equal measure, they were really thinking about premenstrual dysphoric disorder. And certainly, their genre-defining 1983 anthem “We’re Not Gonna Take It” was more about defying parental (and, as it turned out, governmental) authority than defying a certain female-specific monthly tyranny.

    But there the song is these days: 25 years after Twisted Sister’s hostile (but playful) take-over of MTV’s airwaves with a video featuring Mark Metcalf (sending up his role as Niedermeyer in Animal House) playing the Wile E. Coyote to the band’s Roadrunner in a series of escalating slapstick hijinks, “We’re Not Gonna Take It” is back on the airwaves this summer as a chirpy, synthesized call to women’s liberation… from their periods. The song, along with a similarly re-recorded version of Scandal’s spunky new wave classic “Goodbye To You”, is currently being used by Bayer Pharmaceuticals to tout a birth-control-with-benefits pill called (oh it just gets worse, doesn’t it?) Yaz.

    Yaz (or Yazoo as they were known outside the U.S.), you may or may not recall, was the brilliant, if short-lived synth pop duo of husky-voiced singer Alison Moyet and synth-wizard songwriter Vince Clarke, formed in the wake of Clarke’s resignation from his post as Depeche Mode’s (then) sole obvious talent, shortly after that group’s debut. Together Clarke and Moyet recorded a pair of excellent records in the early 80s – Upstairs at Eric’s (1982) and You and Me Both (1983) – contributing a good handful of singles to the classic alternative canon before they too split, with Moyet launching a successful solo career and the openly straight Clarke forming Erasure with the wildly flamboyant singer Andy Bell and establishing his own little niche in gay iconography as Bell’s silent enabler. Despite generally minor chart performances (in the U.S.) at the time of their release, Yaz songs like “Situation”, “Don’t Go” and “Only You” have become just-left-of-center pop standards for a generation of almost-forty-somethings weaned on John Hughes movies. These are songs you might now hear piped in at your local grocery store while you’re trudging through the salad bar line. Tom Jones has covered Yaz. Seriously.

    It used to be (and still generally is) that established brands practiced a military vigilance against any unsolicited associations, no matter how innocuous, with pop and rock music groups. Chicago used to be Chicago Transit Authority until the Chicago Transit Authority threatened legal action. In the 90s, Green Jello promptly became Green Jelly when it started to look like they might sell a few records. So pardon me if I’m feeling a little galled (I’m not gonna take it! No! I’m not gonna take it!) that Bayer has appropriated the name Yaz for its latest birth control wonderdrug, especially since it’s my personal belief (admittedly, not backed up by any medical training) that three minutes of “Only You” can provide instant, albeit temporary, relief for just about any ailment with none of the side effects – cardiovascular problems, upper respiratory infections, and a few others I couldn’t possibly mention here without puking in my mouth a little – indicated for the drug Yaz.

    Bayer’s Yaz ads come at a particularly inopportune moment for fans of the band Yaz. The reunited (after 25 years) duo are currently on tour behind In Your Room, a new four-disc box set collecting remastered versions of their two albums, a disc of b-sides and remixes, and a DVD featuring the duo’s original music videos, live BBC performances, and a short documentary with new interviews with both Clarke and Moyet set for release July 8th, just in time for the group’s American tour dates. The box set (with can be pre-ordered from Amazon.com for about $60) and tour, which were announced back in January, are so hotly anticipated that I’m getting cramps just thinking about it.

    -P. Lorentz

  • New Music In Stores & Online: 6-3-08: Weezer, Ashanti, Jewel and more!!

    While there aren’t any blockbusters arriving in stores this week, there’s a pretty healthy bunch of new music. Here are some titles you might want to look out for.

    *Various Artists “Now That’s What I Call Music 28”: These compilations have been money in the bank for about a decade, but sales have slipped as the general public has realized that they can download the songs they like individually. Anyhow, this edition is significantly less R&B/hip-hop-centric than it has been in the past, with the likes of John Mayer, Fall Out Boy and Colbie Caillat joining recent hits by Lil’ Wayne, Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown.

    Home

    *Ashanti “The Declaration”: Remember about six years ago, when Ashanti was the hottest thing going? Well, this is her fourth album, and I’m not convinced that anyone really cares. She’s pretty much ditched Irv Gotti, Ja Rule and the Murder Inc. camp on this release, which features guest appearances from Babyface and Robin Thicke. “The Way That I Love You” has not made a lot of noise on the pop front, but it was a Top 5 R&B hit and definitely has one of the more interesting videos of the year so far.

    http://www.ashantimusic.net/

    *Jewel “Perfectly Clear”: A week or so ago, I posted Jessica Simpson’s new single, which found the pop vocalist heading into country territory. Jewel is another female singer who’s decided to do a genre switch (at least for now), and it probably goes without saying that Jewel’s adaptation of country flavors is probably a lot less forced (and a lot less blatantly commercial) than Jessica’s is. At any rate Jewel has never particularly interested me beyond a couple of singles, so I’ll skip this one. It is her first release on a new label, though, which usually means that a greatest hits compilation from her former label probably isn’t too far away. Now that, I’ll pick up.

    http://www.jeweljk.com/

    *Weezer “Weezer (Red Album)”: If you want short, hooky pop/rock songs, Weezer and The Foo Fighters are your best courses of action. Both bands have outlasted their contemporaries simply by doing what they do best. You know what a Weezer album is going to sound like, for the most part…or maybe you don’t! This, their fifth album, finds the band members switching up instruments on occasion and also finds band members not named Rivers Cuomo singing lead. First single “Pork & Beans” is already huge. Expect the rest of the album to follow suit. Also, keep in mind that this album wasn’t even supposed to exist, as the band reportedly split up after the release of 2005’s “Make Believe”.

    http://www.weezer.com/

    Also: Indie-rock darlings The Ting Tings, who recently scored the #1 single and album in the U.K. (as well as a coveted iPod commercial here in the States) release their debut “We Started Nothing” today…metal favorites Disturbed are back with “Indestructible” (alas, it features no Genesis covers)…soul siren (and daughter of the legendary Donny) Lalah Hathaway straddles the line between smooth soul and smooth jazz on “Self Portrait”, her new effort…meanwhile, two popular frontmen do the solo thing: Gavin Rossdale (formerly of Bush, currently Mr. Gwen Stefani) tries to re-establish his music career with “Wanderlust”, while Bret Michaels of Poison tries to capitalize on his reality show success with “Rock My World”.

    Happy shopping!!

  • Infatueighties: The Spawn of Wham: Pepsi and Shirlie and Deon Estus

    George Michael is known as many things nowadays. World-class singer and songwriter. King of Stubble (and he’s worked that look for two decades plus now), Public Restroom Inhabitant. But did you know that when George first stepped on the scene with his Wham! partner Andrew Ridgeley, he was…

    …a rapper?

    I’m sure if anyone were to show this 1983 performance to George these days, he would look for the nearest hole to crawl under. However, I (one of maybe 10 people in the U.S. who knew who Wham! was before “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”) find this performance to be quite energetic and charming. I still can’t figure out what the hell Andrew Ridgeley did, though.

    Anyway, the song, “Young Guns (Go For It)” appeared on Wham!’s debut album “Fantastic” (actually, for their first album, they were named Wham! U.K. here in The States). A year later, they were global superstars, and a year or so after that, George Michael had officially gone solo. But what of the two fetching young ladies who danced with George & Andrew in that television performance (and whom you might also remember from the “Go-Go” video)? Well…

    Their names were Pepsi and Shirlie, and they had a minor U.S. hit in the fall of ’87 with “Heartache”, a pulsing bit of mid-tempo pop that was helmed (as was just about everything else in the late 80s in Britain) by the Stock/Aitken/Waterman team. The production team kept busy with artists like Kylie Minogue, Donna Summer, Rick Astley and Bananarama…one member of whom went on to marry…you guessed it, Andrew Ridgeley. See how everything folds into itself? You gotta love it. Anyway, “Heartache” wasn’t a huge single, but I remember it getting enough airplay in New York that I still remember the chorus after not hearing the song for two decades, and it’s a much better song than you’d expect a duo of background singers to come up with.

    Around the same time “Heartache” came out, George Michael went nuclear with the “Faith” album and it’s attendant singles. No matter what radio station you turned on, whether it was the Lite station, the Top 40 station or the R&B station, George was impossible to avoid, and with good reason. “Faith” still stands as one of the 80s’ most irresistible pop albums.

    By the spring of ’89, George could sneeze on a record and it would become a hit. This is probably the reason Deon Estus’s “Heaven Help Me” cruised into the pop & R&B Top 5 around that time. Estus (who looked like a cross between Soul II Soul’s Jazzie B, a member of Milli Vanilli and the black dude from Color Me Badd) had previously been best-known (if at all) as George & Wham!’s bassist, with some prominent facetime in the “I’m Your Man” and “Monkey” videos.

    “Heaven Help Me” doesn’t have a particularly ingenious bassline, but what it does have is George Michael. LOTS of George Michael. George wrote and produced the song, sang background vocals and handles the chorus damn near on his own. In addition, Deon’s voice is enough of a dead ringer for George’s that you’d be forgiven if you’ve thought for all these years that this is a George Michael record. Estus’ album, called “Spell”, was otherwise George-free and that’s probably the reason it bombed. However, this song is damn good-as good as most of the material on “Faith”. And the video is one of those “so bad it’s good” deals.

    While Andrew sits at home and counts checks (and I won’t scare you by putting the video for “Shake” on here), Shirlie from Pepsi & Shirlie is now married to one of Spandau Ballet’s Kemp brothers (man, are all British 80s pop stars married to each other?), Pepsi has settled into civilian , and Deon Estus continues to tour as a support bassist. George Michael seems perfectly content to rake in money re-releasing greatest hits compilations and getting arrested every so often, but at least he’s contributed to some of the Eighties’ most indelible musical moments.