Sappy Lyric Day

OK, so looking at those John Hughes films from the '80s got my sleep-deprived brain working in the dead letter department, and I went and pulled out my copy of The Beat - Special Beat Service (thanks to Gordon for the replacement copy). It was one of those chosen few albums in heavy rotation in our cars when Sam & I were dating. Well I shouldn't really say "few", since we were musical gluttons. But if you'd been riding along in Sam's Arrow in 1985, here's a sampling of the cassettes you would have found on the floor:

Madness (best of)
The Police (everything)
Sting (Dream of the Blue Turtles)
The Beat (Special Beat Service, Just Can't Stop It)
Howard Jones (Human's Lib, Dream Into Action)
Flock of Seagulls (the first two albums on 1 tape)
Sparks (In Outer Space)
Depeche Mode (People Are People)
Shriekback (Oil & Gold) - (Any band who can use the word "parthenogenesis" in a song gets my vote!)
Yello (Stella)
Boomtown Rats (In the Long Grass)
Marillion (Misplaced Childhood)
Love & Rockets (Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven)
Oingo Boingo (Good For Your Soul, Dead Man's Party)
Danny Elfman (So-Lo)
Repo Man (soundtrack)
A-Ha (Hunting High & Low)
Queen (best of)
Tears For Fears (Songs From the Big Chair)
Psychedelic Furs (Mirror Moves)
David Bowie (Let's Dance, Tonight)
Berlin (Pleasure Victim, Love Life)
Missing Persons (Spring Session M, Rhyme and Reason)

...Add to that a smattering of my obscuria (at the time), like Art of Noise, The Replacements, Kate Bush and pre-So Peter Gabriel, plus some leftover Scorpions, Judas Priest, Led Zeppelin and some showtunes (a dead giveaway that you're in an actor's car).

Aaaaaaanyway, the point being that when Sam & I would go to the Baylands in Palo Alto to make out in my (dad's) '81 Oldsmobile with the big back seat (like this, only white/beige - we called it El Presidente), inevitably a tape from one of our respective collections would be providing the soundtrack for our own real-life John Hughes movie (seriously - replace Chicago with San Francisco and slightly fewer bold pranks, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off *was* my senior year in high school). So whenever I hear "End of the Party" by The Beat, with Dave Wakeling's very '80s crooner voice dramatically professing love for the girl in question, I flash back to those times. More fondly now, not quite as painful. I just thought I would share some of that history. Sappy? Sure. Like I said, we lived in a John Hughes movie.

She said to leave it till
the end of the party
Do it now, you know
there's never a next time
How come the feeling
that it's only just started
Pull back your cover,
I could love you for all time
But do it now,
you know there's never a next time.

The bees are busy,
Now there's gold on the hill
The branches waving
But our hearts are wrapped up inside
And then you leave me,
so I start missing you a lot
No argument oh do I love you or not
No argument,
you have all the love that I see as mine
Pull back your cover,
I could love you for all time
But do it now
you know there's never a next time.

You know Wakeling was speaking to a whole generation of kids coming of age at the time, otherwise why would Hughes have crammed his soundtracks with so many of his songs?

So, as you may have guessed, this post is neither here nor there... Just rambling and sharing memories. And maybe sharing the imperative: do it now, you know there's never a next time.