It figures. I get myself a shiny new blogging platform complete with comments and everything just in time for the cyclical insanity of my job to come back around like the weighty business end of a whirling bola. I hate to say it, but keeping my head down and the red ink flowing nonstop for eight (or more) uninterrupted hours a day leaves me with little inclination to do much with my verbal skills at the end of the day. In other words, I haven’t felt much like writing for a while.<\/p>\n
But hey, I care — I really<\/i> care — about you crazy kids waiting around out there in the early-spring twilight for me to entertain you, so how about my usual fallback for times when I don’t have much time to write something that actually means anything: yes, it’s a music video!<\/p>\n
(The truth is, I’ve been missing my Friday Evening Videos feature anyway. I went through a phase in my early teens when I wanted to be a DJ — that would be the radio variety, not the modern-day guys who scratch records in dance clubs — and these entries let me play at that role a little.)<\/p>\n
Tonight’s selection doesn’t have any story behind it — I just saw it for the first time myself a couple days ago — but I’ve always liked The Bangles, the all-girl group that’s best-known for their number-one hit “Walk Like an Egyptian” (although I prefer the number-two-charting “Manic Monday” myself) as well as the shortness of lead singer Susanna Hoffs<\/a>‘ skirts. There’s no question that all four members of the band were easy on the eyes, but they were also very tight musically and they crafted quite a few great, hooky pop singles during the mid to late ’80s, probably more than most people realize. This particular song, “Going Down to Liverpool,” is a bit obscure (it didn’t even chart in the U.S., although it appears on their 1990 Greatest Hits<\/i> compilation), but it’s a nice little tune and one of the rare occasions when drummer Debbi Peterson took over the lead vocals.<\/p>\n However, the real reason I decided to post this one here is… well, I’ll let you be surprised by who guest-stars in the video. I’ll just say that he looks very Mission: Impossible<\/i>-ish here, and it’s my understanding he agreed to do this because his son was a friend of Susanna’s… and any friend of Susanna’s is a friend of… well, just take a look:<\/p>\n