Thank You Very Much, Mr. Robot

Professing a love for Styx isn't going to get you any points with anyone outside of the immediate family of the members of Styx. (Even then, one is not sure.) And while I can't really say that I love 'em -- out of the 5000+ CD's I own, a Styx "Greatest Hits" is as far as I can go into their catalog -- I can say that I have warbled along with many a Styx song, especially the intricate harmonies of tracks like "Lady." And then there's "Mr. Roboto," one of the most ridiculous songs to ever hit the high end of the charts in the ridiculous year of 1983.

And yet, isn't this earnest pap somewhat endearing in a naive futuristic fashion? Almost certainly, it was the song that destroyed the band, with Dennis DeYoung's off-Broadway flourishes at odds with the prog-rock-lite stream of populism that Tommy Shaw was so good at presenting. Turns out that the future DeYoung was writing about was a future without Styx. Which isn't so bad, right?

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"The Silver Gun" by Robert Palmer (1983)

I mean...Urdu? Seriously, Urdu . On an already eclectic and worldly album -- Pride , from 1983 -- "The Silver Gun" closes a chapter in Robert Palmer's career by singing a song about a horse in a language spoken daily by over 100 million people. The liquid bass line and propulsive electronics set out a bedrock for Palmer to ping phrasings rather out of place in Western music, askew astride even the peripatetic minimalism of the rest of the record. Somehow, in the middle of Michigan's Appalachia, I had this on vinyl a few years before the CD era officially commenced. It was an album of effort -- even the cover, a pointillism-and-bronze work, had Palmer's head barely above the water -- but the stitches didn't show to my pre-adolescent eyes and ears. In a career marked by zigs and zags, Pride and "The Silver Gun" were most certainly Other, and for a kid that felt like he didn't belong much of anywhere, it was nice to have those discrete feeling...

"I'll Drive You Home"

Upon reflection, I’ve had a fortunate life in the area of work. As a freshly minted teenager, I would visit Evergreen Park Grocery and dream of someday working there like my father did, and at the age of 14, I got $2/hour to live out that dream, such as it was. From there, I yearned to try other occupations, from record stores to teaching, and I’d be chuffed to tell Young Erick that both of those things happened in due course. ( Oh, and Young Erick, one of them got you to meet David Bowie, and one of them got you to own houses and cars, so I’ll let you ponder on which one was better. ) I even got to DJ a bit here and there, and while it never hit the heights of a professional radio gig, it was certainly better than the summer I played preset cassettes on my boom box for a nerd camp dance while my unrequited crush stayed in her room. What I never crossed off my professional life list was acting, either regular or voice, but while I still yearn for that big breakthrough -- seriously, ask...

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