Yesterday, we were over playing at the Carl Sagans, and as usual, Mrs. Carl Sagan had her satellite tuned to Galaxy 80s. It’s a radio station that plays all 80s, all the time, and it’s quite a mixed bag of cool alternative stuff and crappy pop music — one category of which listened to at the time, and the other category of which I listened to at the time, and I’ll leave it to you to figure out which one of us, as 14-year-olds, preferred Debbie Gibson to The Smiths.
Anyway, the song “Hard For Me To Say I’m Sorry” by Chicago came on. It’s a classic crap pop song; it was a pretty big hit at the time, I guess, but overall I find it rather forgettable and cheesy. But Captain Jelly Belly is really into learning song lyrics, and so asked me one of his favourite questions, “What is this song about?” So I told him that it was about saying sorry, He wanted to know who, exactly, was sorry. I told him, the guy who is singing the song. He wanted to know his name, so I told him it was Peter (and it is — the lead singer of Chicago is Peter Cetera).
And then CJB wanted to know why, exactly, Peter was sorry. This kind of situation happens all the time, because CJB likes to really understand a song when he is going to be singing along, and anything other than The Wiggles seems to dissolve into an extensive discussion of adult human relationships. Usually we try to explain the song as simply as possible, like, “This song is about love,” or “This song is about feeling happy,” or “This song is about a girl named Stacy and her really hot mom.” Often he will take these simple explanations at face value, but for some reason, he had a real thing about this Chicago song, and knowing that Peter Was Sorry was just not enough.
So I told CJB I wasn’t sure exactly why, and CJB guessed that perhaps, Peter had accidentally taken the Buzz Lightyear belonging to someone else. I agreed that that was probably it, because that was the easy thing to do, and so began my descent into Lying Hell For Liars, because now, this story has spiraled out of control and won’t quit. In CJB’s world now — after a combination of inventing details that I have agreed with, or having details supplied by myself out of frustration — Peter took Andy’s really cool talking Buzz Lightyear, but then he noticed that Andy was sad, and then he gave back the Buzz Lightyear and said he was Really Sorry. And then, because we require a happy ending, Peter’s Mommy took him out to Al’s Toy Barn where he got his own talking Buzz Lightyear.
CJB seriously cannot stop talking about this song, and this story, and is constantly asking me questions to fill in even more detail. The worst part is that he wants to download the song for him, the infamous song where Peter Takes Andy’s Buzz Lightyear, and I’m worried that a) CJB will notice that there are not, in actuality, any references to Buzz Lightyear contained in “Hard For Me To Say I’m Sorry,” and that b) I will have to listen to this song over and over for 50 times in a row, which may make me insane (although, I survived hearing it many, many times back in the 80s with most of my brain intact, and here, I give you all major blackmail material by mentioning that I actually owned the album, a fact that gives me nightmares today).
Didn’t Dante write a story about this once?
TurtleHead 
OMGLOL
BTW I’m pretty sure that song was produced by David Foster, who is IMO one of the best pop music producers ever. Unfortunately he had a habit of imposing his sound on any band he worked with, often completely destroying any kind of originality the band had before (Chicago is a classic example). But in spite of that I still have enormous respect for the guy. (But I share your dislike for that song.)
For me all of this depends on when you knew the band he produced. I was familiar with Chicago long before DF got involved with them, and I hate what he did with them. OTOH, I only learned of The Tubes around the time that he produced a couple of their albums, and the stuff he did with them is great (though I’m pretty sure it’s very different from pre-DF Tubes).
Although I know nothing at all about music, I agree with you about Chicago. The reason I owned that album (Chicago 19) was because my mom was a huge Chicago fan from the 70s, and her tastes strongly influenced me in my early teens (I was seriously, that much of a goody goody). She was so excited that they had a new album and a new hit that I paid attention, too. In fact I think she might have been the one to buy me the album.
I don’t know a lot about David Foster but it seems to me like he really hit his stride with the 80s acts…now his distinctive sound is kind of out of fashion. What is he doing these days?
He had his own reality TV show for a bit, didn’t he?
Okay, since I’m the only one who’s going to read this and even know who The Tubes are/were, I feel I need to respond. I think DF did some good stuff with The Tubes — he definitely gave them a very polished sound and gave them a couple of huge hits, which led to a wider audience.
But, as you guessed, he messed with what really made them a bit of a cult band. They had some wonderfully weird and hilarious stuff like “Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman”, “White Punks on Dope” and “Sushi Girl” and, of course, there were their legendary stage shows with Rocky Horror-style costumes and characters like “Quay Lewd”.
After they worked with DF, I think some of the band really liked his style and wanted to do more stuff with him, whereas others wanted to go back to their roots. They did another album (with Todd Rundgren), but then a lot of in-fighting and drug use broke them up.
It was cool when we went to see the reunited Tubes a few years ago. They still put on a pretty good stage show, even though they weren’t doing all the characters and costumes at that time.
Yes, he did. He had married a woman with two teenage or twenty-something sons, who were living it up with all his money. I think the show was about: i) showing the spoiled life the stepsons lived and ii) showing DF’s reaction to it.
I heard, but am not positive this is true, that the wife/mom was so pissed off at DF’s comments and treatment of her kids that she divorced him after the show.
I think he actually became huger in the 90s. He produced Whitney Houston (I think he’s responsible for “I Will Always Love You” from The Bodyguard) and Celine Dion.
You may be surprised to learn, then, that Sushi Girl and Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman are both on Completion Backward Principle, produced by DF. In any case, though, the point I was trying to make was that your point of view on DF’s work with a band depends strongly on whether you were introduced to the band’s music before or with him. For me, my first exposure to the Tubes was with Completion Backward Principle, which I really like. But someone who knew the Tubes before DF came along would no doubt hate the DF-produced stuff.
Oooh, guess I forgot that. I suppose what I was trying to say is that songs like Sushi Girl and Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman are more representative of pre-DF Tubes. Whereas, She’s A Beauty and Not Going to Wait Anymore, which are awesome songs, are really essentially DF-written songs. They could have been done by Chicago or Whitney or Celine.
Yeah, so true. Great songs, but also somewhat faceless.
BTW Mutt Lange is another guy who does the same thing to bands.
I know that song, She’s A Beauty. I think I thought it was Chicago!
This is one of the funniest postings I’ve read in a long long time.
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