Lee Horsley, starred as the mustachioed Matt Houston, a former football All American now wealthy Texan who manages off shore drilling along the coast of California, dabbles in diamond mines, is one of the world’s most eligible bachelors, and of course, is the best private investigator in the city of Los Angeles. That’s right, Los Angeles. Fed up with the attitude of his homeland, Houston left the longhorn state and went off to make his fortune in California.

Assisting him in his business affairs and helping manage his crazy lifestyle is Houston’s very own girl Friday, C.J., played with a wink and a smile by Pamela Hensley. It’s obvious from the first episode that these two have a thing for each other. When and if they wind up together is part of the fun of Matt Houston.

This first season collection includes all 23 episodes from the first season of the hit series, which premiered in the fall of 1982 on ABC and lasted for 3 seasons.  Paramount has packaged the series on 6 discs and it’s available now to buy or rent.

Houston always puts the needs of his clients and friends before his own. Whether it’s the former girlfriend accused of killing her father for his money (“X-22”) to the former girlfriend who is accused of killing her boss (“Deadly Fashion”) to getting to the bottom of who’s trying to kill C.J. and her sorority sisters (“Whose Party Is It Anyway?”), Houston is crafty, tough, and always gets his man. But the great Matt Houston also dabbles in solving high-minded cases like figuring out whether a famous scientist actually saw a UFO before he had a heart attack (The Visitors”) and deciphering the clues of a special code that predicts the deaths of thousands (“Fear for Tomorrow’). If ever there was a well-rounded detective, it’s this guy.

Let’s be straight, this was an Aaron Spelling production, so it was made for purely entertainment purposes. With Matt Houston you got the glitz and glamor of Spelling’s Dynasty type soaps, mixed with the intrigue, mystery and sexiness of Charlie’s Angels and Starsky and Hutch. Horsley and Hensley are capable actors and are pleasant enough to spend an hour with on a regular basis. For someone like me who grew up on shows like Matt Houston, that is weekly mysteries that weren’t too heavy (if you wanted heavy, you had to watch a “grown up” show like Hill Street Blues), there is a nostalgia aspect to the show that made me eager to see it again after nearly 30 years. I was pleasantly surprised that the show held up. Granted, the plots are derivative and the look of this show may be pure 80’s gold, but there’s no denying that Matt Houston is a good time.

It even made me consider growing a stache.

This week, Dave and Mikey review the new Jay Baruchel comedy She’s Out of My League. Is it an Apatow-esque raunchy laffer, or a late-period Farrelly-type groaner? Watch the clip to find out!

Will we be remembered for fighting the good fight, or, like former New York congressman Eric Massa, fighting the tickle fight to end all tickle fights? Will we be remembered for standing behind our constituents even if we didn’t agree with their views, or, like California state senator Roy Ashburn, hiding behind our constituents by saying they wanted us to vote down gay-rights measures, particularly those intimidating constituents who tend to corner us in gay bars that just happen to be on the campaign trail.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my legacy the past few days, especially after the health scare I experienced on Monday when I sat on a rusty tack placed in the chair behind my desk. I scrambled to look up “do-it-yourself tetnis shot for dummies” on Google, but the next thing I knew, a doctor was standing over me and pointing to the spelling of “tetanus” in the dictionary.*

No, I don’t want to be remembered as a mayor who passed out after sitting on a tack. But if I’d died from septic shock and it turned out I’d been poisoned by a political enemy, that’d be kinda cool, I guess.

I also don’t want to be remembered for my own sex scandals, which didn’t involve sexual harassment of my aides, or closeted homosexuality and open self-loathing, but they were embarrassing nonetheless. I think it’s time we all moved on. Or maybe you already have moved on, in which case I’m reminding you of something I don’t want you thinking about, in which case I may need to look up “how to cure verbal diarea” before I pass out again.

Instead, kind citizens of Bootleg City, remember me for my charity work. And if that doesn’t ring a bell — I’m drawing a blank myself right now — remember me for my work as Charity in Bootleg City Little Theatre’s production of Sweet Charity, which broke box-office records, gender barriers, and my coccyx when I fell into the orchestra pit on closing night. (I’d prefer you don’t remember that last part.)

I also hope you’ll remember me for the way I stood up to the local media, especially that time when I challenged the Bootleg City Free Press to change its name since it’s not a free newspaper. Of course, if you put your three quarters in the box and take as many papers as you want, it is somewhat free — and I shall continue to perform such acts of defiance until that scandal sheet sees the error of its ways. Plus, I’m moving soon, so I need those extra papers for packing; printouts from the Free Press’s free website just aren’t the same.

Remember me for the way I tried to bring boatloads of money to our fair city through a promotional tie-in with the new Robert Pattinson film Remember Me, now playing at a theater near you. On the other hand, don’t remember that I received a cease-and-desist order from the film’s distributor, Summit Entertainment, because of the fact that I never signed a contract with them or got their permission to promote the film, which means Bootleg City won’t be receiving even a dinghyload of money for its brown-nosing efforts, and young girls and their angry fathers will continue to despise me since Pattinson, who shot to fame in the first Twilight movie, won’t be making that highly anticipated visit to Bootleg City that I’ve been promising since last fall. However, girls, I will be hosting a DVD viewing party for The Twilight Saga: New Moon at my duplex on Saturday, March 20, so consider this your official invite!

Above all else, remember me smiling. And remember me thinking hard about important issues, or at least pretending to think about them when I was really thinking about food or women. Oh yeah, and remember me occasionally getting work done. But most importantly, remember why you elected me in the first place — remember me as handsome.

Moderately handsome, anyway. Hey, I’ll be the first to admit I’m no Jack Wagner — the former General Hospital star and current Bold and the Beautiful star, who also spent five years on the prime-time soap opera Melrose Place in the ’90s, is one handsome man! And if that weren’t enough, he can also sing and play guitar. Gentlemen, we’re lucky he doesn’t have a foreign accent, or no man in a ten-mile radius would ever be able to get a female’s attention again.

As many of you know, Wagner played at the wedding of Popdose.com editors Jeff Giles and Jason Hare last August, and at the reception the groom and groom joined the actor-singer for a rousing rendition of his big hit from the ’80s, “All I Need.” I couldn’t attend, but according to Roy Ashburn, it was magical.

Whatever happens during my second term in office, remember me as someone whose legacy was complete once he left this world, even if I did give you incomplete bootlegs with poor audio quality, like the one below. Jack Wagner’s “Remember Me Laughing: Rare Tracks 1985-1989″ seems to consist of concert performances, talk-show performances, and General Hospital performances as well as demos, outtakes, and acoustic covers, but only die-hard fans will know for certain what’s what. I left out four tracks that either cut off early, started late, or abruptly became a different song altogether before cutting off early. I did, however, replace Wagner’s cover of James Taylor’s “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight” with a slightly better-sounding version that I found on a fan site. So, if nothing else, remember me for that random act of kindness.

Wish You Were Mine
Remember Me Laughing
I Miss You
(You’re The) Only One Who Knows [Live]
Weatherman Says [Live]
The Right Key
I’m in Love With You
One Life
Wonderful Tonight
Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight
The Glimpse in Your Eyes
Straight to My Heart
All I Need [Live]
Baby Be Mine [Live]
Common Man [Live]
Your Security [Live]
I’m a Prisoner to Your Eyes [Live]
The Lights on Fountain Avenue [Live]
In the Middle of Nowhere [Live]

* If you’d like to learn more about tetanus and how the thought of it alone is powerful enough to incapacitate certain elected officials, visit your local library, where a local homeless person will be happy to fill you in before digressing into a conspiracy theory about deodorant. And if you’d like to play Tetris, which is a lot more fun than tetanus, drop by my office any time, especially if you’re Russian — it’d make for a great photo op! (Please bring your own camera.)

Cornershop – We’re in Yr Corner from When I Was Born for the 7th Time (1997)
Easterhouse – Come Out Fighting from Waiting for the Redbird (1991)
Make Up – Pow! to the People from I Want Some (1999)
Warren Zevon – Boom Boom Mancini from Sentimental Hygiene (1987)
The Rezillos – Somebody’s Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonight from Can’t Stand the Rezillos (1978)
Radiohead – You and Whose Army? from Amnesiac (2001)
LL Cool J – Mama Said Knock You Out from Mama Said Knock You Out (1991)
The Rolling Stones – One Hit (To the Body) from Dirty Work (1986)
Missy Elliott — Bring the Pain from Under Construction (2002)
The Editors – The Boxer from In This Light and On This Evening (2010)
Talking Heads – Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On) from Remain in Light (1980)
Los Fabulosos Cadillacs – Matador from Vasos Vacios (1993)
John Cale – Secret Corrida from Walking on Locusts (1996)
Apostle of Hustle – My Sword Hand’s Anger from National Anthem of Nowhere (2007)
Mission of Burma – Academy Fight Song from Signals, Calls, and Marches (1981)
David Bowie – Boys Keep Swinging from Lodger (1979)
Human Sexual Response – Pound [Remix] original on In a Roman Mood (1981, out of print)
The Bangles – Hero Takes a Fall from All Over the Place (1984)
The Wonder Stuff – On the Ropes from Construction for the Modern Idiot (1993)
Cat Power – The Greatest from The Greatest (2006)

There are things each generation must explain to those that follow. Things they must atone for. The Founding Fathers had slavery, for instance. The freewheeling credit spenders of the 1910s and ’20s had the Great Depression. The “Greatest Generation” had the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

My generation has Kenny Loggins.

To be fair, it was actually our parents who brought him his first measure of success, as the “Loggins” in “Loggins & Messina.” But they knew what they were doing–L&M’s recorded output, while slight, managed to stay on the sunny side of the line between breezy and banal more often than not. “Danny’s Song”? “House At Pooh Corner”? “Watching the River Run”? Classics.

But then Loggins & Messina broke up, and Loggins proved all too eager to expose himself as the dippy New Age doofus he’d always been at heart. His first few albums were a terrible blend of ponderous mysticism, mush-brained folk, and soft jazz, from the interminably mawkish music to the artwork that seemed to always feature a soft-focus shot of Kenny–all done up in a velour tunic or something similarly lame–striking a ridiculous pose against a backdrop of, say, the universe.

That was bad enough. But then the ’80s dawned, and he discovered two things:

1. He wanted to rock.

2. Synthesizers.

This led to a series of albums, each progressively dumber than its predecessors, on which Loggins managed to pan sacks full of chart gold out of a stream of inane, overproduced drivel masquerading as rock & roll. My generation ate it up–we’re the kids who sent “Footloose” to Number One–and we’ve never had to pay for it. One day, however, we will have to explain the terrifying success of Kenny Loggins to our children. CAPTAIN VIDEO! does not look forward to that day.

CAPTAIN VIDEO! certainly will not show today’s video to his curious tykes. “I’m Free (Heaven Help the Man)” represents three terrible musical artifacts from the 1980s–one, it’s a hit Kenny Loggins song from a motion picture soundtrack; two, the portion of the title within parentheses is longer than the portion without; three, in the video, the singer pretends to be an action hero.

This last annoyance was always ridiculous enough when the singer in question was just a simpering soft-rock balladeer (like Peter Cetera in Chicago’s “Along Comes A Woman” video). But Kenny Loggins has never, in looks or musical essence, given the appearance of someone who would be able to put up a convincing fight against a stiff breeze or a six-year-old girl, let alone a non-quadraplegic adult human being.

And that brings us to the crux of this video’s shittiness: It asks us to accept Kenny Loggins as an escaped convict.

He’s on the run! What did he do to wind up in prison?

Isn’t it obvious? He’s a rebel!

No fence can hold him–especially not when these handy fence-snippers are standard issue for all the inmates!

Will he be able to snip fast enough to get out before George and Stanley find out he’s missing?

In the nick of time, he uses his ninja hippie powers to escape detection!

And…here’s where things get really lame.

Knowing that Kenny Loggins made the least convincing street tough since that time Richie Cunningham wore Fonzie’s jacket on Happy Days, the director had two choices: Ignore it, and try to make everything else as believable as possible, or just bring all the other gangsters in the video down to Kenny’s level.

Guess which option was chosen:

Yes, believe it or not, Poindexter here is the leader of the pack. What kind of town is this? Do the cops even bother carrying weapons? Could the crew keep straight faces while watching the filming of this scene, in which Kenny and Poindexter engage in “macho” posturing that leaves them both seemingly on the verge of tears?

Of course, Kenny’s come back for his girl. She lives with her parents and doesn’t look to be more than sixteen years old. Kenny, on the other hand, probably left home when Lyndon Johnson was President. Here is where the video turns creepy and crappy.

Ma: What did she say, George? What did she say?
Pa: She’s run off with that damn goodfornothin’!

Pa: (thinks to self) He won’t get far. Can’t run too far on that freak vegan diet of his. I’ll just wait at the county line with a bag of granola and flush him out.

Yep. That’s what I’ll do.

Of course, Pa doesn’t need to go to the county line–the cops have the lovebirds cornered on top of a building in a matter of minutes. Kenny stands around and makes a series of stupid faces while the girl screams and sobs. Looks like it’s back to the hoosegow for Kenny, until who should have a change of heart but…

Yes! It’s Poindexter to the rescue!

On his signal, the town’s troubled, misunderstood youth descend upon the cops, who have no idea what to do. Kenny and his child bride escape. The old ladies in the background clasp their hands to their bosoms and swoon.

This video wasn’t the dumbest thing Kenny Loggins did in the ’80s–that honor belongs to either “Meet Me Halfway” or his naked wedding to his enema therapist–but it comes close. Painfully close.

Had director Garry Marshall consulted me during the postproduction editing stage of Pretty Woman, the film would have ended with Julia Roberts’ lovable hooker Vivian being driven away from the Beverly Wilshire to the strains of Roxette’s “It Must Have Been Love”. We would also have seen the wonderfully empty Richard Gere’s emotionally distant corporate raider Edward standing on a Wilshire balcony, mourning the loss of the only woman he ever truly loved, or at least the only one he ever paid three grand to fuck for a week.

Fade to black. Cut. Print. Roll credits.

Oh, no, you say, not so fast, Cecil B. DeSmitty. You want the fairy tale, just like Vivian tells Edward before that particular montage. Lots of people wanted the fairy tale. Garry Marshall certainly wanted the fairy tale, and instead of a relatively reasonable ending to a film with a decidedly unreasonable premise, we got Sir Edward riding in to “save” Princess Vivian from turning her life around on her own terms, whisking her away to be his well-cared-for trophy wife forever and ever, amen.

I suppose it would be extra curmudgeonly of me to insist on my alternate ending, but here’s the thing: it was a great, all-too-brief montage. The melancholy look on Vivian’s face as the car drives off; the way she bugs her eyes out to keep from crying, then looks back anyway; the super-vacant way Edward peers over the balcony—these were the realest reactions in the entire movie. And they were set to the most heartbreaking of lost-love anthems, that wonderful Roxette track, whose opening verse so perfectly sets the tone of loneliness, both present and impending:

Lay a whisper on my pillow
Leave the winter on the ground
I wake up lonely, there’s air of silence
In the bedroom and all around
Touch me now, I close my eyes and dream away
It must have been love but it’s over now

It was the highlight of the film’s soundtrack, a Number One hit by arguably the most popular band in the world at that moment. The album, like the movie, was a smash, peaking at Number Four during at 91-week run on the album chart, selling over three million copies in the process.

While Roxette provided the biggest hit on the record, there was no shortage of solid pop music therein. Go West contributed the most excellent “King of Wishful Thinking,” a Top Ten hit in its own right, with its bouncy, immediately memorable chorus. Go-Go Jane Wiedlin gave us “Tangled,” a tasty pop confection that stands at the top of her solo work. Both were radio-friendly songs of a mighty high order.

What would an almost-’80s soundtrack be without a love ballad from Peter Cetera? “No Explanation” might not have had a jaw-droppingly geeky video to push it to the VH-1 crowd, but it works as a piece of soundtrack fluff. I’m also partial to Lauren Wood’s “Fallen,” which accompanied the scene in which Edward takes Vivian to the opera (who could forget that plane-flying-at-sunset shot, or the too-brief San Francisco at night shot? If Garry Marshall had consulted me, both would have been considerably longer). Wood’s previous claim to fame was a song called “Please Don’t Leave,” a duet with, you guessed it —

There are some clunkers here, too. Natalie Cole’s vanilla “Wild Women Do” sounds anything but wild, and the damn thing kicks off the album. It’s followed by an ill-conceived remix of “Fame” by David Bowie (this was, after all, his Tin Machine/Glass Spider period, when he pretty much pissed on his past whenever possible). And why the soundtrack folks used Christopher Otcasek anemic cover of Johnny O’Keefe’s “Real Wild Child (Wild One)” instead of Iggy Pop’s much cooler version is beyond comprehension.

All in all, though, the prototypical ’90s chick flick had a damn fine soundtrack record to accompany it. I just wish I’d have been asked about that ending.  On second thought, perhaps this one works better:

In the present, Pippa Lee (Wright) is the loving wife and caretaker to retired book publisher, Herb Lee (Arkin). She is also the mother of two adult children, Ben, who respects her for all that she’s done for the family, and Grace, who resents her mom because she sees Pippa as a woman who never took any chances in life.  Herb, a refined, educated man, is thirty years older than Pippa. After three heart attacks, his doctors have insisted he take it easy. As the film opens, Herb and Pippa have relocated to a quiet retirement community.

The move has unsettled Pippa and she questions whether she’s having a nervous breakdown, as she finds herself sleepwalking and conducting odd behavior. Pippa begins to recount pivotal moments in her life, flashing back to her early childhood when she was the only daughter in a family of six.  The young Pippa becomes the confidant and friend to her struggling mother, Suky, who manages to maintain a crazed household by popping pills. As Suky, Maria Bello, the exceptional actress from The Cooler and A History of Violence, continues to prove that she’s one of this generation’s great actresses. In Suky, Bello gives us a woman whose spirit is slowly being depleted by the expectations placed upon her to be a dutiful housewife, good mom, and to keep a thin figure. Suky leans on Pippa, a role that the youngster relishes until she realizes that her mom is an addict.

By this point, Pippa is a teenager and being played by Blake Lively. When Pippa can’t handle her mother anymore, she runs away from home and begins a series of misadventures that include a stay with her aunt and her lover, played by Robin Weigert and Julianne Moore, respectively. Weigert, who has done a great deal of work on television (most notably her tragic turn as Calamity Jane on Deadwood), brings a great deal of soul and warmth to her small, pivotal role. Countering that warmth is Moore’s character, a cold, manipulative artist who uses Pippa for her own gain and gets the poor girl kicked out on the streets. Pippa’s life spirals into an endless period of drugs and partying until she meets Herb at a beach party and the two eventually fall in love. Lively captures the stoned, lost characterization of Pippa perfectly and shows more range than she’s allowed on her hit TV series.

Miller intercuts between the past and the present, using visual cues in the present to trigger a flashback. In the here and now, Pippa begins a friendship with, Chris, a divorce played by Reeves, in a role that suits his dramatic strengths. I’ve always felt that Reeves is a strong actor when a) playing a particular role (i.e. a laid back stoner-esque slacker/surfer dudes) and b) he doesn’t have to carry the movie. As he did in Something’s Gotta Give a few years ago, Reeves adds depth to his role and proves to be a perfect acting partner for Wright.

Chris has moved in with his parents at the same retirement community where Pippa and Herb live. He works at a late night convenience store, which is where he gets to know Pippa after she sleepwalks into the store one night. The two of them are kindred spirits, lost in the country and at a crossroads in their lives. Laid back and cool, Chris is the polar opposite of Herb, and although Pippa does nothing to further the relationship past being friendship, she slowly falls in love with him.

Robin Wright’s performance in The Private Lives of Pippa Lee is funny, sad, and mysterious; it is also one of the strongest I’ve seen this year. Wright has a reputation for playing tough, independent woman. In this film she is a woman who has given up her independence, which has weakened her.  Pippa has slowly become the woman she never wanted to be: Suky, her mother. Therefore, Pippa’s journey is one of reawakening and Wright’s performance is so subtle and wonderful you won’t want to miss it.

Although Miller’s screenplay is slightly flawed (the period in which Pippa conforms to Herb’s world is glossed over with voice over narration), the film is still a strong enough work to merit watching. Besides the acting, Declan Quinn’s cinematography is lovely to watch and Sabine Hoffman’s editing is seamless, especially the transitions from the past to the present. There are now wavy lines or dissolves to announce, “We’re going back in time.” Instead, the camera pans or dollies and in the camera move, the transition between time periods takes place. This is similar to the technique used in John Sayle’s great Lone Star, and it is quite effective.

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee is yet another fine independent film that slipped away after a limited release. With so much talent involved and so much quality on the screen, you will want to check it out. The DVD has limited special features, the primary interest being commentary by Wright and Miller. There are brief interviews with the Wright, Arkin and Lively, however these interviews reveal little very little about the film or the actors.

All rise.

The rules of this courtroom are simple. You will be presented with two songs, one by the plaintiff and one by the defendant. It is your task to decide if the defendant’s track is only coincidentally similar to the plaintiffs or, as members of the Bar Association put it, how… could… you?! You have been duly instructed.

Today’s docket: Blues Traveler, plaintiffs vs. Sister Hazel, defendants

Blues Traveler – “Runaround,” from Four (1994)

We recorded three albums that got us nothing but stoner groupies. Finally, we get a hit song and hot stoner groupies! Then these jerks come along, rip off our melody and our hot stoner groupies! What’s this crap?

Sister Hazel – “All For You,” from …Somewhere More Familiar (1997)

It’s so unfair. We never, ever ripped off Blues Traveler. We had no intention of ripping off Blues Traveler. Hootie, maybe!

We ’80s kids don’t have a lot to hang on to, so far as social achievements go. It was a difficult decade to grab a hold of. We had pop culture, and lots of it, but we were also afraid of being vaporized by nuclear war as we slept, the division between the races was as contentious as it had ever been, and there was this new mystery disease that was starting to make the headlines – Still, we always had Live Aid to stand up for our time. It was, in it’s way, an unprecedented act of human goodwill, a triumph of justice over fame, in many ways, and we could be proud it happened while we were the prime demographic. We always had Live Aid, but perhaps not so anymore.

I find it incredibly hard to be completely ignorant. I slip up occasionally, and usually at the most public, inopportune times, but I tend to be unfortunately well-read, sometimes masochistically so. I cannot stand the Sunday political chat shows with everyone shouting everyone else down and John McLaughlin essentially telling all of them they’re wrong, yet I watch them. I get stomach aches about our governing bodies and how nobody in Washington has the ability to work together. I have expressed how I feel the Republicans have adopted Surge-like tactics in their practices – capture and hold. If they maintain a unified front, no matter what piece of legislation is being debated, it is the Democrats’ game to lose. Regrettably, they don’t see how they’re being played, and so they splinter within and, yes, they lose.

My position is not universally agreed upon, not by a long shot. For every person like myself who cries foul for poor sportsmanship, there is another who claims that the Republicans are merely not being cowed, will not vote for legislation they don’t agree with, and if the Democrats can’t see it for what it is and must manufacture conspiracies to placate themselves, so be it. For every one of us on either side of the political fence, however, there are two with their eyes squeezed shut and their ears plugged and, you know what? They always seem happy. They never seem squelched by the existential angst of our times, never bothered by the flailing and flagellation happening all around them as they whistle a happy tune, and it makes me sick.

Of course, they’ll use that as their defense: If you stopped worrying about stuff, what the politicians are doing, what the priests are doing, my indifference to it all, you could be happy like me. It is a very tempting drug, this self-contained universe some people live in. It is a step beyond zen and, from the outside, it truly looks like nothing bad ever gets through their soap bubble of contentment, which  only serves to piss me off more, but I digress. One of the key tricks to disconnecting is literally disconnecting. Turn off the news, direct the web browser only to happy places, Farmville, OMG Catz, and the like. The less I know, the less I’ll kvetch, right?

The media has a vested interest in keeping us, and in this case me, connected. Outrage spikes viewership, viewership captures eyes, eyes take in advertising, advertising helps sell products, etc., etc. Rather than focusing on the nuts and bolts, most newscasts are also very concerned with exposing the things “they” didn’t want you to know, things you have very little control over, but still capture your undivided attention. They feed into the neuroses of the public, and so the concept of shutting down your exposure to it isn’t entirely a reactionary move. At the same time, this is our world/country/state/town we’re talking about and shouldn’t we at least have a clue about what is going on?

The happiest among us might say, “no.” The powers that be have always been, they always will, and our individual choice of falling as a martyr into their spiderweb has less to do with their dishonest inclinations than it does with our compulsions to be busybodies. Mind your own business and your business will be cheerier for it. Think about good things. Think about Live Aid.

Yes, Live Aid, that one day on July 13th, 1985, fast approaching the 25th anniversary this year, where nations came together via satellite, superstars of music and media converged and the goal was not some hollow, self-satisfying wank, but to raise money for the starving people of Ethiopia. Egos were checked, money was raised, the cause was just and for us 1980’s kids, a touchstone for our generation was raised for all to see. The ’60s had Woodstock. The ’70s had the No Nukes Concerts. We had Live Aid, and the scope of it, the goals it hoped to attain and the concept that, by the end, real strides could actually be made gave us a level of pride. This was more than a protest – this was a clear-cut act for change, an immutable good.

Hold on there, pardner, not so fast. If you stayed away from your computer this week, clicked off the cable news and didn’t check your newspapers (Just joshing – nobody checks papers anymore) you could still float by on that rose-colored scenario. If you are a current events perv that needs his or her daily discipline, well buddy, this week you got spanked. Here’s the excerpt that got me all worked up:

LONDON (March 3) — Amid an ongoing global effort to raise funds for earthquake-stricken Haiti, new allegations surfaced today that millions of dollars raised by the 1985 Live Aid concerts for the victims of the Ethiopian famine were actually spent on weapons. The charges offer a timely reminder that collecting money is the easy part of any relief effort; making sure it gets to the right people is often far more complex.

Former Ethiopian rebel leaders have told the BBC that they siphoned off hundreds of millions of aid dollars to buy guns. Some of the diverted funds allegedly came directly from Western governments, and some from money raised in ticket sales at the twin concerts in London and Philadelphia. A 1985 CIA assessment of the country uncovered by the broadcaster also acknowledges that money ending up in militants’ coffers. “Some funds that insurgent organizations are raising for relief operations, as a result of increased world publicity, are almost certainly being diverted for military purposes,” it said.

Disappointing. Twenty-five years on, coup after coup after scandal after takedown, the grown-up in me always knew this kind of thing happened and should not be shocked that it happened in this circumstance too. The kid in me wants to believe there was a big mistake, this isn’t true, E.T. is real and the cereal with that sweet frosting is not actually good for me and, ultimately, won’t make me crap my brains out tomorrow morning. My inner child wants me to flip on ignorance as a defense mechanism and keep this myriad disillusionment from screwing with the historical record as I see it, or at least as I prefer to see it. I at least want to still feel like we got something right during that decade where so much was going wrong, just in case you forgot what it felt like being trickled down upon.

If you are unaware of what that means, essentially the ‘trickle-down theory’ of economics was put into place wherein tax breaks and cuts were directed not at those who simply couldn’t afford them, but to the highest earners of the country, those who could easily afford them. The concept was that the rich who had more discretionary funds at their disposal would spend more, presumably in stores run by the less wealthy, which employed even less well-off, who would then take their pay to businesses in their own financial bracket. It was a tiered system like a tower of champagne glasses, the champagne poured from the top and eventually trickled down to all the glasses as it overflowed from above.  On paper it looks like a feasible plan, but we live in the real world, not on paper. Theoretical economists failed to take fully into account the class war that was going on in the 1980s, foolishly believing these things only happened in Europe. The rich kept the money in their circle, or kept it stashed in off-shore accounts, or decided that instead of creating new wealth by promoting through the ranks, they’d hang onto their positions like grim death or just make sure that Junior knew enough about the family industry to keep from sinking the ship when they inherited it. What of junk bonds? What of Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous?

We reap the results of those decisions and divisions today. The disparity between the nation’s highest earners and the supposed middle class has never been as starkly wide as it is right now. These are the rotten fruits whose vines were planted when we were kids, boom boxes on shoulders, Vans on our feet, color-change t-shirts on our backs and spiked hair climbing to the heavens (or at least the gymnasium girders) like cathedral spires, but at least we had Live Aid – the one time when we thought we got it right. In my disillusionment, as I attempted to reconcile that bitter piece of news, I put the information I had learned out to the Popdose Staff e-mail. I spoke of how it would be so easy to shut out the realities of charity, good intentions, and the revelation that perhaps ignorance was bliss, and in my zeal to stay connected to the world as it truly is, I’ve only brought harm to myself. Perhaps I finally needed to consider an interest in disinterest.

My colleague and all-around go-to guy on current events, Jon Cummings, responded with a carefully thought out reply:

When I worked at an NGO affiliated with the UN, we were always concerned with what’s often called “global chaos” theory. (As opposed to “chaos theory,” which you can get from Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park.) The idea of “global chaos” is that people in first-world nations are always reading about horrible things that are happening in the third world — wars (featuring ancillary wonderfulness like child soldiers and institutionalized rape), famines, massive destruction from earthquakes and typhoons and tsunamis, evil dictators who brutalize their own people, etc., etc.

And all that awful news encourages people to follow their natural instinct, which is to turn away from that information–and thus from the people and problems of the third world. It’s an inclination that often keeps charitable giving down, keeps citizens from pressing their governments to help other people, and (certainly in the case of the US) keeps our government’s foreign aid budget ridiculously low as a percentage of total spending, compared with other first-world nations. (Of course, if you consider the cost of our wars and military presences around the world as “foreign aid,” that percentage increases, but there’s often little actual benefit for the downtrodden in military spending.)

Revelations about spending inefficiencies at certain NGOs or resulting from certain spasms of charitable giving (bureaucracy, extravagant salaries, aid money diverted to dictators or gun-runners, etc.) are a huge problem for the fundraising efforts of aid groups. These groups almost always have the best intentions, but are hardly perfect themselves and often have to deal with far-from-perfect political situations in the countries they’re trying to serve. Supposedly the money from George Harrison’s Bangladesh concert & album got delayed for years and years; it’s no real surprise to hear that some Live Aid money got diverted into feeding the civil war that begat the famine in Ethiopia, rather than feeding the starving people themselves.

The buildup of news about such incidents adds to the flood of information that has undermined our faith in institutions of all kinds–which, of course, turns us inward even more to find solutions for our own lives, and to ignore the lives and troubles of others.

Getting on the soapbox for a moment, I think the Republican Party, in the wake of its own disasters of governance and electoral failure, has devoted itself to promoting its own sort of “domestic chaos theory” to undermine the citizenry’s belief that government can do anything positive to solve society’s problems. The more horror stories (bullshit or not bullshit) the Republicans can throw against the wall about politicians, government inefficiencies, or beneficiaries of government support (the poor, gays, immigrants, etc., etc.), the more people doubt the policies that might actually help various portions of the citizenry. And if government isn’t allowed to do anything, of course, conservatism wins.

Climbing down from the soapbox…the Live Aid story certainly is depressing, and a cautionary tale. But when you’re dealing with international charity, there’s a certain amount of such stuff that you have to deal with if you want to do ANYTHING for the actual people who need help.

You can’t hide under a rock, or stick fingers in ears or flip down the sunglasses if you have any interest in doing what’s right. Nor can you allow yourself to be dissuaded by the disappointing actions of profiteers and mercenaries – wherever the cash carcass is, they’re likely going to get there first to pick at the bones. In this world, that means you have to kill your darlings, all of them, including the illusions you had in your youth about the best of intentions. Not all the money raised at Live Aid got to the needy, but some did, and certainly the concert raised an unprecedented amount of awareness of the situation. Was it the shining success I always thought it was? No, but it may not be the failure that got me feeling so hopeless either. These are the small victories; take them when we can.

Passive ignorance is not a pathway to peace and the validity of one’s disappointment must be measured against one’s engagement in the process, I suppose. Like the old cliche keeps repeating, if you don’t vote, don’t complain – and if you’re not interested in helping, don’t get too depressed when others aren’t helping either. Bad news can still  “bring us down,” we’re still sentient beings capable of empathy (most of the time,) but if we were a society where none of us saw the problems, then none of us would be equipped to help. You only fight the fires you’re seeing, and if you don’t allow yourself to see them, everything burns. Ecclesiates 7:3 reads, “Sorrow is better than laughter, because a sad face is good for the heart.” While the text sounds dire, it essentially boils down to a realization of that which is wrong, which should stir our relationship to the circumstances and cause us to change them. Sorrow, while unpleasant, tells us something. It motivates us if we allow it, but rather than seeing it as an allowance to feel shame, embarrassment or sadness, it can allow us to hear a call to action.

These are hard lessons and I’m not the first to have to wrestle with them. If you’re not inclined to find parallels in Biblical study, try “Araby” from James Joyce’s Dubliners or William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience. Things aren’t the way we thought they were. The only question left is, what do we plan to do about that? For myself, I’m going to try, and if there is anything untarnished to take away from July 13th, 1985, it is that trying to make the world better is, in itself, an immutable good.

We can start here – To contribute to charitable services helping in the Haitian and Chilean relief efforts, please contact the following reputable organizations:

AmeriCares,  Doctors Without Borders, USA,  Habitat for Humanity International,

Hope for Haiti,  American Red Cross

Although I didn’t know it at the time, Hagar was about to make a really big impression in my world. Shock waves moved through the rock world in 1985 with the slightly unexpected departure of David Lee Roth from Van Halen. When the dust began to settle from Roth’s departure, Sammy Hagar was the new guy holding the microphone in Van Halen. I knew enough about Hagar at this point to know what an interesting and unorthodox choice Van Halen had just made. Vocally, Hagar was anything but a clone of David Lee Roth – a clear roll of the dice and statement from Van Halen that they were going to do something different. And so it began, one of the most controversial ( heavily debated to this day, and ultimately one of the most successful) lineup changes in the history of rock and roll music.

One of the things that made the Hagar pick interesting, was that he was not only already very established as a solo artist, but he was also one helluva guitar player. The question: would Hagar be able to let someone else be the guitar player? The answer: When you’re getting Van Halen money? Absolutely.

But how did Hagar become the “Red Rocker?”

For that answer, we’ll take a trip back to 1978 to visit Sammy Hagar at home in San Francisco, caught live on a typically hot night at Winterland. Having just wrapped up a tour opening up for Alvin Lee and Ten Years After, Hagar was back at home to play a gig celebrating the 10th anniversary of San Francisco rock station KSJO-FM (R.I.P., btw – damn you, Clear Channel).

This gig is a great example of the gems lurking within the Wolfgang’s Vault archives – one of two late ’70s complete gigs from Hagar available for streaming at the Vault. The show was a return to the scene of the crime for Hagar, who had recently recorded parts of an upcoming live album, titled All Night Long, at Winterland. The live album featured one new track, “I’ve Done Everything For You,” which would be recast five years later as a hit for rising Aussie heartthrob Rick Springfield.

It’s always a good ducat to have in your back pocket – to be able to drop details of a live album that was recorded in the same venue where the already rabidly revved up audience is. And there’s nothing quite like the additional thrill of knowing that there is new material on that album, new material (the previously mentioned “I’ve Done Everything For You”) that you’re going to hear tonight! One-two, and there’s a knockout scored by the Red Rocker.

Midway through the set, Hagar and lead guitarist Gary Pihl square off for a six string duel that carries us through nearly 17 minutes worth of the Montrose staple “Bad Motor Scooter.” Noting that he had been “smoked” by Pihl the previous night in Sacramento, Hagar lays down the gauntlet for a rematch – a fretboard fight to the death. And the winner is?

In addition to Hagar’s already more than impressive band (featuring Pihl, future Night Ranger keyboard player Alan Fitzgerald, bass player Bill “Electric” Church, and drummer Chuck Ruff), the hometown crowd gets the benefit of a few special guests that truly take this gig to the next level. Journey guitarist Neal Schon (a future collaborator with Hagar on the HSAS project) comes out to jam with Hagar for the first time ever on a raggedly unrehearsed (make that a “very unrehearsed”) version of the Montrose favorite “Rock Candy.”

Schon sticks around for the remainder of the set, joined by Eddie Money and Money’s guitarist Jimmy Lyon to help Hagar round out the gig with a cover (according to Hagar, “something that none of us know”) of “Gimme Some Lovin’” and some bluesy jamming to wrap up the night. Hagar doesn’t exactly stick with his frequent promises throughout the set to play all night, but after 90 minutes plus, and the special guests that showed up, I doubt that anyone was complaining.

Sammy says it best at the conclusion of “Turn Up The Music,” “Goddamn rock and roll forever!”

Listen to this entire show at Concert Vault by clicking here.