Monday, July 11, 2022

Records I'd Forgotten Existed, Let Alone Loved: An Occasional Feature (Special "Skinny Tie Rock" Edition)

From 1980, please enjoy mistakenly-dismissed-as one-hit-wonders [you know, that song with the phone number and the girl's name in the title] L.A. New Wave rockers Tommy Tutone and their MTV fave "Angel Say No."

Apart from just being a great single with a great groove, this song was a huge influence on me musically. The short version is I learned how to play bass by rocking out to it on an old Pioneer two track cassette deck you could overdub on. (Come to think of it, I got a lot of mileage out of that gizmo; I also recall working out the bass part to "Dance With Me" by Orleans the same way.)

In any event, if you put a gun to my head, I could probably still play this song from memory, so -- hey Tommy Tutone, wherever you are, thanks for the music lessons.

2 comments:

Blue Ash Fan said...

I got this album when it came out and still love it. It's a shame they get pigeonholed as having only one great song. Tonight. The Blame. Sounds of a Summer Night. Am I Supposed to Lie? They were so much better than mere one-hit wonders.

cthulhu said...

Good song. But IMHO, the classic of the TT catalog is Cheap Date. “Well whaddya say June?” set to a killer neo-reggae groove and some of the growliest guitars ever put on vinyl. Classic.