Speaker 1: Hello, Shirley fans.
Speaker 2: For the last three years, Jason and I have been
bringing you the stories behind all of your favorite movies
from the eighties. But today we begin a new series.
Speaker 1: In twenty sixteen, the Duffer Brothers introduced the world to
Stranger Things. This show not only changed the way we
all watch television, but surprisingly also truly impacted the music
we listened to, from Africa to Running Up that Hill.
Stranger Things has brought back songs of our past and
introduced them to a whole new generation.
Speaker 2: So The Shirley You Can't Be Serious Podcasts begins a
new series bringing you the stories behind the songs of
Stranger Things.
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Shirley Can't Be Serious podcast.
Today we are diving into season one, episode two of
Stranger Things.
Speaker 2: Yes, and like we said before, we're only covering the songs.
I don't think we'll do another recap rap today. I
think Doctor Fresh is on tour right now. But just
as a quick reminder, this is the episode where Mike
hides eleven in his house while the parents are at work.
Nancy is trying to get busy with Steve. Barb gets
involved and it doesn't go well for her by the end.
Speaker 1: This episode, to me is basically forty five minutes of
people run around going WHOA.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, there's a little bit more going on that
we will touch on all of those plot points as
we go through the songs of Stranger Things.
Speaker 1: Sounds good, let's do it. So.
Speaker 2: An interesting bit of trivia on this particular episode is
that one day while they were filming this episode, Millie
Bobby Brown, the girl who plays eleven Yeah, showed up
covered head to toe in glitter okay, and they had
to stop production to clean her up. I don't have
the explaining story, okay, but Caleb Today told me a joke.
Speaker 1: I would you like to hear it? Yeah, let's hear it. Okay.
Speaker 2: So this guy dipped his balls and glitter. Pretty nuts,
thank you? Yeah that's now. Listener, if you want pretty nuts,
you don't have to dip your balls.
Speaker 1: And where you can go visit.
Speaker 2: The webpage of our sponsor today, manscaped dot com.
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Serious twenty to get twenty percent off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you use the promo code Serious twenty, you
will receive twenty percent off of your order. So be
sure and go check out our wonderful sponsor who helps
bring you this episode today, and it helps us with
them if you go and order some stuff.
Speaker 1: So go do that. That's right, wack it? Okay.
Speaker 2: So to start off, this episode is called the Weird
on Maple Street. Okay, this is kind of the ET episode.
Do you notice the connection here, Like, I mean, the
whole series is ET ESK. But you've got Et and
Elliott making a connection in the movie, but you've also
got Mike and Eleven making a connection in this episode.
He fakes being sick just like Elliott did. She explores
the house just like Et did. He shows her his toys,
including his Star Wars figures and Yoda. I mean, it's
all very This is probably the most ET of all
of the episodes. And then of course she's also men'smerized
by the TV, and you've got this weird scene where
she walks by suddenly as the family's having dinner. All
super etesque. That's true, But let's talk about the name
real quick.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: The weirdo on Maple Street could be a couple of
different things, all right, Okay, So there's a Twilight Zone
episode called The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street which
has a lot of fear and anxiety going on, much
like this episode does. I'm thinking maybe this might be
a Stephen King the House on Maple Street reference be
any number of these things, Okay, but there's a lot
of throwbacks on Maple Street, not on Elm Street, and
now I was really hoping to be Elm Street. Yeah no,
But enough about that. Let's jump into the songs.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: The first song that we have to talk about is
on for about three fourths of a second. It comes
in at sixteen thirty three. Jonathan is driving in his
car and we see he's heading out of Hawkins.
Speaker 1: Well literally is playing in such a short amount of
time you may not recognize it.
Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen. That is a song called go Nowhere
by Reagan Youth.
Speaker 1: Uh, huh.
Speaker 2: Now, as short as that part is in this episode,
I got all kinds of stuff to talk about on.
Speaker 1: This When you called me up the other day and said,
have you heard this story, my mind literally popped out
of my head on the floor. Okay.
Speaker 2: So, as we said, this song is by a group
called Reagan Youth. They were a punk group in the eighties.
They formed when Reagan took office. Basically, and the components,
the founders of the group, if you will, are a
couple of guys named Dave Rubinstein and Paul Bakija, but
they went by the names Dave Insurgent and Paul Cripple
because that's what punk guys do, right.
Speaker 1: Sure, we've talked about that in our Civil Minds episode
on our Patreon. If you haven't heard that, you had
spunky names in the band before they became Civil Minds, Right,
Sid Syphilis, Sid Syphilis our favorite one. So back to
Reagan Youth. You've got Dave Insurgent, You've got Paul Cripple
the name of the band. These guys were some like
anarchist leftist guys. And so it's this idea of Reagan
as Hitler and the Hitler Youth, right, and so that
was their deal. Now they would do satirical like skinhead songs,
except that the skin didn't get the joke, and they
would show up to the shows and Dave Insurgent, Dave Rubinstein,
would call these guys out as they're singing the song
and just like, this is for you, you stupid. His
parents they were survivors of the Holocaust. Yes he was Rubinstein,
shockinglyn Jewish. They were Holocaust survivors who immigrated over to
the US, and he is a first generation American. So,
as it turned out, the group did okay, but they
never really hit it big. They toured with a lot
of big names, but by the end of the Reagan
era the band split up. Bush Youth really just doesn't ring.
Got an entirely different connotation, entirely different and way more inappropriate.
All right, So these guys split up, and Dave Insurgent
by this time had started doing heroin, And when the
band splits up, he becomes a heroin addict. He also
starts selling it. And I say that with the caveat,
he really ends up using the product that he should
be selling, right, exactly right. Yes, he starts dating a
quote unquote stripper who actually turns tricks to bring drug
money in for the both of them. Her name is
Tiffany Bresciani. She does magic tricks. She does magic tricks
where she goes to a car, makes somebody happy and
then comes back. Oh, turning tricks. She's a prostitute. She
is what we call a street walker.
Speaker 2: She is a lady of the night. Yes, they're both
significant heroin addamts. Yes, right, yes, and so, as I
mentioned before, Dave has a bad habit of using what
he should be selling, and so one of his dealers
becomes pretty upset when he comes to him wanting more
drugs with no money for the product he got before.
Speaker 1: Are you telling me that heroin addict is a bad
businessman in this particular situation. Yes, okay.
Speaker 2: But instead of realizing the errors of his ways, Dave
Rubinstein's drug dealer decides to teach him a lesson. Yeah
you know the story on this.
Speaker 1: Well, here's what I know. The drug dealer got upset
and decided to make a point with a baseball bat
and beat him very severely, so much in fact, that
he had to go to the hospital and get a lobotomy.
Speaker 2: I had to call my dad about this because I'm like,
when does a lobotomy help you? Like, how is that
going to save your life?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And basically the idea is your brain is swelling, which
if it's swelling against your skull, it can kill you.
And so he said, probably his frontal lobe was so
badly damaged that they just said it's not going to
be of any use anyway, let's cut it out and
that relieves the swelling. So the lobotomy literally saves his
life once again.
Speaker 1: This is the lead singer of Reagan Youth. Yeah, by
the way, when he showed up at the hospital, his
eyelid was drooping so much it was touching his upper lip.
Oh my gosh. So you've got this guy walk in
the street with this. I've seen her pictures. Pretty young girl,
Pretty young girl, twenty two.
Speaker 2: He has a scar from one ear to the other
from this lobotomy and probably is not operating on all
cylinders anymore, considering that some of his frontal lobe is missing.
Speaker 1: That's true.
Speaker 2: But what happens is a car comes up, This blue
Toyota car drives up and stops to talk to them.
Now inside of the blue Toyota is this guy named
Joel Rifkin, and he's interested in more than just seeing
her with her clothes off. And so she says to Dave, hey,
give me twenty minutes, I'll be right back and then
we can go get our stuff, right, And so she
gets in the car with this guy.
Speaker 1: They leave.
Speaker 2: Twenty minutes goes by, and she's not back right, and
then thirty and then an hour, and then multiple hours,
and Dave is freaked out and he goes to the cops,
and surprisingly the cops are not super concerned about a
missing prostitute.
Speaker 1: This, by the way, is June twenty fourth, nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 2: And so four days later, a cop sees a Mazda
truck with its license plate missing. Okay, so that's a
small violation, right, Yeah, let's pull him over and see
what he's doing. Yeah, So turns on his lights to
pull him over, but he doesn't stop. He continues to
go this person in the Masda truck. It's a slow
chase for a while, but the cop won't leave him alone.
And so because they don't do that, they don't just
give up usually, especially on slow chases.
Speaker 1: So it turns into a fast chase, turns into a
fast chase. He ends up going almost one hundred miles
an hour at one point, and then this truck wrecks
into a stop light and the cop comes running up
to the car and is overwhelmed by a stench, and
when he gets to the driver of the car, he
sees that the driver has Vic's vapor rub smeared underneath
his nostrils, and when he shines his light in the
back of the car, he sees what he believes to
be a dead animal wrapped up in a rug. As
it turns out, it's the body of Tiffany Bresciani, wrapped
in a blue tarp.
Speaker 2: Joel Rifkin, the guy who's driving the truck, the guy
who picked her up, the stripper club patron. Yes, turns
out this is not his first kill. His intention was
to take her and dispose of her body. And when
he started getting chased, he just thought, I'm going to
try to run this into the water and then swim
away and hopefully that'll do it. But once he ultimately
wrecked the car, the cop said he just had his
hands up, not threatening. Got in the police car and said,
can you turn the air conditioning on? Because I don't
think There's going to be a lot of air conditioning
where I'm going, and the cops like, Okay, this sounds weird,
and within a few hours of interrogation they discover that
Joel Rifkin is the most prolific serial killer in the
state of New York, seventeen victims. Wow, so naturally I
had to go down the rabbit hole with Joel Rifkin.
Speaker 1: Right right.
Speaker 2: I watched the A and E biography on this guy.
He is one of the few examples of a serial
killer who did not have a significantly disturbed upbringing. Okay,
he had a very normal life as a child. He
was adopted, but he was adopted when he was like
two weeks old, and his adoptive parents were loving and
really the middle class family, not bad at all. The
problems that he had growing up is that he was
slow and heavy, and his dad, who was a big
sports guy, was disappointed and get frustrated because he wanted
his kid to be good at sports. And then the
kids at the school would mercilessly bully him, call him turtle,
call them lard ass.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: So, over the course of six years, he ends up
murdering a total of seventeen women and Tiffany Bresciani is
the last of those.
Speaker 1: That's incredible. So you're talking about Dave Rubinstein having a
bad few weeks here, right, He gets beat up with
a baseball bat yep, so severely that they have to
lobotomize him in order to save his life. Yes, he's
hooked on Heroin. His girlfriend gets abducted and murdered. That's
June twenty fourth, nineteen ninety three. Oh, by the way,
on June thirtieth, nineteen ninety three, his dad accidentally runs
over his mother with the car and kills her. Oh
my gosh, guess what. Dave Rubinstein committed suicide that very week, July.
Speaker 2: Third, Dude, that is a crazy story. That is a
day Night Fincher plot right there. Yes, amazing ladies and gentlemen,
Chirley fans. That's what you get for a point seven
to five second clip.
Speaker 1: Of a song. Okay.
Speaker 2: Then Jonathan is listening to the radio as he's driving
in his car. He hears the end of go Nowhere.
Interesting title, by the way, to throw in with Will
being in the upside down. A nice relationship there, and
then it goes into another kind of punky song. Punky
song that a whole lot more folks know goes into
the song should I Stay or Should I Go?
Speaker 1: But we're not going to talk to you about that today.
Let's hold off on that one. Guys.
Speaker 2: This is a great song and we are excited to
talk about it and excited to talk about the clash,
and it is used multiple times throughout this episode. Really
all season, yeah, all season for sure. But it's a
big hitter and one of just a couple of songs
in episode seven. So be sure and hit the subscribe button,
hit the follow button so that you will get notified
whenever we release episode seven, and we talk about should
I Stay or should I Go?
Speaker 1: In detail? Okay, d So, the next song in episode
two of Stranger Things is a little song you may
have heard of called Deck the Halls by Chicks with
Hits Okay.
Speaker 2: In the credits, this song is said to have been
sung by Chicks with Hits Okay. For the life of me,
I cannot find that version out there. I don't know
where it is, but that's what they say. I can
tell you that Chicks with Hits is a group composed
of Terry Clark, Pam Tillis and Susie Bogus. They toured
together under that name Chicks with Hits, because they had
thirty six top ten singles between them. Okay, that's a
good title for them, But I can't find this version.
Seems like the only time that you're gonna hear it,
Ladies and Gentlemen, is at eighteen minutes and thirty seconds
into this episode, when Joyce is driving to her workplace
and she just gets in and walks in the door.
That's the song that's playing over the pa.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, I've got some stuff for you on Deck
the Halls. Okay, inform me my friend. Okay, so we
know Deck the Halls as this traditional Christmas carol, right,
but the melody is Welsh, dating all the way to
the fifteen hundreds. It's first found in a musical transcript
by Welsh harpist John Perry v. John Perry, John Perry. Okay, okay,
the harpist, yes, the harpist exactly. So this is like
in the seventeen hundreds. It's like seventeen ninety four, and
then poet John Sierrog Hughes wrote some song lyrics. Now
get this, this is the seventeen ninety four lyrics. You're
ready for this. This is the English version. Okay, Oh,
how soft my fair ones bosom fa la la la
la la la la la, Oh, how sweet the grove
in blossom? Hello, fa la la la la la la. Oh,
how blessed are the blisses? Words of love and mutual kisses? Okay, right,
all right, so now then you like that's great? Okay.
Speaker 2: Tipper Gore would not be a fan of this song.
Speaker 1: So I know exactly right. Later on down the road
in seventeen seventy eight, Mozart actually used this tune in
the eighteenth violin sonata. Okay, so Mozart takes it and
it becomes very popular. Bro, you're blowing my mind here, Oh,
deck the holes, deck the halls. So also later on
in seventeen ninety four, it's published as nos Galan, which
is a Welsh term. Okay, now then listen to these lyrics. Okay,
deck the hall with bowls of holly falla la la
la la la la lahtis the season two be jolly.
Follow la la la la la la la Fill the
mead cup, drain the barrel, follow la la la la
la la trowl the ancient Yule Tide Carol follow la
la la la, la la la. So it's a drinking song,
right right, Okay, I love it. Yeah, Fill the mead cup,
drain the barrel. Yeah, okay yeah. Now, then in eighteen
seventy seven they drop all the drinking references and it
becomes a Christmas eighteen seventy seven, eighteen seventy seven, so
they scrub it of the drinking lyrics. And then finally
and then eighteen ninety two it becomes plural deck the Halls.
That's when they add utiltiede Carol, and you have deck
the Halls that we seeing Fira rah rah every Christmas. No, no, no, no, no,
ba la la la la. There you go.
Speaker 2: How about that smiling it? Okay, dude, you you have
given me a history of a magical Christmas song that
I did not know the history of. And as it
turns out, just a few seconds later, when Joyce has
got her phone. By the way, also eighty three is
about the time that they had the trust bust with
AT and T and that you could actually go to
a store and buy your phone instead of having it
given to you by the phone company. Oh well, and
so she's trying to buy it and she's asking for
an advance.
Speaker 1: H my son is missing. That's such a tool. He
is a tool.
Speaker 2: But what's playing is at that transition we hear jingle bells,
and that's at eighteen fifty three in the episode. Now
the jingle bells, we could play it for a year. Oh,
this version is being sung by the Canterbury choir. Now, Jason, Yes,
I am not going to give you a history of
jingle bells, but I can tell you something about Canterbury.
Speaker 1: Ready, ready.
Speaker 2: Canterbury has the oldest currently operating school in the world.
It's called the King's School. Okay, and it's where Orlando
Bloom was born. Okay, also Christopher Marlow. But I thought
Orlando Bloom was it. And that is all I have
about Canterbury. Now, I know that they have a choir,
and I know that that choir sang jingle bells, and
I know that the Duffer Brothers used that music in
this episode.
Speaker 1: You got more for me. I've got some stuff on
jingle bells for you. Ready for this? Tell me? All right?
So the song jingle Bells was not originally.
Speaker 2: Called jingle e really.
Speaker 1: It was first published in eighteen fifty seven under the
title the one Horse Open Sleigh Okay, written by this
guy named James Lord Pierpont. Now his nephew's name is
John Pierpont Morgan. Have you ever heard this guy, John Pierpont Morgan. No,
JP Morgan as in the bank guy. As in the
bank guy, that's my bank. There you go. Wow, So
got a little famous connection there. Yeah. Jingle Bells is
literally one of the most famous and most commonly sung
songs in the history of the world. It was written
in eighteen fifty seven as a thanksgiving song. This guy
named James Lord Pierpont is in the Songwriting Hall of Fame.
Jingle Bells is also the first song sung from outer space. Nice.
In nineteen sixty five, two astronauts on Gemini six smuggled
sleigh bells and harmonica and while they were talking to Houston,
ching ching ching ching jing, jingle bells from space. Pretty cool, right,
that is awesome. They also sort of played a prank
on Houston and said we see an unidentified flying object
low trajectory coming out of the North Pole. This happened
on Christmas. Yeah, yeah, this is like December sixteenth of
nineteen sixty five. It is brilliant. That is brilliant. So
there you have it, the story of Jingobells. Fantastic man,
how about that? I love it.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm excited to see what you have to say
about our next song. Okay, the next song comes in
at twenty seven minutes in nineteen seconds, as Jonathan is
arriving at his father Lonnie's house. It's again, he's still
listening to the radio and there you catch a little
bit of clip of a song, and the name of
that song is Dark Stars by Mark Glass. Tell me
what brace yourself?
Speaker 1: Yes, I can't find Jack Squat on this on the internet.
I researched by brains out trying to find who Mark
Glass is and what Dark Stars is, and I can't
find it. Literally, nothing that I can find is that little,
tiny one and a half second clip that he's as
he's turning off the radio to come into the house. Yeah,
I couldn't find anything.
Speaker 2: Well, the good news is that we transition almost immediately
from that song at twenty seven minutes and nineteen seconds
into the next song we're going to talk about at
twenty seven minutes and fifty seconds, and that song is
called I'm taking off by space Knife.
Speaker 1: Okay. I watched the video on this, yeah, and it
was awesome. It was like I was transported back to
nineteen eighty three. Yeah, he looks like he's performing this
on the Star Trek next Generation Holidack.
Speaker 2: The eighties are blaring all over the place. It's not
as though he's got actual eighties it's just in the
style of you've got the window blinds opening up to
see the pretty girl in all of her eighties makeup
and hairstyle, and it is synth gold. Is synth gold,
it is Okay. Now, what we need to know is that,
just like on our last episode where we had a
song that sounded just like a Madonna song, sounded just
like a Kylie Minogue song out of the eighties, this
song didn't happen until the twenty first century. It's crazy,
and I can tell you that it was on YouTube
as early as June of twenty thirteen. That's three years
before the release of Strange Things.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So somebody in the world loved this guy. He's not
on a record label. I'll tell you. If you'd like
to go check out the rest of his music, you
can find it at spaceknife dot band camp dot com,
which is bandcamp dot com is where a lot of
unsigned artists go to release their music. And I've listened
to his stuff.
Speaker 1: It's good. It's good stuff.
Speaker 2: He's got his first album on there is Early Singles Okay.
It came out in twenty eleven. The next album is
called The Greatest Hits, Volume one is the second album
is the Greatest is on that that came out in
twenty thirteen. That is the one that has this song
on it. It is a great homage to new wave
and eighties videos.
Speaker 1: Like I literally listen to this and it makes me
want to go get on my BMX bike, ride to
the arcade and eat Reese's pieces. Yeah, it really does.
Speaker 2: You know, this guy is out of Atlanta, Georgia. You
should definitely go check him out. His other songs on
that album, If a girl with space, she'd be you
and Alien Love okay. And as we mentioned, the name
of this song is I'm taking off Shield your Eyes
And there's this great moment in the YouTube video where
like the girl is watching him and then like she's
having to shield her eyes because he's literally.
Speaker 1: Taking off like a rocket. This he didn't go cheap
on the baby either sit No, she's a good look
at girl.
Speaker 2: The interesting thing is this YouTube video actually appears on
the TV in the Stranger Things episode Oh Wow. As
Jonathan is coming into Lonnie's house, He's getting confronted by
Lonnie's girlfriend and you can hear it through the doorway.
And then when he kind of bursts through the door,
he walks by a TV and you see that eighties
esque video playing on an old eighties style TV.
Speaker 1: How about that? It's gold Man. I love it. Hey,
this is a great song. I'm a fan, me too.
I checked on his YouTube. He only has like six
hundred subscribers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, his band camp and his Facebook are just a
few hundred folks. But I would encourage all of our
listeners go check this guy out, go follow his page.
It's got some good eighties styles.
Speaker 1: I liked it. I dug it.
Speaker 2: Now jumping ahead to our next song. Just like the
last song, this is a song that sounds really a
and it sounds really specifically eighties. This is a flat
out copy of another eighties song. The name of this
song is Body Language.
Speaker 1: Wends of.
Speaker 2: This song is composed and performed by Alexander Baker, also
known as Ace and Claire Mario. This comes in the
episode at thirty three minutes and seven seconds when Nancy
is talking to Barb on the phone. So once again,
Nancy's in a room and we've got music that sounds
like it's from the eighties. But this is another twenty
first century song. And this song doesn't just sound kind
of like a Madonna song. This song sounds.
Speaker 1: Almost exactly like a depeche Mode song. Yeah, the song
is enjoy the silence. Listen here.
Speaker 2: Obviously, I mean very very close, right, say, I mean
the guys got the same sounding voice, the instruments that
are being used are identical. The melody is just a
rearrangement of the same notes. I mean, it is so
much Depeche Mode it's crazy, right, And that's what they want.
They want you to think that Nancy is listening to
some Depeche Mode in her room, but it's really body
language by Alexander Ace Baker and Claire Mario. Now, as
we've talked about, this episode came out in twenty sixteen,
I sent you a video from a show that was
called XPlay and it is a video game talk show. Okay,
they would talk about whatever the latest releases are Okay,
some of our listeners may be familiar with this explay thing.
But they got a lot of requests to go do
a review on some retro games, and so they called
this episode the Breakfast Game Club, right, And there's a
great scene at the end where the two hosts are
playing the parts of the members of the break this
Club and if you listen, you can hear this song. Well,
this episode was released in March of two thousand and six,
so this song had been around for ten years before
they used it in Stranger Things. So nobody went to
a band and said, hey, we need a song for
this show that we're doing that sounds like a depeche
Mode song. They found it, right, And there are a
lot of people if you look at the comments on
the YouTube video of this song, there are a lot
of people who are like, I didn't know that they've
used this on Stranger Things. I've been looking for this
thing for ten years trying to find it. I would
watch the end of that show over and over because
I loved this song.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's great, man.
Speaker 2: I just want to go guys, go listen to depeche Mode.
Speaker 1: Hey, you know what, when you need depeche Mode, and
you need a song that sounds exactly like depeche Mode,
but you need it on the cheap.
Speaker 2: I guess you cal Alexander Baker.
Speaker 1: I guess Ace. Yeah, he's done.
Speaker 2: Some other music for some other shows as well, and
he didn't get any credit on the video game talk
show Play.
Speaker 1: I could not find the credit on there. By the way,
that episode that you showed me was really funny because
it was like the reveal at the end of the
Breakfast Club where Ali comes around the corner and Andrew
is like blown away by what he sees, but it's
rocketed up like Wayne's world, like yeah, yeah, and she's
a babe o Mattic in that one for sure. Yes.
So that show was called XPlay, hosted by Adam Sessler
and Morgan Webb. It's still around, so.
Speaker 2: I encourage you guys to go check it, at least
that episode out. He came out, as I said in
two thousand and six, season six, episode twenty five, last
minute and a half of the episode.
Speaker 1: That's cool. Hey, By the way, I've just got something
I want to throw in real quick, quick shout out
to a friend of mine. Yeah, and longtime listener. I
was in chick Fila this morning, okay, waiting on my breakfast.
I was standing in the lobby, okay, and the chickil
A manager came up to me and said, are you
Jason Colvin? Like yues, she's like the celebrity Jason. I'm
like now. And apparently my buddy Blaine Peterson was going
through the drive through and put the manager up to that.
That's hilarious, Like, that's awesome. Yeah, thanks Blaine, you made
my day. I was really confused, so that was great. Great.
I almost went to chick fil A this morning too.
I would have seen you there. Maybe you have been
in double sighting. It's been great for her. That would
have been really cool. Okay, are we ready to move
the next song? I'm ready to move on to them.
Are you excited about it? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I am actually okay. So next song on our list
is tie a Yellow Ribbon round the Old Oak Tree.
How can you say those words and not just sing them?
They just roll right off the tongue.
Speaker 1: It's great.
Speaker 2: Before we go into the story behind the song and
tell everybody. This comes in at thirty seven minutes and
seventeen seconds when Nancy and Barb are sitting in Barb's
car outside of Steve Harrington's house deciding, you know, to
go in and what to do, And at the end
of the conversation, Barb says, is that a new bra Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well, tie the little rim of round three hits been free.
So this song is being sung by Brotherhood of Man, Yes,
but they are not the group that made it famous.
That's right. Brotherhood of Man formed in nineteen sixty nine
and it was just a creation of an umbrella title
for a changing lineup of session singers. Okay, but by
nineteen seventy that idea had kind of worn out. They
had a big hit called United We Stand, which was
the closing theme for The Brady Bunch Hour. Okay, Yeah,
Their biggest success is in the UK. They had three
number one hits and four top twenty albums, none of
them were Tie a Yellow Ribbon round the Old Oak Tree.
Though the Tony Orlando version is literally the biggest song
of nineteen seventy three. It is the biggest song. As
a matter of fact, it hit number one in the
US in the UK for four weeks starting in April
of nineteen seventy three. Now four weeks starting in April
of nineteen seventy three. I feel like that's an important event.
It's like November fifth, nineteen fifty five. That's exactly right.
This May fourth, nineteen seventy three. What happened? This was
the number one song in the United States the day
I was born nineteen seventy three. Fantastic this song right here.
You were born on May the fourth. I was born
May the fourth.
Speaker 2: You have a Star Wars but I do have a
Star Wars birthday, which.
Speaker 1: Is fantastic because I love Star Wars. Time. It's been
three lines. Du still Lizzy. This song has been played
three million times.
Speaker 2: It's one of the biggest songs of all time.
Speaker 1: It reached the top ten and ten countries. It's interesting
because this song. I thought this song was like an old,
old song, right, and it's got an old story behind it.
Like the idea behind the song is a guy has
been in prison and the work bus will drive by
his old love's house, right, And so he's wanting to
know once he's released, is he welcome to come back
and see her or not?
Speaker 2: And if he is, then she needs to tie a
yellow ribbon around the old oak tree. Right, and you
know happy ending to the song, there's like a ton
of yellow ribbons around the old oak tree.
Speaker 1: It pulls at your heart.
Speaker 2: Great story, kind of sweet, and yet it was turned
down by multiple record executives saying this song is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Okay, now listen to this. I've got this. This is
gonna blow you away here. Okay, yes, okay. So Tony
Orlando and Dawn they sang this song in nineteen seventy three.
Tony Orlando built the Yellow Ribbon Music Theater in Branson, Missouri,
in nineteen ninety three, Branson, Missouri.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's what you and I like. Oh yeah, it's
kind of a fun place.
Speaker 1: But here's the kicker. You ready for this? Yeah. In
nineteen seventy six, during the Republican National Convention, Tony Orlando
danced to this song with Betty Ford. Wow. Yes, wow,
And according to him, this was Nancy Reagan's favorite song
at the time. This song has been covered by Ben Crosby,
Jim Nabors, who is Gummer Pyle In case you didn't
recognize that shows I am Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Lawrencewell,
Dolly Pardon, Harry Connick, Junr and Andy Kaufman. Did you
say Andy, Andy Kaufman covered this Andy Kauf all right,
man in the moon, all right, yes, okay.
Speaker 2: So we have a wonderful progression of this very almost
I wouldn't I have to say, goodie, goodie kind of
song right into another song. As Barb and Nancy come
up to Steve Harrington's house, it's such a great scene.
He busts the doors open thirty eight minutes thirty four
seconds and booming from out of the house is a
song called Raise a Little Hell.
Speaker 1: I don't know how this got by me, Like I
don't know this song. So this song is by a
group called Trooper, and they are a British Columbia Canadian band.
It was hard for Canadian bands to get hits in
the US honestly at this time, and this one came
out in the seventies, and so it's seventy eight, I think,
so five years later Steve could be listening to this song.
But let me tell you a little bit about Trooper first, okay, okay,
So Trooper was started by Ray McGuire and Brian Smith
aka Smitty, who were from Vancouver. Could shout out to
our good friends Addie Ayachino and Cameron Eckert are Canadian
Patreon members who are probably huge fans of Trooper. I
don't know. Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2: Yep, you guys will have to tell us all your
stories of seeing Trooper and talk. So these guys started
out as a band called winters Green in nineteen sixty seven.
They had a song called are You My Monkey? Big hit,
big hit in Canada. It was very the door sounding song. Okay,
winter Green became apple Jack. They started touring in British
Columbia and they were playing at that time, playing this
song raise a little Hell. So while they're touring, they
get heard by this guy named Randy Bachman. Have you
heard of him only because you pointed it out to me. Yeah,
he was Bachman Turner Overdrive, that Bachman, right, he was
before that he was in the Guests Who And if
you don't recognize the name of that band, let me
play you a little guitar lick that he did that
will ring the.
Speaker 1: Bell American woman. Yes, absolutely so.
Speaker 2: Ray Bachmann sees Trooper and he says, you know what, guys,
I want to sign you to my label. He's got
his own little label and it's called legend, and so
he became their producer for their next five albums. First
album was Trooper, which came out in seventy five. Second
album was Two for the Show, which came out in
sixty six, and by this time they had gone with MCA.
Their third album was called Knock Them Dead, Kid, and
this reached what they call Canadian platinum. And when I
saw that, I had to go, well, what is Canadian platinum?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Well, do you know what the US platinum is?
Speaker 1: Million?
Speaker 2: Million is correct? Five hundred thousand is gold in the US.
In Canada, fifty thousand is gold and one hundred thousand
is platinum. So they've got a Canadian platinum ahead with
their third album. Fourth album comes out in nineteen seventy eight.
Thick as Thieves Goes double platinum. Has the only successful
single in the US. And do you know what that
single is?
Speaker 1: Raise Little Hell You Got It? Rolling Stone ranked this
as number seven on the Top ten Sports anthems of
all Time.
Speaker 2: It's fantastic, It's great if you listen to the harmonies
on this, the dynamics of the song. This is a fantastic,
freaking song and it is the perfect song to play
when Steve Harrington opens those doors right.
Speaker 1: And I told you when I first watched this season,
I was watching with my kids. Of course they had
seen season two, three, four when I watched season one.
So Steve Harrington to me was jerk boyfriend. I hated
his guts. Yeah, well everybody did that first season. That
first season, he was Jerk' boyfriend. By the way, in
a case of terrible timing, Trooper released an album in
nineteen ninety one called ten.
Speaker 2: Oho maybe good timing. Who knows that's true? How many
people looking for Pearl Jam ended up with a Trooper?
A Trooper that had been playing together for thirty years
ended up with that album.
Speaker 1: Can I please have a ten CD? Please? Grandma? I
don't know what you got. This is not even flow. Okay,
need take this back.
Speaker 2: So these guys they stayed together, I mean yeah, like
you said, they were recording still in the nineties and
actually less than a year ago. Ray and Smitty both
called it retirement.
Speaker 1: By the way, for our Ottawa Senators fans from the
years nineteen ninety two to nineteen ninety six, every time
they scored a goal, raised a little hell was played.
It's great, it's great. I love it. Okay, all right,
moving on, we are finally once again. I mean so
many songs that we've gone through. Their musical budget obviously
wasn't super.
Speaker 2: Huge, but they managed to get a piece of gold
or two in each of the episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the song that we get next is one that
you will all know, ladies and gentlemen, I Melt with You.
Speaker 1: Okay. So this song is.
Speaker 2: By a band called Modern English.
Speaker 1: It comes in in the.
Speaker 2: Episode at forty two minutes and fifty nine seconds. This
is just as Jonathan is taking pictures. He hears a scream.
He runs over to the pool and it turns out
it's because they're horsing around Steve Nancy and poor Barb
is sitting there.
Speaker 1: Like a lump, poor Barber.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they're listening to I Melt with You by
a band called Modern.
Speaker 3: English, you say, says on the side.
Speaker 1: Totally appropriate for the setting of the show. Nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this song came out and did pretty well
because it was associated with a big movie of the
time movie called Valley Girl.
Speaker 1: Valley Girl has Nick Cage, Devorah Foreman, E G. Daily
I E. Dottie from Peebe's Big Adventure Joyce Heiser and
Coling Camp. I mean it's a eighties iconic movie. That's
how I know it is from that movie, one of
Nick Cage's first big roles. It reached number seventy eight
on the Hot one hundred that's where it peaks out at,
and then they re released it in nineteen ninety it
gets to number seventy six. It did reach number seven
on Billboard's Mainstream Rock charts in nineteen eighty three. But
as far as the Hot one hundred, this is like
a slow burn like. It has been played a bazillion
times since then and has become eighties icon gold. But
at the time, for whatever reason, didn't.
Speaker 2: Climb the charge very high, right, And so this was
a success for them. This was an entirely different style
than they were used to. So Modern English started as
a group of high school friends, Robbie Gray and his buddies, yep,
And they just they had one buddy who could kind
of play the guitar, and they said, let's.
Speaker 1: Form a band. Yeah, good idea.
Speaker 2: I mean, punk is the new thing right now, so
why don't we do that. This song, of course, is
not at all punk, This is very new age, right. Well,
when they, I mean ultimately they learned to play some instruments,
They did gigs. They ultimately got a recording studio and
recorded the song. But as he was singing this song,
this is part of an album. So he was singing
this song, the producer said, how about instead of screaming this,
you just sing it right? Well, even less than that,
you talk it. Yeah, And so this kind of soft
talkie song. It changed the rest of the album. They
went from a kind of a punk yell into a
much more smooth, new wave pleasant to listen to. Right,
And like you said, this song has stood the test
of time. It wasn't like it was definitely a big
hit for some guys who didn't have anything else going on, right,
But it was something that kind of, like you said,
people realized how good it was as time went on.
And I still hear it today here also all the time,
all the time. I heard it this morning as a
matter of fact.
Speaker 1: So Robbie Gray said, he wrote this song in two minutes. Wow.
In two minutes. Wow. It was just kind of a
stream of consciousness. He just kind of wrote down some
stuff and if you listen to the lyrics, I thought,
this is really cool. Yeah, it's about a couple making
love when the nuclear blast goes off, right, and they
melt together, like physically melt together. It's gross, but it's catchy.
It is catchy. He said he didn't want to write
a song where it's boy meets girl, they fall in
love and they get married and happily ever after they're
having sex, the bomb goes off and they melt How
about that now, I did think it was interesting. They
made this video for MTV. He said. They made it
for like a thousand pounds Canadian which is nothing, but
MTV played it all the time.
Speaker 2: It's great, a great song. It very It seemed like
it had more popularity on MTV than it did than
it was getting radio play.
Speaker 1: For sure. We've seen this before where a radio station
in America picked it up, started playing and it just
sort of calm dance clubs and MTV. Yes, when they
were recording it, the producer went to Robbie Gray and
I keep in mind Robbie Gray is a punk guy,
and he's like, this part right here, I think you
should hum, and Robbie Gray's like, I'm a punk guy.
I don't hum. He's like, well, you're gonna hum on
this one, and you're humming right here, and this part
right here, he hums, and it's beautiful. It is great.
It's eighties gold YEP ranked number seven by VH one
as the one hundred greatest one hit Wonders. It's one
of the biggest one hit wonders of the eighties. Here's
a list of movies that this song is featured in.
Fifty first dates, Mister and Missus Smith, not another teen movie,
sky High. It was on Glee. Burger King used it,
Eminem's used it, Taco Bell used it.
Speaker 2: There was a movie made called I Melt with You
that had Rob Low in it.
Speaker 1: Wow. They re recorded it for that movie. That's crazy,
and it never got past seventy six in the Hot
one hundred. It's crazy. It was crazy. Okay.
Speaker 2: So our song that we mentioned before, Should I Stay
or Should I Go? Comes up again at this point
in the episode. It becomes a big plot point. At
this point in the episode, we had heard Jonathan listening
to it in the car. We had then trained transition
to where he was talking to Will as they were
talking about their dad and how difficult that was, and
he was talking to him about how good this music was,
and so it's a real major plot point. And then
after I'm Out with You, we see Joyce get a
phone call like she got before, and then she gets
led down the hallway and we hear it start to
blare from his room. It's as though he's trying to communicate,
which is why this song is so important. So be
sure hit subscribe, hit follow, and we'll talk to you
about it in episode seven. That brings us to the
final song of the episode, and they have saved the
best for last.
Speaker 1: The way this song is used is so perfect. It's
like a sadness that's masked by rock and roll. That
song is called Hazy Shade of Winterless I'm bangling my
head here, I am bangling my head that opening chan
chan chun and that sort of minor tone right there. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So this version of this song came out thirty five
years ago, November nineteen eighty seven. Yep, the Bengals had
been performing this song since March of eighty three. I
know this was a song they did live on stage right,
and they got hit up to do a song for
this movie called Less Than Zero, had James Spader and
Robert Downey Junior as an almost prophetic drug addict, like
literally right before Robert Downey Junior got arrested for drugs.
I mean, it is a crazy movie.
Speaker 1: I can't let you go without mentioning Andrew McCarthy and
Jamie Gertz. Yes, right, as it turns out, this is
not originally a bangle song, right now. I was very
familiar with Simon and Garfunkel when this song came out,
but it was like their greatest hits, familiar, right. I
don't think that I knew until I heard this song
that it had been originally done by Simon and Garfunkel.
Paul Simon wrote this song in sixty five when he
was in England and he felt like he was kind
of in this repetition of seasons and it just things.
Speaker 2: Weren't going anywhere, which is where you get that line
of that repeated line of look around, leaves are brown
and the sky is a hazy shade of winter, Like
it's not a happy memory for him, right. So, and
so he and Garfunkel had recorded this song when they
were recording Parsley Say Drowsmary in Time, which is fantastic
album and also a great recipe for a room if
you're interested in that.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: What they did was the next year they decided they
were going to release it as a standalone single. The
song did so well that they decided to put it
on their next album, which was called Bookends. Okay, another
great album. So, as I mentioned, the Bengals as a
new group seventeen years later start performing this live on stage.
Then they get this offer to do a song for
the Less Than Zero soundtrack. Now I'm going to ask
you when I say Bengals, was the first song you
think of luck like an Egyptian And that's probably the
song that broke up the band. So they had a
producer named David Kahn for that album, and their experience
in doing that with him was miserable and they put
them in a bad enough spot that eventually they fell apart.
But he was not the one that produced a hazy
shade of Winter. You're nod in your head because I
know you know the answer, and def Dave, I hope
you're listening.
Speaker 1: Let's go. The producer on this album.
Speaker 2: Was DJ Double R, mister Rick Rubin himself.
Speaker 1: How about that? Yeah, it's fantastic, Rick Ruben. Go back
and listen to our Beastie Boys episode where Rick Rubin
was vital to their.
Speaker 2: Success and run DMC and run DMZ.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: And so he actually let them do a lot of
the production on this one.
Speaker 1: And and Michael.
Speaker 2: Steele, the bassist, will tell you that song sounds the
most like they sound as a band. And she said,
if we hadn't been in such bad shape and had
such a bad experience with David Kahn, that song might
have saved us, but it wasn't enough to save us.
Speaker 1: That's fantastic. Okay. So here's what I got for you.
You're ready for this? Yeah, Okay, We're not going to
dive too far into the Bengals, but here's the top
ten for February sixth, nineteen eighty eight, when this song
hits number two. Okay, And I'm going to touch on
these because a lot of these we've talked about. Okay.
Number ten, I could never take the place of your man,
Prince Sure off the Sign of the Times episode. Go
back and check that episode out. Number nine, Tunnel of
Love by Bruce Springsteen. Number eight, Say You Will by Foreigner?
Number seven What Have I done to deserve This? By
the Pet Shop Boys. We actually talked about that in
our Patreon So okay, Number six Hungry Eyes by Eric
Carmon off the Dirty Dancing soundtrack. Right. Number five I
Want to Be Your Man by Roger Don't worry about
that one, okay. Number four Seasons Changed by expos A. Okay,
Number three Need You Tonight by in Excess off their
Kick album. Okay yep, cover that one too, yep. And
number two Hazy Shade of Winter of course by the Bengals. Yeah,
and then the one the only Tiffany with could have
been must have been? No im, Sorry, Hazy Shade of
Winter is a way better song than that one. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: Now, as I mentioned this, this song, this Hazy Shade
of Winter thing was based on experience that Paul Simon
had and somebody made a contrast to another song that
was big at that time by the Mamas and Papas
called California Dreaming.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Yes, they're very similar kind of ideas, but almost like
the other side of the coin. Right Yes, California Dreaming
will come up again in this series when we get
to season four and it's not the Mamas and the
Papas version.
Speaker 1: Once again.
Speaker 2: Def Dave, I hope you're listening it's the Beach Boys.
Speaker 1: So we talked about how Hazes Shada Winter was recorded
quickly to get it on the Less than Zero soundtrack.
We talked about that movie It's all about drug used
by young twenty somethings in California. During Less than Zero,
there is a person who gets a cameo as like
an extra, was paid thirty eight dollars to be there.
His name Brad Pitt. Get out of town. Brad Pitt
is in less than Zero. Brad Pitt is just a
dude at a party in less than Zero. Wow, paid
thirty eight bucks. Awesome? That is awesome. How about that?
Speaker 2: Okay, that is our last song? And before I leave,
I have to tell you it comes in at fifty
two minutes and forty two seconds into the episode. Yeah,
it's just when Nancy is asking for privacy and then
asking for Steve to look at her as she takes.
Speaker 1: Off her shirt. Yes, is that a new bra? Yes?
Speaker 2: And poor Barb is sitting alone on the diving board
outside over the pool.
Speaker 1: Dropping blood drops into the pool.
Speaker 2: And it's this very poignant moment. And interestingly, just a
little while earlier in the episode, you see a Jaws
poster on the wall, Blood in the Water, and then
we see our very first glimpse of the Gorgon just
before she screams, and Jonathan doesn't pay any attention because
he thinks it's just them horsing around again. The next episode,
which we will cover on our next episode, huh is
heartbreaking when we see what happens to Barb fantastic, So guys,
be sure and hit the subscribe button, hit the follow button,
make sure you hit notifications if that's an option, so
that you will see when our next episode drops, and
we of our episode three of season one, the Songs
behind Stranger.
Speaker 1: Thanks guys. If you like what you hear, go to
our Patreon page. We drop a Patreon episode one time
a month on one hit Wonders of the seventies, eighties, nineties,
anything in the MTV generation, and I think some of
our best episodes are over there. Yeah, for five bucks
a month, you can get these. It's great, right, And
if you're listening on the podcast app, be sure and
go check out our YouTube page where you can see
that we look awesome and attractive and there's no charge
for awesomeness or attractiveness.
Speaker 2: It's funny Thank you, but if you want to donate,
we would truly appreciate that.
Speaker 1: Guys, we will see you next week. See you next week.