My Top 1000 Songs #333: More Songs About Chocolate & Girls
At some point around '80 or '81, back when I was a high school freshman, my buddy Jeff shared with me a mixtape someone had put together with a bunch of punk and new wave songs. I don't remember much about the tape, though I'm pretty sure there was some Ramones and Buzzcocks, maybe some Jam. It didn't necessarily send me scurrying out on a record-buying spree; I was still mostly in classic rock and prog mode, with a few exceptions like the Clash and Talking Heads. But it was an early indicator to me that there was a lot of music out there that I wasn't hearing on the radio. (See also: Urgh!)
The one song I distinctly recall hearing for the first time on that tape was The Undertones' "More Songs About Chocolate And Girls." And, again, I didn't go out and further explore the Undertones. Which, in hindsight, was pretty dumb; it took me another couple years to do that, instantly falling in love with their 1979 self-titled debut and its 1980 follow-up, Hypnotized, the album which this song opens.
Still, the song was riveting from that first listen, and immediately stuck in my head. Like pretty much everything on those first two records, it's a quick, straightforward power-pop track given a post-Clash/Ramones electric urgency. A jolt of pure fun, in this case backed by a cool reggae/ska off-beat rhythm, the guitars trading killer licks while Feargal Sharkey's unique vibrato acknowledges the unabashedly lighthearted nature of the band's music. "It's never too late to enjoy dumb entertainment... 'cuz here's more songs about chocolate and girls."
As the first Undertones track I heard, it'll always feel more significant than just... a song about chocolate and girls.
Live 1980:The current post-Sharkey version of the band, earlier this year:
Thank you very much. I've been enjoying these posts. How about taking a break from top 1000 songs though and doing a top 100 albums? I, for one, would be extremely interested in that. Plus it's easier by a factor of 10. I think.
ReplyDeleteI spent the past few years writing up albums--not necessarily my top 100, or in any particular order, but probably captured most the records I'd want to talk about. Maybe I'll pick that up again when this little project is completed, if I'm still around.
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