2000 Great Songs #1441: Away From Home

Ok, fine, Klark Kent's 1980 single "Away From Home" is most definitely not one of the 2000 greatest songs ever recorded. It's a dorky little trifle. But I have great affection for it (as well as the rest of Klark Kent's eponymous LP).

Klark Kent is Police drummer Stewart Copeland, following his own muse under an assumed name (written as Klerk Kant on some releases to mitigate litigation risk), a bit of a lark recorded as the Police were gradually pivoting from reggae-tinged new wave upstarts to the commercial behemoth they'd become. As with Copeland's infrequent songwriting contributions to early Police records, he's much more of a goofball than the increasingly serious Sting, and the record gives a glimpse of what might have been had they operated as more of a democracy--a little more fun, a LOT less commercially successful, that's for sure. On this tune, Copeland merges the experimental, offbeat new wave sounds of Devo and the B-52's and the Waitresses with a spunky ska beat. I've always gotten a kick out of it for some reason (perhaps in part because it was pretty obscure at the time, and was fun to discover some years later after the Police were thoroughly dominating the radio and MTV).

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