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Facebook is a hell of a thing. Not only can it end marriages and get people fired, it brings folks back into your life after years or even decades. Many of these people have oooold pictures of you, and many of these people also have scanners. You will get to relive outfits and hairdos. Oh sure, you remember these things being atrocious, but you don’t get the full impact of how alarming they truly were until someone digs up photographic evidence.
Every once in a while, some clever little archivist takes it to a whole new level of humiliation… with VIDEO. Video of you in your puffy shirt, ripped fishnets, crimped Manic Panic pink hair, and braces, doing That Dance, the dance we all did circa 1987 when a 12” extended remix of Tones on Tail came on at ‘da club. In our case, ‘da club was called Stratus, and you probably had your version of it where you grew up, so I will share the glory:
Unfortunately, I am not actually in these videos, but I hereby declare that I looked just as ridiculous, and in fact aspired to the calibre of ridiculousness of some of these girls, with whom I attended high school.
This trip down Memory Lane was all worth it, however, for reminding me of one of my favorite songs of the ‘80s: “Dance with Me” by Lords of the New Church. This band doesn’t get many pages (or even paragraphs) in the history books, even though it was a punk supergroup fronted by the legendary Stiv Bators and included Brian James of the Damned, Dave Tregunna of Sham 69, and Nicky Turner of the Barracudas. Dead Boys is Bators’ primary legacy, and rightfully so, but when I was 13, I didn’t know from the Dead Boys. All I knew was this wierd-looking dude in this bizarre video had me at “ritual fertility”. I heard real longing and desperation in that voice, and it spoke to me.
Twenty-four years later, the clothes and hair don’t hold up very well, but the song does—remarkably so. I think I’m going to go find me some Lords of the New Church CDs. And possibly a crimping iron.
