CONCRETE BLONDE?

I'll give you "Everybody Knows", off of the _Pump up the Volume_ soundtrack (3 points & 10% of royalties to Mr. Cohen). You will TAKE BACK "Joey" and the Vowel Movement bandname (& maybe all those stories about Ms. N. making egregious passes @ that Wall of Voodoo guy).

Oops, sorry.

I quite liked certain select Concrete Blonde tracks -- though never a full album. "Tomorrow Wendy" (written by the brillaint Andy Prieboy, no?), "Still in Hollywood", "God is a Bullet" and "Joey" were all pretty great. "Happy Birthday" was shit and "Ghost of a Texas Ladies Man" was just embarassing. Saw them live once, and they were quite good. Whatever happened to them?

xpost: yeah, that "Ghost of..." thing was an astonishly unsuccessful move.

I'm a big fan, even their missteps are charming, and Jim Mankey is perhaps the most underrated guitarist in alt-rock.

Our showstopper was a song about a mentally ill guy who, when he gets his GF pregnant, becomes convinced a volcano is growing inside her. That and a sludge metal cover of Roy Orbison's "The Crowd".

Jim's brilliant.

Maybe it's time for me to get Bloodleeting. I keep playing "Caroline" these days.

"Someday" is a beautiful song. I love love love Jim Mankey's solo on that, it sounds like he chopped down a palm tree and made a guitar out of it.

wow, "caroline" -- what a great song. i think i've had it somewhere in the back of my head for the last 20 years and it didn't surface again until tonight. what a dark horse.

that Trouser Press thing is brutal and wrong!

I still like this band -- like 1989 for me was "Bloodletting," The Cure's "Disintegration" and "Vision Thing" by Sisters of Mercy

their stuff is flawed and occasionally ridiculous but the version of female LA hipsterdom that Johnette embodied at the time is too finely etched in my mind for me to let go of them entirely. Robbins assails the "truly heinous lyrics" of "Joey" but I've always found that song weirdly affecting, particularly after seeing Johnette sing it live, where they came off as genuinely tragic in a co-dependent way, rather than simply maudlin.

The Great Paul Thompson once, ruefully, admitted that he scored his first gold album as a member of Concrete Blonde.
Roxy Music had not had a gold record by then? Or they didn't give him one?

The fact is, Joey is a great song partly because it really shouldn't be one.

"we can make believe that Kennedy is still alive..." tomorrow wendy came on at a bar last night and this line seemed to send a chill thru the whole plavs (i happen to live in dallas but i don't think that even mattered)

"Joey" is the #11 song in Canada as of the week of June 7, 2021, the most recent chart available - does anyone know why? Was it in a TikTok meme or TV show? I don't see on the American Billboard chart.

https://musiccanada.com/charts/2021-06-7/

Some Country guy had a viral cover of it earlier this year

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/entertainment/music/2021/02/28/jeremy-pinnell-gets-rolling-stone-nod-concrete-blonde-joey-cover/4576789001/

I'm thinking movie or TV synch tho.

It's the new Sparks documentary reawakening all the rabid Jim Mankey fans.

the real question is why would "Joey" ever leave the charts

As a Canadian, I'm not too familiar with the MusicCanada charts. I've usually looked at the Canadian Billboard charts to see what's charting. But I could just be out of it on what's the better authority.

The Billboard chart is usually paywalled so I check the MusicCanada page. Tbh, I'm not sure I even knew they were different from each other. I do wonder what the methodologies are based on.

I have the feeling that Canada might have been a more receptive market for them - I remember, when they were still around, that their videos got a lot of play on MuchMusic, including a few half-hour spotlights.
I also remember one of the Toronto music critics - maybe writing for eyeweekly - describing the Concrete Blonde debut as the worst album EVER. It's the only one I've heard, and I particularly liked "Song for Kim", which keeps her voice out of the strident zone it sometimes veers into. There probably weren't many other teenagers listening to them because they loved A Woofer in Tweeter's Clothing.