Welcome to my Halloween edition of the very popular retro music feature named after the 80s late night program 'Friday Night Videos.'
Since it is the spookiest night night of the year (okay, I know that's actually tomorrow night) I have chosen a scary video for you, Captain & Tennille's 'Love Will Keep Us Together'. Please exercise caution because this clip is a masterwork in terror ... what? ... is that right? I'm being told that we can't actually show that one because of the possibility of mass panic.
Well that's okay because I have a second video lined up. Naturally you would assume that I would choose Michael Jackson's 'Thriller', but I felt that would be to obvious. Instead I'm going with Frankenstein presented new wave style in Yazoo's "Don't Go."
History:
Released in the UK in July 1982, the song peaked at number three on the UK Singles Chart, becoming Yazoo's second top 5 hit. In the US, where the band was known as Yaz, the song was their second big hit on the American dance chart, where it spent two weeks at number one in October 1982. Their first American dance chart hit was "Situation", which had also gone to number one on this chart earlier the same year. The music video for the song features band members Alison Moyet and Vince Clarke in a sort of haunted mansion with Clarke cast in the role of Victor Frankenstein. The song is featured in the 1989 film Tango & Cash, in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories on the radio station Wave 103, and appears in Dance Dance Revolution II. The song re-entered the UK Dance Chart on 13 December 2009 at number 30, peaking at number 15 on 2 January 2010.
As I mentioned in an earlier post I did have the opportunity to meet Yazoo member Vince Clark, now with Erasure, after a concert in Anaheim. I'm happy to report that Clark is still good friends with Yazoo vocalist Alison Moyet .
If you sat down after dancing around your apartment to our last clip, get back up because here comes your bonus video:
Yazoo (known as Yaz in North America) were an English synth-pop duo from Basildon, Essex, consisting of former Depeche Mode member Vince Clarke (keyboards) and Alison Moyet (vocals). The duo formed in late 1981 after Clarke responded to an advertisement Moyet placed in a British music magazine, although the pair had known each other since their schooldays.
Over the next 18 months the duo released two albums, Upstairs at Eric's and You and Me Both, which received critical acclaim for their production, particularly the blending of Clarke's synthesizer melodies with Moyet's blues- and soul-influenced vocals.
Yazoo enjoyed worldwide success, particularly in their home country, where three of their four singles reached the top three of the UK Singles Chart and both their albums made the top two of the UK Albums Chart. In North America, they are known for the song "Situation", which, though originally only a B-side in the United Kingdom, was a club and airplay success in the United States and Canada before being released as the band's debut single in North America.
Despite their success, the duo split acrimoniously in May 1983 as a result of a combination of Clarke's reluctance to make more records under the Yazoo name, a clash of personalities, and a lack of communication between the pair.
About ten minutes east of the city of Lake Charles are the remains of an abandoned water park . The decaying structures are clearly visible from the busy I-10 freeway and for years drivers have wondered about it's history and why it was left for dead. The Pirate's Cove Water Park actually has a rather interesting story behind it. A story that has been repeated over and over again, unfortunately, here in Louisiana. It's just another example of how government bureaucracy in this state killed an enterprise before it could ever get off the ground. Construction on the park began in 2008 and it was scheduled to open sometime in 2010. The sprawling complex was envisioned as an oasis from the hot summer heat that would feature luxurious amenities like a 900 foot long lazy river, a giant splash pad for the kids and eventually a five star hotel. The Pirate's Cove would have been an obvious tourist destination that could have brought much needed tax dollars and employment oppo...
I have to admit that I have been hanging on to these photos for a couple of months now just looking for the right minute to post them. Back in November I was traveling up to El Dorado, Arkansas and I passed through the small town of Dodson. While driving through town my eyes spotted a very attractive old house up on a hill and I just had to stop and take a few photos of it. I honestly don't know the history of this house, but I'm sure some local will send me message telling me all about it (and someone did see the UPDATE ), and it's not as cool as an abandoned railroad locomotive or old movie house but it really spoke to me. I have to wonder about the people who used to live in it and how it ended up in the state it is now. Anyone can see that it was a beautiful house long ago. What happened? How did such a grand residence end up like this? Those are questions that I can't answer unfortunately. Unfortunately a site like this isn't all that uncommon here in Louisian...
The abandoned, yet fully intact Rock Island Railroad trestle over Bayou Boeuf south of Lecompte, Louisiana. For many years I have had a fascination with the now defuncted Rock Island Railroad. As a youngster my family used to take a yearly pilgrimage to Texas to visit family for the holidays. Traveling across eastern New Mexico into the panhandle of Texas my eyes would survey a set of lonely single railroad tracks. For years I searched those tracks for a train to no avail. That was until the fall of 1978 when I spotted a small mixed train lead by a couple of high nosed Geeps. The train consisted of a couple of cabooses, a flat car, tank car and two boxcars. We had just crossed over the Texas line and I was excited to see just what railroad had owned this rarely used set of tracks. As we got closer the name on the locomotives came into view, "Rock Island". Rock Island? I thought, at the time that it was some eastern railroad. Later on I would learn that The Rock was a ra...
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