Ummm…. can you use that word in a sentence please?
Welcome to another fun filled Monday, everyone… and a holiday Monday at that! Happy Unicorn Appreciation Day to you all! Go out there and hug a unicorn today and show them how much we really care! While you’re all frantically searching for a single-horned beast to shower with affection, The Nest will allow its own much appreciated unicorn DJ Scratchy to pull another groovy record out of the vault for this week’s Dusty Vinyl Archive! The Sponkies are searching for it right now under all of the old Pat Boone LP’s…. ah, here they come with it!
One of the recurring themes you’re likely to see here on the DVA is conventionally labeled “one hit wonders” who are anything but. Of course, I unearthed some classic, lost Escape Club last Monday… and this week we’ll give the same treatment to one of the best named animal bands in rock and roll… John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band!
Nice beaver, Mel.
The band that emerged from the smallest state in the union is well remembered by people who were alive during the 80’s as the guys who did that “On the Darkside” song for the 1984 cult classic Eddie and the Cruisers. On the strength of the movie and its soundtrack, “Darkside” made it up to #7 on the Billboard charts…. but it wasn’t Cafferty & Company’s only Top 20 hit. Nope, they put together a follow up album in 1985 which spawned a handful of modest hits… the biggest one being “C-I-T-Y” which only peaked at #18 despite being about 100 different levels of fucking awesome! It’s impossible for me to not clap along to the beat of this song…
Hey, if a band from San Francisco can sing about the Motor City, then so can the pride of Rhode Island!
Coast to coast, Detroit is one tough C-I-T-Y.
There is an official music video for this song somewhere out there (but not in Scratchy’s archive) that features the backup vocalists using their arms to spell out the letters to C-I-T-Y just like really lame people have done for over three decades to the song “YMCA.” Since The Village People (or at least their choreographer) already came up with the gestures for two of the letters, all the Beaver Brown singers had to figure out was how to perform the I and the T… the latter of which probably led to a lot of unintentional eye pokes.
Crossing your T’s would be even more dangerous with semaphore flags…
Join us again next week for more music and unicorn appreciation!
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
Happy Unicorn Appreciation. That song…
I’m wearing my paper horn in honor of the day…
you brought me back to my teenager time, I felt young again for some minutes…. oh to live in the 80’s again… but please give me a kick when I start to pennies in my shoes and to wear my sweater around the shoulders :o)
NTTAWW 80’s fashion! I’ll bet this would be great aerobic workout music…
Eddie and the Cruisers is one of the first things I ever remember watching on HBO (covertly, at my grandparents’ house)
I don’t ever remember seeing that one (Though the Wiki article mentioned it aired on HBO a lot)… it seemed like Midnight Madness was on HBO every time we turned it on back in the day.
You’ve never seen Eddie and the Cruisers???? Then how can you appreciate the [SPOILER ALERT] twist ending of the Into the Great Wide Open video?
PS I was hoping for some little known Bowie tracks today, but I assume you write these things in advance and schedule them. In case you consider this at some point, I have a tip for you: both hunky AND dory.
It’s possible I may have seen that video before, though my viewing of VH-1 Classic has been few and far between since they expanded into the 90’s… but obviously I wasn’t missing what I was missing!
I almost always write up the Monday posts in advance, and this one was typed up yesterday morning. By the time I found out Mr. Jones had passed when I got home from work, the post had already posted. I don’t have any Bowie in the notebook yet anyway…. but then again I don’t have yours and Hottie’s knowledge of him.
I need to remember to caffeinate before hitting play on these 80’s songs. Maybe. We’ll see how a week started with an 80’s flashback goes! I remember this song but it mostly just took me back to cheerleading practice in the high school cafeteria where we made up (choreographed would be too kind of a word) a dance to On the Darkside. I guess I should just be glad our coach didn’t pick C-I-T-Y and make us spell out the words with our arms!
Now that would have been an awesome routine! I’m sure C-I-T-Y is a more danceable song than On the Darkside anyway…
Interesting. I lived in Detroit when this song came out and I don’t remember it at all. I do remember the band and the darkside business though.
Happy UAD, ES!
I was wondering if it might have had more airplay in Detroit due to the shoutout, but maybe not. I was annoyed that Tigers fans sing along to the Journey song at the ballpark when I went there a few years ago, and shout out the “Born and raised in South Detroit” line. I hate that song… hell, I hate just about everything Journey did!
Detroiters hold a special ironic place for that Journey sing since there is no such place as South Detroit. South Detroit is actually Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
That’s pretty funny then!
This video would be much more compelling if there was a unicorn with a semaphore flag in it. Just saying… seems like a missed opportunity to me.
Maybe a unicorn with a flag hanging off the end of its horn…. that would be really cute.
All Harper – age 3 – wanted for Christmas was a unicorn! She got one that is quite large. I got a small one to keep at my house.
I hope you let it out to run around in the yard every once in a while…
We have hunted through the dusty Arizona desert, but the unicorns have refused to come out and be hugged. So hug an extra one for me 🙂
OK, I’ll hug a unicorn for you if you promise to hug a cactus for me! Ummmmmm, maybe that wouldn’t be a good idea…
Hey, how is Sparkle Pony and Rainbow Donkey and the sponkicorns? Haven’t seen them much lately and I was worried about possible divorce and what would happen to the KIDS?
You must have missed by big Christmas play production that starred the whole gang…
https://evilsquirrelsnest.com/2015/12/20/a-pony-christmas-carol-part-i/
Sparky doesn’t appear until Part 2…
OMG, must go see!
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Well… it’s okay I suppose, and they do have a cool name!
Happy UAD for yesterday. I hugged a unicorn yesterday and am happy to report that the horn missed all major organs!
Unicorn appreciation can be a dangerous business, but totally worth it for just a flesh wound…
Now why is Mel waving a stuffed Beaver? No i changed my mind, I dont want to know. Happy Unicorn Appreciation Day.! I just want to kiss both those sponks and call them George! ❤