Hope you have your sunglasses ready…
Is a gloomy Monday leaving the forecast for the rest of your week looking ominous? Well, The Nest is about to bring you some future tidings in the form of past earworms! This is the day we fire up the Magic 8 Ball and search the stars for another forgotten musical prophecy out of that time machine jukebox we like to call the Dusty Vinyl Archive! DJ Scratchy shall be your gypsy, dressed like a tramp and thief… while the Sponkies look forward to the day they can drive in a flying car. I predict there will be a wonderful song in this post’s future…
With 214 posts in the Dusty Vinyl Archive’s archive, as well as a Top 30 novelty song countdown to boot… you’ll probably be as surprised as I am that I have not yet featured the song I’ve chosen for this week’s earworm. But it’s true!
Can you guess what it is just from all the hints I dropped in the intro?
Many underground bands exist for years with a small, but loyal group of fans who hope and pray that their favorite musicians will decide to live a life of poverty and never sell out. That wasn’t true for the Wisconsin husband and wife duo of Pat and Barbara MacDonald, better known by the forehead slapping name of Timbuk3. The very first cut from their very first EP album, Welcome To Timbuk3, became a surprise hit and an 80’s nostalgia staple. And that’s the video you just watched for their 1986 song “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades.”
I got a crazy deejay who wears dark glasses…
“Future” made it all the way up to #19 on the Hot 100 chart, and became the band’s only song (despite five more albums over the next decade) to even sniff the pop charts. Although it was embraced by those coming of age as a graduation party song, the truth is that Pat MacDonald actually wrote the song with the same message many other 80’s hits tried to tell us…. this is the nuclear age, and the bomb’s gonna get us all!
At least we’ll have shades on to look at the pretty mushroom cloud.
The Wiki page on the song has some of the lyrics that were cut from the final single that would have made it painfully obvious that the bright future wasn’t all about getting 50 thou a year to buy a lot of beer.
For those who didn’t study nuclear science, you can still buy a lot of plain label beer…
Come back next Monday for another lost song you won’t need shades for….. well, unless it’s Corey Hart…
Not THIS Corey Hart… he needs to see the ball.
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
i take the title as my motto for today… and for tomorrow… YES!
The future is always evolving, but the future of the past remains the same!
Right on! Yes, I recall this song with its toe-tapping beat. It was always a guarantee to pop up and move around (maybe that the body’s (albeit pretty ineffectual) way of trying to move around enough to avoid a direct nuclear blast. Happy Monday!
A direct nuclear blast might cool things down a bit. Plus, keep me from having to cut the grass this week…
No kidding…talk about H-O-T!! Try to stay cool or at least relaxed while waiting to normalcy to return on the heat index.
if you want HOT come here to Arizona.
I remember that they did featured this song on the TV show “Head of the Class.” I’ve never seen the actual video until today. Low budget kicks ass!
That was cutting edge in 1986! Back in the days when a green screen computer monitor playing The Oregon Trail could blow our minds…
That was a fun video to see and I like the song. I’d never heard it before. 🙂
It had a very novelty feel to it, and I didn’t realize it was actually a hit until a few years later. I got a tape recorder for Christmas 1986, and this song was one of the first things I recorded on it!
Ah yes, this one is truly classic…
An essential 80’s anthem…
I know the song quite well but never thought about it being about a nuclear disaster until you mentioned it. Even though he mentions nuclear science in the very first line!
It doesn’t really have an apocalyptic vibe to it. If their intention was to be sarcastic about the bright future of a budding nuclear scientist, they failed miserably…
I do remember that song BUT never had seen the video…..hopefully NOT prophetic but definitely entertaining!
Pam
I’ve never really paid attention to the lyrics except my future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades part, so I always thought this should be played at every graduation. Hey if it’s about nuclear destruction, so be it because it’s got a catchy beat so…why not? Mona
The 80’s had a lot of great nuclear apocalypse songs with great beats! May as well dance while everything melts down…