Rapper’s Delight.
Does another Monday morning find you so unmotivated that even a tornado couldn’t get you out of bed? Well, The Nest doesn’t know which way the wind blows, but we’ve still got the forecast that will call for mostly sunny skies in your ear! This is the day each week we search through the record book for another misty song that got struck by lightning from that supercell full of lost hits we like to call the Dusty Vinyl Archive! DJ Scratchy has the DVA Seal of Approval and is ready to rock you like a hurricane, while the Sponkies record the precipitation that accumulated in Rainy’s rain gauge (0.0 inches for the 18,354th day ina row). Hail, hail rock and roll…
The Fixx is one of many new wave bands that made a name for itself in the 80’s that is pretty much remembered for just one song, but like many of those other “one hit wonders,” they actually recorded a lot of other songs that got lost in the big hit’s shadow…. including a few you might even recognize. We, of course, know them for “One Thing Leads To Another,” which was a #4 smash in 1983. Also off that same album, Reach The Beach, was The Fixx’s only other US Top 40 hit, “Saved By Zero.”
No! Saved by ZERO, not Saved By…. oh, nevermind!
If Reach The Beach were another, then the thing that led to it was their previous album, 1982’s Shuttered Room. That gave us two more Fixx songs that are still on the periphery of known 80’s music today in “Stand or Fall” and the group’s token late Cold War era The Bomb Is Gonna Get Us All Song, “Red Skies.” The latter song was redone in 1987 for The Fixx’s album React, and it’s probably the best known version in the US, as well as in my opinion , the best…
Yeah, you can tell the guys are a bit older in that video compared to the iconic video for “One Thing Leads To Another.” The original 1982 version of “Red Skies” had the distinction of missing the Hot 100 by a single spot, while the ’87 remake inexplicably didn’t chart at all…. but seems to have become the preferred radio version over time. Of the bevy of Fixx songs that weren’t big hits but still aren’t totally forgotten, “Red Skies” has to be my favorite. Plus, it was the earworm that inspired the title for one of the most viewed posts ever on my blog….
Blue skies at dawn…
Come back next Monday for another lost hit Fixx from The Nest…
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
they had a portable in their videos… long time before we saw one for real…… ;O))))
Yes! I saw that in one of the Wiki articles I read for this, that they had the first mobile phone to ever appear in a music video in 1984. That’s kind of like an episode of Columbo, which features silly string long before anyone even knew what it was (or the Mecca-vandalizing thing it would become)….
Oh yeah…..I remember their music – well. The nighttime squirrel pix are fun – I have noticed if I’m sitting on our front porch at dusk I see a lot of squirrels out and about. I figured they were just getting ready for date night.
Pam
The fun thing about the “nighttime” pix is that it was actually about an hour or so after dawn… I just got some really neat shadow play in those pictures!
Good choice, especially with all of the winter red sunsets, and the red moon eclipse coming Tuesday night.
I’ve heard Cy Curnin lives in Santa Cruz, just a 2.5 hour drive from my house. Three with road construction which is ALWAYS. Not quite rubbing elbows. Hey, if I could afford it I’d live there.
Had I been aware of the eclipse, I’d have definitely mentioned it here! What a strangely serendipitous choice I made this week!
Speaking of red skies, how about the blood moon eclipse here in New England on the night of the election? How ominous is THAT?
Second blood moon this year, it’s almost like it isn’t a special event anymore…
I think it’s the last one until 2025, or so they say. I caught the one in Minnesota. Just as well because I can’t see anything from here. We are enclosed by tall and even taller trees. I get some very INTERESTING shots, but you can’t see the moon, just tree branches.
That was great. Until the bloke started singing and ruined it.
Always gotta be that one little thing wrong….
Lots of heart pumping percussion in this song which always made it a great toe-tapping song whenever it came on. Love it!