Something 4 The Weekend # 223

Pablo Cruise: Worlds Away: "Love Will Find A Way" [mp3]

I'm pretty sure I've written about GUILTY PLEASURES before.

I don't believe in the term or the idea behind the term, and that's not just because I'm a lapsed Catholic. To admit to guilty pleasures myself would be to admit bad taste, and I'd like to believe I have good taste, though ultimately I'm such a musical omnivore that taste probably doesn't factor. I listen to music from all over the stylistic and skill spectrum, and all level of popularity, and my appreciation and enjoyment of all this music is just as varied. This might be an unconscious strategy (that I'm just now realizing) to keep myself beyond reproach as a self-respecting musical fanboy and self-styled tastemaker, but I'm going to leave those notions for another time.

What's true for every single one of us is that our own tastes range and vary, and so the best we can do is arrive at some sort of consensus about songs and artists, which we do all the time. Bach was some sort of genius, so was Duke Ellington. Elvis is the king of Rock'n'Roll, The Beatles are the greatest rock band of all time, or possibly The Rolling Stones. The Wu-Tang Clan ain't nuthin' to fuck wit'!

Of course, then we have to factor in context.

You might find Pablo Cruise to be a fairly unremarkable band. I would agree. They're certainly not the worst band of all time, but really not very memorable either. The thing is, "Love Will Find A Way" reached #6 on the Billboard charts in 1978, so plenty of people liked it. We can't discount that, I don't think. I didn't like this song in 1978, but the girl I "dated" for seven weeks that summer certainly did, so I went along with it. 33 years later, I think about that girl with fondness, so why should I feel guilty for finding a measure of pleasure from this song today?

I might not have liked this song very much back then, but I did love the cover art. It made me think of another song from 1978, "Thunder Island" by Jay Ferguson, a song about a man and a woman alone on an island and the sexy things they did while there. I remember looking at this cover art and imagining me and that girlfriend alone on a tropical island, making out in front of a bonfire on the beach. Such is the imagination of a tween in love, with hormones starting to rumble.

Love will find a way out there on thunder island. That's a bit of the story of my life, circa August of '78.

Hotcha! Hank