"Who Made Who" by AC/DC

SONG TITLE: "Who Made Who"
ARTIST: AC/DC
ALBUM: Who Made Who
YEAR OF RELEASE: 1986
WORDS: lyricsdownload.com
DOWNLOAD: right-click here

This one's another funny choice for me. I've never owned an AC/DC album. Sure, like most people my age, I could probably name a dozen AC/DC songs without even trying. But I've never been a fan, or even a listener. That was my big brother's job.

My relationship with R. is the most complicated of my life, and merits and entire book if not its own series of essays. The short version of the story is that we were polar opposites in nearly every facet of our lives, and we hated each other.

There was one time when we were teenagers that we took a road trip together to visit the extended family. Our parents were born and raised in the same small Wisconsin town, so both sides of our extended family were in one place. I can't remember why we were visiting; I want to say it was a funeral, but that's probably just because it's the only thing we ever go back for anymore. Maybe it was the wedding or graduation of one cousin or another. The point is that we were stuck together in the car for about six hours with no one else to break the silence.

Our tastes in music couldn't have been more different, but I was feeling uncharacteristically generous and accommodating, so he was taking control of the stereo. And AC/DC was his band of choice. We made it through a few songs before "Who Made Who" came on and I burst out laughing.

I launched into an extended diatribe about his horrible taste in music, and the key to my argument was the fact that the words were completely unintelligible. We debated for a while, and it could have gotten ugly, but we went back to the source material and it saved us. I challenged him to replay the song and translate line-by-line what the singer was saying.

We rewound the cassette, and his face slowly broke into a smile as he listened. It started small, then grew and spread until it took over his whole face, and he began to laugh. It wasn't long before we were both out of control with laughter. Howling, hysterical, tears-running-down-your-face, stomache ache-inducing laughter. I can't think of another time in the whole of our teen years when I saw such an unguarded reaction, and I'm sure he'd say the same.

Aside from the occasional word and the repetition of the title, neither of us could make out a goddamned thing. It was a certain couplet that really did us in. Through the miracle of the internet, I can tell you now that the words were "If you made them and they made you / Who picked up the bill, and who made who?", but that day it sounded to us like no language known to man.

R. didn't abandon his love for AC/DC and we went on to share many years of silence and resentment. But that day, that moment, stands out to me as the one perfect instance of absolute fun, joy, and pleasure we took in one another's company for many years.

"Nemesis" by Shriekback

SONG TITLE: "Nemesis"
ARTIST: Shriekback
ALBUM: Oil & Gold
YEAR OF RELEASE: 1985
WORDS: lyricsdownload.com
DOWNLOAD: right-click here

"Nemesis" gets SotW honors for a couple of reasons. Its big claim to fame is that the band manages to use the word "parthenogenesis" in the chorus of a pop song. You should get extra points for that. For anyone who went through high school biology in a fog, parthenogenesis (literally "virgin birth") is a high falutin' name for asexual reproduction. Now, doesn't that just make you want to take to the dance floor? I thought so.

The words are incredibly dark and twisted and epic, but the music just begs you to dance. The combination is totally infectious for people of a certain disposition, and in 1985, I was of that disposition. It's funny, then, that I didn't really notice the song until just last year.

Most of this disc is gloomy atmospheric stuff, which I was also heavily into in 1985. I owned this on vinyl back in the day, after my friend Mike put "Faded Flowers" (a future SotW, to be sure) on a mix tape for me back when mix tapes were the center of my universe. "Nemesis" made no impression on me, except that I hated the jarring juxtaposition of it following "Faded Flowers". I bought the CD last year to get "Faded Flowers", which I usually just played in isolation on repeat. I was a little slow with the repeat button one day, and "Nemesis" came on. I'd just heard a disturbing story on NPR Science Friday about some sharks that reproduced through parthenogenesis out of the blue, and the word leapt out at me from the chorus. The song stuck in my head for days, and still comes back pretty regularly.

This song badly wants to be a Buffyverse vid. No, really. I'm pretty sure the song wants to be a Fanged Four vid, though it could be a simple Slayers vs Evil vid too. I completely suck at artistic interpretation, so it's totally possible that this actually IS a song about vampires. Vamps are crowd favorites among the goth set, to be sure, and parthenogenesis is as good a term as any for how vampires re-produce. So making it all about vampires could have been what Shriekback was getting at all along or could just be my Buffyverse obsession taking over my life. You make the call. Either way, it's rich territory, my friends.

"Verdi Cries" by 10,000 Maniacs

SONG TITLE: "Verdi Cries"
ARTIST: 10,000 Maniacs
ALBUM: In My Tribe
YEAR OF RELEASE: 1987
WORDS: alwaysontherun.net
DOWNLOAD: right-click here

First, I need to point out that 10,000 Maniacs absolutely suck. The fact that they produced this song through some freaky accident of fate in no way mitigates their general suckitude or means that you should pursue any other songs by them. Though if you find any others this good, let me know.

This song popped into my head as I was swimming in the pool last month at my hotel in India, and it wouldn't leave. There's no other song I know of that captures the particular brand of peace and loneliness to be found in traveling. If you stay in one place long enough, you get a sense of the other people who are sharing your roof. Even if you never speak, you learn their faces, their routines, the silent rhythms of their days.

You may not even be aware of them in the moment, but as the distance increases they stand out more and more. As I paddled around the pool on a sweltering day tens of thousands of miles and two continents from home, I had a strange sense of future nostalgia - the knowledge that I'd be looking back on that moment fondly for the rest of my life.