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penfield"I like my bands in business suits, I watch them on tv
I'm working out most everyday and watching what I eat
They tell me that it's good for me, but I don't even care
I know that it's crazy
I know that it's nowhere
But there is no denying that
It's hip to be square"
- Huey Lewis and the News, Hip to Be Square
Last week I was watching Chuck, a cute little wink-and-dagger comedy with a deft musical touch. Not only are the opening credits set to Cake's opus concordia "Short Skirt, Long Jacket", but for the second week in a row, the lead actress's entrance (3:00 in) was choreographed to the Huey Lewis and the News classic "Do You Believe in Love?"
(Incidentally: Yes, I do now.)
It had been a long time since I thought about Huey Lewis and the News, but there was a time in my youth that the band's catalog represented the soundtrack to my life.
Not to get all Patrick Bateman here, but I always admired the band's combination of straightforward pop-rock hooks, crystal-clear production and cheeky humor. They were perhaps too "corporate" to be admired like Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band and too slick to be appreciated like The Cars, but their R&B-inflected melodies dominated the Top-40 charts in the second half of the 1980's.
Their multi-platinum album Sports first captured my attention, especially the video for If This Is It, which I must have watched on MTV hundreds of times with rapt attention. And when they scored the theme song to Back to the Future -- a movie I tried to emulate from the skateboard to the air guitar -- I was enchanted.
The first concert I ever attended was a Huey Lewis and the News concert at Rochester's War Memorial Coliseum. I was ten years old and the band was touring in support of its triple-platinum album Fore!. My dad took me to the concert and allowed me to invite my friend Richard.
This was around the time that Huey Lewis and the News came out with their modest hit Hip to Be Square, which was, on a meta- level, a very strange song. It was brazenly ironic, considering that this was still one of the most successful bands in America calling themselves "square." But there is also a twist of narcissism in it, in that they're also boldly calling themselves "hip." And while all this is going on, mainstream pop was getting more lame by the minute, competing with a sanitized hip-hop/rap movement and about to be suffocated by angsty, plaid-wearing men whining about how their prescription drugs aren't strong enough.
Anyway, I remember enjoying the concert, but it represented the apex of my devotion as a fan. Their subsequent albums never lived up to the previous magic. And Richard -- who, coincidentally, was going by the nickname "Dick" at the time -- repaid the generosity of that concert ticket by repeatedly mocking me for liking Huey's music.
Lewis and the News have pretty much been off my radar (and popular music's) since then. But I popped my Greatest Hits CD in the player the other day -- after watching that Chuck episode -- and damned if those hooks don't still hold up.
Maybe the band is so down and out that it finally is hip to like Huey Lewis. But I've only just learned that they apparently recorded the theme song to the Seth Rogen/James Franco stoner vehicle Pineapple Express. Does that make them hip again? So is it cool to like them, or what?
I'm working out most everyday and watching what I eat
They tell me that it's good for me, but I don't even care
I know that it's crazy
I know that it's nowhere
But there is no denying that
It's hip to be square"
- Huey Lewis and the News, Hip to Be Square
Last week I was watching Chuck, a cute little wink-and-dagger comedy with a deft musical touch. Not only are the opening credits set to Cake's opus concordia "Short Skirt, Long Jacket", but for the second week in a row, the lead actress's entrance (3:00 in) was choreographed to the Huey Lewis and the News classic "Do You Believe in Love?"
(Incidentally: Yes, I do now.)
It had been a long time since I thought about Huey Lewis and the News, but there was a time in my youth that the band's catalog represented the soundtrack to my life.
Not to get all Patrick Bateman here, but I always admired the band's combination of straightforward pop-rock hooks, crystal-clear production and cheeky humor. They were perhaps too "corporate" to be admired like Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band and too slick to be appreciated like The Cars, but their R&B-inflected melodies dominated the Top-40 charts in the second half of the 1980's.
Their multi-platinum album Sports first captured my attention, especially the video for If This Is It, which I must have watched on MTV hundreds of times with rapt attention. And when they scored the theme song to Back to the Future -- a movie I tried to emulate from the skateboard to the air guitar -- I was enchanted.
The first concert I ever attended was a Huey Lewis and the News concert at Rochester's War Memorial Coliseum. I was ten years old and the band was touring in support of its triple-platinum album Fore!. My dad took me to the concert and allowed me to invite my friend Richard.
This was around the time that Huey Lewis and the News came out with their modest hit Hip to Be Square, which was, on a meta- level, a very strange song. It was brazenly ironic, considering that this was still one of the most successful bands in America calling themselves "square." But there is also a twist of narcissism in it, in that they're also boldly calling themselves "hip." And while all this is going on, mainstream pop was getting more lame by the minute, competing with a sanitized hip-hop/rap movement and about to be suffocated by angsty, plaid-wearing men whining about how their prescription drugs aren't strong enough.
Anyway, I remember enjoying the concert, but it represented the apex of my devotion as a fan. Their subsequent albums never lived up to the previous magic. And Richard -- who, coincidentally, was going by the nickname "Dick" at the time -- repaid the generosity of that concert ticket by repeatedly mocking me for liking Huey's music.
Lewis and the News have pretty much been off my radar (and popular music's) since then. But I popped my Greatest Hits CD in the player the other day -- after watching that Chuck episode -- and damned if those hooks don't still hold up.
Maybe the band is so down and out that it finally is hip to like Huey Lewis. But I've only just learned that they apparently recorded the theme song to the Seth Rogen/James Franco stoner vehicle Pineapple Express. Does that make them hip again? So is it cool to like them, or what?
