You're Too Loud!

It seems like every summer I get into a "corny" or "bad" pop-rock band from the 80's. Like in 2012 when I got heavy into The Outfield. I wish I could think of more recent examples, but rest assured that I really love a whole bunch of power-pop from the 80's and am often judged for it.

This summer, that band is Huey Lewis and the News.

I've had a copy of Fore! for(e) a while, but it was mainly just something that I would throw on while playing MLB The Show, because I don't like to cry while playing video games, which nulls all of my other records. I wasn't really into it, but I will admit that the vocal hooks are pretty huge.

Then the other day, The AV Club posted an article about "The Power of Love" 's place in Back to the Future. I really got what the article was saying and it made me think "Hey, that song is pretty catchy, is it good?" I followed that by looking up a video I had just remembered, coincidentally also from the AV Club, which was The Hold Steady (a band I really like) covering "The Power of Love" for the AV Undercover series.



The cover isn't anything spectacular, but I really like the way that they discuss Huey Lewis before it, specifically everyone wondering "Is he secretly cool?"

They give some interesting proof that he might be, which I will paraphrase and augment with my own points below:

1. Huey Lewis legitimately learned how to play harmonica while hitchhiking across the United States. This sounds like the type of thing that a 20-something douchebag would do now, but he did it in the early 60's and also...

2. He played harmonica with the Rolling Stones. I couldn't find anything about this anywhere, but The Hold Steady mention in the above video and I assume they have some inside industry knowledge that I am not privy to, playing only in an unsuccessful Canadian punk band.

3. Cooler than that, in my opinion, is that his first band, Clover, was the backing band for Elvis Costello on his debut album My Aim is True, which happens to be my favourite. Did you know that? I did not.

4. While Clover relocated to the United Kingdom in the late 70's, they become part of the "pub rock" scene, which was popular at the time. As a result of this, Huey Lewis played harmonica on Thin Lizzy's Live and Dangerous. This is becoming less of a gray area, because Elvis Costello and Thin Lizzy are both undeniably good and cool.

After reading about him and watching the above videos, everything about Huey Lewis and the News just seemed to click for me. I got a hold of their best-selling album Sports and a greatest hits collection and really found myself enjoying the songs. I guess something that I really appreciate about the band is that they came right at the beginning of image starting to dominate music, a time when a band full of mid-thirties quasi-dad-rockers playing pop-rock-funk-new wave could still be cool. Combine a blues pub rock band, a new wave band and the guitar/saxophone player from Sly and the Family Stone, and apparently you get the News. They just seem fun. As The Hold Steady say in the video, it seems like when Huey Lewis and the News get onstage, everybody is ready to party and have a good time

Huey, to me, seems like that friend of your parents who, rather than settling down and starting a family, kept playing in a band. He is under-dressed when your parents have parties, starts drinking earlier and is the only one who swears in front of you.

I guess it just happens to be that his band put out two of the biggest albums of the 80's.

I'm also a sucker for big bands. I fucking love that every Motown track has a huge band on it, which in turn makes the songs sound big. Or Bruce Springsteen, how much does the E-Street Band add over a traditional two guitars, bass and drums outfit? Come to think of it, Huey Lewis and the News is almost a corny 80's version of 70's Bruce, just with less good lyrics. I don't mean to say that his lyrics are bad, because they are actually better than you would think, but c'mon, it's The Boss.

What I was trying to get at in the last paragraph is that I appreciate that everyone in the News plays their instrument. I know that sounds dumb, but bear with me. The News was assembled by combining Clover and another San Francisco band Soundhole. They're almost like a collection of session musicians, but not quite. I guess that I've just grown accustomed to the punk ethos of starting a band no matter if you play an instrument or not, but the fact that everyone in The News is good at their instrument and plays one instrument in particular adds a lot to the music. The basslines are good (dude, I fucking love the bass playing in Huey Lewis and the News) are good because he's only concerned with writing bass, not with anything else in the band.

I hope that this video will maybe illustrate some of what I'm trying to say:


First of all, can everyone please note how good of a live singer Huey Lewis is? Also, how tight the band is.

And man, what a fucking good song.

That video, being from 1987, represents Huey Lewis and the News when they were at the height of their popularity as it probably comes the Fore! world tour. Look how big the set up and band is. Fucking 11 members. They also clearly know exactly how to market themselves. They make themselves seem like everyman, working, lifer musicians by having Huey come out in a plaid shirt, but they're anything but. They are huge pop stars touring on an album that went to number 1 in four countries and sold 5 million copies. That images works for them though and I fucking love it.

The inverse is that they actually are like that and titled their biggest album Sports because they love sports, which would be just tremendous.

Like The Hold Steady, I have a sneaking suspicion that Huey Lewis might actually be a cool guy and lifer musician, which I always appreciate. Look at this article, again from the AV Club, sorry for going overboard on links from them, where he speaks about the importance of live music versus recorded music at sporting events. Not only do wholeheartedly agree with what he's saying and get funny feelings in my chest at him describing the organic sounds of a baseball game, but "live bands are culturally valuable in that they connect a team to a local music community in a real way"? That's just a great statement.

He just seems to come off as really humble most of the time, which I suppose is something that is always attractive in pop starts.

I can't believe how much I have come to like Huey Lewis and the News in the lasts three days. Who would have thought?