The Search for Power

I make really great cards. Ever since I was in single digits, I’ve been putting my artistic ability to use as the poor man’s John Hallmark[1]. Whether it is a birthday or Kwanzaa, if I have the time and love[2], you have gotten a piece of paper crafted and folded with devotion. Even when I went through a spurt of mass production in my preteens, when we got our first computer and I was introduced to clip art, I still made sure every tagline was something I had never used before. If my life plan had veered a little to the left, I’d be in Kansas City right now dreaming up Shoebox greetings.

My most recent creation was to be a belated wedding card for my friends Zach and Shana. Originally I was going to make a very Sponge Bob or Love Boat card[3] but I scrapped that in favor the theme of Addicted to Love.

The idea was set. All I needed was to draw the famed Robert Palmer Girls add the catchphrase and viola. This would have gone right to plan if I could have found better photo reference then paused grainy YouTube clips. All I had to work with was blurred blobs of tight hair and make-up. After two hours of crappy sketches I gave up for the week. So until better reference is found, I’m sorry Zach and Shana, the wedding card is off. It’s OK I still have five months.

The upside of this was that I got to do a lot of unintentional Robert Palmer research. You may remember Mr. Palmer as Rolling Stone’s best dressed rocker of the 80’s and for the model posse that seemed to follow him like an unaffected band of puppies, but just before his landmark Riptide album made Robert Palmer a Pepsi spokesman, he was involved in one of the more successful all-time supergroups Power Station.

If it’s not coming to you, the Palmer/ Duran Duran/ CHIC amalgam brought us the international hits like “Some Like it Hot” and “Bang a Gong (Get It On).” Just reading this should be making you sing to yourself, “Some like it hot………some like hawwwwt.” And then you would sing to yourself. “Feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel the heeeeeeeeeeat!/ Burning you up/ Ready or not!” I know this isn’t just me. They played Live Aid for crying out loud.

The video for “Some Like It Hot” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M41Xnqq8FQw is an 80’s visual history lesson featuring bad animation, worse video graphics, a woman shaving her armpits, the Duran Duran guys looking like they got kicked out of a Robert Smith’s supergroup[4] and Robert Palmer in priest’s clothing preaching to a pink cactus that was occasionally “on fire.” So why on Earth doesn’t anyone own The Power Station album?

After a few inquiries, I found that only two of my music inclined friends even admitted interest. Nick said that he recently almost bought it with one of his gift cards and my friend Chad admitted to owning the vinyl back in his tender Minnesota youth, and tried to convince me of the power Duran Duran’s other side project Arcadia had back in the day. But no one, not one hipster, nerd or wall street power broker had a hard copy.

My own excuse is simple. I’ve never really been much of a music person. The breadth of my pop culture knowledge focuses on TV and Movies. I’ll only buy an album if it comes highly recommended from a small cabinet of musical advisors or if I have to buy it for my wife. In the 80’s, I purchased one tape: The Back to the Future soundtrack. Mostly for The Power of Love because Huey Lewis was and still is my idol. His album, with the News, “Sports” is one of the most ironically owned albums in history. It wasn’t til Queensryche’s Empire that I bought another.

Chad suggested I just download it, but it wouldn’t be the same. I want to know that somewhere out there. There is someone (Chris?) that looks through their stack of CD’s when they are sick of what’s on their iTunes and at least thinks about grabbing the Power Station out from between their Postal Service and Pretty Girls Make Graves.

Maybe availability was the problem? What if it was impossible to find? It would surely be more of in store impulse buy then an online search driven quest. I went to three local “cool” record stores in the heart of Williamsburg and Greenpoint. I even had to explain to the counter guardian at AMny’s own Earwax exactly what I was talking about. Sadly, he just got defensive and said, “We don’t sell 80’s pop here.” So be it, it seemed its ironic value was even higher then I thought.

I gave it look see in the music department of Barnes & Noble, thinking bigger means Power Station. Well not quite. I did find four different Greatest Hits albums of Robert Palmer including a 20th Century Masters album. Now before you get hysterical there is also Master of the Twentieth Century album for Eddie Money, Tears For Fears and someone called Rainbow. There was also a two disc anthology that featured the hits of Power Station, but it wasn’t the prize. I wanted the bad cover art. The surely cryptic liner notes. The photo of Robert looking like he was the manager that just happened to get into the picture.

To avoid the shutout I went to Virgin. If it wasn’t there, then it wasn’t in print and that was that. I flug open the doors from a bitter Union Square and launched into the maze of Madonna albums, Miss Sunshine DVD’s and $10 things that I already owned and when I got to the P’s just above Powerman 5000 there it was[5]. Red and black jagged cutouts, the band awkward picture and eight rock songs from an era when you could get away with having eight songs on a record. And of all of this nostalgic bliss and ironic superstardom for a mere $18. So maybe Chad’s right; I’ll download it.

[1] Historical note: This name is completely made up.
[2] Aka If I’m not being too lazy.
[3] Their wedding was at a public beach and reception was on Narragasset Bay.
[4] Which I found out was called, “The Glove.”
[5] I also found Arcadia.