Song Of The Day 1/3/2014: Dennis DeYoung - "Boys Will Be Boys"

I had this memory attack. A memory attack is when a past event sort of shows up by some associative process, like Miller's "plate of shrimp" speech from Repo Man. Elements of the memory amplify in your consciousness way more than they should until your cerebrum is overwhelmed. Because memory by definition can be fragmented, this distant memory stays with you until you can satisfy your cerebral cortex's need to relive it in fuller detail.

What I'm trying to say is that today's Song Of The Day tripped and fell into my head Tuesday night and there was no way I could get rid of it until I exorcised it. Where did it come from? When I attended The Recording Workshop in Ohio (an excellent institution) some mmmmph years ago, one of the engineers/lecturers procured a copy of Dennis DeYoung's album Desert Moon.  DeYoung sang with Styx, and is the most clearly enunciating singer in rock history, therefore not a rock singer. His tonsils house not a fleck of gristle. He is more suited to showtunes, and in fact released a Broadway album in 1994.

ANYWAY, at the Recording Workshop, this engineer played Desert Moon to show off its technical gloss. He considered it the best-sounding CD he had ever heard, in terms of fidelity, noise reduction, all that stuff. He did note that he was not taking creativity or songwriting acumen into consideration with his assessment. In other words, he was allowing that even if the song sounded great, it probably still sucked.

"Boys Will Be Boys" is the song he played. Only now am I picking up the "commentary" it's making about male hormonal rage. All I remembered before was that it was annoying and that Dennis was over-enunciating, and that he went on some sort of crazed rant at the end of the song. It made me want to rip the Greek letters off all the frat houses at OU and set them on fire. It doesn't have that same effect now, but I had to expunge it. Many are called but few are chosen.

You're welcome?