Song Of The Day 10/17/2014: The Police - "When The World Is Running Down, You Make The Best Of What's Still Around"

You Pick The Artist II: Rich Rau gave me the Police. Ah, the Police. One of the groups I loved in high school, then forced myself to reappraise in the light of Sting's mostly rock-free, ingratiatingly effete solo career. I started to get a little picky, I admit. Songs like "Born in the 50s" and "Message In a Bottle" started to sound saccharine to me, when at one time I would have cranked them up loud in the boombox inside my backyard tent. That was before I heard Gang Of Four. Anyway, partially because the onset of age has turned me a little soft and more forgiving of the overstated graphic design of the British New Wave, I lightened up. I can enjoy things now. Life's so much better now that I've found my favorite brand-name expectorant.

I'm pretty sure my first Police album was Zenyatta Mondatta, two foreign-sounding words The Police just made up, half of which also provided the name for a prize-winning Thoroughbred race horse. I heard the horse actually preferred The Cure, but who can tell, am I right? All told it's probably still my favorite of the Police's five studio albums, although in more mentholated moments Ghost In the Machine and its bracing coldness is more my speed. My jam, as it were, from ZM is "When The World Is Running Down, You Make The Best Of What's Still Around." I like the mundane logic of the narrator, the droll notion of austerity as a lifestyle choice, and its calling out James Brown's appearance on The T.A.M.I. Show. And they got through that big long title without using parentheses as a crutch. Good show, blondies!

I found some other Police songs that I have bruised, nostalgic affection for: