Song Of The Day 9/11/2015: The Lafayettes – “Life's Too Short”
“Life’s Too Short” was the Lafayettes’ only single, with “Nobody But You” on the other side. I’m not sure which was the “A” and which was the “B,” but it’s “Life’s Too Short” that made the charts for as long as it did. If you’re an ’80s cinemaphile and this song sounds distantly familiar to you, that might be because it was featured in the original John Waters version of Hairspray (1988). Actors playing the Lafayettes (“Lead Lafayette,” “Lafayette #2” and “Lafayette #3”) lip-synch the song on the Corny Collins TV show. (The Lafayettes were from Baltimore, where Waters is from and where his early films are generally set.)
The song was also a surprising early inspiration for none other than Brian Eno: “'Life's Too Short'... (was) a very mysterious single that meant a lot to me. The main rhythmic element in it is just someone playing rimshots, playing on the edge of the snare drum, there’s no big drums in it. So you have this very sparse background feeling and this urgent singing over the top.” And that, my friends, is how Music For Airports came to be, and why that middle-aged couple across the street who wears natural fibers all the time looks so blissfully unaware on Neighborhood Watch Night.