During my freshman year of high school, back when I was first learning there was more than just "both kinds" of music (country and western) Rod Stewart's song "Infatuation" became something of an unwanted earworm of mine. I didn't know Stewart's history, mind you, beyond the fact that he'd done some disco stuff, which I didn't like. Now, of course, I love his Small Faces work, along with pre-disco stuff like the ubiquitous "Maggie May." I'm still not a huge fan of "Infatuation," but that video is so very, very 80s. I can imagine the coke-infused pitch session for the video: "So, you're stalking a gangster's moll, see? Binoculars and cameras. It's like that French film, Blow Up, real artsy. Only you're a peeping Tom and she's half-naked most of the time." Yeah, it doesn't get much more 80s than that.
Earlier this week I heard Rod Stewart's "Some Guys Have All the Luck" for the first time in what is probably decades. It's Stewart in his 80s pop mode, before he shifted to a more adult contemporary style. It's a typical, visually-striking MTV-friendly video as well. But you know what I most remember about it? A written song parody that turned up in the pages of Cracked or one of those other Mad knock-offs at the time. The parody was "Dumb Guys" and seemed like it should've been a Weird Al bit, but wasn't. The lyrics went something like, "Dumb guys can drive you nuts/Dumb guys are such a pain/Dumb guys don't need a break/Dumb guys have water-on-the-brain." Hmm. Now that I write it out, it doesn't seem nearly as clever as I remember. But I can assure you, my 14-year-old self thought this was high comedy.
