I Couldn't Get Away

[Being an 80's music freak has its sad and frightening moments. John called me late yesterday afternoon and told me some anonymous software company was having a party at Ruby Skye and they'd engaged...get ready for it...A Flock of Seagulls to perform! He scored free tickets, there was an open bar, and so much for my Thursday night laundry plans.]

[Ruby Skye is this old theatre that's been converted, with varying degrees of aesthetic success, into a nightclub. We always mock it as being where the Walnut Creek crowd goes when it's time to party in the city. Last night's party was filled, unsurprisingly, with nerdy, middle-aged software types who may remember AFOS's "I Ran," but would be completely confounded by "Wishing" or "Space-Age Love Song." John and I soaked up the free refreshments and bopped to the vintage hits playing over the loudspeaker (Bow Wow Wow remains evergreen), and eventually these four guys dressed as though they'd just finished installing a septic tank shambled onto the stage.]

[Excuse me, but wasn't A Flock of Seagulls all about the guy's hair? (I say "the guy" because, while normally I can tell you in what order various Taylors left Duran Duran, AFOS trivia is too much even for me.) A scraggly blond ponytail dangling behind a sad baseball cap didn't crerate the same glam effect. He (OK, I looked it up. Michael Score.) was stubbly, shapeless, and drunk, and he overdid the looooong note held on the synthesizer, which remains Score's trademark contribution to modern music. They did a several "new" songs, did an extended, grungy version of "I Ran," and John and I decided to leave.

[I was laughing my inward ass off at the spectacle of these earnest, hardworking, middle-aged men, flogging a horse that maybe shouldn't have been allowed to be born twenty years ago. I couldn't wait to get home to write about it. We fell into conversation with the roommates instead, and I didn't have a chance to put down how perfect I thought the night was. I was thinking back to listening to the old KFRC in the early 80's, with Dr. Don Rose, and sitting thru New Year's 1982 writing down the top hundred songs of 1981 as the station counted them down. "I Ran" was in the Top 5, I feel almost sure.]

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