Lucky Number
Throughout my life music has represented so many different things it would be hard to put my finger on defining what it means to me. There is a reason I have looked at individual songs as bookmarks to delineate a time, a place, a person, an era, an artist, or a mood. As I have explained countless times in the over 90 Musical Triggers already written, music, and the individual songs and artists take me away to a time in my life. Music is meant to help me remember and connect to a memory or memories tucked away in a box and stored within the shelves of my hippocampus. I have discovered in these more advanced years of living that I may have a hard time remembering what happened yesterday, but hearing the opening to a familiar tune from the past will bring floods of thoughts and recollections, along with full lyrics from the time when the melody was introduced to me as if it was the yesterday I had just forgotten.
I will hear my triggers in most unusual places, which is likely part of the charm or even the point of the idea behind Musical Triggers as a project or a concept. The triggers I experience are meant to produce a smile or remind me about things that almost feel like fictional stories from another person’s life. If you live long enough the past will begin to feel foreign. Each trigger will also likely produce a series of sub-triggers either because I have been re-enlightened about an artist or other tunes connected to the current trigger are suddenly bursting forth and reminding me of still more thoughts and people emerging from those stored boxes. Occasionally, I take the trigger and let it ring repeatedly through my head like an earworm. Other times I will stop what I am doing and dive into YouTube to watch and listen to the memory. Whether the sub-triggers are a part of the original pop into my head or a product of the scores of similar suggestions an algorithm within YouTube will provide, I am bound to get lost for periods running from minutes to hours down a rabbit hole.
Sometimes a trigger will arise directly from a visit to YouTube (I spend a lot of time there between my constant queries into all matters of life, ASMR, and researching new music to keep my mind open and adventurous (while potentially building and then creating new musical triggers for the future). During a recent YouTube visit, I was reminded of 1978 and a period of time where quirk was king (and queen) and the world of alternative sounds and artists had really begun to take shape and forge its way into the mindset of popular music.
I suppose the question I would want to answer first is how I would define quirk or quirkiness for the sake of my reference above. I have always found quirkiness in music to be represented by artists who individually or collectively were different from the norm, perhaps a bit odd or unpredictable in their manner, dress, behavior, or appearance. Something dangerous or risky always worked for me. Different sounds alone would stop me dead in my tracks and force me to question what I was listening to. Did I like it? Did it make me laugh? Was it memorable? All this and so much more was prevalent (although not exclusively) in this period when artists were breaking all manner of molds and testing the waters in alternative, punk, and the emergence of new wave trends. Many of the sounds of the period would be called ‘underground,’ but that did not matter to me. I was not the sort that sought out anything but the mainstream, music is music and I listened to almost anything if I found it appealing.
In 1978 there was a plethora of diverse or unusual sounds and artists. I remember my introductions to the mighty Kate Bush, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Martha and the Muffins, The Ramones, Nina Hagen, Blondie, Television, The Clash, Elvis Costello, Iggy Pop, The Talking Heads, Devo, Kraftwerk, The Cure, Gary Numan, The B52s, amongst scores of punk bands, all defying the normal concepts of the day. It was at that time I was also introduced to an American / British artist by the name of Lene Lovich. The song I first heard was called “Lucky Number,” a punk/alternative/spacy-pop number that went to the top 3 in the UK and identified a sound my 20-year-old new-wave mind and soul could not shake. The only thing that made the experience even better was the look. When I first was able to set my eyes on Lovich singing “Lucky Number” I found an artist with a distinct brand in almost every way possible.
1978 preceded my VJ and DJ years (and my move to California by two years), but the artist, that song, and some subsequent releases would play heavily into my rotations for several years to come. There is a bounce to Lovich’s music that awakens the brain and forces the feet to begin bouncing up and down. Many of the new wave artists and their fare could be challenges originally on disco-laden dance floors but others, like “Lucky Number,” “New Toy,” “It’s You, Only You (Mein Schmerz),” or “Blue Hotel” prescribed a different type of movement for dancing, even if it were to be defined as odd or unconventional to most.
I remember bringing Lene Lovich’s “Lucky Number” to parties in some of the places that I was inhabiting at that time in my life. In that period, I was still in Phoenix, Arizona working with TGI Fridays and having parties with people who could be termed as unconventional themselves. Not everyone was drawn to the music that was beginning to take over my life. I could always get a few people to ask me “What IS this?” but I was already beginning to see and understand that my people had not yet fully appeared in my life and when they did I would be one of many celebrating the sounds of new wave, punk, alternative, and any other defined category that was ‘out there’ and just about as far away from The Eagles as possible.
Truthfully, artists like Lene Lovich, and songs like “Lucky Number” and “New Toy,” (written by Thomas Dolby for Lene Lovich, and used as a jingle for Target at Christmas time) helped rocket me into a new world, saving me from the doldrums of life in Arizona. My adult life truly began with the advent of alternative sounds. I wrote about Dolby in January with Europa and the Pirate Twins.
I never used to cry ‘cause I was all alone
For me, myself and I is all I’ve ever known
I never felt the need to have a hand to hold
In everything I do I take complete control
That’s where I’m coming from
My lucky number’s one
I’ve everything I need to keep me satisfied
There’s nothing you can do to make me change my mind
I’m having so much fun
My lucky number’s one
Ah! Oh! Ah! Oh!