Early last month, a tune that had come to be known as The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet was identified, ending a search that stretched back to 2007. You can read the Wikipedia page linked above, watch the Professor of Rock YouTube video forwarded to me by my cousin Alan shortly after news of the discovery broke, and/or listen to the cracking good "Subways of Your Mind" recorded in 1983 by a short-lived German band called Fex. It's a true feel-good story, with 70ish-year-old musicians experiencing completely unanticipated success and reuniting after decades apart. Definitely worth several minutes of your time to catch up on the story if you haven't already. But my apparently short attention span leads me to be curious about the next great musical mystery.
As it happens, I have a couple of my own mystery songs arising from decades of listening to the radio and watching MTV during its heyday. One dates back to the early 80s, as best as I can recall arising while listening to WEBN, the big AOR FM station in Cincinnati. In my head it's a moderately slow, guitar-driven piece, with of course a male vocalist. The one word I believe I heard in it that's stuck with me? "Sacerdotal." Go figure.
The other came to my attention a few years later via MTV, watching with good friend Mark H, perhaps in the Transy Student Center. We're captivated, not necessarily in the best way, by a repeated, chanted phrase something along the lines of "I'll do anything, anything." The one image I took with me is of a number of people standing while the song plays on. I'm guessing I saw the video only once. It was not remotely a hit. And yet, I've continued to think about this song every so often over the years and have even attempted to find it--to no avail--a couple of times.
I tried again this morning, and something made me tweak the search this time, to "I'd do anything." Bingo. "I'd Do Anything" was the third single from Dead or Alive's first album, Sophisticated Boom Boom. Made #79 in the UK in early 1984. While it didn't chart here, it cracked MTV's playlist by mid-February (though the report in Billboard botched the title):
I suspect a fine book could be written about this list of songs (well, I'd want to read it, anyway).
According to Billboard's MTV reports, "I'd Do Anything" stayed in Light Rotation for several weeks, well into April. It must have been sometime that spring that my one sighting occurred. I wouldn't have placed it quite that early in time; on the other hand, it makes sense from the standpoint of Pete Burns and company not registering with me, as they would have been more than a year away from their breakthrough here in the States.
I suppose I'm only 99% certain that I've finally figured this one out, though that's enough for me to put it in the "case closed" folder. Now, if any of you know of a more-or-less 43-year old song with "sacerdotal" or something akin to that in its lyrics, I'm all ears.
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