It's Just a Blog

First posts are always awkward, aren't they? How to begin.... Well, I suppose I'll start by saying that I'm starting this blog for the same reason everyone else blogs - to record stuff that happens in my life and post it for the world to see. But I could possibly also be blogging as a cheap form of therapy, one-sided of course. If I can vent my frustrations to the world online, and get them off my chest, I'll feel much better. Feel free to leave comments if you'd like to make this therapy two-sided, like a proper session. And this blog also gives me something to do with my free time, of which I now have more than I would like, having been laid off from my job a few months back. Aah, my first online venting - I feel better already.

I chose the title of my blog, Nowhere Girl, from a favorite song of mine. It was a single by B Movie, from 1982, probably their only hit. I bought it as an import single as a teenager growing up on Long Island, New York, as it wasn't released in America. When B-Movie finally released their one and only album in 1985 (in America as well as the U.K.), they re-recorded Nowhere Girl for inclusion on it. But by 1985 "New Wave" was changing, becoming more commercial and pop-oriented (Curiosity Killed the Cat? Give me a break!). The new version of "Nowhere Girl" replaced the swirling, moody synthesizers of the original with a much brighter, upbeat piano, and it ruined the song. The moodiness of the synthesizers was evocative of the solitude that I imagined Nowhere Girl to be living in. At least the original version of the song made it onto the soundtrack of the 1999 film "200 Cigarettes," so it proves someone else remembered it. But B-Movie did what many other bands in the mid-80s did: re-record their early 80s hits to make them more successful. Of course, the new versions sucked. "Pretty in Pink" by the Psychedelic Furs immediately comes to mind. The irony of the re-recorded version is that the Molly Ringwald film of the same name was named after the original version because it was Ringwald's favorite song at the time. Yet the film used (and possibly commissioned, I don't know offhand) the newer version, with saxophones (gasp!), instead of the original version which had inspired it, because it was more commercial. The original in my opinion remains one of the all-time classics of 80s New Wave music. Another example of a crappy mid-80s remake of a great early 80s song is "Don't Stand So Close to Me" by the Police. I was particularly disappointed some years ago when I purchased the Police's Greatest Hits CD to find that the record company substituted the original version of the song with "Don't Stand So Close to Me '87." WTF? Why do record companies do that?!

I've rambled on long enough, but I'll leave you with the opening lines of the B Movie song. When I first heard them as a teenager in what was arguably the happiest time of my life, they were just lyrics from a really cool song. Whenever I hear it today, as part of my 9-hour Best of the 80s playlist on my iPod, I still get a chill up my spine because it takes me back to the time when the New Wave movement was at its height, and at its best, and it was exciting. But today these lines strike a chord with me because I feel they relate to the person that I am now, twenty-five years later. Not that I'm depressed, like one of those disaffected Goth teens posting their innermost thoughts on MySpace as a subconscious cry for help, mind you. I just feel like I've become more solitary in nature over the years. Not in a bad way, really, but perhaps more solitary than I ought to be. But there you are.

Nowhere Girl, you're living in a dream.
Nowhere Girl, you stay behind the scenes.
Nowhere Girl, you never go outside.
Nowhere Girl, 'cause you prefer to hide.