Day #21 of the 30 Day Music Meme

Day #21 of 30 Day Music Meme - a song you like with a person's name in the title

The 1982 disco hit by Laurie Branigan....(not the Van Morrison song or the one sung by Jim Morrison) - no this is the song written by Laurie Brannigan and hit the top of the charts in the 1980s. I first heard it on the musical Flashdance and had the song from the Flashdance soundtrack.

Watch on YouTube

The lyric that sold me is "you really don't remember or is it something that he said, or all the voices in your head calling...Gloria". It's a song that says a lot about our toxic male culture's effect on women. It's a song of rage, and agency.

I adore the raw and in your face lyrics and the sound of it.

(no subject)

I'm loving Halt Catch Fire - which gets better as it moves forward. Had a nice discussion with my brother about it today. We both love the character Joe McMillian, and both have issues with Cameron, the somewhat one-dimensional gamer - although we both knew people a lot like her.

The series is an excellent inside look at the world of the dot.coms and the computer companies from the 1980s to the 1990s. It airs on Netflix, but was originally an AMC series. I like it and the characters so much better than Breaking Bad, it is much more real to me - and much tighter, with stronger female characters. But it got less acclaim and less notice, unfortunately.

Bro and me both worked in the early dot-com industry. We watched it develop from lap-tops to the world-wide web. I remember Mozaic, Netscape, Yahoo, Calnet, Compuserve, American Online, and all the others. And when Microsoft Windows revolutionized the PC market. I started work on the old IBM machines, where you had to basically put in code to get anywhere.

And my brother started in game development.

Also it depicts very well how people deal with each other and allow their insecurities and egos to get in the way. What is most brilliant about it - is how they keep failing. It's a great subversion of a classic trope - which is usually in television, you watch people succeed at their endeavors. These guys continue to fail. They have these great ideas, but they are either too early, one of the key players doesn't step up to the plate, etc. All the things that go wrong, often do.

Success is kind of a game of luck. It's happenstance.

It's what my brother loves about the series - we watch them try and constantly fail.

And I appreciate it too. It's so realistic. Most, actually all the companies I've been in - that were in the private sector failed in some way at their intent. They either got success by merging and laying massive amounts of people off, got bought out at a low sum, or just failed.

Another great bit is how evolved and redefined each character is - they are constantly changing. And how it addresses romantic love and the process of building a company. All of it.

Four seasons. 10 episodes each. On Netflix.

Check it out.