night boat to Houma

Madness, "Night Boat to Cairo"

The Police, Zenyatta Mondatta
The (English) Beat, Special Beat Service
The Damned, The Chiswick Singles and Another Thing
Madness, One Step Beyond
Bad Manners, Special Brew

We took the night boat to Houma to go pick up the dog from my mom's and this excellent throwback soundtrack pulled from my Terrebonne High Class of '87 tape case saw us through the impenetrable darkness of Spur 70, a truck route illuminated only by the moon, sugar cane field fires, and the occasional glitter of a petroleum processing plant. It worked so well I'm going to queue it up again to facilitate the following remarks:

• Zenyatta Mondatta has a marked skronk side I'd forgotten. Also, I could listen to a 4-hour full permutation version of "Voices Inside My Head." Does there exist a massive dub workout of the tune? Sly & Robbie did "Walking on the Moon" but it's not quite what I'm after.
  
  
  The Police, "Voices Inside My Head". I like the guy's MTV-style production credits.
     
• The (English) Beat's "Save it for Later" has always been one of my all-time favorite songs despite my previously not having a clue what Dave Wakeling is crooning in most of the verses. A lacuna, if you will.
  
  Black air and seven seas
  All rotten though, but what can you do?
  I don't know how I'm meant to act
  With all of you lot.
  
  Kinda heavy for this little video, which incidentally depicts the little basement nightclub in which I will hang out should I make it to Heaven, reading French paperbacks while 1980's insouciant English babes dance with hand motions.
  
  
  The (English) Beat, "Save it For Later"
     
• Damn, the Damned were good.
  
  
  The Damned, "Smash It Up"
      
• History may cast them as clowns, but Madness was no slouch of a band. Nor was Bad Manners.
  
  
  Bad Manners, "Inner London Violence" from the 1987 film Dance Craze.
      
• I wish there was an actual night boat to Houma. The drive is a bit of a circuitous slog no matter which way you go, so it might as well be by night boat. My parent's house is right on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, which I could pick up just across the river at the locks in Plaquemine, so it is possible.
  
  Cajun Ska Cruise! It's an idea whose time has come.