Adam and Huey and Sarge
In the room in which I am writing this, I can look to my left and see a giant French movie poster for 1987’s Dragnet. I can look to my right and see several 1988 and 1989 Mets Starting Lineup figures on top of my bookshelf (from which they fell last Friday during The Great New Jersey Earthquake of 2024). Straight ahead are two stacks of TV Guides from throughout the 1980s.
I say this not to give you reasons why women should stay away from me but as a way of telling you that I am very invested in the 1980s. Which you probably already knew if you’ve been following along here. And, hey, thanks for doing that!
But I am also saying this as a way of introduction to what I have come to discuss this week—namely, a confluence of events that found me, over the course of four days, at a concert, a Broadway musical, and a wrestling convention, all celebrating different moments in a happy childhood. I’m pretty accustomed to such celebrations, but rarely do they come in such rapid succession.
It was pretty exciting. And weird. But mostly exciting.
Before we got cable TV and, by association, MTV, our major music video consumption came by way of a show that aired semiregularly on WWOR called Top 40 Videos. I don’t think there were any VJs involved like they had on MTV (this YouTube clip that is mostly commercials indicates that there was a voiceover guy named Kenny), and to the best of my recollection, there wasn’t a lot of variety in the videos they showed. “That’s All” by Genesis got played a lot. “Love Is a Battlefield” showed up frequently. And Yes’s “Owner of a Lonely Heart,” with its snake, did its best to scare me on a regular basis.
That video succeeded quite frequently in its mission, but it was another video in heavy rotation that confused me and, in its own way, filled me with terror. That video was for Adam Ant’s “Strip.”
There is nothing inherently terrifying about it, and through adult eyes, it’s cheesy and funny. But through a child’s eyes, there s a guy with a bow in his hair kind of dressed like a weird pirate who keeps showing his shoulder a lot and he’s talking about stripping, which I think is something I shouldn’t be listening to a weird pirate talking about, and there’s a woman who’s taking her clothes off and then the weird pirate is taking his clothes off too.
It was a lot to process.
Especially for a child who doesn’t know what it means to process something.
Anyway, “Strip” was aired more than a few times, and it made me uncomfortable every time . But I kept watching it. Granted, there were not many other options in the late afternoon on a Saturday. But despite the terror that welled up inside of me on each viewing, I kind of liked the song. I probably sang it around the house.
It was a few years until I heard “Goody Two Shoes” (I don’t think I saw that video until adulthood), but that one had all of the hook power of “Strip” with none of the terror. It soon became a top jam, and I eventually bought it on a 45. Somewhere along the way, I worked past my terror at the sight and sound of Adam Ant.
I never really made it beyond “Goody Two Shoes,” but that one song was enough for me to buy a last-minute ticket to see him play Webster Hall a few years ago. I keyed into a few other songs of his at that show (though I spent most of the time waiting for “Goody Two Shoes”), and so when I saw he was coming back around, and with The English Beat, I was in. On to the State Theatre in New Brunswick!
I’ve seen The English Beat (now with just Dave Wakeling from the original lineup carrying on the legacy) a few times since I arrived (very late) to my English Beat fandom, so I knew they’d be a fun opener. I guess I should have been prepared for the largely, ahem, advanced-of-age crowd to stay in their seats during a show that really should be spent on your feet, but it was still disheartening. I mean, I like sitting a lot too, but keeping your ass glued to a seat during “Ranking Full Stop” seems like a bad use of your time on earth. But at least some folks got up for “Tenderness,” “Save It for Later,” and “Mirror in the Bathroom.” So that was nice.
People did stay on their feet for most of Adam Ant’s set, and midway through, the opening notes of “Strip” hit. He did not play it at the Webster Hall show, so this was a live debut for me. And I was able to enjoy it without feeling any real sense of terror at all. Hooray for progress!
“Goody Two Shoes” opened up the encore, and sounded as good as it could without a horn section (but two drummers, augmented at points in the set by another pair of bass drums the bassist and one of the guitarists pounded). I don’t think I’ve ever heard that song and not immediately felt a sense of intense happiness. Perhaps as someone who doesn’t drink and doesn’t smoke, I feel a kinship to the song. Oe maybe it’s just a good song. Whatever the case, it was good to hear it live again, almost 40 years after being terrified by the weird pirate baring his shoulder.
I’m sure there was a Huey Lewis and the News video on Top 40 Videos more than once, and maybe that was even where I saw my first Huey video. All I know (actually, I know lots of things, but it seems impolite to brag) is that from the moment I checked Sports out of the Port Richmond branch of the New York Public Library in Staten Island, I have been an unwavering Huey Lewis and the News fan. Can’t stop, won’t stop. I can go into great detail on this matter (and, in fact, have already gone into pretty good detail about it), and probably will do so at some point, but perhaps the greatest testament to my HLN fandom is that when I heard a musical based on Huey Lewis and the News songs was coming to Broadway, I thought, “Yeah, I’d probably go see that.”
The major stumbling block to my attendance would be that I would rather do almost anything than go see a Broadway musical. I have seen three in my life, and that seems like plenty to me. I can appreciate the art form, and Broadway stages are full of immensely talented human beings. It’s just not for me. I’m pretty sure it never will be. I imagine Broadway isn’t too broken up about it.
Another hurdle to overcome for me seeing anything on Broadway would be the average ticket price. I know those immensely talented human beings and the immensely talented stagehands and crew behind the scenes need to get paid, but the cost per minute of entertainment still seems awfully hjgh to me. It’s a lot to pay for something I am probably not going to love.
Which is why when I read that tickets for The Heart of Rock and Roll were going to be offered for $19.85 on the opening day of ticket sales, and that Huey Lewis himself would be at the box office to greet fans and take Polaroids with the first 50 people in line, I decided it was time to get back to Broadway!
It turned out the tickets were for balcony seats for preview performances, but that seemed fine to me. And so I purchased a pair of tickets for the second week of previews and convinced my sister (who, like my mother, enjoys Broadway; my dad, on the other hand, had an inexplicable disdain of Julie Andrews) to come along for the fun. After I bought the tickets, I realized that they were for a day after my sister and I were going to see Adam Ant and The English Beat, so we had a doubleheader of 80s joy ahead of us. Well, I hoped the musical would bring joy.
And, in fact, it did. It generally takes me a few minutes to adjust to the fact that I’m watching something where people might burst into song at any moment, but once I made it through, I let the Huey wash over me and had a good time. You can experience the show for yourself (probably for more than $19.85, but there are reasonably priced rush tickets, too), but the basic gist is that there’s a guy who used to be in a band who now works at a cardboard box factory and there’s this woman who works for her dad who owns said factory, and then Broadway things happen. I don’t know if it’s good as musicals go, but it’s a few hours where I got to hear people sing Huey Lewis and the News songs (or sometimes slightly tweaked versions of Huey Lewis and the News songs), and it would be hard for that not to be a good time. Am I right?
I do have one very important note: The bassist in the band in the musical is wearing a WCW Starrcade shirt, which, as a wrestling fan, I appreciate. However, the musical is set in 1987, and though, as the T-shirt states, Starrcade started in 1983, there was no WCW in 1987. So this shirt is invalid, and I don’t see how the musical can be succcessful if this is allowed to continue.
I took a day off from the 1980s (though I never really take a day off from the 1980s) but then headed on a train to Philadelphia Saturday morning to attend my first WrestleCon. Now, of course, I have attended many, many, too many wrestling conventions, but I have never attended WrestleCon, which runs annually on WrestleMania weekend in the city where WrestleMania takes place. After skipping the closest one in the last 10 years (WrestleMania 35 in Brooklyn), I figured this year was as good a time as any to hit WrestleCon. I suppose you might be thinking “Is there really ever a good time to hit WrestleCon?” It’s a fair question. I doubt we’ll ever really know the answer.
There is a part of me—the part that grew up going to local WWF house shows in the 1980s—that would like to attend WrestleMania at least once in my life (I did watch Wrestlemania 2 on closed-circuit TV at Wagner College). But then I am forced to remind myself that I don’t really like wrestling that much anymore, so sitting in a football stadium for anywhere from five to 10 hours over two days is probably not going to be something I enjoy. Truth be told, since maybe WrestleMania VI, the odds of me having a pleasant WrestleMania experience have been increasingly long.
But WrestleCon, full of wrestlers I grew up watching, seemed like something I could dip my toe in. At this point in my life, I’ve met most of the wrestlers I care to meet (what a sentence!). But that doesn’t mean I can’t find something in my Apartment of Ridiculous Things to get signed by a Hero of My Youth. And so I pulled out an issue of Wrestling’s Main Event I purchased not very long ago that had everyone’s favoriite fake drill sergeant, Sgt. Slaughter, on the cover (the inside article has some great photos of Sarge’s visit to Jay Thomas’s radio show on WKTU); a trading card featuring announcer Tony Schiavone; and the first issue of WCW’s comic book with Lex Luger on the cover and made my way to the Sheraton in the City of Brotherly Love.
I had heard that Sarge will put you in the Cobra Clutch for a fee, so when his handler ran through the options of what I could buy for what price, it was merely a formality, as I knew I would be paying whatever price they wanted. How often in life do you get the chance to pay a 75-year-old man to put you in a submission hold? Two, three times at most?
And so Sarge signed my magazine (“Oh, I haven’t seen this one in a while”), we took several different poses, and then it was time for the Cobra Clutch. I dove right into the ridiculousness and did my best sell job, fake gasping for air and tapping almost immediately. I haven’t watched thousands of hours of professional wrestling to just stand there placidly with a smile on my face. But inside I was pretty happy. Also, as part of the package, I was given a commemorative coin to mark my official membership in the Cobra Clutch Club. I feel your jealousy, and it is warranted.
You’re probably hoping to see the photo. I can’t just be giving away a photo of me in the Cobra Clutch for free here. That’s OnlyFans stuff.
I also had a pleasant conversation with Tony Schiavone about the joy that 6:05 on Saturday night brought me as a child (please don’t make me explain the wrestling time slot on WTBS), opted not to get Lex Luger’s autograph, bought Ken Patera’s book and forgave him for the trauma he caused me when he and Big John Studd cut off Andre the Giant’s hair (“I’m glad you worked through that”), and took a picture with Hector Guerrero because I was wearing my Olympic Auditorium shirt purchased at La Plaza de Cultura Y Artes in Los Angeles after checking out the exhibit on the Olympic there (running for another month and worth checking out if you are in Los Angeles), and the Guerreros were a big part of the Olympic’s history.
After leaving WrestleCon, I checked out the WWE World that was going on at the convention center, which was underwhelming only because there wasn’t enough stuff from the 1980s there for my liking (though they did have one of Captain Lou’s shirts and Mr. T’s trunks from Wrestlemania 2). And then after walking through Philly for a bit, I called an end to my three-day tribute to the 1980s, pleased with how it all went down and again grateful for a happy childhood full of music videos and men in tights beating each other up for my enjoyment.
Vive Le ’80s!