For a Song: I Feel Possessed

Crowded House: I Feel Possessed

[purchase]

This week kind of fell apart for me. So, the album review will return next week, and in the mean time, here is another For a Song. One thing that happened is that the election has sparked a political argument on my Facebook page between myself and a guy I grew up with. The details don’t matter here, but it reminded me of something.

I used to have a friend who worked in a record store. I would hang out there after work, and we would talk about music. His tastes ran towards pop, and his favorites were Hall and Oates. My tastes were more eclectic, then as now. Each of us believed that we could turn the other on to something that they would really like if they just gave it a chance, and occasionally it worked. More often, it led to us getting very loud. I took the woman who would later be my wife to meet this friend one day, and things went as they normally did. Later, she asked me why I went in there if we hated each other so much. From this, I learned that it’s a guy thing. Since then, I have had this kind of friendship a few other times, and the “arguments” have been about sports or politics usually. We unite over our total disagreement with each other. I can only say that these friendships are real to us, no matter what they look like to outside observers.

Getting back to my record store friend, In early 1989, he presented me with a cassette tape of his “best songs of 1988”, so I had to make my version for him. I Feel Possessed by Crowded House was on it. Not the song so much, but Crowded House became one of the groups we both liked. This was a band that could achieve a soaring emotional quality in their songs and singing, without having to resort to a heavy handed production style. I Feel Possessed has the slight reverb that was found on so many records in the 80s, but that’s about it. The rest is a great song performed perfectly, and that’s why it stands up so much better than much of the music of that year.

By now, if you recognize the image I chose for this post, you’ll know exactly why I chose it.