Tag: New shoes

Movie Music Monday – 48 Hours

I always check out “This Day in Entertainment History” when preparing for Movie Music Mondays. I’ve had a song I’ve wanted to feature on here for some time. At first glance, I thought I had the perfect day to tie it in yesterday. One site read, “48 Hours released on this day in 1988.” My first thought was, “Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte!”

Now, count my mistakes with me. Then, (1) I realized that I was looking at the 19th of January and not the 20th. This made me sad because the song I wanted to feature is from this movie. But 1988? Something wasn’t right with the date. I thought on it more 1988 seemed “late.” (2) When I checked the facts, sure enough, the movie was actually released in 1982. This made more sense. So I went back to the original website and realized that I missed something else. (3) It was CBS TV’s “48 Hours” that was released on January 19th.

I chock it up to my lack of sleep and everything else going on. Whoops!

So here we are. I have absolutely no reason to feature this movie today or the song I want to play. But, I’m going to do it anyway and I hope that’s ok.

The standout song from the 48 Hours soundtrack for me was The BusBoys “The Boys Are Back In Town.” Not to long ago, I posted the ten songs that were scientifically proven to make you happy. This song is one of my “happy songs!” If I had to describe it, I’d say it is a little jump blues, a little rock and roll, and a little shuffle/boogie.

The BusBoys keyboard player Brian O’Neal wrote this song and he shared the story of it with songfacts.com:

“The BusBoys were signed to Arista Records. Our manager at the time was Michael Klenfner, who was best friends with John Belushi and well connected with our agency ICM.

One of the songs on {our sophomore album} was called ‘New Shoes.’ It was a unique blend of rock and soul, with a cool shuffle back beat. Well, there was this movie being made called 48 HRS. at Paramount Studios. The film was originally slated to star Richard Pryor, but the newest, hottest young comedian of Saturday Night Live fame ended up in the role. The director was Walter Hill, the producers Lawrence Gordon and Joel Silver. Both Walter and Eddie Murphy were represented by my aforementioned agency, ICM.

I get a call from my agent, asks if I wanted to be in this movie. I said I was interested and he set up a meeting with Joel Silver. Joel explained the film had a bar scene that Eddie was supposed to go into and there was going to be a band playing. Joel and Walter wanted a Black band that had a rock and roll edge. We were and still are one of the primary roots, rock and soul bands that fit the bill.

They had already heard ‘New Shoes’ and wanted four more songs. My brother, Kevin O’Neal and I wrote some songs over the next couple of weeks. At the recording session for the demos to present to Joel we had finished three songs: ’48 Hours,’ ‘Love Songs Are For Crazies’ and ‘Monkey Mash.’ It was 2:00 AM and the band was tired and ready to go home when I say ‘Guys, I’ve got one more song.’ Groans. ‘It’s going to be an easy, blues type shuffle with a little gospel opening piano lick – and it’s going to be called – ‘ (me looking around) ‘- – The Boys Are Back – – In Town.’

We laid the track and I finished the lyrics and the vocal a few days later. When the tracks were all completed I thought we had three real songs and one ‘filler.’ As it turns out, ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’ became our signature tune and was featured in the movie. It doesn’t have any connection with the Thin Lizzy song other than the title. I always liked their track, but wasn’t thinking anything about it when I composed ours. I’ve since come to think of theirs as an English approach and ours an expression of American rock, roll and soul. The movie and the song became wildly popular. For reasons only conspiracy theorists can explain, the song wasn’t released when the movie first came out. For almost twenty years it was probably the most famous song in the history of America that had never been officially released. We finally made the song available to the public on our CD by the same name in 2000.“

So if you woke up today with the “Monday blahs,” I hope this one puts you in a great mood!

Date Night

I took Monday off work this week so my wife and I could have a date night.  We lined up a sitter (Nana) and began to decide what we wanted to do. There have been plenty of things that my wife and I have wanted to do for a while, so I started looking at those. I was truly surprised at just how many things are closed on Mondays!

We’d been talking about going to the Henry Ford Museum/Greenfield Village in Dearborn for sometime and almost booked a visit. However, when I thought about how my wife would be working Sunday night, I didn’t think the trip would be fun for her on little or no sleep. That will be a trip for another day.

She has been wanting to get a pedicure for a while, so I decided that we might be able to do that together. NOT because I like them, as a matter of fact, I’m not too keen on folks touching my feet. I would do it, however, if my wife wanted to because we’d get time together. I couldn’t get an appointment, so we skipped that.

Saturday night, we talked about getting take out and bringing our mattress out to the living room to watch movies. By Sunday we decided that we’d actually go to one of our favorite restaurants and do some shopping.

I made sure that Sam got to sleep through the day. I took the kids to Nana’s in the early afternoon, ran some errands, and was home by 3pm. When she woke up, we showered and got ready to go. We figured we’d shop first and then eat later.

Not too long ago, one of those cheap plastic legs on our couch cracked. We didn’t know at first because it was in the back. When I went to move the couch to sweep, I saw that the screw from the broken leg was digging into the wood floor. The couch was old anyway and we tossed it to the road. So we went looking for couches.

First of all, can I ask why cheaply made furniture is so doggone expensive? Wow! Sticker shock to say the least! We did find a few couches in our budget, but naturally, those were “No Delivery.” Uh, you are a furniture store! No delivery?! What’s up with that?! I was floored. Needless to say, we didn’t get a couch – yet.

Next we went up to the outlets because there were a few things we needed. I was in dire need of work shoes. I tend to wear them out pretty quick. So we stopped at the New Balance store and I picked up a new pair. My wife found some workout type clothes there and picked them up.

Next we stopped at the Goodwill store there. Sam loves thrift store shopping. I do, too, especially when it comes to books, CDs, or albums. She saw that they had all of these Halloween costumes out and they were like $2-$5 each. She loaded the cart with outfits for Ella and Andrew so they could play dress up. She struck gold there.

There was a cool antique shop close by and we strolled through there. I love going through those places. I am always guaranteed to see (1) casserole dishes that my mom and grandparents had, (2) the various glasses that McDonalds have growing up (Smurfs, Shrek, Bugs Bunny, and the McDonald’s characters), (3) some old toy that I had growing up, and (4) plenty of music and movie stuff.

Finally, it was time for dinner. We always say, “We really need to try such and such place,” but end up going to somewhere familiar. We decided to go to our favorite Mexican place. We always get take out from there and have never actually ate in the restaurant before, so we did. It had been so long since we have had a night together I splurged and got queso dip as well as salsa for our chips!

When we left dinner we were stuffed. We weren’t quite ready to go home yet, so we walked around Walmart. Sam wanted to get some containers and Command hooks for the outfits we bought the kids. As usual, we spent more than we intended to, but it was nice to just casually stroll around without having to yell for the kids to “stop touching that.”

At home, we enjoyed the remainder of the evening together. As a parent, you tend to forget just how much you need to share time together without the kids demanding your attention. To just be able to have conversation with each other was something that was so needed by both of us. We both need to continue to make a conscious effort to have those “mom and dad” dates.