FOR NO GOOD REASON: The Tubes’ “PRIME TIME"

It came up on the iPod shuffle this afternoon while I was finishing up my schoolwork and I had to listen to it several times in a row—one of the big tracks from the keen Todd Rundgren-produced concept album Remote Control, "Prime Time" is about as seductive and instantly memorable a pop song as the ‘80s ever produced (the album was actually released in 1979, but who’s counting), with unbeatably smoky come-on vocals by Re Styles that resided just this side of porn parody. And then there’s the familiar music clip, a great, insane relic of the nascent age of music video and a test of the viewer’s ability to endure the visual dichotomy of Styles’ salacious beauty slammed up against Fee Waybill’s somewhat more grotesque visage. Can your heart stand the shocking fact of Waybill’s disembodied head whispering sweet nothings in the song’s spoken-word interlude? Press play and find out.