I just saw that VH1 will be premiering the Behind the Music episode on the 80s glam rock band Poison tomorrow night (October 1, 2009). In an interview, lead singer Bret Michaels commented "The interview we did was great, but I've got no control over how they edit it or anything. VH1 has a lot of stuff from me over the years. I think they're gonna do a damn fine job." I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to do some Flashback Videos from the band.

Poison had three multi-platinum albums with two of which being released in the 80s. The first was 1986's Look What the Cat Dragged In which would sell over 3 million copies and hit #3 on the Billboard Album charts. It included the single "Talk Dirty To Me" which itself would reach #9 on the Billboard Hot 100 in May of 1987. This week's first Flashback Video is "Talk Dirty to Me" by Poison...

Then in 1988 the band would follow that up with the album Open Up and Say... Ahh! which would sell over 5 million copies and hit #2 on the charts. This album would include three top 10 singles including the ballad "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" which would make it all the way to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song I remember best from this album though is "Nothin' But a Good Time," so this week's second Flashback Video is "Nothin' But a Good Time" by Poison...

After 25 years, Poison (which consists of Michaels along with C.C. DeVille, Rikki Rockett and Bobby Dall) is still recording music and performing. They just ended a summer tour with two other 80s rock icons Def Leppard and Cheap Trick. Poison is planning to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the group's recording contract in 2011. "I'm really, really looking forward to that," Michaels says. "We'll just go out for a while year and do what we do and have a blast and just make a nice, big world tour out of 2011." I am sure it will just be "nothin' but a good time" for the band and their fans. I know I will at least be tuning in for the Behind the Music episode.

That will do it for this issue of Kickin' it Old School. Thanks for reading. If you are interested in reading any of my other 80s related issues, please click there for a summary of those. If you want to see the past issues of Flashback Videos, just type that into the Google Search Box at the top of the right hand column and it should give you a list of all of them. You can also always click on the Archives in the upper left hand column or use that Google Search Box to find any past issues or topics you may have missed. If you are a fan of Kickin' it, PLEASE CLICK ON THE FACEBOOK LOGO in the upper right hand column. This will take you to the Fan Page where I ask you to then click on "Become a Fan". Even if you are not a Facebook member yet, please consider joining and registering as a fan at that page. You can also now follow Old School on Twitter by clicking on the FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER LOGO also in the upper right hand column. This will take you the page and you can just click on the box that says "Follow". Let other 80s fans know about it as well! Peace and much love.

If you noticed the lack of issues this past week it was because I took a family vacation to Walt Disney World in Florida. It was a fantastic trip that I hope my young daughter never forgets. While down there, we saw reminders of all of the great Disney movies from the past 60+ years including the first, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, all the way to the latest, The Princess and the Frog (set to release this December). It started me thinking about the 80s and it turns out that my favorite decade was one of the least prolific for the great Disney franchise.

There was an animated feature-length film released in 1989 which I will discuss later because it really re-launched that aspect of Disney movies and would lead to huge successes in the 90s and beyond. But first, I will briefly the main Disney movie that I remember from the 80s and that is Tron.

Tron was the 1982 sci-fi film starring Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner and Cindy Morgan about a young computer software engineer played by Bridges who is sucked into the digital computer world. It was released at a time when computers were just making their way into the mainstream and is one of the first films by a major studio to combine live action with computer graphics extensively. Here is the original trailer for Tron...

Though I was not a big fan of the movie at the time, there was an arcade game based on Tron which I did enjoy playing quite a bit. It ranks highly on my Top Classic Arcade Games of the 80s list which you can check out by clicking on that link. My favorite part of that game is also one of my favorite parts of the movie and that is the lightbikes. Here is the scene from the original movie with the lightbikes...

You may or may not know that there is a sequel scheduled to be released in 2010 called Tron Legacy. There is an early trailer for the film already and the lightbikes look to be even cooler in this new version. Here is the teaser trailer for the upcoming Tron Legacy...

As for animated feature-length films from Disney in the 80s, there were not many of note. There are really only five to note including The Fox and the Hound (1981), The Black Cauldron (1985), The Great Mouse Detective (1986), Oliver & Company (1988) and of course The Little Mermaid (1989). The last is the movie I referred to at the beginning which served to re-launch the feature-length animated film as both a popular and lucrative focus for Disney.

The Little Mermaid opened in November of 1989 and grossed over $84 million in the U.S. during its initial release. It marked a return to the musical format that made Disney films popular from the 1930s to the 1970s. The Little Mermaid featured seven original songs by composer Alan Menken and lyricist Howard Ashman with two of them receiving Oscar nominations for best original song and one winning it ("Under the Sea"). Here is the original trailer for Disney's The Little Mermaid...

After the huge success achieved by The Little Mermaid, the Disney animation department expanded greatly from about 300 artists in 1988 to 2400 artists by 1999. It would be followed by other huge successes like Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992) and The Lion King (1994). The Little Mermaid is not one of my personal favorites, but if you want to see my list of Favorite Animated Feature Films then click on that link to check that one out. Also, in case you were wondering, I did get to meet Ariel a couple times while visiting Disney World. With a young daughter who happens to be a big fan of all the Princesses, it was inevitable.

So Disney did not see huge successes in the 80s, but there were a few (like Tron and 1989's Honey, I Shrunk the Kids) and one big one with The Little Mermaid.

That's all for this issue of Kickin' it Old School. Hope you enjoy the "Preview Review" issues and please let me know if there are any particular 80s movies that you want to see me cover. Thanks as always for reading. If you are interested in reading any of my other 80s related issues, please click there for a summary of those. You can also always click on the Archives in the upper left hand column or use the Google Search Box at the top of the right hand column to find any other issues you may have missed. If you are a fan of Kickin' it, PLEASE CLICK ON THE FACEBOOK LOGO in the upper right hand column. This will take you to the Fan Page where I ask you to then click on "Become a Fan". Even if you are not a Facebook member yet, please consider joining and registering as a fan at that page. You can also now follow Old School on Twitter by clicking on the FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER LOGO also in the upper right hand column. This will take you the page and you can just click on the box that says "Follow". Let other 80s fans know about it as well! Peace and much love.

Here is what he says as an introduction on his site...
"At some point in the 80s, popular music started incorporating saxophone solos as some kind of fad. Some of them are fine, but most of them are ridiculous to have in the songs. I have attempted to separate the quality and appropriateness of the solos from what I think of each song as a whole (I still really like most of these songs, even the ones with low grades)."

He goes on to list each song, rate the saxophone solo and include a link to listen to the actual sax solo from each song as well. Quite an impressive effort! Here is the link to this site, so you can see all 67 songs on his list and be able to listen to the sax solo in each of them. I highly recommend you check it out and have fun listening to these solos many of which I never really paid much attention to before.

The list seems to only include songs that have an actual saxophone solo and not just songs that include saxophone in the band. I do not have the expertise to rate the quality or appropriateness of the sax solos in the songs and even if I could, it would be difficult to separate them to judge them separately from many of these songs which I enjoy so much. So I decided just to give you a top 10 list of my favorite songs from his list. My top 10 will not take into account the quality of the solo, but simply allow songs to qualify for the list by having a sax solo. The top 10 will also include links to the video if you want to listen to the whole song.

So with that, here is OLD SCHOOL'S TOP 10 SONGS FROM THE 80s WITH SAX SOLOS IN THEM (+ Bonus 10):

Honorable Mention. Alf Theme Song (Season 3-4) - [link to video] I thought it was funny that he included this on his list. I am a fan of the 80s TV Theme songs in general evidenced by my popular Favorite TV Theme Songs list. If you have not read that one before, click on the link and enjoy some of my preferred choices. Alf did not make that list, but is still a worthy effort so I give it an honorable mention here.

20. "Simply the Best" by Tina Turner

19. "Lost in Emotion" by Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam

18. "Super Freak" by Rick James

17. "Electric Blue" by Icehouse

16.(tie) "What You Need" by INXS & "Harden My Heart" by Quarterflash

15. "I Wanna Go Back" by Eddie Money

14. "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" by Billy Joel

13. "Fortress Around Your Heart" by Sting

12. "Never Surrender" by Corey Hart

11. "The Glamorous Life" by Sheila E.

10. "I Can't Go For That (No Can Do)" by Hall & Oates [link to video]

9. "Dancing in the Dark" by Bruce Springsteen [link to video]

8. "Rio" by Duran Duran [link to video]

7. "Who Can It Be Now?" by Men at Work [link to video]

6. "Modern Love" by David Bowie [link to video]

5. "She Works Hard For the Money" by Donna Summer [link to video]

4. "You Belong to the City" by Glenn Frey [link to video]

3. "Dance Hall Days" by Wang Chung [link to video]

2. "True" by Spandau Ballet [link to video]

1. "If You Leave" by O.M.D. [link to video]

There's my list. Remember, I was only using the songs on the sax solos list and my rankings had nothing to do with the saxophone solo itself. In fact, many of the songs on my list received very poor grades for the quality or appropriateness of the saxophone, but I still love them anyways. That is only 20 of the 67 songs on his list, so be sure to go check out the others and see how the sax solos graded out. I thought this was an interesting angle on music from the 80s and I wanted to be sure to share with all of you. Hope you enjoyed it and maybe we will see a sax solo revival in the near future.

That's all for this issue of Kickin' it Old School. Thanks as always for reading. If you are interested in reading any of my other 80s related issues, please click there for a summary of those. If you are interested in reading more of my Top 10 lists, please click there for a summary. You can also always click on the Archives in the upper left hand column or use the Google Search Box at the top of the right hand column to find any other issues you may have missed. If you are a fan of Kickin' it, PLEASE CLICK ON THE FACEBOOK LOGO in the upper right hand column. This will take you to the Fan Page where I ask you to then click on "Become a Fan". Even if you are not a Facebook member yet, please consider joining and registering as a fan at that page. You can also now follow Old School on Twitter by clicking on the FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER LOGO also in the upper right hand column. This will take you the page and you can just click on the box that says "Follow". Trying to send daily 80s tweets out via Twitter, so be sure to follow me there. Let other 80s fans know about it as well! Peace and much love.

Check this out: Here is an interesting photo from my friends over at failblog. This van for Mitchell's Wholesale Provedores sells something entirely different when the door slides open...

Quote of the day: "Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They're absolutely free and worth a fortune." - Sam Walton, Founder of Wal-Mart

With Football season starting, I was trying to think of some 80s movies about football. There are several great baseball movies and Hoosiers is a great basketball movie from that decade, but there are not a lot of football movies to look at. There were really two that came to mind.

First, there is the 1983 film All The Right Moves which starred Tom Cruise in what was really his first starring role. Cruise plays a high school football player hoping to get a college scholarship to allow him to leave the struggling blue collar town he grew up in. The film also stars Craig T. Nelson, Leah Thompson and Chris Penn. Here is the original trailer for All The Right Moves...

That is actually a very underrated movie, but the next one is far from that. That is the 1986 comedy Wildcats starring Goldie Hawn as a woman who takes the rare opportunity to coach the boys' football team at an inner-city high school. The movie has its moments and is somewhat entertaining, but it is quite predictable and just not as funny as you would hope it would be. This film also featured Woody Harrelson, Wesley Snipes and even LL Cool J in smaller roles. Here is the original trailer for Wildcats...

So, those are the two football movies from the 80s that I remember best. I guess you could also include the Anthony Michael Hall film Johnny Be Good (1988) or the Robin Williams/Kurt Russell film The Best of Times (1986) as well. Are there any other 80s football movies that you recall?

I am stoked for the NFL season to get going. This is my favorite time of the year!

That's all for this issue of Kickin' it Old School. Hope you enjoy the "Preview Review" issues and please let me know if there are any particular 80s movies that you want to see me cover. Thanks as always for reading. If you are interested in reading any of my other 80s related issues, please click there for a summary of those. You can also always click on the Archives in the upper left hand column or use the Google Search Box at the top of the right hand column to find any other issues you may have missed. If you are a fan of Kickin' it, PLEASE CLICK ON THE FACEBOOK LOGO in the upper right hand column. This will take you to the Fan Page where I ask you to then click on "Become a Fan". Even if you are not a Facebook member yet, please consider joining and registering as a fan at that page. You can also now follow Old School on Twitter by clicking on the FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER LOGO also in the upper right hand column. This will take you the page and you can just click on the box that says "Follow". Let other 80s fans know about it as well! Peace and much love.

This is the twenty-first issue of my 80s Video of the Week which I call "Flashback Videos." As a reminder, these issues will not include the usual "Check this out" or "Quote of the day" sections at the end like normal issues of Kickin' it Old School usually do.

Today (September 7, 2009) is Labor Day and to celebrate this holiday I thought I would do a Flashback Videos on WORK. My first instinct was to feature something from Men at Work, but I did an entire issue on them a little while back. Here is a link to the Men at Work issue which includes my Top 6 songs and video links for each of them. So instead, I decided to feature a couple songs that include the word "work" in the song title. I narrowed it down to four songs, but then chose two of them to present to you here. The two I did not choose were "Workin' For a Livin'" by Huey Lewis & the News and "Workin' Day and Night" by Michael Jackson.

I have to admit that my choices are probably not all that surprising. First, I chose the 1981 single by, Canadian rock band, Loverboy titled "Working For the Weekend." This song was actually ranked #100 on VH1's list of 100 Greatest Songs of the 80s. Not too many songs are more appropriate for Labor Day, so this week's first Flashback Video is "Working For the Weekend" by Loverboy...

My second choice was not a hard one for me either. I chose the 1983 single by former disco queen Donna Summer titled "She Works Hard for the Money." This song was a tribute to "working women" and would hit #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 as well as become the first music video by a black female artist to be heavily promoted on MTV. Summer would receive a Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. This week's second Flashback Video is "She Works Hard For the Money" by Donna Summer...

Labor Day has been celebrated in the United States since 1882 and made an official holiday in 1894. It is now a state holiday in all 50 states celebrated on the first Monday in September each year. I thought these two 80s songs were fitting tributes for this day since most of us are working hard for the money and the weekend. I know there are likely many out there without employment right now as well and I really wish you the best of luck in your searches. Happy Labor Day to all of you!

That will do it for this issue of Kickin' it Old School. Thanks for reading. If you are interested in reading any of my other 80s related issues, please click there for a summary of those. If you want to see the past issues of Flashback Videos, just type that into the Google Search Box at the top of the right hand column and it should give you a list of all of them. You can also always click on the Archives in the upper left hand column or use that Google Search Box to find any past issues or topics you may have missed. If you are a fan of Kickin' it, PLEASE CLICK ON THE FACEBOOK LOGO in the upper right hand column. This will take you to the Fan Page where I ask you to then click on "Like". Even if you are not a Facebook member yet, please consider joining and registering as a fan at that page. You can also now follow Old School on Twitter by clicking on the FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER LOGO also in the upper right hand column. This will take you the page and you can just click on the box that says "Follow". Let other 80s fans know about it as well! Peace and much love.

This week (September 1, 2009) featured the long-awaited release of Whitney Houston's new album, I Look to You. This is just her sixth studio album and first since 2002. Houston is one of pop music's biggest-selling artists of all time, selling over 140 million albums and 50 million singles worldwide. In U.S. album sales alone, Houston ranks 4^th all-time among female artists only behind Barbra Streisand, Madonna and Mariah Carey. She released her debut album Whitney Houston in 1985, which became the best-selling debut album by a female artist. Her second studio album Whitney (1987) became the first album by a female artist to debut at number one on the Billboard 200 albums chart.

Her past success is unquestioned, but it all derailed for her in the late 90s through rumored drug use and as her marriage to Bobby Brown became strained. What a shame, but I am hoping that she can resurrect her once great career. When she burst onto the scene in the 80s, she took the music world by storm. As for the 80s, she had hits with "You Give Good Love," "Saving All My Love For You," "How Will I Know," "I Wanna Dance With Somebody," "Didn't We Almost Have It All," "So Emotional," and "Where Do Broken Hearts Go" of which the last six songs all hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

The song I personally liked the best was "Greatest Love of All" which also went to #1 in May of 1986 as the fourth and final single from her debut album. Many people do not know that this is actually a cover of a 1977 song performed by George Benson for the soundtrack of the Muhammad Ali film The Greatest. I admit that it is a little cheesy, but also soulful and I have always felt a strong connection to the song. So to celebrate Whitney's new album release, I decided to make this week's Flashback Video "Greatest Love of All" by Whitney Houston...

Houston will give her first interview in seven years, as she sits down with Oprah Winfrey for her season premiere on September 14, 2009. The interview is billed as "the most anticipated music interview of the decade." I don't know about that, but I do know that I am hoping that this once great 80s diva will put it all back together and reclaim her rightful spot in music history. I want to remember the great Whitney from the 80s and early 90s and (though I have serious doubts) maybe she can be that Whitney again.

That will do it for this issue of Kickin' it Old School. Thanks for reading. If you are interested in reading any of my other 80s related issues, please click there for a summary of those. If you want to see the past issues of Flashback Videos, just type that into the Google Search Box at the top of the right hand column and it should give you a list of all of them. You can also always click on the Archives in the upper left hand column or use that Google Search Box to find any past issues or topics you may have missed. If you are a fan of Kickin' it, PLEASE CLICK ON THE FACEBOOK LOGO in the upper right hand column. This will take you to the Fan Page where I ask you to then click on "Become a Fan". Even if you are not a Facebook member yet, please consider joining and registering as a fan at that page. You can also now follow Old School on Twitter by clicking on the FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER LOGO also in the upper right hand column. This will take you the page and you can just click on the box that says "Follow". Let other 80s fans know about it as well! Peace and much love.