Top 19 -- INXS: Kick

We've come to the part of the Top 19 where I no longer talked about these albums on Facebook. Even though they're still in the Top 19  I guess you can consider them honorable mentions or runners up to the Top 10 Facebook list.*

* This preamble seems highly unnecessary but so is this list.

When I was in junior high school, I was a good boy. This is not a brag, more of a declaration of fact. I was a member of the National Junior Honor Society, an altar boy and was so consumed by guilt that the mere thought of doing something bad* gave me a stomach ache. Make no mistake, it wasn't that I did good things due to a high moral calling. It's that I was afraid and embarrassed of being caught doing those bad things. 

* Two stories to illustrate my point. One, when I was in seventh grade, I received my first detention because the assistant principal, Mr. Gormaley, caught me running in the halls. I tried explaining that I was late for class, but he didn't care. He wrote me up. By the time I got home, I was so distraught that when I saw my mom, I started bawling uncontrollably over this transgression. "How will Harvard ever accept me now," I wailed. I'm sure my mom rolled her eyes, but she told me that everything was going to be okay and that getting in trouble was part of growing up. My mom was pretty cool, TBH. 

The second story is that pretty much everyone had gone through some sort of kleptomania phase when they were younger. I never did at the "appropriate time". Like I said, I was insanely afraid of getting caught and having to face my family, so I never took anything that wasn't mine. The one day I stole something was in my freshman year At Merrimack College. Every day I'd buy a copy of the Boston Herald and Boston Globe from the school store. There was an issue of the Hockey News next to the papers and on the cover was a picture of the new Toronto Maple Leafs sweater. It was the same jersey as the year before but on the shoulders was a maple leaf patch. For some reason, I had to have it and I didn't feel like paying the $2.50 for the issue. So I placed the News (which was printed tabloid style, so it looked like a newspaper) between the two Boston rags. I paid $1.00 (50 cents for each paper) and walked out the door. After awhile I threw away the Hockey News, but I still feel a twinge of guilt when I think about it. An issue of the Hockey News seems like a pretty lame thing to steal. 

I needed to set the table for this album because in order to fully get why I love it so much, you have to understand where I was at the time I first heard it. Growing up in the 1980s there were three things that I was sure of: AIDS was everywhere, drugs would definitely kill you* and Satanic Panic was real. 

I recall the first time that I heard INXS, it was a night in late March and I wanted to fall asleep, but the hall light was on. Either I had my radio on or my brother did and I heard "Devil Inside" floating over the airwaves. I had no idea who INXS was or where they were from of what they looked like, but I was convinced that they were devil worshipers. I had an idea in my head that even though they didn't sound like a heavy-metal band, what they were singing about definitely made them one. 

* I also thought that Huey Lewis and the News were "definitely into drugs" due to their song, "I Want a New Drug" which obviously glamorized drugs. Huey Lewis and his News might be one of the squarest bands of the 1980s. I'm sure they did drugs, but this song wasn't the 80s version of "White Rabbit". It was just a song about how being in love made you feel. As you can tell, I was a bit of an idiot. But if you read the Guns N' Roses entry, you knew that. 

Even though they had been around for a number of years, INXS blew up during the spring of 1988. "Kick" was massive and was everywhere. The videos for "Devil Inside", "Never Tear Us Apart", "New Sensation", "Mediate" and "Need You Tonight" were constantly run on MTV. The singles were played all over Top 40 radio. It became very apparent very quickly that INXS weren't devil worshippers like W.A.S.P. (it was an acronym for "We Are Satan's People", dontchaknow. And Blackie Lawless sang about fucking like a beast!) obviously was. They were just a fun pop band from Australia who made great hits and interesting looking videos. 

I know that I didn't get this album in the summer of 1988, mostly because I didn't need to. But I probably got this album for Christmas of that year and I wore it out. It was different than the metal that I was listening to at the time (again, see the Guns N' Roses entry for the trio of awesome albums that I first purchased) but "Kick" still rocked. It rocked in a way that Poison or GNR or Kiss or Def Leppard or White Lion didn't. The songs were catchy as hell and even the singles were great. The band did a cover of "The Loved One" that is so awesome, I listen to it a few times a month now, even 32 years later. I won't even bother listening to the original recording because this is the only version that I need. 

Not only did I unequivocally love this album, but it also brought me back to my eighth grade Spanish trip to Montreal (yeah ... I know. Amesbury Middle School was a strange place). Even though I didn't own this tape, I remember listening to it a lot in the hotel room and on the bus trip up to Quebec. This and "Appetite for Destruction" were the two tapes that were played over and over and over again. 

And while Junior High School was the worst three years of my life, when you are an ignored freshman in a big school, it seemed like a fond time. Listening to "Kick" as a ninth grader reminded me of the one truly fun time that I had during those three years. I guess it was my first taste of nostalgia and I liked it. 

This was the only INXS album that I owned, though I was a big fan of their newer albums. I thought that it was cool when my uncle and aunt bumped into band member Andrew Farris when they were in Hawai'i. I was really bummed out when I heard that Michael Hutchence died. My wife and I even watched their reality show when they were trying to find a replacement for Hutchence. They sorta fell through the cracks when people discuss 80s bands, but they shouldn't. They were excellent and an important part of my musical maturation.