You Make My Dreams: A guilty pleasure revealed

We all have guilty pleasures when it comes to music, even though we hate to admit them. I’ve thought of Def Leppard as being one of my guilty pleasures, but that’s not much of a stretch. Those guys produced two albums everyone has at least one of. You can’t be a guilty pleasure if it’s everyone’s guilty pleasure.

Plus Def Leppard is straight up rock n roll, and any guy loves straight up rock n roll (Van Halen, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC – you can’t be an eighth-grade boy without bowing down to these rock gods).

But with all my love of overt rock, 80s punk, and obscure indie music from 1977 to 2010, I shouldn’t be a fan of Hall and Oates. But I am.

A HUGE fan.

This is not information I usually share, but an e-mail came along my in-box which makes it easier for me to disclose, and lets me know I’m not alone in my H&O love. The Bird and the Bee, an indie pop duo with jazzy/synth songs steered by Inara George’s soothing voice, is releasing in March a tribute album called Guiltless Pleasures Vol. I: A Tribute to Daryl Hall and John Oates. The album covers some of the H&O’s most famous songs – such as Sarah Smile, Rich Girl and Kiss On My List – as well as other favorites such as Maneater and Private Eyes. It’s light and delicious – a joyful listen.

My two favorite Hall and Oates songs are You Make My Dreams (brought back to life by the (500) Days of Summer soundtrack) and Out of Touch, which I’m sure makes people groan.

It was the Out of Touch tour, way back in the mid-80s, when I saw Hall and Oates in concert for my first and only time. I took a female friend, who at the time I wanted to be more than friends with, named Sarah (convenient, right?) and we were going to meet up with some other people at the show (including my best friend Karl). It was going to be a great night.

It wasn’t.

The opening band was General Public, a group we all very much wanted to see, and the show was set for an 8 p.m. start at the Hollywood Sportatorium, an airplane hanger in the middle of nowhere with only one road going in and out. We hit traffic – massive traffic. I was driving my father’s Oldsmobile, which aside from being the car of 55-year-old white men, had a tendency to overheat when stuck in traffic. Five miles from the concert hall, the car overheated, then stopped.

Shit.

Remember, this is before cell phones, so I’m pretty much stranded on the outskirts of Fort Lauderdale with a girl I’m trying to impress. To our great fortune, Karl was not far behind, so we were able to all jump in his 1974 Volvo (his car was a beast, and six of us in all were able to squeeze in) and head on to the show.

But with the traffic, we missed General Public, walking into the hall as they finished their last song (Tenderness). Sarah and I had seats in another part of the venue from the rest, and we went off to take our seats before Hall and Oates took the stage.

I had known Sarah for several years at this point, but now I was nervous because I was seeing her in a different light. So now I’m tongue-tied, I’m pissed off about the car (which I stranded at some crappy gas station), annoyed we missed General Public, and not sure what I’m going to tell my father when I come home without his car. I was relieved when the show started so I could focus on something else and stop making Sarah uncomfortable, which I’m sure was the case.

I think the show was good, but all I remember was bad stage props and people running around needlessly (though Daryl Hall can sing his ass off). They didn’t sing Sarah Smile (of course), and the show was over as quickly as it started. My dilemmas returned.

I wanted to go back to the car, but Karl heard of another way to get out of there to avoid the traffic, taking us in the opposite direction of the crappy gas station. I knew I had no choice, as the five others wanted to get back home.

I sat silent in the back seat, as far away from Sarah in the car possible. Karl dropped us off one by one, and I remember Sarah getting out of the car in a hurry when she was home; I’m not even sure I said goodnight. When I finally got home, at little after 1 a.m., I had to wake up my father and tell him the news.

He was not amused. I barely slept.

So how does it all end? We went back the next day to get the car (which started up just fine, stupid Oldsmobile), I was grounded and Sarah started dating Karl.

And still I love Hall and Oates. Go figure.

I guess catchy songs forgive plenty.