"Panic" by The Smiths

Good evening dialophiles! Tonight, the Dial’s radio receivers pick up a frequency from our friends “across the pond”, as we spotlight an awesome track from iconic British alt-rockers The Smiths. Tune in right now for the pop music decrying classic “Panic”!

Panic on the streets of London… Panic on the streets of Birmingham
I wonder to myself… Could life ever be sane again?

A non-album single released in between The Smiths '85' LP "The Queen is Dead", and '87s "Strangeways, Here We Come", Panic peaked at #11 on the UK Singles chart in 1986, and would prove to be one of their highest charting tracks. Unfortunately, The Smiths were never given a major push on American top 40 radio, hence, none of their twenty charting UK singles ever crossed over to U.S. radio markets.

However, despite it’s relative obscurity in the States, Panic was voted single of the year back home in the U.K. by the annual NME (New Musical Express) readers poll, and ranked sixth in the best dance record category, a rather ironic award when one considers the nature of the song.

You see, to hear Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr tell it, BBC Radio One DJ Steve Wright played the uptempo bubblegum pop track "I'm Your Man" by Wham!, immediately after reporting on the horror and despair of the Chernobyl nuclear tragedy. Marr found this juxtapositioning incredibly crass, and openly criticized the role of pop music in people’s lives. Front man and lead vocalist Morrissey wrote the lyrics based around this critique, and “Panic” soon found itself getting airplay among the very light hearted pop tunes it mocked.

But there's Panic on the streets of Carlisle… Dublin, Dundee, Humberside
I wonder to myself…

I have to admit ignorance to the music of The Smiths during the 80s. I listened exclusively to the very American top 40 stations that didn't play them, and I didn't have cable or satellite TV until ‘91, so MTV was only an occasional treat when I visited relatives. I didn't discover Morrissey and crew until the mid ‘90s, when the Waves Music record store I worked at started frequently playing the Smiths "Singles" CD. It was then that I grew to appreciate their unique defeatist slant on Brit pop with tracks like "Girlfriend in a Coma", "Bigmouth Strikes Again", and what many consider to be their signature song, 1985's "How Soon Is Now?"

Given the current state of American top 40 radio, I believe it's high time for Morrissey and Marr's revolutionary anthem to mount a comeback. Their message is even more relevant in today's vapid pop culture and celebrity obsessed world than it was during the mid ‘80s. It would need to be a re-release of the original track, however. I’d hate to hear a hip-hop twinged dance cover by Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke... *shudder* (Although the irony would be delicious…)

Burn down the disco… Hang the blessed DJ…
Because the music that they constantly play…
IT SAYS NOTHING TO ME ABOUT MY LIFE…
Hang the blessed DJ. (Hang the DJ, Hang the DJ, Hang the DJ...)

"Torture" by The Jacksons

Hey all you Dialophiles out there! Tonight, the Dial tunes in a hard rock flavored slice of mid 80s pop/funk from the legendary Jacksons, the iconic pop/soul group that began in 1969 as the Jackson 5. Tonight, we proudly present "Torture". 

It was on the street so evil, so bad that even hell disowned it.
Every single step was trouble for the fool who stumbled on it. 

The second single from 1984's double platinum Victory LP, Torture served as the final US top 40 chart entry for the brother group, peaking at #17 US on the Hot 100, #12 US Hot R&B, and also #26 on the UK Top 50.

Sung as a duet between Michael and Jermaine and written by Jackie Jackson alongside Motown songwriter Kathy Wakefield (co-author of James Ingram's "One Hundred Ways"), the track is officially stated to be about the emotional pain one suffers during a breakup, yet lyrics like… 

She said as though I should have known her… tell me, what’s your pain or pleasure… 

seem to lean toward a story of sadomasochism. We’ll leave it up to you, the Radio Dial peruser, to decide.

Torture’s music video served as the first choreography job by Paula "Straight Up" Abdul. Due to the complex and arresting visuals of the resulting video, Abdul earned her role as the choreographer for The Jacksons’ Victory tour.

An amusing side note is that scheduling conflicts prevented both Michael and Jermaine from filming the video with their brothers. Jermaine is not represented at all, but what appears to be Michael in several scenes is actually a wax sculpture of the King of Pop!

The video for this track fascinated me when I saw it on NBC's Friday Night Videos. All the bizarre horror imagery, such as deformed faces, hands reaching up from grates in the floor, eyeless Jackson brothers, mutant spiders, and breakdancing skeletons made this an arresting barrage of visuals to be sure.

Most memorable as far as I’m concerned, was Jackie Jackson stepping back against a wall of eyeballs, reaching back into a pupil, pulling out a goopy mess, then finding that an eyeball has taken root in his palm! I always felt like maybe I shouldn’t have been watching it, but I just couldn’t look away! 

And I still can't find the meaning of the face I keep on seeing. 
Was she real or am I dreaming? 

Along with the videos for Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me", Billy Ocean’s “Loverboy”, and Thomas Dolby’s “Hyperactive” (the popping off dummy head scene…), Torture was among the first music videos I searched for on the internet in the early 2000s, to see if they really were as disturbing as my 15+ year old memories of them led me to believe. When viewed in retrospect, they all exhibit high degrees of camp, (bordering on hilarity), but at the time, those visuals, especially that darn eyeball wall, lodged in my subconscious as the stuff of nightmares.

Check it out, but we here at the Dial are not responsible for any weird dreams you may encounter upon viewing this great forgotten 1984 jam.

Baby, because you cut me like a knife without your love in my life.
I'm out, I'm walkin' the night 'cause I just can’t stop this feelin'.
It's torture, it's torture, it's torture.