"Find Another Fool" by Quarterflash

Happy New Year Dialophiles! The Dial in its infinite wisdom, has chosen to kick off your new year with a tasty power-pop track from 1981… give it up for Portland Oregon’s Quarterflash, and “Find Another Fool”!

“I should have learned this lesson long ago, that friends and lovers always come and go”

A self-assured rejection of her former lover by a jilted woman, FAF was extracted from Quarterflash’s debut self-titled LP, peaking at a respectable US #16 on the top 40, and a slightly better #12 on the mainstream rock charts. The band, founded by husband and wife team Marv and Rindy Ross, enjoyed six other charting singles on the Hot 100, beginning with the monster US #3 hit “Harden My Heart”, up through their final appearance, the 1985 #83 single “Talk To Me”. FAF, HMH, and ‘83’s “Take Me to Heart” (US #14), are usually considered the triumvirate of Quarterflash singles due to their iconic sound and familiarity among the MTV generation.

“You let me down, and now your hand is out… well here’s some spare change you can count.”

Even after FAF was retired from top 40 stations a few months after its peak, the haunting way in which Rindy concludes the chorus (“to loooove youuuuu”) would sneak into my memory periodically, even though I drew a blank on the artist name and song title for quite some time. And though I never owned the LP, the album cover of four identical male “ghosts” standing in a field at night went hand in hand (or “mind in mind”?) with the recollection of Rindy’s spectral vocals.

“You pulled this once, you pulled it twice, its time you listened to my advice…”

Despite not recalling the song’s details for years, FAF is one of the many early 80s classics that I associate with weekend visits to my Grandparents’ house. In order to listen to the hot hits as I drifted off to sleep, I tuned my Pop-Pop’s desktop radio to WPGC FM, well before they adopted their current hip hop format. I loved that radio, it was cube shaped, with an extendable antenna, and a single oversized dial on the top. One side featured the speaker, and another side had a slider switch to select between AM or FM frequencies, and TV audio signals. I used to enjoy approximating a stereo sound by watching TV with its normal volume on, and tuning this radio to the same TV channel I was watching so I had the same audio from two sources. But I digress.

Whenever I hear FAF now, I get transported back over 30 years to those nights at my grandparents, stargazing out the window while resting on the guest bed with that beloved radio placed near the pillow. Quarterflash’s hit, and other great tracks like Journey’s “Who’s Crying Now”, Champaign’s “How ‘Bout Us”, and Def Leppard’s “Photograph” all take me back there as well, which is one of the many reasons why to this day, early 80s top 40 is still my favorite style and era of pop music. It represents a simpler and calmer time and place.

As “Harden My Heart” is still spun frequently on terrestrial radio, in contrast to any of Marv and Rindy’s other singles, it’s understandable that somebody could arrive at the conclusion that Quarterflash are one-hit wonders! We here at the Dial hope that this post will help to prevent that misunderstanding from ever happening! We also hope that all of you loyal Dialophiles have an outstanding New Year filled with promise, opportunity, laughs and fun, and as many obscure and forgotten tracks from the past as you can handle!

Keep checking in with the Dial in '14, because the more you listen, the MORE YOU REMEMBER!

“Why don’t you… find another… find another… find another fool to love you. Find another… find another… find another fool to love you.”