Tom’s Songbook – “Summertime Girls” by Y&T

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(Tom Hapgood is an assistant professor in the Art Department at the University of Arkansas, and teaches animation, web design and motion design. An avid Cold War aficionado, Tom lived in Germany during the 1980s, sported various lengths of mullet, and attended many heavy metal concerts. He doesn’t listen to his old heavy metal collection much anymore, mostly because he doesn’t have any devices to play it on.)

Many of the ’80s videos featured beach tomfoolery, but this is one of the best. You almost can’t find more ’80s references in one place, from checkered shorts and half shirts to boom boxes and Risky Business sunglasses, all on the Xanadu that was the California beach. The gimmicks abound – digging up a metal band dude in the sand with a metal detector. Get it? He’s so freaking’ metal that the metal detector finds him and latches onto him.

Y&T (“Yesterday and Today” – pretty edgy!), was one of those bands with a core audience and a few radio and MTV hits in the late ’70s up through the early ’90s. They weren’t the first to sing the praises of the female on the beach after the likes of the Beach Boys and Elvis. That was nothing new. Metal chicks laying out, wearing leather bikinis while pouring motor oil on their skin? That was new.

In the mid-late ’80s I did go through a sudden acronym-band phase. I remember listening to Y&T at the same time I started listening to TNT. I was in Germany and heavy metal was king. The American beach, Fast-Times-party thing was renowned, and Y&T seemed to provide the soundtrack for us as we pretended to be the Top Gun guys playing volleyball or the tap dancing guys from White Nights (editor: Please delete that — it can’t get out.)

[Editor's note: Nope, those of us who lived through the '80s must pay for our collective sins.]

At some point in the video, as if it can’t get anymore conceptual and madcap, from their distant lands arrives the parade of misfits. The beefcake carrying the mermaid, Carmen Miranda with her fruit hat, the bald pseudo Hare Krishna guy, the nerd couple, all led by the teeny weeny bikinis brigade. Then, towards the end arrives the gaggle of Rob Halford-bedecked metal maidens. Much like their suburban valley girl counterparts who were leading the procession, these girls aren’t interested in our heros in any way. Instead, they brush by and set up shop at their Mad Max encampment by the seawall, where they prep for their upcoming attack on the bimbo volleyball game.

Eventually, the gang of misfits senses the sunset and retreats to their shuttle. Our guys evidently do something to impress the leather-clad dominatrices. Even though they seem to have struck out completely on the love front, the rocker chicks (the correct amount of them) decide they can’t resist the charms of the short-shorts guys. They abandon their hubcap compound and embark on a romantic stroll on the pier, and love wins out again.

And there’s a giant robot.

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