AORchaeological Discoveries: Saraya

Back in '87 a couple of kids from Jersey formed a band, Alsace-Lorraine, and headed west to find fame and fortune. They failed. However, much like that which is called "the Way" is not the true Way, that which is called failure is not true failure. That which is called "failure" is really just a setback; true failure is giving up.

These people were no failures. Returning to Jersey later, they continued to write new songs, perform locally, and recruit new talent via networking, which included some cross-pollination from Danger Danger. Emerging as Saraya, they went on to produce two albums, Both of which are totally worth your time. I didn't discover their music until later in life, and that should not have been. I won't let them drown in the sands of time.

First off -- we need to clear the air and get the elephant out of the room now -- Sandi Saraya is disturbingly attractive. She's an 80's rocker chick, a trope of human that went extinct when the last known example was killed by Jason Voorhees in the first minutes of Part VIII. We shouldn't have allowed that to happen, either. The governments of the world should have set up breeding programs, like they do with condors and panda bears, to keep 80's rocker chicks alive. The world becomes a less interesting place whenever it loses its diversity.

Compounding this is that Sandi Saraya is "80's-cute," a oddly-specific flavor of attractive. This is bothersome, because she was probably the only person we left out of the Great 80's-Cute Conversation of 2005, which means that we'll have to have it all over again to account for this new finding, and I'll need to take a vacation day for that.

See, one night, back in grad school, my buddy Brian was feeling depressed, because he was in graduate school, and that's kinda what you do there.

"We should go to Uptown," I suggested, because it was Oxford, and that's just what you do in Oxford.
"I don't want to go out," he said. "There's nothing I want out there."
"What do you want then?" I asked.
Brian sighed.
"I want to find someone who's 80's-cute, but they don't make those people anymore," he said.

"80's-cute is kind of a broad term," I said. "What specifically are you looking for? Who is the exemplar of 80's-cute?" I asked.

This lead to a nine-hour, sometimes-screaming debate which spanned the entirety of time, space, and popular culture. No data point (save Sandi Saraya) was left unconsidered. The great irony of all this was that by the time we were able to pin down what he was looking for, we couldn't go out, because it was 7 AM the next morning. There's probably a moral to this story, and that's weird, because it seems like there shouldn't be. The exemplar of 80's-cute turned out to be Kim Wilde, of all people. I know you might disagree with this -- but we've probably already discussed this in lurid detail.

Sandi Saraya was unique among scalding-hot the scalding hot women fronting bands, as she was used primarily as a musician, and not purely as sex object. I could spend a lot of time trying to explain myself, but it's a lot easier if you just experience what I'm getting at. Although Ruchela is going to stab me for sure for using this particular example, watch this:

Aight, now watch this:

Notice how the second video was missing something? The something that made it so great to begin with? Music is a consumer product, bundled with a gimmick to get it to sell. Often the cart is put before the horse, and the gimmick is given priority over the music -- form over function. When this is the case, the music just becomes a necessary evil for a paycheck. When people make music just to make money, it's different than when they make music to make music. You can feel it when the musicians are doing that. It shows, and it's all very Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, but it's there.

When art becomes work, it ceases to be a passion, then what is it? When life become work, and is lacks passion, then what is it?

I'm not saying that Saraya was a troupe of pure artists, or that the music wasn't a product, or that there was no gimmick -- I'm saying that it's apparent that they were deliriously happy to play their songs, record their videos, sell, their albums, and live their lives.

This is why I like it.