I love gadgets. Admittedly, I don’t have many, aside from my recently acquired mp3 player and my company laptop (a little big for a gadget, but I’m including it since I still get a thrill whenever I “go wireless” in a cafe). Last week, I added a new cell phone to the gadget list. It’s a sleek, sexy little number with a camera and quite a few other funky features, and I’ve been having fun getting it all sorted with my configuration preferences. Thanks to the camera, I’ve got a charming shot of the Little One in the bath as wallpaper. I’ve configured my Internet and Message settings, and have started fooling around with the games.

Call me a child, but one of my favorite “new cell phone activities” is configuring the ring tone. I mean, the way I see it, your chosen tone is often a reflection of your personality (so you can obviously imagine what I think about leaving the default Nokia tune). It can be a conversation piece among friends, or bring a smile (or a frown) to the faces of strangers. And these days, the selection is huge! The new phone comes stocked with a large collection of tones, making it easy for nearly anyone to find a ring tone that makes them happy. I could have been happy too, if not for the feeling that I settled. You see, when it comes to ring tones, I’m not just anyone, and I have this bizarre, deep-seated need to be a little different. Welcome to the world of ring tone downloads.

I admit it. I’m a ring tone downloader. I have to have a ring that most people don’t have (which is why I opted not to download the once hugely popular “Take On Me“, despite my great love for the song and college-girl crush on Morten Harket), and will patiently scroll through nearly all the ring tones that my cell phone service provider has to offer. This is also what made me realize that I must be old, because I’d never heard of most of the “latest hits” they were offering or the musicians who’d created the original tunes. I was chatting with Stephanie while I conducted my search, and she concluded that Cellcom must have made up the songs and groups, but I suspect she was just saying that in order to comfort my aging, wounded ego. How bad was it? I knew more songs in the Latin Music category than I did in the Rock and Pop categories. Ay, dios mio!

Where were the songs I knew? Sadly, relegated to special categories like 90s and 80s. Suddenly, despite the age gap between me and the obvious target audience, my spirits were lifted. Suddenly, life made sense again, as I listened to polyphonic clips of songs like “Big in Japan” by Alphaville, “Enola Gay” by OMD, and “Panic” by The Smiths, to name a few. As usual, I made a list of the top choices, narrowing down with repeated “listenings” to each, as well as questioning how others would respond. Usually, I also bounce my ideas off my friends, but since the regular victims confidants were involved in a flurry of holiday celebrations, I was left to decide on my own. And, since I’m utterly hopeless when it comes to making these kinds of decisions, I ended up downloading two ring tones. The first one was a no-brainer. I’ve mentioned before that one of my all-time favorite songs is “Mr. Jones and Me” by the Counting Crows, so when I discovered that I could download the ring tone (and it was a decent rendition, which is not always the case), it immediately jumped to the top of the list, and for now, it is the default ring tone, with the other one I’ve selected as the back up, to be switched to in the event that I feel like a change.

When it came to the second song, though, the list included all the 80s songs mentioned above, as well as one more. And that is the song I’ve chosen for today’s 80’s Music Video Sunday. A song that came out in late 1986, released by an alternative dance band out of England. I discovered the song during my first year in college, thanks to Chrissy, the woman living in the dorm room next to mine. Chrissy’s taste in music tended to run to the alternative, and I learned a lot from her that year as I became familiar with such bands as The Smiths, Scruffy the Cat and others whose names simply escape me (due to my advanced age, no doubt). It was a heady time in my musical education – a time that I remember quite fondly (at least those parts that I can actually remember. After all, those were the college years…).

I fell in love with a lot of sounds and songs in those days, and today’s “winning selection” is one of my favorites. Ladies, gentlemen and others, it gives me great pleasure to share one of my favorite songs from the 80s. New Order’s “Bizarre Love Triangle“.

Bizarre Love Triangle
New Order
(lyrics courtesy of LyricsDomain)

Every time I think of you
I feel shot right through with a bolt of blue
It’s no problem of mine but it’s a problem I find
Living a life that I can’t leave behind
There’s no sense in telling me
The wisdom of a fool won’t set you free
But that’s the way that it goes
And it’s what nobody knows
While every day my confusion grows
Every time I see you falling
I get down on my knees and pray
I’m waiting for that final moment
You’ll say the words that I can’t say

I feel fine and I feel good
I’m feeling like I never should
Whenever I get this way, I just don’t know what to say
Why can’t we be ourselves like we were yesterday
I’m not sure what this could mean
I don’t think you’re what you seem
I do admit to myself
That if I hurt someone else
Then I’ll never see just what we’re meant to be
Every time I see you falling
I get down on my knees and pray
I’m waiting for that final moment
You’ll say the words that I can’t say

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