Lost in the Everglades

814. TOMMY SHAW, "Girls with Guns"
Written and produced by Tommy Shaw
A& M 2675 1984 Billboard: # 33

If there was a video for this song, I was never aware of it. From the first time I heard it, though, this song was associated for me with a moving image: a pullback helicopter shot of a car heading into the Everglades on a episode of Miami Vice. I no longer remember what case Crockett and Tubbs were investigating on that episode--maybe they were organizing a family reunion for Sonny's shipmate Elvis--but I remember that shot, and this song.

Research now tells me that Shaw was in both Styx and Damn Yankees (two bands about which I care close to nothing) and collaborated with a former member of Night Ranger (a band about which I care even less, if we can measure such things).

But damn is this a great driving song. The lyrics might offend me if I actually paid attention to them--mostly for the pre-Tarantinoesque misogyny, maybe for the one almost direct steal from Zevon--but once again it's the music, people, not the words: the synth riff and wah-wah throughout; the piano runs as you get close to the choruses; the stumbling drum on the bridge and toward the end; the little scream in the last minute that is most assuredly the last gasp of The Rebel Yell, which shows how far the South has really been brought down in nearly one hundred and twenty years.

And yeah maybe Michael Mann had a little bit to do with it.