This morning I was fortunate to hear Barry Manilow's "Copacabana." My reaction to this item from a far off time surprised me. "Copacabana," a song for which I've never had any affection, emerges in retrospect as a weird example of a very weird mini-genre-- the cautionary tale that you can dance to. And as terrible as this song has always seemed to me, it's hard not to embrace the absurdity of it. These days when I don't like a pop song, it's usually because it has a threadbare emotional landscape that I can't enter. But Manilow's undeniable gift for Pavlovian melody, coupled with an elaborate gaggle of session musicians elaborately bringing the AM funk, pulls me in like quicksand.
I think the Hot Plate Radio Panel, after we exhaust ourselves commentating on the political scene, may have to turn to more serious matters-- the dissection of this bizarre record, which is equally infectious and tragic (not unlike leprosy).
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