Nostalgia is a sneaky little tramp.  We always seem to look at things in the past with rose-colored glasses.  I remember Linear’s “Sending All My Love” with fondness.  For a couple of months there during my senior year in high school, you couldn’t turn on a radio without hearing this song.  It has a good beat; you can dance to it, blah, blah, blah.  I just don’t remember the video being so darn…gay.  I do recall always thinking that the lead singer must be John Stamos in disguise, and I kept expecting one of the little Olsen twins or another member of the Tanner family from “Full House” to join him for a little pop-lock dance number.  But that was about the limit of my derision of this little cinematic masterpiece.  In its defense, though, they did dress cool—at least for the time.  I mean, everyone dressed like that.  And mullets, even the copiously styled ones in this video, were the thing back in the day.  That look just did not hold up well.

I can look at the “Sweet Child O’ Mine” video by Guns N' Roses, and it still looks cool.  You can still tell that Slash doesn’t give a crap and would most likely punch you in the face if he could see you from underneath the top hat and all that hair.  But the Linear guys, I don’t know.  Strangely, the lead singer is a music producer now, and he’s produced for big named acts, such as the rebel country group, Big & Rich.  Neither Big nor Rich has done a country-rock remake of “Sending All My Love,” though, so the Linear influence has not reached critical mass yet.  According to Internet rumor, these guys are making a comeback in 2007, and I wish them all the luck in the world.  I just hope they’ve lost the mullets, along with the Rocky Balboa-in training dance moves.

Video: Linear—"Sending All My Love"