Song of the Day 11/25: 39 Steps, “Slip Into the Crowd”

Somebody put Woody Allen’s “Hannah and Her Sisters” on the TV on Thanksgiving – the multi-year plot contains two big Thanksgiving scenes – and I got to hear the song that gave an obscure band its 15 minutes of fame.

There’s a scene about halfway through the movie when the characters played by Woody Allen and Dianne Wiest go on a disastrous date. Wiest, who’s playing a troubled, cocaine-addicted actress, takes Allen, playing a hypochondriacal version of himself, to CBGBs. Keep in mind, this movie came out in 1986, a decade beyond the days when the club helped birth New York’s New Wave, so the scene’s conceit – that this is the depth of depravity – was already a caricature when the film came out. Though the overreaction is played for laughs, we’re supposed to sympathize with Allen when he then takes her to hear Bobby Short play his lounge piano.

But when the scene came on the other day, I was like, wait a minute – I think I’d rather hear these guys than Bobby Short. Who were they?

A Montreal band called 39 Steps. “Slip Into the Crowd” was their signature song even before they changed their name from the 222s, and was the title track to the LP they released in 1987. They were, as you’d guess, much bigger in Canada than the U.S., where the film gave them their moment in the spotlight. Allen’s reaction implies some kind of obnoxious punk – maybe nobody had told him about Henry Rollins, or Allen was just afraid to put him on film – but it’s actually a moodily melodic New Wave tune.