Song of the Day 10/16: Red Rider, “Lunatic Fringe”
You might remember this song from 1985, when it was used on “Miami Vice” and the movie “Vision Quest,” but you probably don’t remember the band. Red Rider never reached the Top 40 in the United States, but they were major rock stars north of the border, where all their albums went platinum. They ruled the ’80s there, but went on a long hiatus when their frontman and songwriter, singer/guitarist Tom Cochrane, left for a solo career.
Cochrane is majorly famous in Canada – named to the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, recipient of numerous humanitarian awards and even the nation’s highest honor, the Order of Canada. In the United States he’d be as unknown as the band he fronted if it weren’t for his 1991 hit, “Life Is a Highway.” He wrote this song after learning about Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust, and intended it as an anti-racism message.
Lunatic fringe
In the twilight’s last gleaming
This is open season
But you won’t get too far
‘Cause you’ve got to blame someone
For your own confusion
We’re on guard this time
Against your final solution
We can hear you coming
No, you’re not going to win this time
As Todd Rundgren noted when talking about this song in 2016, “The lunatic fringe is no longer the fringe.”
The ethereal intro is by Austrian producer/keyboardist Peter Wolf, not to be confused with the J. Geils singer.
