Into You Like A Train Archives

Album: Talk Talk Talk
Year: 1981

As different as the U.S. and U.K. versions of Talk Talk Talk were, they fully agreed on one point: side two needed to start off with “Into You Like a Train,” the incredibly unsubtle fuck song that featured a typical pummeling Vince Ely drumbeat and a near-perfect mix of roaring guitars, soaring sax and pouring keyboards.

Back in the fall of 1981, I was a learning how to be a DJ at the pre-on-air KFSR — broadcasting down the hall to the KFSR office!! (and maybe the dorms, though I never believed that) — one of my most vivid memories of that time is putting on “Into You Like a Train,” and just fucking turning the studio monitor up as high as it would go, trying to get taken away by the overwhelming momentum of it all.

“Certain songs,” Craig Finn sang on The Hold Steady Almost Killed Me, “they get scratched into our souls.” That’s the basis of “Certain Songs:” a look at the songs that have done just that. These aren’t necessarily our favorite songs or the songs that we think are the best, but rather songs that — every single time we hear them — instantly transport us back to a place and time in which that song is forever intertwined. This is one of the reasons we so hate the RIAA’s attempted stranglehold on the dissemination of music: you never know where that next certain song is going to come from.

Sometimes the things that totally change your life happen so randomly as to be almost impossible.

Probably usually, actually, which is why you can never think too much about them. In any event, the first great thing to happen to me as an “adult,” was getting involved with KFSR, the Fresno State radio station.

And it happened because Tim made friends with a guy while we were both a Fresno City College.

At the time, Tim and I had only been out of high school for a few months, and we were going to City — or at least I was — because there was really no plan for adulthood besides drinking as much beer and buying as many records and seeing as many concerts as was humanly possible before actual responsibilities started creeping in.

Into You Like A Train

Certain Songs #1666: The Psychedelic Furs – “Into You Like a Train”

Certain Songs: Psychedelic Furs – Into You Like A Train