Featured Essay: The Mystical Dice of Random Musical Destiny

by Rich Wilhelm

I recently bought a new turntable. It is the first serious piece of audio equipment that I have purchased for myself in 22 years.

It is not as if I didn’t own a record player. The piece of equipment that I bought 22 years ago is, in fact, a working phonograph. But change is good and it was time for a change. 

To celebrate this fun new record player, I’m going to return to enjoying regular audio adventures with my Mystical Dice of Random Musical Destiny.

Here’s the deal: I have a collection of dice, many of them 20-sided. I don’t play fantasy games; I just like dice. But I have developed an utterly convoluted way to use the dice to determine what records to play when I don’t have something in mind that I deliberately want or need to listen to at that moment.

This is the first in a series of essays. Only the Mystical Dice know where future installments will take us!

Cheap Peaks!

“The kid is hot tonight/Whoa, so hot tonight/But where will he be tomorrow?”    — Loverboy, “The Kid Is Hot Tonight”

This first story, inspired by the Mystical Dice picking a compilation album called Exposed II, is one of the longer stories, and actually features two albums:  Exposed II and its predecessor, Exposed. Both released in 1981. Both subtitled A Cheap Peak at Today’s Provocative New Rock.

This story also features me hopping around on one foot in my underwear in an examination room, as a doctor tells his students what an interesting case I am. But I’ll get to that in due time.

The Exposed albums, both two-record sets, are prime examples of “loss leader” products. In this case, these were various artist sampler albums, so cheap that the company releasing them (in this case, Epic/Columbia and associated labels) will lose money in the short run, in the hope of making the money back in the long run via sales of the proper albums by highlighted artists.

Some of the artists on the original Exposed album were Judas Priest, Adam and the Ants, Steve Forbert, and Rosanne Cash. And let’s not forget Loverboy! Yes! Loverboy.

The second volume featured Psychedelic Furs, Orchestral Maneoeuvres in the Dark, and many new wave-ish bands that most people have never heard of, or at least haven’t thought about in decades. 

Meat Loaf associate Ellen Foley appears on Exposed. Meat Loaf associate Karla DeVito appears on Exposed II. 

I probably bought both Exposed and Exposed II at Village Records, a shop at Tri-State Mall, just over the border in Delaware. I was hitting that store up often in those days, walking straight past the paraphernalia cases to get to the records. 

Exposed was probably two or three bucks, which was my impetus to buy it. When Exposed II hit the shelves a few months later my motivation was probably my desire to complete the set, just as much as the fact that it was cheap. 

In some other timeline, I may have given the Exposed albums a few cursory listens, then filed them away, eventually shuffling them off to thrift store oblivion. But thanks to scoliosis, that is exactly not what happened. 

Instead, Exposed and Exposed II became my scoliosis soundtrack. Let’s detour a bit through my scoliosis journey… 

An Interesting Case

About two years before the Exposed albums entered my life, I found myself in an examination room at the Alfred I. DuPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Delaware, just a few miles from my home. Wearing just a pair of tighty-whities, I was standing on one foot as a doctor pointed out the irregularities of my shoulders and spine to at least one, but I’m thinking two or three or maybe 27, young medical interns. They listened intently and stared at me as the doctor noted that I was “an interesting case.”

I may have been asked to hop on that one foot, but this could be a false memory on my part. Or maybe not. 

Also, to this day, I am not sure what made me “an interesting case”. But the doctor said I was, so it was probably true.

Hopping or not, I was in that room in my undies because I had recently been diagnosed with scoliosis, otherwise known as curvature of the spine. One doctor heightened my 13-year-old boy self-consciousness by noting that scoliosis was mostly an affliction experienced by teenage girls.

I don’t remember how my parents and I figured out there was something wrong with my back, but I do have a vague memory of possibly discovering something was amiss when we went shopping to buy a suit for my 8th grade graduation. It may have been while trying on suit jackets that we noticed that one of my shoulders seemed to have a hump that the other didn’t have.

Maybe I was having back pain as well, though I don’t recall that being an issue. I had been delivering newspapers for about four years, and sometimes that bag slung over my shoulder could be heavier than it should have been. 

Regardless of my fuzzy memory, I know that I was diagnosed with curvature of the spine and we began making regular trips to DuPont. Surgery and/or braces were discussed but I think in the end, it was just decided that we’d keep an eye on it, to see if it got worse within some predetermined amount of time. 

In the meantime, I was given a set of exercises to do. And this is where the Exposed albums return to the story. 

My Loverboy Scoliosis Workout

I was assigned to do about 30 minutes of exercises every day. This included push-ups and stretching a long strip of rubber. I also had to do pelvic thrusts, which weren’t nearly as sexy when I did them as the cast of The Rocky Horror Picture Show advertised them to be in “Time Warp”.

I needed a soundtrack for these workouts. I remember that I often used Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell album, and even his second, long-forgotten LP, Dead Ringer. Quite possibly, I was also listening to Bad for Good, the solo album by Meat Love collaborator Jim Steinman. But once I had the Exposed albums, they became my heaviest workout rotation. 

Not every song on the two collections worked for me, but many did. The Loverboy songs, “The Kid Is Hot Tonight” and “Lady of the ‘80s”, got me super pumped. In a total “your changing body” moment, I vividly remember breaking out into a sweat the likes of which I had never experienced before while vigorously pushing up to either “The Kid Is Hot Tonight” or “Lady of the ‘80s.”

I was never quite the same after that. Thanks, Mike Reno.

Recalling that Loverboy moment is important, because a few years later, Loverboy became my band of choice to like ironically; that is, to pretend to like because I thought it was funny. But thinking back to those push-ups, there would have been no irony detected in my initial love of Loverboy. I was hot and sweaty from my push-ups, and “The Kid” was hot (tonight) as well. I appreciated that. But, yeah, where would he be tomorrow? Where would I be tomorrow, when I had to do more push-ups? That’s when it all got existential on me. And that’s what has humbled me into thinking twice before I start liking something ironically again. 

I should also note that the Exposed albums featured liner notes about each artist and their albums. These liner notes often made for some quick post-workout, cool-down reading and are just as responsible for inspiring me to want to write about music as any column by Lester Bangs, Robert Christgau or Dave Marsh ever was.

Eventually, my visits to DuPont ended, though I can’t remember specifically when or why. I suppose the doctors felt reassured that my case, though interesting, was not going to advance and there would be no need for further treatment. 

I stopped doing the exercises and my scoliosis era just faded away. 

Technically though, I still have scoliosis. It’s just not something that I have thought about much over the last 40 years. I have largely moved on from the music of Meat Loaf/Jim Steinman, but I still occasionally speak lovingly of Loverboy. 

Columbia/Epic’s “loss leader” strategy did work on me, just not in the way the corporate honchos hoped. I have often bought original albums highlighted on Exposed/Exposed II, but usually in bargain bins years after their original release. In many cases, I’ve subsequently ditched some of those same records, because I’m just as happy hearing songs from them in the Exposed context. Still though, I own nearly everything that the stellar Rosanne Cash has ever created, and I love Steve Forbert. And, yes, I own original Loverboy albums. Of course I do,"

Finally, I should note that 40+ years later, I still have my ears open for “today’s provocative new rock”, circa 2025. But with all the vinyl trading I’ve done over the decades, I still own both of my original Exposed albums. When I do occasionally ponder my scoliosis era, at least I know I have a kick-ass, pelvic-thrusting soundtrack.

Rich Wilhelm is a writer who lives in Royersford, Pennsylvania. Rich is the news editor for the communications department at ASTM International. He has written extensively for Cool and Strange Music Magazine, PopMatters, and his own website, The Dichotomy of the Dog. Rich is also a certified volunteer tour guide at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Rich can be found on social media at Bluesky (@rfwilhelm.bsky.social), Threads (valentine_headphone_kid), and Instagram (valentine_headphone_kid).