I Think I'd Have Been More Excited If I'd Known How Much Fun (for the most part) The '80s Would Be

I was twelve the first time that I stayed up to witness the arrival of the new year. It was the night the ’70s ended. It was hardly a hoopla-laden affair to me. In fact, everyone else in the house had gone to bed.

I had stayed up watching Purdue play Tennessee in the Bluebonnet Bowl.

(I had to research who had played and that Purdue won 26-22)

At some point, I had switched over to Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve and, for whatever reason, got drawn in to the march toward 1980. It wasn’t the music. I was still about a year from music truly mattering to me.

The only performer who I remember was Barry Manilow singing some song called It’s Just Another New Year’s Eve. Even with my relative amibivilance toward music, Manilow was so everywhere for such a stretch in the ’70s, I knew some of his songs.

I think when 1980 finally hit, I shrugged and shuffled off to bed. It still felt pretty much like 1979 to me.

Here’s a trio of songs by acts that, according to Mr. Pop Culture, performed on that Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve in 1979 (even if I don’t remember seeing them)…

Blondie – Heart Of Glass
from Parallel Lines

So, I wasn’t listening to music in 1979, but I did know Blondie’s Heart Of Glass. On the rare occasions when there was music in my life, Heart Of Glass seemed to be playing.

I loved it – the trancey, shimmering disco beat and the sexy indifference of Debbie Harry’s vocal. There had to be millions of twelve-year old boys who took notice of Debbie Harry in 1979.

I didn’t know it then, but Blondie would become one of my favorite bands of the time and one that I still adore. The group incorporated a lot of musical styles into their sound, sometimes disasterously, but often the failures were at least interesting.

Chic – Le Freak
from Black History in Music

I did a bit of research and Chic’s most recent hit as the ’70s closed was the engaging Good Times. whose bass part would prove to be quite influential (Queen’s Another One Bites The Dust being just one example).

I could have sworn I had a copy, but, if I do it’s missing.

I do have Le Freak, from the year before. Like Heart Of Glass, Le Freak was one of the handful of songs I probably knew by name. Of course, the “freak out!” was what hooked me and my friends in junior high.

Village People – Go West (12″ version)
from The Best Of The Village People

Village People were everywhere for a year or so. It seemed like they popped up a lot on television which made me familiar with Y.M.C.A., Macho Man, and In The Navy.

Yeah, Y.M.C.A. is good fun, but it’s worn out its welcome with me.

I think I first heard Go West as a Pet Shop Boys cover. Then, it was used in a commercial for butter – farmers on tractors singing it – while I was living in London. It’s catchy as hell and dramatic to the hilt.

Baseball

For the first time in I have no idea how many years, I watched the MLB All-Star game the other night. It surprised me a bit to realize how rarely I’ve watched the game in the last twenty years.

I stared quizzically at half of the players during this year’s introductions as though I was trying to identify someone from a police line-up.

As a kid, the All-Star game was appointment viewing. We knew all of the players and most of us could rattle of a relevant stat or two.

In a world where summer had no internet, no mp3 players, only the most rudimentary of video games, and no cable television, baseball was often our favorite waste of time.

By ten o’clock in the morning, most mornings, the first pick-up game in our neighborhood would have already ended (usually in an argument, sometimes to steal strawberries from the patch out beyond our first base line).

The afternoon game that would come together (once tempers cooled and boredom set in) was like an Ironman competition and a test to merely endure in 95 degree heat.

Over the years, my interest in the sport has waned. I think it’s mostly due to the disparity in spending between the teams.

But it’s also football. Now, even in the middle of July, my focus is not on baseball but rather that my favorite team has signed some free agent linebacker and how that signing might affect a season that won’t really be underway for another three months.

It’s an onslaught of information that is, in the middle of summer, mostly empty calories. Even a dedicated fan doesn’t need to be so in the loop (and, if you do, you might have a serious gambling problem).

The first All-Star game that I vividly remember was 1979. Maybe it’s because my grandfather, a lifelong Pittsburgh fan, had passed away a few months earlier.

Almost every evening during baseball season, he’d sit on the couch with my grandmother. They’d hold hands and watch the Pirates on television or listen to them on radio.

(that autumn, the team would win the World Series in dramatic fashion)

Baseball was far more important to me than music in 1979, but perusing the Billboard charts from July of that year revealed a number of songs that, even as a casual listener, I recall hearing…

John Stewart (with Stevie Nicks) – Gold
from Bombs Away Dream Babies

The man who wrote Daydream Believer, Stewart was joined by Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks on the timeless-sounding Gold. It’s a pretty perfect pop song.

If Paloma and I ever open up a bait shop in the Southwest (I always pictured this song taking place on some dusty, desolate stretch of road in Arizona), I’d insist this song be on the jukebox.

The Knack- My Sharona
from Get The Knack

I had little interest in music in ’79, but, like all of us, I knew My Sharona. I don’t recall the mania surrounding them or the backlash, but I’ve wondered if it was similar to Oasis a decade and a half later.

Joe Jackson – Is She Really Going Out With Him?
from Look Sharp!

OK, I can’t honestly say that I ever heard Is She Really Going Out With Him? at the time. In fact, I’m positively certain that I didn’t hear it ’til several years later after Jackson had hit with Steppin’ Out.

Better late than never, though, and Is She Really Going Out With Him? is classic stuff.

Supertramp – Goodbye Stranger
from Breakfast In America

I’ve declared my affection for Breakfast In America before. But, as a non-music fan in 1979, I thought Goodbye Stranger was the brothers Gibb.