As we moved into the later 1980s the music world was getting away from me. We had Whitney Houston, Tiffany, Debbie Gibson, Richard Marx, Miami Sound Machine....not my cup of tea. Some of the tunes today were big enough hits and some...well you have to dig a little but there's always good music, somewhere!
I'm mad at Prince! Ok, the Beatles don't have songs on iTunes for some reason but at least you can see tons and tons of their stuff on youtube. Prince has made it impossible to see his videos so no Raspberry Beret, which ticks me off! And **** Bryan Adams too. Bryan Adams! Who does he think he is? I like his music, he fits in here but I wanted to use Summer of '69. So **** you, Bryan! Now on to some great performances and some very guilty pleasures.
And then we danced! The early 80s had a lot of entertaining music and these tunes are the kinds of things I was listening to. We'd moved to San Francisco and frequented a club called Echo Beach. These tunes seem like the modern era, thanks to MTV. I didn't get a deja vu feeling exactly, while I was putting this together, but the memories are stronger than any of the previous weeks.
So this disco thing was fading out. Baseball fans were rioting over it in Cleveland. Or maybe that was the 5 cent beer. In Manhattan a different kind of music was growing that soon spread to London and then back to other parts of the U.S.
Here are my favorites of the late 70s, very early 80s punk/new wave scene.
You saw the list yesterday, the one with Barry Manilow, the Captain and Tennille, Olivia Newton-Fig, the Carpenters and so on. Today's stroll will not include any of them, due to my insistence that I have to like something to post it!
1975 was, in retrospect, the last year of the 60s in music. Heavily influenced by what had come before, often performed by the same people. Soon it would be all disco, punk, new wave.
Ok, so I'm skipping ahead a little but I got on a train of thought which led me to my own short-lived career. When 1975 rolled around I found myself in Los Angeles. Shaharazade and I had been in a small town on the Oregon coast and I had to go. I had ambition! We moved to San Francisco but I soon found that SF wasn't the place. I had to go to Hollywood.
While America was entertained or tormented by disco, England was going through an odd phase, where hippies and makeup combined to create the Glam Rock scene. Satin was in. Nuttiness was in. It eventually played itself out by becoming too bubble-gummy. The goofball outfits of Slade and the pop of The Sweet
led to the nice, safe, calculated Bay City Rollers. But for awhile it was a lot of fun.
So the Beatles broke up and things got confusing. The Rolling Stones, for example, no longer had an example to catch up with. Thanks to The Band's rusticana (is that a word?), the Beatles getting back, Dylan's catching rainbow trout being what it must be all about, and hippies in droves leaving the cities to become country dwellers, rock 'n roll was getting soft.
Some real mindbending happened in the later 60s...as some of us remember so well! And that bit about "if you remember the 60s, you weren't there", well, that's not true at all! It's some kind of anti-hippie propaganda.
The times, they a-changed in 1967. Here's a collection of crazy garage music and early psychedelia, culled from my memory and the wonderful world of youtube. Thanks, youtube! You've saved me late fees at my local movie store. I've got two I like. One is Clinton Street Video, a smallish store that has a very good selection of obscure music plus lots of Italian movies. The other is Movie Madness, a much larger place, whose owner goes to Hollywood auctions and stocks his display windows with Rita Moreno's nightie from West Side Story or Tony Curtis' flapper hat from Some Like It Hot. But I digress...
I was tempted to start with The Singing Nun, Bobby Vinton and such. Check out what the big hits of 1963 were! Sugar Shack, Surfin' USA (ok, that's 1 good one), The End of the World (by Skeeter Davis...a slow number), Rhythm of the Rain, He's So Fine, Blue Velvet (the bad one by Bobby Vinton), Hey Paula, Fingertips (that makes two good ones), Washington Square, Can't Get Used to Losing You (by Andy Williams!!), Dominique, I Will Follow Him...it was pretty dire. But really, why subject all of us to those songs? The important thing is, life changed in December 1963.
In the winter of 1970, thanks to the work-study program at Antioch College, I managed to get myself a job as an assistant music teacher at a small Detroit private school. I've forgotten the name where I worked. It was awhile back! I found a place to live with students from Wayne State University. Every day I'd get up, walk to Woodward Avenue, take the bus downtown (where I'd freeze), then transfer to school. The only thing that's important here is "Woodward Avenue". On that street is Mecca. The Sound of Young America. Hitsville, USA. Motown Records.
Our great vacation at the end of 1958 took us to Miami. It was my first airplane flight! We left New York in the cold of winter and landed in some kind of sunny paradise...which lasted for about a day. We had a beautiful day in Miami and 6 days and nights of rain.
i've been listening to a bunch of angel tunes this week.
i first heard this by John Prine & Bonnie Raitt. tis one of my favourite tunes.
i couldn't imagine Dave Matthews doing it, really....
but i really really like this version. Boyd Tinsley (violinist) is singing.
