Back in 1979, I moved back to Western NY from Madison, Wisconsin. I was about to start a new career as a college professor. Diane and I were looking at houses in the neighborhood we wanted to live in. The mortgage interest rates were 13% back then! And, I listened to a lot of songs on the radio as I was driving around from job to job.
Naturally, I heard The Cars’ “Let’s Go” many, many times. And Smokey Robinson’s “Cruising'” while I was cruising around North Tonawanda.
We’ve all been hearing “YMCA” at Trump rallies lately. And when I see Laura Loomer hanging out with Trump, Joe Jackson’s “Is She Really Going Out With Him?” seems appropriate for the moment.
Back in 1979, Nicolette Larson’s “Lotta Love” received heavy airplay on our local radio stations. Do you remember these songs? Any favorites here? GRADE: B
TRACK LIST:
| 1 | The Cars– | Let’s Go |
| 2 | Foreigner– | Dirty White Boy |
| 3 | Blondie– | One Way Or Another |
| 4 | Rickie Lee Jones– | Chuck E.’s In Love |
| 5 | Smokey Robinson– | Cruisin’ |
| 6 | The Doobie Brothers– | Minute By Minute |
| 7 | Raydio– | You Can’t Change That |
| 8 | Earth, Wind And Fire*– | After The Love Has Gone |
| 9 | The Knack (3)– | Good Girls Don’t |
| 10 | Peter Frampton– | I Can’t Stand It No More |
| 11 | Foreigner– | Head Games |
| 12 | The Babys– | Every Time I Think Of You |
| 13 | Hot Chocolate– | Every 1’s A Winner |
| 14 | Ashford And Simpson*– | Found A Cure |
| 15 | Bell And James*– | Livin’ It Up (Friday Night) |
| 16 | Peaches And Herb*– | Shake Your Groove Thing |
| 17 | The Village People*– | Y.M.C.A. |
| 18 | Joe Jackson– | Is She Really Going Out With Him? |
| 19 | Bonnie Pointer– | Heaven Must Have Sent You |
| 20 | Nicolette Larson– | Lotta Love |
Interesting, I don’t recall that Cars song by its title, but the vast majority of these are familiar. Never a big fan of Nicolette Larson nor, particularly, the Knack. Perhaps part of the reason was we (my parents and sister and I) were on the move from New Hampshire to Hawaii, and living in an apartment in Waikiki that the FAA provided, till my folks could find a house (in Kailua, which they paid a small fortune for, and sold for a larger fortune when they moved to Virginia in ’83)…not so much radio time, though much of what I did spend was in my parents’ bedroom while they watched something that didn’t engage me on TV in the living room, listening reasonably frequently to the SEARS RADIO THEATER and THE CBS RADIO MYSTERY THEATER, running from 7-9pm (IIRC) weeknights on the CBS newsradio station in Honolulu.
The Jones and the Jackson might be my favorites here, and not my favorite Doobie Bros. nor Blondie songs, but the latter is pretty funny.
Todd, 1979 was a big year for some of these groups and artists. They were on the cusp of MTV…
How many jobs did you hold down in ’79?
Todd, I had just moved back to Western NY from Madison, Wisconsin after Diane and I got married. I was teaching part-time at Niagara University and Canisius College and applying for a full-time postion at Erie Community College’s Business Department. I was hired at ECC and started a tenure-track in January 1980. Then 37 years later, I took the Retirement Buy-out.
Quite the academe shuffle…glad things went well, all things considered.
The most I was sustaining was full time at TV GUIDE for the first three months and hanging on to my after-hours part-time job at SmithKline Beecham. Neither paid too well, though when I got my first raise at TVG, I gave up the drug company and started working all the O/T I could get. My salary by the time TVG collapsed was reasonable, though not exactly Easy Street.
Todd, the reason I chose to teach at Erie Community College rather than Niagara University or Canisius College–both offered me teaching positions–was that at ECC I would be part of the New York Teachers Retirement System. Diane and I are on Easy Street now because we are both members of NYTRS with pensions that don’t exist for new teachers anymore.
Bittersweet, no?
I know all of the songs here and like my usual suspects: the Cars, Blondie, the Doobie Brothers, Joe Jackson, Earth, Wind, & Fire. But I don’t think—other than Nicolette Larsen covering then-boyfriend Neil Young’s song (he dumped her when her version was more successful than his)—it’s the best song from any of them.
Deb, songs from 1979 seemed more commercial. Neil Young is a strange dude.
Headlining rock/pop was Very corporate by 1979…hence the popularity of some punks and some rap and more of the more “radio-friendly” “New Wave”….Multiple songs on this album by Foreigner is weighted heavily toward what was cheap, but they were a faceless hit machine still in ’79. (Better them than Journey, or the creeps in the Knack).
Todd, and 1979 was the year that Disco Died. With MTV around the corner, groups had to adapt to performing on videos.
Disco per se faded, but rap started making inroads, other dance music such as house rolled in, quiet storm started to coalesce, and funk continued apace. And bland bores such as Lionel RIchie, of course, kept on boring. Even DC’s go-go music would score some national hits by mid-decade.
Todd, you’re right that Disco morphed into Dance Music in the 1980s. Rap was on the rise in 1979 and became a feature of MTV in the mid-1980s after some initial corporate resistance.
I know all of the performers but only six of the songs. 1979? A decent year personally. We were living comfortably on my pay check while my wife was a full-time mom for our two pre-school daughters. I imagine that’s a rarity among young couples today.
Fred, you and your family had an ideal situation. Today, many couples decide kids are too expensive and owning a house is out-of-reach.
I’m drawing a blank on most of the songs and the artists, but if I actually heard the songs…Well, that probably would not matter because the Seventies were not my decade (but neither were the Eighties, the Nineties, the Oughts, and so on — I’m stick in the late Fifties and the Sixties, and I’, not ashamed.
I will say that I think there ought to be law that when people dance to YMCA now, they must use Trump’s spastic “dance” moves exclusively.
Jerry, YMCA is a song of Gay Pride…but obviously Trump doesn’t know that.
I pretty much agree with everything Jerry said, though I do know a dozen of the songs. Funny, I hadn’t heard it in many years, but I just heard “Lotta Love” last week when driving around. I’m not sure if Deb’s story of their breakup is accurate or not – she’s probably know better than me – but Neil certainly has had a shaky personal life. But then, Larson was involved with several other music people – Andrew Gold, Weird Al Yankovic – before marrying drummer Russ Kunkel. She died way too young. Also, Linda Ronstadt (who sang with Larson backing Neil Young) says that she suggested she record “Lotta Love,” while Larson claims she found it on a cassette on teh floor of Young’s car and he told her she could have it.
Of course, I am a big Earth, Wind & Fire fan, so that would be on my list, though it is not one of my favorites of theirs.
Jeff, love that Nicolette Larson story! Neil Young seems to have problems with plenty of people…especially women.
Loved BLONDIE.
They were lovable. Some of my schoolmates, including (nowadays) academic and poet Juliana Chang and visual artist Carol Cheh, picked up a drunken Jimmy Destri (keyboards) wandering some major street in Honolulu and offered to give him a ride to where he might need/want to be. He wrote thank-you notes in almost coherent form on napkins. (Blondie was in town for a 1981 concert, IIRC.)
Certainly, their “Call Me” was essentially disco after disco was fading.
Carol’s more an art journalist and curator, to be more accurate.
Todd, here’s what Wikipedia says about “Call Me”: “Call Me” is a song by the American new wave band Blondie and the theme to the 1980 film American Gigolo. Produced and composed by Italian musician Giorgio Moroder, with lyrics by Blondie singer Debbie Harry, the song appeared in the film and was released in the United States in early 1980 as a single. “Call Me” was No. 1 for six consecutive weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, where it became the band’s biggest single and second No. 1.[1] It also hit No. 1 in the UK and Canada, where it became their fourth and second chart-topper, respectively. In the year-end chart of 1980, it was Billboard’s No. 1 single and RPM magazine’s No. 3 in Canada.
Yep, and the synthesizer-driven song is more dance music than most if not all the rest of their work…even the kind of disco pastiche that “Heart of Glass” was earlier.Or the rap pastiche that was “Rapture”…
Todd, I think “Rapture” is my least favorite of their songs.
For me, “Raoture” is also most notable for its goofy wit, though it did also name-check some NYC rap notables, the first time a lot of people heard their names.
Todd, “Rapture” was a hit and was played constantly on our local radio stations back in the day.
Patti, I’m still a big Debbie Harry fan.
A line in your review caught me off-guard:
“*We’ve all been hearing “YMCA” at Trump rallies lately. And when I see Laura Loomer hanging out with Trump…*”
Oh, HAVE we, now?
Dan, MSNBC and CBS EVENING NEWS cover Trump rallies and provide “highlights” of what goes on there.
That’s a relief. I mean, I didn’t actually think you went to Trump Rallies, so I just conjectured about your attendance on a few web sites to see what everyone thought…
Dan, I’m online about 10 minutes a day. I work on my blog, check a few other blogs, and clean out my email account of the dozens of spam emails I get each day. I only see Trump on TV, usually on MSNBC.
Also hard to miss those clips on tv comedy/chat shows…
Todd, those clips are everywhere!