As summer approached in 1979, we moved out of the house where I had spent all of my life into a new one, in the same suburb. It was a great house. It's top two floors had been bombed off in World Way 2. My brother and I were given a spacious room each in the cellar, which had been renovated accordingly. It was brilliant. Privacy! Next door lived a Lutheran pastor with two wholesome blonde boys (one of them whom was briefly in my class at school) with Danish names. I don't think that Pastor wanted his little angels hanging with us ruffians, so in three years living next door to Flanders, we never even talked with Rod and Todd. But my life was not rendered incomplete by the snub. Teenage depression, on the other hand, together with low self-esteem and unresolved issues following my father's death two years earlier, were a blight in my life. As ever, music and football were my refuge.
Chic - Le Freak.mp3
In the wake of
Saturday Night Fever, disco became a dirty word. Yet, disco was never properly defined, which meant that novelty acts and serious funk were lumped together into a stew of dismissal. Frank Zappa even saw it fit to parody Chic on his anti-disco anthem "Yowsah Yowsah Yowsah". The idiot. Chic's Nile Rodgers has a lot to say about how that prejudice was destructive in his career. Of course, history rightly observes that Sesame Street's disco album had very little to do with the genius of acts like Chic (listen to the
C'est Chic album; it is simply fantastic), whose baselines have been sampled to death, and that the Bee Gees were emphatically
not the "Kings of Disco" (though their disco output was pretty damn good as well). In a rare nod to conformism, I was publicly a paid-up member of the "Disco Sucks" movement. Secretly I grooved crazily to "Le Freak", "Knock On Wood", "Ring My Bell" et al. I might have embraced Chic even more had I known then that the "Aah, freak out" line was supposed to go "aah, fuck off", aimed at Studio 54 after the crappily exclusive club denied Rodgers and bassist Bernard Edwards entry -- possibly even as the DJ was playing Chic songs.
Patrick Hernandez - Born To Be Alive.mp3
I did not groove along to "Born To Be Alive". Like "Y.M.C.A.", that damn song was ubiquitous. I despised it with such force that I'd walk out of the school discos (which were shit anyway) when that blasted song was played. The dance people would do to it, at least where I lived, was stupid as well: one would jump with both legs together from side to side, preferably in rhythm. Stupid song, stupid dance, and stupid singer with a football player's bubble perm. Except, hearing it now and conquering my prejudice, I must concede that it is actually a pretty good Euro disco song.
Gerard Kenny - New York New York.mp3So good they named it twice, sings Mr Kenny as he fellates the Big Apple. I had this on a compilation album (a picture disc, one of these exciting newfangled things of the day), and rather liked it as a companion piece to Billy Joel's "My Way", a favourite at the time. It really should accompany "New York State Of Mind"; either way, it belongs in the same genre as Billy Joel.
Queen - Mustapha.mp3My friend Arne was a big Queen fan, and had introduced me to more than
News Of The World., which I already had. So when
Jazz came out, I bought it -- and put up the poster of all the naked women on bicycles (or Fat Bottomed Girls on a Bicycle Race) on my wall. And my mother didn't mind, tolerant woman that she was. "Mustapha" was the of the oddest thing I had ever heard in rock. Still is: it sounds like a Muslim call to prayer which halfway through gets the pomp rock treatment. Muezzin rock, if you like. Strangely, at that point I had never heard "Bohemian Rhapsody". I recently listened to
Jazz again. A few decent songs apart, it's a terrible album.
Art Garfunkel - Bright Eyes.mp3I was totally besotted with "Bright Eyes". Remember, a year before I was a suburban mini-punk. Now I drowned myself in soppy schmaltz (never mind that the melody is very lovely indeed). In fact, I was in so sentimental a state, I couldn't watch
Watership Down, because I had heard that some protagonistic rabbit dies. "Bright Eyes" is awfully soppy, but to its credit, it made me investigate the back catalogue of Simon & Garfunkel, as well as the superior solo output of Art's sidekick Paul. And I like the tall one for giving rise to one of my favourite lines in a song: "If I had a million dollars, I'd buy you some art. A Picasso or maybe a Garfunkel" (Barenaked Ladies).
George Harrison - Blow Away.mp3A forgotten classic from what was a rather fallow period for Harrison. This is a lovely upbeat song with a catchy chorus which could well have featured on A
bbey Road. It has a nice bit of Harrison's distinctive guitar, without it dominating. A real feel-good song.
Amii Stewart - Knock On Wood.mp3
There are some who regard Amii Stewart's explosive version of Eddie Floyd's original the best disco track of all time. I might not quite agree with that view, but it certainly is a contender. Its locational companion piece is Anita Ward's "Ring My Bell". Both songs remind me of the last church youth camp my brother and I attended. Two long years before, I had the time of my life (culminating in my slow dance with the lovely Antje). Now the group was populated by tossers and thieves. Some bastard stole a whole stack of 7" singles I had brought along for disco purposes. The youth leaders did not bother to investigate the theft (for which I had a suspect). The Ten Commandments didn't require reinforcement with that sorry lot...
Boomtown Rats - Diamond Smiles.mp3
I had long been a bit of a Boomtown Rats fan, from the debut album, and welcomed the success of "I Don't Like Mondays", just so that I could point out to my less sophisticated pals that I had long been a fan. "Mondays" is a fine song, but spoiled forever by Geldof's pregnant pause after the line "and the lesson today is how to die" at Live Aid. Bob, mate, it's a song about a high school shooting, not famine. A pregnant pause would've been appropriate at a Columbine benefit. In relation to famine, it was as appropriate as is playing James Blunt's "Your Beautiful" at a wedding. Tosser. Instead, let's hear it for one of a trio of outstanding tracks on
The Fine Art Of Surfacing (the other being "Someone's Looking At You"). "Diamond Smiles" is one of the best songs ever about suicide. Keep it in mind for that essential self-annihilation mix-tape!
The Knack - My Sharona.mp3
Incredibly, the Knack were hyped as "The New Beatles" (part 85) when this came out. They had a couple of decent songs, but their quick return to obscurity cannot be described as an injustice. Still, "My Sharona" totally rocks, from the staccato guitar riff and vocal delivery to the "woooooo"s. And the cover of the single rocked even more, at least for a 13-year-old lad, depicting a gorgeous brunette in a vest with protruding nipples (gasp!). Of course, to German ears, the band's name was a cause for mirth, with the best variant being the adjective
beknackt, which loosely translated means "off his rocker".
ELO - Don't Bring Me Down.mp3
I never liked ELO much, mainly because I thought Jeff Lynne was a bit of a dick. But there are times when you have to forgive Jeff's dickishness, and the
Discovery album provided me with one such an opportunity. For the purpose of this series, I could not choose between "Don't Bring Me Down" and "Confusion". The "Wooosh" versus the glorious intro of "Confusion" (which I think rips off "Airport")? The decider was arbitrary: "Don't Let Me Down" reminds me of marshmallow mice I liked eating at the time. "Confusion" doesn't remind me of sweets at all. I have since come to like many ELO songs, but I will not forgive Lynne for the unspeakable Traveling fucking Wilburys.
Tim Curry - I Do The Rock.mp3
Probably my single of 1979. At that point I was blissfully unaware of that overhyped cult twaddle that is
The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Indeed, I remained so until the late '80s. So when Tim Curry visited a restaurant in London where I worked as a waiter in 1985, my excitement was based on my love for "I Do The Rock". The 80-year-old owner of the restaurant, an old Australian queen we had nicknamed Mr Magoo, was dining on Table 12 at the same time, and somebody advised him that a celebrity was at Table 9. Mr Magoo moseyed over, stood before Mr Curry and his lovely companion, stared at them for a bit while rolling his tongue outside his mouth, as he habitually did, and then blurted out in an accusatory manner: "So, you're famous!" Mr Curry responded gracefully that he was an ac-tor. Thus informed, Mr Magoo turned and waddled back to Table 12.
B.A. Robertson - Bang Bang.mp3
A similar song to "I Do The Rock", with a litany of famous names, though mostly drawn from literature instead of real-life celebs. Half of the plot of season 2 of
Rome in two verses: "Tony and Cleo struck out for the freedom down Egypt's way, but Caesar had squeezed her in Rome on his quilt for a day. Hey hey. Now Anthony got really angry about old Caesar's hanky panky. She told 'em she would use em, and boy did she abuse 'em. Fall in love and blew 'em away." I've always loved this song, but now I associate it with one of the best anecdotes I've heard, involving a chap losing his virginity in a garden shed to the strains of B.A. Robertson's biggest hit. Bang bang and hanky panky indeed.
Frank Zappa - Bobby Brown.mp3Incredibly, "Bobby Brown" received extensive airplay on West German radio. I can understand why the terminology of "golden shower" or "she had my dick in the vice" went over the heads of German censors. But were they really happy to pass a line like "I've got a cheerleader here, wants to help with my paper. Let her do all the work, and maybe later I'll rape her"? Zappa was not endorsing the sentiments of his protagonist, of course, and recording the song was his prerogative (dyswidt?). I'm sure Zappa, whose delivering a great vocal performance on "Bobby Brown", was tickled to know it was being played on foreign radio.
Tubeway Army - Are 'Friends' Electric?.mp3
This Kraftwerk-influenced song was quite unique when it came out, and may well be regarded as the prototype for the New Romantic sound which would begin hitting the charts the following year with acts such as Visage and Orchestral Manouvres in the Dark. Much as I liked "Are 'Friends' Electric?", I later found it difficult to regard it fondly when Gary Numan revealed himself as a Thatcherite Tory. Having come across the (hopefully facetious) argument lately that Phil Spector should be left off murder charges on basis of his musical legacy, I think I might have overreacted in letting a man's obnoxious politics interfere with my enjoyment of music.
Thom Pace - Maybe.mp3This is the theme song of a TV series,
The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams (known in Germany as
Der Mann in den Bergen), which was produced in 1977/78 but came to German TV only in 1979, finding greater success there than it did in the country of its origin. Like the TV series, the title song is pretty soft. It can be enjoyed only in the pursuit of feeding nostalgia. And it is only in these terms that I find cause to play the song. To be honest, though, I wouldn't mind watching an episode of Grizzly Adams again.
The Buggles - Video Killed The Radio Star.mp3
Who said Americans have no sense of irony? This was first music video ever to be shown on MTV, setting out the new channel's ideology of domination by playing a song that anticipated and bemoaned the age of the music video. Delicious. Trevor Horn, who also anticipated the advertising yuppie look of the mid '80s, regretted the name Buggles: "I know the name's awful, but at the time it was the era of the great Punk thing. I'd got fed up of producing people who were generally idiots but called themselves all sorts of clever names like The Unwanted, The Unwashed, The Unheard... when it came to choosing our name I thought I'd pick the most disgusting name possible." My brother gave this to me as a present, redeeming himself for his previous transgression of desecrating my Sex Pistols LP.
Pink Floyd - Another Brick In The Wall.mp3
As 1979 drew to a close, I bought Pink Floyd's brand new single on the day it came out, quite by coincidence rather than by design, because I had considered the Floyd as a bit of poncey music. And I agree with my younger self, even if I love "Wish You Were Here". Anyhow, a whole nation following my trendsetting ways, this would soon become a big hit in West Germany, topping the charts within a few weeks. Naturally, I totally agreed with the sentiments of teachers leaving 'them kids' alone. In South Africa, as I would later learn, "Another Brick In The Wall" was banned from airplay because it had been adopted as an anthem for an anti-apartheid schools boycott.
And if I was in 1979 as I am now, my favourite album of the year would have been:
Earth, Wind & Fire - After The Love Has Gone.mp3Earth, Wind & Fire - In The Stone.mp3
To those who care about such things, collecting Halloween songs is a bit like collating music for Christmas: you can never have enough. In that spirit, here are some offerings that didn't find their way on the Halloween Mix I posted a month ago.
