Month: October 2018

My son’s high school changed this year from offering seven class periods to six. This caused him a little consternation, as suddenly he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to take all the classes he wanted, AP Chemistry in particular, but it all worked out in the end (they also run an optional “early morning” time block before 1^sthour, and that’s where the chemistry course landed).

His experience has been a rather different scene from the early 80s, at least compared to what Walton-Verona had on offer. They had six periods, full stop, and since it was a really small school (55 or so in my graduating class), options weren’t all that numerous, either.  Five of the classes I took my junior year (80-81) were almost automatically determined for me: English, Algebra II, American History, Chemistry, and Band. (Digression: my English class was actually somewhat non-standard and fun, two one-semester offerings for that juniors and seniors could take. The first half was Advanced English, where we did a ton of writing—I didn’t mind that at all. The second half was Early English Literature, which was also really fun. One of the most useless things that I still carry around with me is the ability to recite the first eighteen lines of the Prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, in Middle English.) It wasn’t obvious what to do at first for the sixth class, but I landed on another set of one-semester classes that were much more disparate.

Even though I’d had my driver’s license for four months by the time school started, I took Driver’s Education in the fall of 80. Several of my good friends were in there, too—I suppose our insurance bills got reduced for taking it? Mr. Tillery mostly taught PE/Health; he’d been my basketball coach and Health teacher in 7^thgrade. It was pretty much what you’d expect: film watching, test taking, and practical experience. There was a big expanse of asphalt just down the hill from the high school, literally called the “driving range,” where we practiced parallel parking and instilling various safety habits. (The driving range was also where we held our track practices, since we had no football team and hence no field with a track encircling it. Today, it’s a parking lot for busses.) We also hit the road a time or two, in groups of three with Mr. Tillery—I guess those left behind got a study hall.  I can’t say that taking the class changed my life, but it could have made some people I knew a little saner behind the wheel, a big contribution to the common good.

My spring course was something they’d never offered before: a half-year class in Personal Typing, taught, as it happened, by Mrs. Tillery. I hadn’t any place in my schedule for their regular full-year typing offerings, since I planned to load up on math and science electives. But as a complement to the driver’s ed?  Perfect.  It took me several weeks for my brain and muscles to sync up on where to move my fingers to construct words I wanted to create, but I am SO glad I was trained to do it.  For the next year or so after I first learned my way around the keyboard, I’d often have the experience of thinking about a word and then creating a mental image of typing it out (sometimes my hands would play along). I’m hardly speedy, and I still make mistakes all the time, but honestly it’s one of the most valuable things I took with me from high school—I sure use it all the time (it definitely made it much easier to gen up 800-plus words this morning). I’d totally lucked out on the timing, too—Personal Typing turned out to be a one-time offering at W-V.  There was one other benefit; it counted as the business class I needed to participate in FBLA competitions that spring, which sent my last year of high school in an unexpected direction.

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Thinking about that Driver’s Education class always puts me in the mind of the music of October 80. I was initially inclined to go with “Drivin’ My Life Away” as the featured track today, for perhaps obvious reasons, but I can’t pass up the opportunity to pick the song whose title shares a word with yesterday’s feature (and whose artist has the same last name). Contra what I said about Stevie, I confess to being an Al Stewart fan boy back then, beginning with “Year of the Cat;” the album of the same name was one of my first LP purchases. When “Midnight Rocks” debuted at #31 about a month prior to this show, I figured Al had a third top 10 song on his hands. I was disappointed when it stalled out at #24, its position here. Nonetheless, it was big with me, hitting the summit of the Harris Top 50 for a couple of weeks in November.

Those almost three years between Rumours and Tusk comprised a marvelous period where members of Fleetwood Mac would pop up on other people’s records. I can quickly think of four top 10 songs from late 77 to mid 79 where some subset of Christine, Lindsay, and Stevie appeared: “Sentimental Lady,” “Magnet and Steel,” “Whenever I Call You ‘Friend’,” and “Gold.” I like all of these (I wrote about one of them just two weeks ago), and I imagine that the outside help had something to do with it.

My favorite song of this tiny sub-genre, though, has to be the second single from John Stewart’s Bombs Away Dream Babies, which is at its peak of #28 on this show. I learned from Casey about Stewart’s notable place in the music scene: being part of the second wave of success for the Kingston Trio, writing “Daydream Believer.” One time when my pals and I were rummaging through WTLX’s album closet in the fall of 83, I came across Dream Babies Go Hollywood, the follow-up to his hit record. Perhaps chagrined at not finding the LP with the hit singles (the stash we inherited contained precious few albums you’d call essential for the operation of a radio station–I fear it’d been raided by past generations of jocks or their friends), I regret to say I never gave it a spin.

Back at the beginning of September I wrote about how often it’s nighttime when I think back to the fall of 79. “Midnight Wind” is so much a part of that sense. It evokes the dark thoroughly, from the title, to Stewart’s beckoning lyrics and distant vocals, winding on through to Buckingham’s searing guitar work at the end. But it’s Nicks that ends up stealing the show, wailing like a ghost for Miranda to join the party. It sounds like an offer impossible to refuse, even if one is likely to regret the consequences. I just want to crank this one, put it on repeat, and let it roll.

I didn’t think of myself as a Stevie Nicks fan boy at all back in the day, but she’s received mention several times here at the old blog already. Upon reflection, I do dig a very high percentage of the stuff she wrote/sang between “Rhiannon” and “If Anyone Falls” (perhaps oddly, “Dreams” has never done all that much for me); maybe I’m just now connecting some dots that have always been there.

My experience with Emerson, Lake & Palmer growing up was largely limited to “Lucky Man.” Well, let me put that another way—“Lucky Man” was the only one of their songs I heard that I knew as being by ELP. I suppose this is no particular surprise—certainly it’s the first/only song of theirs that would come to mind for many folks today. I was too young to hear it on the radio when it was a current single (it was actually released twice, hitting #48 in April 71, and #51 in February 73), but nonetheless it’s a part of my 70s soundtrack, going back before I started listening to AOR in earnest late in high school. I did hear Lake’s solo single “Let Me Love You Once” frequently my senior year, and his “I Believe in Father Christmas” is now one of my favorite seasonal tunes.

My college friend Warren was an ELP fan; he made sure I learned about “Fanfare For the Common Man” and “Karn Eval 9,” among others. (Though no keyboard player—he’s a drummer—Warren enjoyed mimicking Emerson shaking his long locks back while pretending to play one of KE’s lengthy solos.)  He also promoted “Touch and Go” (with Cozy Powell on drums) to me when Emerson & Lake reunited in 86.

This week’s #40 song is one of those that I heard every once in a while years ago without paying attention to who the artist was (not only was I a little too young for peak prog rock, I didn’t have any slightly older friends to clue me in). I grant you that the synth solo at the end should have tipped me off, but what can I say?  It was the ELP song that got played by Casey, and they spent just one week more on the show, at #39. The second release of “Lucky Man” immediately followed the chart run of “From the Beginning;” methinks the label was trying to revive it in reaction to this sort-of breakthrough.

I’ve been listening to the Billy Joel Channel on SiriusXM in the car a lot this month. On my way to work Friday morning, Joel was discussing his favorite keyboardists, with a song played from the artist after each monologue. Sandwiched between discourses on Elton John and 50s jazz legend Art Tatum was a bit about Keith Emerson. Billy specifically mentioned a song, “Little Arabella,” from Emerson’s days in the 60s band the Nice.  I started thinking, “Great—I get to hear this piano line that Joel is talking up. Maybe I’ll be able to understand a little about where it fits in with his stuff.” Uh, no—they played “Lucky Man” instead.

In my edition of Joel Whitburn’s Top Pop Singles (the one that stops in 2002), the first entry in the ‘T’ section belongs to a Dutch one-hit wonder. Taco (last name Ockerse) stormed charts around the world with his version of Irving Berlin’s “Puttin’ On the Ritz,” going Top 10 in nine countries, including #1 in Sweden and New Zealand (and in the U.S. on the Cash Box charts). It reached just #4 in Billboard; it’s on the way down here, stopping off at #18. While it’s plenty novelty-ish (that probably goes a long way to explaining why he didn’t hit again), I’ve always liked it. It appears that, like so many artists from way back when, Taco has kept active as a performer through the years.

Someone paying close attention to my musings over the last year or so might notice I’ve written very little substantive about stuff that happened during 1983. I don’t think it’s an accident. In particular, that fall is not a favorite season. My first dating relationship was right at the one-year point on the weekend of this countdown, but things weren’t going especially well; looking back, it’s not hard to tell that was on me. I was also in the process of botching a situation with a very good friend. At 19, I clearly had a long way to go.