Sometime during that awkward phase in adolescence where I had obtained a learner’s permit, but did not yet have “off campus lunch” at high school, I bought a “Best of Disco” CD compilation at Hastings in Wenatchee, Washington.
If ever there was a moment where all things brilliant converged into one 60 second montage, it would have to be the German made-for-TV movie “Das Millionenspiel” (The Millions Game).
It seems like the ‘serious’ teenage runaway movie was almost a trope circa 1980. I can think of two in particular, which featured pretty bland, terrible, melodramatic plotlines, yet contained fabulous music on their soundtracks.
Backlashes work in all directions, at least they went every which way in the Winter of Discontent in the late 1970’s in the UK.
I live for surprises. I am the only white boy I know that has multiple Yarbrough and Peoples singles, can sing all the traditional Spanish folk songs thanks to Joan Baez, and who listens to ABBA in its original native Klingon.
The adjacent suburbs of New York City, that’s where the Roches came from. Not a household name by any measure, but nevertheless an interesting group of Irish American singing sisters who typify the results of the 1970’s music scene.
Imitation, being the sincerest form of flattery, reached its weirdest and widest extent in the early 1980’s. One of the very first “rap songs”, Rap-O Clap-O by Joe Bataan, was covered in Dutch by “Danny Boy”.
After all of these years, I just watched the music video for Kate Bush’s “Experiment IV” for the first time. Dawn French and Hugh Laurie are both in this video!
I’ve never felt more stuck in my entire life as I have in New York – I have never felt more like an outlier, an outcast, a misfit, an injured athlete who looks back at the game they once played so well with a quiet disdain for those who came after.
If there was ever a song that was entirely overlooked at the time, and continues to rest in obscurity today, it is the song “Giant” by The The, from 1983.