I happened to catch part of an American Top 40 countdown while running errands with Jeepster this morning. Casey Kasem was doing his thing just as he had from this week in 1974.
At the time of the original broadcast, I was a first-grader trying to adjust to a school in a small town where I had lived for less than a year. Most of my classmates seemed to be related and most of their parents had gone to school together.
Not good times.
And most of the songs Casey was playing were ones that I recollect hazily, if at all, from that time.
So, I thought that I’d consult a Billboard Hot 100 chart from later in the decade, when there would be fewer cobwebs.
As October was reaching its mid-point in 1979, I was a sixth grader and my friends and I were engrossed in the 1979 World Series.
It was shaping up to be a short series as Baltimore had taken three of the first four games against Pittsburgh.
I was dismayed. The broadcasters kept reminding me that there were just four times in the 75 year history of the World Series that had rallied from such a deficit to win the title.
If you were a twelve-year old kid pulling for the Pirates, it might as well have been never.
I was a Pirate fan through birth with familial ties to Western Pennsylvania. As kids, my parents had known Bill Robinson, who was starting for the team in the outfield.
My grandfather had passed away a month into that season, having been devoted to the team since the days of Honus Wagner.
October 13, 1979 was a Saturday and the night before the Pirates had dropped game three of the series.
I had remained sprawled out in front of the television late into the night, until the last, miserable out and I was still brooding about it as I biked to a soccer game that morning.
That night, it would be a repeat as the Orioles took the seemingly insurmountable three games to one lead.
And, eight days later, I was watching when the Pirates won a third straight game – game seven – to clinch the World Series.
(and the team hasn’t returned since)
Music was just beginning to pull some of my attention from sports that autumn. I was most certainly a passive listener, hearing music mostly when exposed to it through others.
Here are four songs that were on the radio that autumn as the Pirates were playing in the World Series (in what it seems – as each year passes – might have been for the last time in my lifetime)…
Journey – Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’
from Evolution (1979)
Journey was still two years away from Escape, but the group was having a hint of that future success with the slinky Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’.
The song was indelibly etched into my young brain that fall when, one Friday night at the pizza place that served as a hang-out for kids not old enough to drive, the song came on the jukebox.
As my friends and I watched, Mary, one of the true beauties in our class, and Deb, a few years older and already possessing a PG-13 reputation, began to dance to Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’.
As they swayed to the song, we all stood there – slack-jawed and inert, transfixed and mystified.
Fleetwood Mac – Tusk
from Tusk (1979)
The bowling alley was the other premier place to see and be seen once you reached junior high school.
I heard unusual Tusk incessantly from the bowling alley jukebox that autumn. And, I would pester my buddy Tony to play his 45 of the song when we hung out at his house.
It’s “real savage like” and a fine example of the twisted genius of Lindsey Buckingham.
Foreigner – Dirty White Boy
from Head Games (1979)
I knew Foreigner for songs like Cold As Ice, Double Vision, and Hot Blooded. I’d hear them blaring from the Camaro of an older kid in our neighborhood as he raced through the street headed for somewhere.
And the title track and Dirty White Boy from Head Games were two more songs that I associate with the bowling alley jukebox. For all of the grief that Foreigner might be given, their straight-ahead rock stuff certainly did sound cool blaring from a Camaro eight-track player or bowling alley jukebox.
(and, the girl on the cover of Head Games was Lisanne Falk, who would play one of the Heathers in the 1989 black comedy Heathers)
Cheap Trick – Dream Police
from Sex, America, Cheap Trick (1996)
Cheap Trick exploded in 1979 with Cheap Trick At Budokan and the quartet from Rockford, Illinois is one of the first bands I can recall my classmates embracing with fervor.
Dream Police was culled from the parent album of the same name – the follow-up to the mega-selling At Budokan – and we delighted in the manic, subconscious angst of the protagonist and the driving music of the power-pop classic.
And, I can’t hear Dream Police now and not think of sketchy ticket-scalper Mike Damone in the iconic Fast Times At Ridgemont High making his pitch – “Can you honestly tell me you forgot? Forgot the magnetism of Robin Zander, or the charisma of Rick Nielsen?” – and singing a snippet of the song.