Today’s Top 5: December 7th, 1979

Posted: December 7, 2019 in 1970s, 1979, Barbra Streisand, Blondie, Donna Summer, K.C. and the Sunshine Band, Rupert Holmes, Styx, The Buggles, The Commodores, Today's Top 5, Top 5
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As I write, 40 years ago this day was a Friday. I was 14 years old and a ninth-grader at Keith Valley Middle School, the Hatboro-Horsham School District’s second of two middle schools. (At the time, the district’s elementary schools were K-5; Loller Middle School was 6-7; Keith Valley was 8-9; and the high school was 10-12; in the decades since, Loller closed; KV became 6-8; and the high school became 9-12.) 

In the Delaware Valley, you never knew what a December day might bring: One morning, such as this day, might be a brisk 40 degrees (Fahrenheit); and the next could dip into the 20s.

As was my custom, before leaving for school, I flipped through the Philadelphia Inquirer, which landed on our front porch every morn, while eating breakfast.

To me, the biggest news of the day was that the Philadelphia Flyers beat the L.A. Kings 9-4 and extended their unbeaten streak to 23 games. (The game was from the West Coast, so started late – too late to watch.) They’d continue with no losses for another month (12 games), racking up a record that still stands today.

I scanned the comics. Here’s this day’s Doonesbury, which is slightly prophetic: disco’s days were indeed numbered.

I’ve noted this before, but the late ‘70s were – economically speaking – tough. As the Inquirer reports on its front page, a jump in wholesale food prices showed that inflation had yet to be tamed:

For the year, inflation clocked in at 11.35 percent. That means, on average, items priced at $10 on January 1st, 1979, cost $11.35 by year’s end; but “on average” means just that. Some items skyrocketed higher while others remained about the same. If you look at fourth paragraph of the above article, you’ll see what I mean: “Energy prices rose by 2.5 percent in November, the smallest increase since February, but were still 62.7 percent higher than a year ago.”

Due to the increasing energy and food costs, something had to give: Discretionary spending. Except, that is, mine. My $5/week allowance still went far, especially when combined with Christmas and birthday cash. I hit the movies with regularity…

…and usually bought a 45 every week. LPs were a bigger expense, of course, so entered my collection at a slower pace. (That would change in a few years after I discovered a nearby used-record store.)

Speaking of albums, here are the Inky’s (uncredited) album reviews for the week:

Reading them now, I’m shocked: I had no idea I’d read a review of one of my essential albums, Hank Williams Jr.’s Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound, this early in my musical development. (I discovered it a few years later.) 

For the TV aficionados, this was the night’s lineup:

And, with all of that context (and more) out of the way, here’s today’s Top 5: December 7th, 1979 (via the Top40Weekly.com charts that end Dec. 8th):

1) Styx – “Babe.” In some respects, Styx were little more than a white Commodores with Dennis DeYoung the Lionel Richie of the group. (Think about it.) This ballad tops the charts for the first of a two-week run at No. 1. 

2) Barbra Streisand & Donna Summer – “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough).” In her never-ending quest to stay hip, Babs pairs with the era’s Queen of the Top 40 for this kitschy curio, which drops to No. 2 after its own two-week stay atop the charts.

3) The Commodores – “Still.” In some respects, the Commodores were little more than a black Styx with Lionel Richie the Dennis DeYoung of the group. (Think about it.) This ballad holds steady at No. 3.

4) K.C. and the Sunshine Band – “Please Don’t Go.” Coming in at No. 4 for the second week in a row is this out-of-character K.C. tune, which sounds lifted from the Dennis DeYoung/Lionel Richie playbook. It would eventually land at No. 1.

5) Rupert Holmes – “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” – Rising a notch to No. 5 and on its way to No. 1, this pop tune – which was inspired by a personal ad Holmes read – has been derided as one of the worst songs of all time. (Rolling Stone named it the sixth worst song of the 1970s, for example.)

And a few bonuses…

Blondie – “Dreaming.” In its 11th week on the charts, this perfect slice of taut rock drops from No. 27 (its peak) to No. 31. 

The Buggles – “Video Killed the Radio Star.” One of the week’s “power plays” is this foreshadow of the future, which jumps from No. 44 to 41.

Remember December: Albums of the Year, 2019

Posted: December 1, 2019 in 2010s, 2019, Album of the Year, Allison Moorer, Bangles, Bruce Springsteen, Kelsey Waldon, Leslie Stevens, Rain Parade, Remember December, The Dream Syndicate, The Three O'Clock
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The best music reflects the audience as much as the artist; we hear and feel our own life’s highs and lows in the lyrics and melodies. Hardship and happiness are singular yet communal experiences, in other words. Everyone encounters each along the way, though the where and when may differ. Life unfolds like a maze, after all. Though no two journeys are the same, at some point everyone treads down a rocky path that turns into a dead end – just as everyone eventually, at least for a time, finds their way. We do it again and again, over and over, until, at last, the maze comes to an end.

Years end, too. 

Which leads to this: On New Year’s Eve of 1978, the year when the music bug bit me, I scrawled “Wings – London Town” on a piece of looseleaf paper I titled “Best Album of the Year” (or words to that effect) that I then slipped into one of the drawers of my desk – the same desk, in fact, that I’m writing on now. With every passing year, another album or albums were added to said paper. In time, I transferred the burgeoning list to typing paper, then entered it into our first computer, then saved it to a floppy disc and, in the late 2000s, moved it lock, stock and barrel to an external hard drive. I now have it stored in the Cloud. 

(Heirs beware: There’s a lot of digital junk in my digital drawers.) 

The selection process, then and now, remains the same. As I explained in a Facebook post way back in 2010 that I’ve since moved to this blog: “The candidates are drawn from what I’ve purchased, so the pool is decidedly limited in comparison to, say, what the writers at Rolling Stone or Allmusic.com are exposed to. Some years I buy a lot and some years not, primarily due to my listening habits – I play albums I love over and over and over until they become one with my subconscious (obsession, not variety, is my spice of life). So the more I like certain albums, the less overall I hear.” (I’d amend that ever-so-slightly now. The explosion of streaming music has caused the need to spend money moot, but time is the new currency. And few of us have a lot of that to spend.)

Bruce Springsteen’s Western Stars bowled me over upon its June release. It marries an art form I adore – the “adult pop” sound of the 1960s – with Bruce’s well-honed songcraft, which this time out features a slew of recognizable characters finding their way through life. As I wrote in my review, it “spins tales of life’s casualties who invariably take two steps back for every one step up. Springsteen’s sympathy and empathy for them ring clear, perhaps because he sees himself in them – as should we all. (‘There but for the grace of God go I,’ in other words.)”

It’s such a tremendous album that, honestly, I’ve assumed it would be my Album of the Year since I first heard it.

But it’s not. It’s my No. 2.

No, my top album of the year is Allison Moorer’s Blood, the companion album to her poetic (and highly recommended) memoir of the same name. As I concluded in my review, it’s “a soulful treatise that resonates like few albums I’ve heard this year, let alone this decade. It’s a personal journey through pain and darkness that shares universal truths about life, love and forgiveness. Don’t miss experiencing it.”

Not all of the year was given over to darkness, however. The 3×4 compilation, which found the Bangles, Three O’Clock, Rain Parade and Dream Syndicate tripping back to the mid-‘80s and the Paisley Underground via vibrant renditions of each other’s songs, was and is pure joy set to vinyl. As I said in my review, “the music was utterly of its time – and, I’d argue, timeless.” It’s my No. 3.

Coming in at No. 4: Kelsey Waldon’s White Noise/White Lines. To cop a few lines from my review, it “mines the earthen strains of country music that mainstream Nashville, too often these days, ignores. It’s not the country-pop played on the radio, but the country-punk once played in the honky-tonks. It’s raw and ragged, real. Black soot courses through its veins.”

And, finally, my fifth favorite album of the year is Leslie Stevens’ Sinner, a set that both conjures and transcends the Cosmic American Music of Gram Parsons. To borrow from my review, “[i]t’s the kind of album you play once, and wind up playing again and again, each time hearing something new. Her vocals are a thing of ever-shifting beauty, soulful and sweet and pure, and the songs are strong and sure.”

(There were many other albums that caught my ear throughout the year and, I’m sure, in the weeks and months to come I’ll regret not singling a few out here. Feel free to peruse my First Impressions of them.)

Today’s Top 5: Remember November – Songs of the Year, 2019

Posted: November 30, 2019 in 2010s, 2019, Album of the Year, Allison Moorer, Bruce Springsteen, Juliana Hatfield, Kelsey Waldon, Remember December, Song of the Year, The Three O'Clock, Today's Top 5, Top 5
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Tonight, the streets outside our home will be littered with limousines and Town Cars as nominees, presenters and industry bigwigs arrive at the Old Grey Cat’s annual, and much ballyhooed, Album of the Year shindig. Select music artists and assorted others will walk the red carpet (and UNC Tar Heels welcome mat), pose for photographers, and field questions from reporters covering the event.

As is customary, after weeks of spirited deliberations, each member of the awards committee submitted their top pick for the past year via a web form, with the tabulated results printed out, folded over and placed sight unseen into an envelope that was then hermetically sealed and dropped in a mayonnaise jar on Funk and Wagnalls’ porch. No one, and I mean no one, knows the contents of said envelope. No one, that is, except for the evening’s host, the great seer, soothsayer, and sage, Catnac the Magnificent.

But before that Big Reveal, there’s this: Song of the Year. 

It is not a new addition to the fete, but an occasional one, and generally relegated to a single mention during the main awards summary. This year, however, due to the strength of several songs, the committee has deigned to break it out into a separate “teaser” post.

The “committee,” of course, is me, JGG. As I’ve said before, and will likely say again in tomorrow’s Album of the Year post, I am who I am: a middle-aged white guy with catholic tastes and a whimsical sense of humor that, some days, only my wife and cat appreciate. In my estimation, and to switch to serious mode, music lifts us when sad, calms us when mad, makes bad times manageable and good times even better. My picks come from what I’ve either purchased or added to my Apple Music library, which is packed with longtime favorites and albums discovered through reviews.

And with that out of the way, here’s today’s Top 5: Remember November – Songs of the Year, 2019.

1) In another era, Allison Moorer’s hymn-like “Heal” (from her Blood album) would have sat atop the charts for weeks on end, been played on the radio alongside Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and the Beatles’ “Let It Be,” and – as those two songs – covered by Aretha Franklin. It’s that powerful. It’s that perfect. Soul-salving set to song, it’s a soaring – yet restrained – prayer for inner peace. It’s my Song of the Year.

2) In some respects, Bruce Springsteen’s “Hello Sunshine” follows a similar thematic blueprint. As I wrote upon its release back in May, “it’s a masterful treatise on melancholia and depression” that describes Bruce’s “desire to step from the shadows and stand in the sunshine.” 

3) Kelsey Waldon’s “Kentucky, 1988” (from her White Noise/White Lines album), on the other hand, is less a treatise and more a celebration of roots. Kelsey may have been born of “two imperfect people” and weathered tough times as a kid, but that doesn’t stop her from looking back with wonder.   

4) The Three O’Clock – “Tell Me When It’s Over.” Not to tip my hand, but the 3×4 project was one of my favorite albums of the year – and how could it not be? The Three O’Clock’s rendition of this Dream Syndicate song tosses me through spacetime like few other tunes… as does the album as a whole. (That said, the unofficial video itself is best listened to, not watched.)

5) Juliana Hatfield – “Lost Ship.” Released way back in January, Juliana’s Weird album was a damn good outing and this moody track, with its mercurial guitar break, remains – for me, at least – its piece de resistance. It takes me places.

Absolutely Sweet: Maria McKee’s La Vita Nuova

Posted: November 20, 2019 in 2010s, 2019, Maria McKee
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Maria McKee, long a favorite in this household, has a new album slated for release in early 2020, aka the Year of Visual Acuity. Titled La Vita Nuova, it’s available for pre-order on Bandcamp; and the first teaser track, “Effigy of Salt,” is – to my ears, at least – instantly addictive. Stylistically speaking, the song echoes the baroque and operatic rock that percolated throughout her criminally underrated Life Is Sweet and High Dive albums. Lyrically? It’ll make you think.

 

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