Posts Tagged ‘The Knack’

Today’s Top 5: September 8, 1979

Posted: September 8, 2019 in 1970s, 1979, Charlie Daniels Band, Chic, Earth Wind & Fire, ELO, The Knack, Today's Top 5, Top 5
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Days become weeks, months and then years, and soon enough the communal memories are relived on the Decades TV channel via its flagship “Through the Decades” program. For those who’ve never seen the show, it’s a magazine-styled documentary series that delves deep into what happened on a particular date across the decades. Sometimes, though, I wish it dove deeper into specific days or timeframes. 

Which leads to this date in 1979: September 8th. It was a Saturday and, in the Delaware Valley, a wondrous pre-fall day. As predicted by Jim O’Brien, the weather forecaster on Action News, temperatures remained in the low 70s through the afternoon, thanks in part to the sun hiding behind billowy clouds, and then dipped into the 60s that evening.

The main issue on everyone’s mind: the economy. The unemployment rate jumped from 5.7 percent in July to 6 in August, due in large part to layoffs in the manufacturing sector, and inflation was – yet again – on the move, clocking in at 15.4 percent.

Two months earlier, on July 15th, President Jimmy Carter had delivered his infamous “malaise” speech about the palpable unease in the land: “It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.” Carter, it should be noted, was half-right: There was a crisis in confidence – but it wasn’t directed inward. Rather, the American people had lost confidence in him.

The median income of households in the U.S. was $16,530 (click here for a full report), which comes out to $58,418 in today’s money. (The average cost of a car, for those curious, was $6,848.)  

Anyway, Saturday being Saturday meant me heading up the street to play make-shift baseball, basketball, football or street hockey with friends, all to a soundtrack provided by the Top 40-oriented WIFI-92. That night, along with the mom of two of the friends, we took in one of the funniest movies I’d yet seen, The In-Laws.

I know the date not due to a photographic memory, but old-fashioned deduction: It’s the only Saturday in September that the movie was booked at the one-screen Hatboro Theater, which is where we saw it.

If I’d stayed home, my TV options would have been severely limited…

…so, odds are, I’d have hightailed it to my room and listened to music. And speaking of music, here’s today’s Top 5: September 8, 1979 (via Weekly Top 40).

1) The Knack – “My Sharona.” Topping the charts for the third week in a row is this tasty track, which I owned – and still own. In time, an anti-Knack backlash took hold, as the band was seen as calculating and somewhat crass. Whatever. 

2) Chic – “Good Times.” Within a year, Chic would find themselves cast aside due to the anti-disco backlash deejay Steve Dahl’s Disco Demolition Night ignited on July 12th at Chicago’s Comiskey Park. But that doesn’t diminish their work. (Nile Rogers’ memoir, by the way, is well worth the read.)

3) Earth, Wind & Fire – “After the Love Has Gone.” The classic soul group channels their inner-Christopher Cross in this adult-contemporary classic.

4) Electric Light Orchestra – “Don’t Bring Me Down.” The final single from ELO’s 1978 Discovery album reached No. 3, their highest-charting 45 yet. (It would take an assist from Olivia Newton-John for them to hit No. 1, which they did the following year with the title tune to Xanadu.)

5) The Charlie Daniels Band – “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” Folks who heard this on country radio back in the day may not know, but the line that goes, “’Cause I told you once, you son of a gun, I’m the best that’s ever been” was dubbed in after the fact to accommodate radio airplay. As heard in the clip below, it originally went, “I done told you once, you son of a bitch, I’m the best that’s ever been.” 

Today’s Top 5: September 29, 1979

Posted: September 24, 2017 in 1970s, 1979, Blondie, Herb Alpert, Michael Jackson, Robert John, The Knack, The Records, Top 5, Wind & Fire
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The fall of 1979 can best be summed up in one word: “eh.” Disco ruled the charts, but a New Wave was breaking. I was a newly minted ninth-grader and having a blast – primarily in cartooning, a fun elective where we made silly Super 8 movies – but also in most everything else. I got good grades, had good friends, and had good times.

In the wider world, however, things weren’t quite as upbeat. Unemployment averaged 5.8 percent, the lowest it had been since 1974, but as the year wore on that number inched higher. The bigger concern: inflation, which rose from 9.3 percent in January to 13.3 percent in December.

As recounted in “The Great Inflation,” a Federal Reserve historical overview, the reasons for the spiraling inflation were plenty, including the Fed’s own policies, President Nixon’s decision to opt out of the Bretton Woods system (aka the gold standard), and the oil shocks of 1973 and 1978-79. This March 1979 news report from WEWS in Cleveland does a great job of explaining the ripple effect that OPEC’s recent decision to raise the price of oil would have:

Now, factor in oil-related events beyond OPEC – like the Iranian revolution, which decreased overall oil production by about seven percent, and old-fashioned hoarding, which was also in play, and the result was scenes like the ones captured by the MacNeil-Lehrer Report in June 1979:

Beyond the economy, this year in American history is notable for the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident that March; President Carter being attacked by a “killer” rabbit in April; McDonald’s introducing the Happy Meal in June; Steve Dahl’s “Disco Demolition Night” at Chicago’s Comiskey Park that July; Michael Jackson releasing Off the Wall in August; and, on Sept. 23rd, an anti-nuclear protest in New York City drawing an estimated 200,000 people.

Of course, as a 14-year-old boy in suburban Philly this September day, a fine Saturday with highs in the mid-70s, I was at once aware and unaware of much of that. My family watched ABC’s World News Tonight most nights, and read the newspapers – granted, in my case, that meant scanning the headlines before diving into the Sports and Entertainment sections, but I knew what was what. Kind of.

I likely spent part of the day playing ball in the street with friends, or at the park doing the same. A radio may or may not have been blaring, and if one was that meant WIFI-92, the Top 40 station I wrote about in this remembrance of Donna Summer, was providing the soundtrack to the fun.

Movies in the theaters that month included Amityville Horror, More American Graffiti and Monty Python’s Life of Brian; and, over the next few months, included 10, The Rose, 1941 and The Jerk. Of those, I only saw More American Graffiti and 1941 in the theaters, though I read the Amityville Horror book. But here’s one memory tied to one of the films I didn’t see, 10: Not long after its release, a girl came to school with her hair braided in cornrows exactly like Bo Derek’s. Now, cornrow braids work for some folks – Alicia Keys springs to mind. Others? Not so much – and this girl definitely fell into that camp. Everyone looked. Everyone laughed (though hopefully not to her face). And she arrived at school the next day with her locks returned to their natural curls.

And, with that, here’s today’s Top 10: September 29, 1979 (via Weekly Top 40)…

1) The Knack – “My Sharona.” The debut single from the new-wave Knack knocked just about everyone for a loop – most of all, I’m sure, the band itself – when it landed atop the Billboard charts for six weeks in a row, with this week being its last; and it went on to be the the year’s best-selling 45. It’s an undeniably catchy tune, and one that won over many young music fans such as myself – small surprise since the Knack’s Doug Fieger later said it was written from a 14-year-old boy’s POV. But Capitol’s accompanying promotional campaign, which conjured the Beatles, ultimately caused a mean-spirited backlash (“Knuke the Knack,” anyone?) that soon doomed the band to joke status. Which is a shame because, as I said, this song is a delight – and the followup single, “Good Girls Don’t,” was pretty darn good, too.

2) Robert John – “Sad Eyes.” The No. 2 song, which would inch up a notch to rule the Billboard charts the following week, is this easy-listening favorite.

3) Herb Alpert – “Rise.” No. 3 this week is this light disco instrumental from legendary trumpeter Herb Albert. It would take the top spot in four weeks’ time.

4) Michael Jackson – “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough.” What needs to be said about this, this week’s No. 4 single? That it’s disco? Yes? That it’s undeniably catchy? To quote my wife, “it’s a great song.”

5) Earth, Wind & Fire – “After the Love Is Gone.” Rounding out the Top 5 is this EW&F classic, the group’s sixth Top 10 hit in six years.

Also making their chart debuts this week…

6) Blondie – “Dreaming.” Clocking in at No. 79 is this, my all-time favorite Blondie song. I could play it on a loop – and, in fact, I’ve done just that. Here’s a factoid about it that I never knew: According to Blondie’s Chris Stein, the song’s a direct cop of Abba’s “Dancing Queen” (though I and American Songwriter don’t hear it).

7) The Records – “Starry Eyes.” And at No. 89 is this under-appreciated classic from the Records, a British power-pop band. It hails from their debut album, which was named Shades in Bed in the U.K. but morphed into a self-titled delight in the U.S., where the album also featured a much cooler cover. That’s the reason I bought it, actually.