Meme Tagged….a change of direction

I have been tagged. John from Last Visible Dog did it. And has now changed the face of this blog. Possible forever.
I had eschewed blogging until Liz was hospitalized and then started the first of many. Unfortunately for the blogosphere, all of them were finite, had an end point, etc.
So, here I am, I came up with a snarky and fun idea, invited a bunch of bloggers to be a part of it….only only some came….
The most important of them is Samurai Frog of Electronic Cerebrectomy, easily one of my five favorite reads (and the first thing I check with coffee in the AM)

As I said, John tagged me and he did it to this blog which might just be the starting point of a new frontier.

Here we go:

The rules for this little meme are:

1. Go to www.popculturemadness.com
2. Pick the year you turned 18
3. Get yourself nostalgic over the songs of the year
4. Write something about how the song affected you
5. Pass it on to 5 more friends

I was a snarky, self righteous music lover back in those days. It HAD to be underground, featured in Trouser Press and hard to find (imports were a bonus) back in those days for me to call it my own. Thank god those days are over as I now can enjoy The Hold Steady back to back with The Osmonds and tossed with a generous helping of Queen and feel no guilt.

Some thoughts on the songs of the year:

#58
Stray Cat Strut.
The Stray Cats
This was the album I should have bought. Peter and I had gone to the record store that was three doors down frommy parents’ shop in Bar Harbor. We had just been paid and, for some reason, decided NOT to spend the day eating pizza and playing Defender with a roll of quarters that could last all day. The owner of the shop was a pasty red haired dude who always looked pissed off that he had to be in Bar Harbor selling Air Supply to the unknowing and, yet, he wouldn’t engage two 17 year olds in conversation. Prick.
Anyway, the poster on the wall compared Elvis Costello’s new release Imperial Bedroom to Gershwin. I was a sucker for good advertising. After the first murky murmurings of Beyond Belief I was hooked. ANd I would listen to that side every day for the rest of the summer.
But, Peter bought The Stray Cats. And he bopped to it all summer long.
And in school that fall it was everywhere. It seemed to be the soundtrack for Senior Year. Almost. And by the time I got to college the next year it was ubiquitous and maligned. The roots rock/rockabilly revival was over. Costello would be crowned a genius but if you wanted to get the joint jumping, all you had to do was put on Setzer and the boys.
It’s that way 25 years later.

#66.
Radio Free Europe.
R.E.M.
My introduction to REM was 1,000,000 off the Chronic Town Cd. Actually, I never had the CD since it was impossible to find in the snooty town I lived in and I would forget that I wanted it when I discovered the import of Dirk Wears White Sox in the hip store in Livingston New Jersey.
1,000,000 and U2’s I Will Follow were the mainstays of college radio back then and by the time I got to college the indie rock scene had really begun to make some noise.
I am actually surprised to see that this even charted that year.Go figure.
A good friend of mine was an REM fanatic. He swore by Murmur, which this song is on. Declared it a classic. And it is. Although I find it difficult to go back and listen to it in its entirety. The production feels dated, but it’s still a fine record.
This is also the very first CD I bought. I was hit with a kidney stone in 1987, our senior year and Richard got me in a cab and took me to hospital. As a thank you, I bought him this CD. Even though he didn’t have a player. I just figured if he was ever going to get one (ha! ever…..I’m funny) I would like this to be the first cd in his collection. It was. But I think I stole it.

Finally
#2
Come on Eileen
Dexy’s Midnight Runners.
This song was big. Huge. Couldn’t escape it. I remember sitting on the windowsill of my high school band rehearsal room, waiting for word from one of the colleges I applied to, Syracuse, talkin with Jeff Z. Jeff was terrified of the CH CH Ch Ah AH AH sounds from Friday the 13th and if you whispered it near him, he freaked out. I mean, like he jumped out of his skin. Jeff was also the first person I knew whom I was sure was gay even though he had “girlfriends”. I was right. Go Gaydar!
We both sat on the sill, talking about the future and then this song came on. All I remember is how we were sure that it was one of the dirtiest songs we had ever heard.
“Come on Eileen, Oh, I swear, at this moment you mean everything. When you wear that dress, my thoughts I confess, verge on dirty”??? The guy is trying to get into Eileen’s pants, right? He’s begging her, isn’t he? This is the dirtiest top 10 song since Donna Summer’s Love to Love you Baby, isn’t it?
Well, that was our little secret. Like the moment when Doug Feiger says “when she’s sitting on your face” in the (chartbuster) Good Girls Don’t. Our parents weren’t paying attention back then. And, while the girls we fell in love with wore leg warmers and spandex, there was just one little chickadee who pranced around in overalls and, through her androgyny and sexuality, brought two friends, just beginning to define their sexuality, to a nexus point and a point of convergence. Thanks, Dexy!

I could go on and on and on about that list. You know, pound for pound, 1983 wasn’t all bad.

Now, I must tag.

I choose Homercat, Kristen, Splotchy, Song, by Toad, and Dave Willie. IF they are still reading this blog. And IF they are interested. And if you know what’s good for you, you would read these blogs, too.