It happened so fast. Like a flip of a switch, it seemed that Disco was gone. One moment I was in 8th grade Boogie-oogie-oogie-ing the next, I was in high school. I just realized that I left out a peculiar detail about myself. I had not grown even half an inch since third grade. I was 4 feet 10 and one half inches tall in the third grade and I was 4 feet 10 and one half inches tall my Freshman year of high school. [I’m 6 feet tall now just in case you were freaking out.] I really think it was all the coffee I drank on the front porch with my mom when I was in third grade. Does this have any bearing on my musical evolution? I can’t say for certain but I thought I’d throw it out there in case you saw something I didn’t.
So I’m attending college prep school in Vermont with students from literally all over the world. It is fall of 1979 and Disco is starting to provoke some surprisingly violent reactions. Music called New Wave is starting to fill in that vaccuum where disco used to be. I remember the drive from the airport in Hartford, Connecticut. Does that give you an idea about how small these communities were? I had to fly in to an airport two states away. On that three hour drive was the first time I heard Blondie – Heart Of Glass. It still had kind of a Disco beat to it but different.
I instantly liked Blondie. Heart Of Glass was a great song that served as a kind of transition from the heavily produced disco songs to a more scaled back and sensible sound. Was it the New Wave people were talking about? I liked the almost mechanical aspect of the percussion against the atmospheric quality of her voice. She wasn’t bad to look at either. I bought 45. On my budget, 45’s were about the best I could do. I eventually would pick up a dozen or so before I could make arrangements to get back to where I wanted to be, albums.It was a new start. Like I had left my elementary school friends behind by going to BFMS, I left my BFMS friends behind when I went to Vermont Academy. A few kids from Bellows Falls Middle School also went to Vermont Academy. Likewise, Kansas, Styx and a few more made the transition to high school with me.
Early on at VA, one thing I realized that my room was missing was a stereo that I could call my own. My cousin Jamie had her own stereo that she got for selling magainzes. It had AM/FM turntable and 8-Track. I found one in a Sears catalog that had AM/FM Turntable, 8-Track and cassette. Of course I could never afford something like that. After all it was $100. I called my dad and more or less begged him to get it and ship it to me. A few weeks later and there it was. I set it up in my room and tuned the radio to my favorite now forgotten radio station and this was the first song it played.
Diana Ross – Upside Down
Isn’t it weird the things that you remember? The same thing happened when I turned on the deck that I installed in my first car but that doesn’t happen for a few more years.
My personal music collection had grown somewhat stagnant while I was away at middle school. Like I said before it wasn’t really a priority and my mother wasn’t there to finance any music purchases. Somehow, now that I was in high school, it seemed that the opportunity to buy music presented itself more frequently. I didn’t have a formal job but I would split logs for my Uncle for a stipend. I also became a pro at finding discarded beer and soda containers that I’d turn in to the village market for the 5 cent deposit. Many boxes of pop-tarts were purchased thanks to littering bastards.