I call this era College Intermission because my heart wasn’t in it and it felt like I was just waiting around for my life to resume. I would make a bunch of friends at college and all that but I never did get into a single computer class. Something a computer science major probably should have had don’t you agree?
Michael Sembello – Maniac
Bonnie Tyler – Total Eclipse Of The Heart When I think of the autumn of 1983 a couple things come to mind. One is driving up and down state street to North Side High School to pick up my sister and the other is this song.
Greg Kihn Band – Jeopardy
Eurythmics – Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This
Spandau Ballet – True This one used to be on the radio so much. It was aggravating at the time but the burn in ties it to this era so solidly.
That first semester I had developed a routine. I’d drive to class which was an alien activity. I’d pick up my sister from middle school on the way home. In the evenings, I’d hang out at home. I still maintained regular study hours like they taught us at the Acaedmy. I’d turn the TV on but leave the volume down. I’d listen to music and write in a journal that I had decided to keep.
M*A*S*H would come on every night after the news and I watched them all. I became a a big fan. I prefer the early seasons with Frank, Henry and Trapper. It was pretty good all the way through but the last few years it was getting too political at the expense of the humor.
One of the early arrivals in my next engaement with Columbia House was Billy Idol. I must admit that I am at a bit of a loss as to how I decided to pick up this album. I can only assume that I heard White Wedding on the radio or saw the video for it.
I think it says something that I bought this album. While Billy Idol was still what I would consider a mainstream player, his music was a little rougher and more aggressive sounding than other stuff I had been listening to. Just a little bit. I wonder if this could be the first step in a journey that would take me to years of hard rock and heavy metal.
Was this a by product of life in the city? The last time I lived here, I was thoroughly into KISS. Now I was back in the city and the softer stuff like Journey or the folksy stuff like John Denver just seemed out of place.
I had officially started college at the local extension of Purdue University. It was quite a disappontment. The environment was underwhelming. After living on campus for four years, going to what was basically a community college, left a lot to be desired. Living in the city was depressing too. Sure there were city parks and such but no mountains, no crystal clear running rivers, just miles of concrete and asphalt and stagnant brown rivers.
I hadn’t attempted to make any friends yet. I signed up for classes, all the computer classes were full so my guidance counseler signed me up for a bunch of stuff that I had no interest in at all. Botony, are you serious? Maybe Billy Idol was cultivating a rebel in waiting.
Was MTV really as big as I remembered it was back then? Even though our house didn’t have cable, MTV was still on our minds and we hungered for music videos. We never missed Friday Night Videos. It was the closest we could get to the MTV experience in our house.
I think that MTV may have been like the Facebook or iPad of their time. Even people that didn’t understand it felt that they need to be involved with it somehow. This line of thinking probably is responsible for some really poor decisions. I’m sure that some bands that made some of those elaborate videos shouldn’t have. Maybe it was because I was at the perfect age, but I look back on this era with enormous fondness and feel sorry for the youngsters of today that have to live with the current version of MTV. Do people even make music videos anymore?
Men Without Hats – The Safety Dance
Peter Schilling – Major Tom
Wall Of Voodoo – Mexican Radio
Kajagoogoo – Too Shy
Talk Talk – It’s My Life
The Talking Heads – Burning Down The House
I think it is interesting how the clips I’m sharing here have migrated from live performances to official videos.
I don’t know why but for a 4 year period starting that autumn, I paid attention to radio and music videos more intently than I ever had. I still maintain that it was a ripple effect from MTV. Even on our 4 and half channels we had Friday Night Videos. Perhaps it was just a coincidence. I had relocated back to Indiana. I really didn’t know anybody here anymore. All that music I acquired while in Vermont more or less sat idle. In much the way that Disco disappeared, this new 80’s Sound appeared.
I had identified a few local radio stations and let it happen. That makes this section somewhat different. A very large portion of the music from College Intermission was stuff that I did not own until decades later. I was still buying albums at this time. In fact one of the first things I did was sign up at Columbia House again. I used a good portion of my inital free albums to replace some of my favorite cassettes. So this era will have its album elements but wil also be peppered with songs of the time. I do this because even though I didn’t purchase them then, I feel that they still contributed to My Musical Evolution.
Pat Benatar – Love Is A Battlefield as you know I loved Pat Benatar in the Academy Days I even got her Get Nervous album at the end. I realize that I forgot to mention it. I didn’t really listen to it. Here she was again and this song was all over the radio but by then I felt that I had moved on so I didn’t pursue it. Enjoyed it, but didn’t buy it, yet.
Gary Numan – Cars Another one of those songs that sport the classic 80’s sound.
After leaving Space Mountain, I slept for most of 3 full days. I felt exhausted but I’m sure that some level of depression was to blame as well. I moved back into mom’s house. Grandpa and I constructed a nice little bedroom in the basement. It had my old captains bed (which would be my son’s in 10 years) a comfortable old arm chair a desk on loan from my dad, a book case, and a TV table. It was cool in the summer and even cooler in the winter.
As far as My Musical Evolution is concerned, this is an interesting development. The College Intermission era goes from September, 1983 to September 1985. What may seem confusing is that during this same time period I’ll be experiencing The Rise And Fall Of ’84 and The Metal Years. Essentially 3 threads all progressing simultaneously. Maybe it is a split personality thing. We’ll find out as we go.
College Intermission begins with the local radio. As I mentioned earlier, it seemed that the airwaves were being flooded with new MTV inspired artists and a somewhat signature sound. I’m opening up the era with Kissing To Be Clever by Culture Club. The reason I’m doing this is because of the aforementioned anomaly. I owned Kissing To Be Clever on cassette but it had been months since I made the switch back to vinyl. I know it was on cassette because it had an instrumental version of Time (Clock Of The Heart) on one of the sides to balance out the running time. That instrumental version did not appear on the vinyl or even Compact Disc versions. I had to have it on cassette.
I recently asked Adam if we listened to Culture Club at Vermont Academy. We both agreed that we felt that we had not listened to Culture Club until college. I suppose it was possible that I got the cassette and then simply forgot that I listened to it during the Academy Days. That has to be the explanation unless somebody gave it to me.
I have been having a blast “forcing” myself to listen to all these old albums start to finish like we did back in the day. Sitting, contemplating, trying to remember. Some things are absolutely clear others not so much and the rest lost to the fabric of time.
It can be intoxicating. I find that if I don’t “come up for air” frequently, I experience a slight disorientation as my mind attempts to switch gears back to the present.
I think the genesis of this project started a year or so ago when Mary and I started watching Season One of How I met your Mother. In the opening of the show, “Ted” tells us that he decided to tell his kids the long version of how he met their mother because something reminded him that before he was their father, he had this whole other life. That notion really connected to me for a couple of reasons. We get so caught up in the day to day and being who we are that we can forget who we were.
The hardest part about looking back at yourself in the past is that you realize that every past version of yourself had hopes of being something in the future and none of them are how you actually ended up.
So what have we learned so far? I for one found it interesting that the technology of the era made listening to entire albums the norm. It was something that I didn’t think about at the time because shuffle hadn’t been invented. It seems that with a few exceptions, most of the music I was listening to was rather mainstream. I had already started looking for unusual things like Chipmunk Punk, whale songs and sound effects. I went from buying vinyl albums to factory cassettes and back to vinyl. I had adopted the behavior of backfilling. If I found an artist that I liked, I would in most cases buy other works from that artist.
A growing concern for me is that I’m going to overlook something. In case you couldn’t tell. I don’t do any real preperation. I haven’t carefully examined my media library sorting and pigeon holing. What you are reading are the first and only drafts. So far, I’ve avoided trying to plan things out too much. I was hoping to get some kind off free association thing going so when some thoughts pop into my head I scramble to let them fall to the page. I’m sure that it makes for some aggravating reading with all of the grammatical and spelling errors and poorly expressed thoughts. I may have discussed this already but in case I haven’t here’s what it looks like behind the scenes. I think about the particular era in questiuon. I think about the albums of that era then I select one and play it. While it is playing in the background, I try to visualize any details that I can about that album. How did I first hear of them? What kinds of things were going on while I was actively listening to that album? Often, the act of listening to the album will stir up stuff. A lot of these albums have been dormant for years and thus unspoiled by time. If a thought or emotion pops up, I started writing about it. That is about it. As always I encourage you to use the comments section to do the same.
At the end of the year, I hope to be done. Then I’ll spend the first month or two of next year and go back through as editor and tidy things up. Maybe I’ll add links to artist web pages, more info on the stuff we talked about or to where people can buy the music referenced.
My last night on Space Mountain was extraordinarily busy in the bar. The place was packed. The Movie Midnight Express was on the small screen and everybody had gotten into it. I was in a hurry to get our party started. All summer long I had gotten into the habit of creating an experimental drink in the bar and bringing a pitcher down for us to share. On this night I made a pitcher of White Russians because it was a favorite of Al’s and it was his 20th birthday.
Giorgio Moroder – Chase
We had planned a party we called Men In Flight. It was a birthday party for Al who was turning 20. My youngest is 20 right now. I struggle to imagine Al being her age. Everything seems so different. Mark saw that this song was where the party started. No more teenage wasteland for Al. We went to lookout rock around 2 in the morning and climbed on to the roof of the inn to watch the sunrise. It was my last day on the mountain and I didn’t want to surrender a minute of it.
The Who – Baba O’Riley
Later that morning I packed up all of my stuff. Matt and I walked around the top of the mountain for a while. I was still numb at the notion of leaving. Grandpa showed up and we put everything into his car. I had my tearful goodbyes to all of my brothers on the mountain and we were off. The last thing I saw was Matt sitting on the wall at the entrance to the lot. It would be the last time that I’d see them with a couple of exceptions.
Living in Vermont without the serious responsibility of earning a living may have given it a mythical quality. The absence coupled with the passage of time may have raised that to the level of paradise. Our subsequent vacations there might reinforce that sentiment. Did I love every minute of living in Vermont? Realistically, I couldn’t have but it sure does feel like I did. I hope I didn’t squander any of it. I hope that I appreciated my time in Vermont while I was there as much as I do now
Late in the summer, Adam and I made our last hitch hiking trip to Burlington. It seemed that everywhere we went, Madness Our House was being played as well as Naked Eyes Always Something There To Remind Me. When we got back, we spent the night in his room in Snafu Hollow. His radio was on and I remember waking up in the early hours of morning to Always Something There To Remind Me. I looked around his room which had become so familiar to me over the past three years. As I listened to the song, I came to the sinking hollow realization that in just a few days, I’d be heading back to Indiana for good. I’d like to imagine that I was aware of the impact of that but I know in my heart that there was no way I could.
I would be leaving Vermont and all the friends I had made over the previous 6 years. I just hoped that there would be always something there to remind me.
Although living on top of Mount Equinox was amazing good fun and staggeringly beautiful, we were more or less cut off from civilization. As a result, there wasn’t much in the way of new music being added to my collection. At this point I had 2 cassette carrying cases that held 24 cassettes each and a 48 cassette case. Do any of you remember these? Let me try to find a picture.
I also had a small stack of vinyl albums.We listened to a good deal of radio then as well. Always a radio on in the kitchen, sometimes in the bar. They had a table top version of Donkey Kong in the bar over the summer, I’d play it during slow times. By August I had become the Donkey Master.
Many of the songs hitting the radio that summer we have already discussed. Songs like, China Girl, She Blinded Me With Science, I Ran and others.
Here are some of the frequent flyers on the radio that summer that we haven’t talked about yet.
Eddy Grant – Electric Avenue
Toni Basil – Mickey
Prince – 1999
It blows my mind to think that we were listening to 1999 in 1983 and that it would be nearly my entire lifetime again before we actually got to 1999. It seemed so far away from that end but just a drop in the bucket from this end looking back. I guess that time is like a telescope where looking to the future is like looking from the wrong end. Everything is artificially small and distant. Looking back, things seem closer than they actually are.
