Tom Lehrer’s That Was The Year That Was is a good example of why I wish I would have spent more time in researching and organizing before I started this project in January. I almost completely forgot about this record. I was just kind of reflecting on Space Mountain and suddenly it popped into my mind.
I had never heard of Tom Lehrer before. One of the Kitchen Sisters, Jason bought this album that summer and shared it with us. I thought it was brilliant, it had that sort of vaudeville like musical sensibility combined with very witty lyrics. Sure the topics included are quite dated it was recorded in 1965 but it still has some great songs and Tom Lehrer’s delivery is inspiring.
I made a copy then and hung onto it until I bought in on Compact Disc in the early 1990’s. I gave that copy to Adam and just a few years ago I bought it again as welll as a few of his other works.
I never saw or heard from Jason after leaving the mountain that summer. I wonder what ever became of him. Maybe Adam knows.
I got my first glimpse of MTV in the summer of 1983. It had been on the air and running since August 1st of 1981 so it was almost 2 years old already. As you know during my entire time in Vermont TV basically did not exist. Nobody I knew had access to MTV. I can’t remember anybody at Vermont Academy ever mentioning it. Of course if somebody said “Did you see MTV?” I would not even know what to ask as a follow up question. It seems obvious now. Everybody has heard of MTV. I think the really sad thing about MTV is that it is nothing like it was back in the beginning. I suppose some would look at early footage and fele that it was raw or amateurish but it was pioneering as well. Guess what, I’m about to say it yet AGAIN. I was at the perfect age for the launch of MTV.
I was 16 when it launched 18 when I first saw it 19 when I started watching it frequently, 20 when I had it in my home and 25 when it turned to shit and I didn’t care about it anyway. Of course we’re getting ahead of the story again. At this point it was the summer of 1983 and Adam and I had gone to meet some ladies in Shaftsbury, Vermont. Adam’s date Toni had MTV at her house not too far from Historic 7A. I can’t say what all went on in toni’s house that night but I do recall seeing MTV and thinking it was a great concept. It left amark. Ask my kids over the past 2 decades on our Vermont vacations, as we head to Bennington on Historic 7A, when we get to Shaftsbury, I point to the little neighborhood off the right side of the road near the bridge and say “Over there somewhere is where I first saw MTV.” That isn’t what makes 7A historic though incase you were wondering. It isn’t because Bo Derek filmed some exteriors for A Change Of Seasons withing view of 7A either.
I think MTV is significat to My Musical Evolution in numerous ways. The main one being the shift in the dynamics of the music business. One of the by products of MTV wa sthe explosion of recording artists that could leverage their visual appeal against any deficienies in musical ability. The was a rush to sing individuals or groups that had The Look. Of cours this assertion doesn’t have any factual evidence to support it but from my perspective as a consumer, it sure feels accurate. We’ll discuss MTV and music videos again I’m sure. As I may have mentioned, the MTV influence has been apparent when I try to find samples of the songs in My Musical Evolution. Since the Academy Days there have been a growing number of Official Videos available where live appearances on Midnight special, Bandstand or something like that was all we had to go on.
The first thing I saw on MTV was Prince Live singing Little Red Corvette. Of course Prince has a problem with YouTube so the sound has been removed. This is disappointing because it means that the rest of my Prince references are going to be challenging.
I’m going to drop a few more MTV clips here to try to relate the flavor of the station.
I know that this is too early in the evolution for all this MTV but it has been nostalgically good to see some of this old stuff again. It’s too bad that some retro channel ins’t rebroadcasting this stuff. I think it would find a pretty decent following.
You know guys know how to party when they break out the Songs Of The Humpack Whale album. It has been discussed in earlier posts that I have a certain fascination with Sound Effects. I had collected a couple albums that I may or may not have mentioned. If I didn’t, it was merely due to oversight and not embarrassment.
Most of my sound effects records had to do with ghostly, haunting types of sounds. Others included airplanes and trains. Most of my old vinyl sound effects records simply aren’t available on Compact Disc and thus have been lost to the juggernaut of technology.
I don’t remember exactly where the Songs Of The Humpack Whale album came from. It had to be Bennington. I’m sure that I saw that and thought that it would be cool. We heard about whal songs in school now I had two sides of whales to listen to for nearly a full hour. It was cool and we did listen to it.
At one point a couple of the guys had those Beta fish on little glass bowls. One evening on Space Mountain we turned off all the lights except a little blue buld which we put behine the two bowls of beta fish. We listened to the whales sing and watch as these fighting fish just floated around in their bowls completely ignoring each other. We were told that if we put the bowls next to each other the Betas would see each other and put on this amazing display of aggression. Either our fish were near sighted or just pacifists. If it weren’t for the amazing whale song album the night would have been a total loss!
I had seen this album cover for years even before I knew who REO Speedwagon was. It always seemed to be there. I would look at it and it would make me wonder. It was such an odd thing to put on an album cover. OK maybe not as odd as a topless pre-teen girl holding a model airplane or Edgar Winter.
By the time I connected the dots, I had already accumulated a handful of REO Speedwagon albums. I don’t know why this on eluded me for so long. It was either Al or Mark across the hall that introduced me to You Can Tune A Piano, But You Can’t Tuna Fish. It was still REO Speedwagon but it felt a little more serious or mature than Hi-Infidelity.
Tuna Fish became my favorite REO Speedwagon album. I’m not sure if it was because Al liked it so much or if I was changing. Tuna Fish seemed a little more rock and roll than Hi-Infidelity. It had a louder and more raw feel to it that seemed to fit with the direction I was heading.
There is still more REO Speedwagon ahead of us but for now it’s Time For Me To Fly.
Cargo by Men At Work came out in May of 1983 even as we were still enjoying Business As Usual. Like the album A Flock Of Seagulls, Cargo really belongs in 2 different eras. It starts in Space Mountain but continues into College Intermission. So what I’ll most likely do is treat it in a similar way. I’ll highlight the songs that belong here and then finish up when it is appropriate.
Cargo was like The Go-Go’s Vacation in that I was buying purely because I like the band and not because I had heard any songs from the album. Cargo was also the responsible for me learning what the term Ska meant although I’m not sure what it means. Space chef Tim told that Settle Down My Boy was Ska. I had no reason not to accept this.
So let me elaborate just a little about the arrangements up on Space Mountain. in the “Basement” of the inn were the crew quarters. Back behind a maze of storage was a little hallway that had a bathroom. and some bedrooms. The hallway terminated at a door to the outside which opened up to a deck that then went down some stairs to the ground. So it was more of a walkout basement. Of the rooms downstairs, only ours and Mark & Al’s had windows. They looked out into the valley and across to Stratton Mountain.
The view from our window
The inn itself was at the end of a 5 mile paved road full of steep sections and hairpin turns. To the south stood 4 FAA antenna towers. A mile down the road was an access road to three giant wind turbines. To the west was the Carthusian Monastery and a pair of mountain lakes. Strikingly beautiful all around. We all lived and worked up there. It was amazing. The work wasn’t particularly difficult so it was more like a 10 week party with little interruptions of work here and there. I can’t think of a better way to spend your first summer after high school than living with your friends in a beautiful green mountain top.
I know that this is supposed to be about music and influences but I feel the need to share my observations regarding the 4th of July fireworks. From out vantage point on the mountain, we’d be able to see the fireworks from at least 4 different towns. I had no idea what to expect. I had only seen them from the ground before. Now I was about to be at eye level with them! Or so I thought. When they actually went off, they seemed to pathetically small way down there in the valley. The resulting let down was such that it was and continues to be so comical.
In contrast, a thunderstorm rolled into the valley below us that summer.Thatwas something marvelous. The clouds flooded the valley the top quarter of Mount Equinox and the ridge across the valley stood above it. In the clouds below, lightning was striking and lighting the clouds up from below. In other weather news, it also snowed up on top of the mountain that summer. Someplace I have phots of the parking lot covered in snow and we even made a little snowman. I’ll see if I can find them. Now back to the music.
Here are the Cargo songs that belong on Space Mountain.
This wasn’t the first time that I heard of David Bowie. Mom had Fame back in the Scratchy 45 Days but that was about all I knew of David Bowie. Those magazines I was checking out back in the KISS Age would often mention David Bowie who, like KISS, would wear stylized make-up in his theatrical act.
So I had heard of David Bowie. I even saw the movie Cat People for which David Bowie has a soundtrack credit. I liked the music of Cat People even though the story was little weird and underwhelming. With China Girl I was finally motivated to pursue some of his material. I liked China Girl very much and within a short time after buying the album, I had grown fond of the rest of the tracks.
I almost saw David Bowie live that summer. He was supposed to play someplace in Syracuse, New York that was just a few hours away from Space Mountain. One of Mark’s friends was involved with the arena in some way and we were all going to be “security guys”. Basically we’d get the Security Staff Tour Shirts and mill about the arena. We were all excited about it but then something happened and the tour dates got postponed and it put the concert beyond my window of avialability. I just did a web search. The show was supposed to be July 23 in Syracuse, NY and got rescheduled to September 6th.
Even though I was quite fond of the Let’s Dance album, I never pursued more Bowie music apart from a Greatest Hits compilation that I got in order to get Fame. Still, Bowie will pop up a couple more times before we’re done.
Modern Love
China Girl – Did you know that China Girl also appears on Iggy Pop’s album Idiot? Same song but very different sounding when done by Iggy Pop.
It is tough to leave the Academy Days. It was such an important part of my life. I’m not talking about in the Glory Days sense, but rather that I recognize how important that step was to me. I’ll also truly appreciate what going to school in Vermont allowed me to do at that age. It is an uncommon opportunity that I was able to take advantage of. I guess the danger of going through an immersive, self relfective exercise like this is that it is easy to get caught up in the emotional riptide. To wish that you could go back and be yourself at 17 again for just one day.
The next era is called Space Mountain and it is quite short as it only lasted from the last week in May to the first week of August, 1983. A couple years earlier, Adam had gotten a job at the Skyline Inn on top of Mount Equinox in Manchester, Vermont. A year later, I was up there too working as the dish washer. This summer, I was 18 and moved from the kitchen to the bar as the bartender. The drinking age was 18 in Vermont back in those days. That was a strange thing. I was a bartender then when I came back to Indiana I would have to wait 3 years before I could go into a bar.
So I lived on top of Mount Equinox for a couple of months with my best friend Adam, his brother Al and 8 or 9 other guys and girls. One day my other best friend Matt came up to visit and he ended up getting hired too. The work was easy, the scenery fantastic and the parties legendary. We called it Space Mountain there is something about sitting on lookout rock at 2:00 am looking down at the lights of Manchester. The monks tore down the inn last summer.
In May of 1983, I graduated from Vermont Academy. It was also that spring when the long running television series M*A*S*H would air its final episode. I had watched M*A*S*H from a distance over the previous decade. I had seen enough to more or less know the characters and the situation. I wouldn’t consider myself a true fan of the show. I would be in a year but while I was at the Academy, TV was not part of my daily life. The series ending must have been a big enough event because the school had made arrangements for it to be accessible to us. We all seemed to be there watching it.
I had been going to school in Vermont for 6 years. Two at Bellows Falls Middle School and Four at Vermont Academy. In a small way it felt like Hogwarts must have felt to Harry Potter. I didn’t live with oppresive Dursleys at home but it certainly was a more restrictive environment in the city. Here in Vermont I was basically free to go as far as my bike would take me. With thousands of acres of forested mountains and rivers to explore. I loved being a part of it very much.
There is a particular feeling that I would get at the very end of each school year. I would complete my last final exam then walk out of Fuller Hall into the heart of the campus. All around me the end of the school year was apparent. Some of the kids were already packing up. Some kids were already gone. I’d stand there in a conflict of feelings. I was glad to done with another year of classes and looking forward to a summer vacation but at the sime time I didn’t want school to end because it meant that I wouldn’t see my friends again until September. It’s not that I didn’t like going home, but there I really didn’t know anybody any more and I wasn’t able to do much even if I had maintained contact.
Senior year was a bit different on so many levels. Like M*A*S*H, we were no longer needed here and this core group of people that I had been around for 4 years was disbanding. Living on campus and sharing all your meals with the same people year after year makes you closer. The second big change was that 2 of my classmates died the weekend before finals week. It was a tragic accident while tubing on a local river. That Saturday night it seemed like the power was out on campus. Everything was still and quite as people gathered together to cry in the dark. The next day, the headmaster announced that finals would be cancelled and we were dismissed until commencement the following weekend.
The entire school packed the little church in the village. Somebody speaking to the congregation said “Many feel that Eric and Randy died too young but they lived an entire lifetime” It was an odd thought but true. They lived their entire lives, it just wasn’t as long as most. After the service Adam and I took off to Snafu Hollow to try to think about something else.
Like M*A*S*H, we would all be leaving this campus that we called home for so long. Some went home before us. some never made it home again. Since finals didn’t happen, I didn’t experience that final conflict of emotions. It was probably for the best as that time there would be no September to look forward to.
A Flock Of Seagulls is an album that I struggle with in that I don’t know which era to assign it to. I acquired it in the Academy Days. I was one of the last factory cassettes that I bought as I closed down my Columbia House membership in preparation for graduation. So it can easily fit in the Academy Days. The problem is that it was on Mount Equinox that we really played the crap out of it and that makes me want to classify it in the Space Mountain era.
Even though I am still firmly undecide, it looks as if I’m plodding ahead and putting in the Academy Days I just don’t feel convinced. Maybe I’ll think of something along the way. I see this as problem that I will be facing again in the future. As you know, I’ll be buying my first Compact Disc player in late 1985 or early 1986. One of my missions will be to go back and upgrade all of my factory cassettes and vinyl albums to Compact Disc. As a result, many of the songs an albums we have talked about up to now will enjoy a ressurection that sort of muddies the waters or blurs the lines between the eras.
So what I’ve decided to do about A Flock Of Seagulls is leave this post here in a sort of unifinished format and pick it up again in the Space Mountain era. Inelegant and less than ideal but also experimental or at least mental.
I feel like Men At Work stormed onto the scene. It seemed like one day nobody had heard of them and the next we all loved Who Can It Be Now. Of course I could be mistaken and I am willing to be wrong. This was the last of my Christmas albums from my cousin.
Adam and I played this album a lot and we’d be playing their next album Cargo in a few months on Space Mountain so stay tuned.
This is another one of those albums where the “less popular” tracks lace my memory with images of the Dungeons & Dragons Fiend Folio. I seem to have a lot of Dungeons & Dragons moments. It may sound weird but that is what we did back then. We didn’t have Nintendo, Sega, Xbox, Playstation or even Gameboy. Not only did our phones NOT have games but we didn’t have phones to not have games on. Dungeons & Dragons filled the gap left by all that stuff that hadn’t been invented yet kind of like an analog version of World Of Warcraft.
There is something about the song Down Under. It was the favorite for a long time. Maybe it is the flute. Flutes didn’t seem to make into a great deal of the music I listened to. Greg Ham, the man behind the flute and the sax on Who Can It Be Now died in april of this year. When I played Business As Usual today, I found that the less popular songs seemed to hold a little more sentimental feelings for me. When Aric and I moved into The Roach Motel, we spent then entire day moving. The next morning, the very first morning on our new place, I woke up early to get started on the upacking and setting up. I don’t know why but I chose Business As Usual to be the first album played there. Maybe it was a play on the idea of Men At Work. I’m not sure why I remember that. Roach Motel is still 2 years away at this point.
When Down Under was climbing up the charts, I remember there was this fascination with Vegemite. Everybody had heard the term in the song but nobody seemed to know what it was. Some claimed it was jelly derived fom seaweed. We didn’t have the internet back then so we couldn’t just go to Bing.com and search like we would today. That notion is rather interesting. How automatic it is to do a web search on anything that jump starts your curiosity. How many microfiche companies have gone out of business> How may librarians have been laid off? Vegemite was a mystery everybody had differing opinions about what it was but everybody agree that it tasted like shit.
Who Can it Be Now?
Down Under
Underground – This one in particular is one of those D&D songs
Helpless Automaton
People Just Love To Play With Words
Touching The Untouchables
Catch A Star
Down By The Sea
It was hard to resist the urge to include all the songs. The only one that I didn’t care to much for on this album was Be Good johnny just never liked it too much.
Tom Lehrer’s That Was The Year That Was is a good example of why I wish I would have spent more time in researching and organizing before I started this project in January. I almost completely forgot about this record. I was just kind of reflecting on Space Mountain and suddenly it popped into my mind.
