Young Hearts Run Free

On July 31, 1976, I was in the middle of the best summer of my life. There’s no doubt that 33 years ago, 40-some miles south of the spot where I’m sitting right now, my ear was to the radio, listening to that summer’s immortal soundtrack. But hours later, it would be August. Summer’s end would be in the air—and much of the fall’s immortal soundtrack was already on the air. So here’s an experiment—a countdown of the top 40 songs in Billboard for the week of July 31, each described in 25 words or less. It’s like Twitter, only more coherent. I hope.

40. “Summer”/War (debut). Indelibly associated not just with summer, but with September, too.

39. “A Little Bit More”/Dr. Hook (debut). “We better get it on now/’Cause we’ve got a whole life to live through.” In other words: let’s get busy at gettin’ busy.

38. “C’mon Marianne”/Donny Osmond (up from 40). I somehow missed this in 1976. I didn’t miss much.

37. “(Shake Shake Shake) Shake Your Booty”/KC and the Sunshine Band (debut). This is not quite as insanely great as KC’s first two Number One singles, but would end up in the same spot.

36. “Steppin’ Out”/Neil Sedaka (up from 38). For those of you who enjoyed “Bad Blood,” here it is again. Or it would be, if I weren’t suffering near-terminal laziness. (So please enjoy this video of a cat and a turntable instead.)

35. “Who’d She Coo”/Ohio Players (debut). Painful title, but a mighty damn funky record.

34. “Play That Funky Music”/Wild Cherry (debut). Must appear on any list of quintessentially 1970s records.

33. “Another Rainy Day in New York City/Chicago (up from 36). I’ll say it again: Captures the feel of an urban rainstorm like no other record ever. (Since I’ve posted this in the past and it’s not on YouTube anywhere, please enjoy this video of Subwoofer Cat instead.)

32. “Take the Money and Run”/Steve Miller Band (down from 11). Stolen from a former radio colleague, teasing it before a break: “Two kids with four names and plenty of cash for their road trip.”

31. “Heaven Must Be Missing an Angel”/Tavares (up from 33). If forced to choose, I pick this as my favorite disco record of all time.

30. “Say You Love Me”/Fleetwood Mac (debut). Scores extra points for using the word “woo.”

29. “Something He Can Feel”/Aretha Franklin (up from 31). I can’t believe Beyoncé hasn’t covered this one yet.

28. “I’d Really Love to See You Tonight”/England Dan and John Ford Coley (up from 30). A perfect radio record: catchy, easy to sing (you know you’ve done it), and over in 2:36.

27. “The Boys Are Back in Town”/Thin Lizzy (down from 12). Sounded great in 1976, although 33 years of overexposure hasn’t helped. And if this made it big, why not “Jailbreak“?

26. “Sophisticated Lady”/Natalie Cole (up from 27). Funky, sure, but at this point in her career, she didn’t sing all that well; her backup singers are annoying as hell.

25. “I Need to Be in Love”/Carpenters (holding at 25). Dedicated to anybody who ever despaired of finding somebody out there, as both Karen and Richard do in the video.

24. “Young Hearts Run Free”/Candi Staton (up from 26). Southern soul meets disco, and soul music wins.

23. “A Fifth of Beethoven”/Walter Murphy & the Big Apple Band (up from 32). Classical music meets disco, and disco wins.

22. “Last Child”/Aerosmith (up from 24). “Dream On,” this, and “Walk This Way” in a calendar year makes a pretty good year.

21. “Baby I Love Your Way”/Peter Frampton (up from 28). Check him out in the video. We all used to be that young once, and in 1976, I was.

Up next: the top 20.

“Summer” (45 version)/War (buy it here)

The Year That Was (Part IV)

(Parts 1, 2 and 3 of this series are here and here and here.)

When I found my 1976 daybook again recently, I hoped it would be the Rosetta Stone that unlocked the mysteries of 1976, including the Big Why: why a part of me continues to live in that year despite all the other years that have passed since then.

The fact that it is no such thing is a great disappointment to me.

The daybook, 33 years on, feels like a piece of performance art for an audience of one. Back then, I fancied myself a master of trivia and a student of the arcane, and so I kept a daybook full of the sort of arcana that would impress someone like myself. I couldn’t repress entirely the more useful impulses I had, which accounts for the news headlines and family milestones, but I buried them under the trappings of the character I was trying to be. As a result, the 49-year-old me, who would like to see his former self clearly, is mighty frustrated with his former self.

But I’ve got to forgive him, too, because there’s a lot in him that’s admirable, and some in him that I wish I still had. I like. I used to say that I admired his confidence, but I don’t think you could rightly call what he had confidence. Rather, it was a willingness to accept who and what he was. He didn’t shop around for a personality like some 16-year-olds do. He wasn’t entirely satisfied with who he was—he hated being paralyzed in the presence of girls, and he wished he were a better athlete—but he knew there wasn’t much to be done about it, so he tried to proudly embrace his geekitude. He didn’t doubt that he had found his calling in life—radio—and he pursued it as best he could. His obsessions ran deep, but his interests were broad; he tried reading Milton and Proust, and he watched the news every night because he felt it was important to know what the world was about.

None of this is in the daybook. Traces of it are there amidst the fog, but I can barely see them. So I’m left to guess about 1976, like I’ve always done before. And here’s what I think I think:

When I got my driver’s license in the spring, I achieved freedom of mobility. Once you get that, you’ve crossed a bright line into fuller participation (and greater responsibility) in the wider world. But at the same time, I had yet to cut the cord that bound me to the childhood security that was the only life I could remember. So although I was out in the world more fully than before, that independence was measured in baby steps, and it came with a safety net. Also, what I remember of the ed psych I took tells me that adolescents often see themselves as players on a stage, and they believe the whole world is watching. They tend to dramatize themselves and their actions, and I was more self-dramatizing than most—everything seemed important because it was happening to me. And at the end of the year, I experienced the thrill of being chosen by a member of the opposite sex. Your family has to love you, or so you believe. But when another person chooses you? Mindblowing. So: I experienced 1976 as if the world were a giant stage I’d just stepped onto, with new roles to play. The audience was familiar—often it was only that perpetual audience of one—but the role-playing was exciting nevertheless.

As for the music of 1976, I can’t judge it apart from the experiences of the year. It’s not especially vivid because it’s empirically better than the music of any other year. It’s vivid because it’s the music I lived with 1976, and that makes all the difference.

I knew all of this before I found the daybook again. But absence of written evidence regarding the deeper meaning of 1976 might be evidence of something else. At our blog summit a few weeks back, whiteray said of his favorite years, “Some years are just magical.” So maybe I’ve been looking for something that’s not there—and doesn’t need to be.

That’s not a very satisfying ending. Believe me, I know.

From the WLS Big 89 of 1976:

2. “Silly Love Songs”/Paul McCartney and Wings
4. “If You Leave Me Now”/Chicago
21. “Shannon”/Henry Gross
38. “Love Rollercoaster”/Ohio Players (introduced by Wolfman Jack on The Midnight Special)
47. “Rubberband Man”/Spinners (also from The Midnight Special)

Jock Around the Clock

One of my Internet pals posted a link yesterday about the history of radio in Arkansas,  including a few paragraphs about the legendary KAAY and its most famous show, Beaker Street. But it was something else in the article that struck me as I read it this morning: “[Future Stax Records executive] Al Bell learned to jock at the original KOKY with studios near Little Rock Central High School at 1604 W. 14th St.” I couldn’t remember the last time I saw the word “jock” used as a verb, referring to the act of being on the air. In college, however, we used it a lot, as in “I have to jock on Friday night” or “Who’s jocking right now?”

Somewhere, I have a trucker cap I picked up at a radio conference in 1980 that’s emblazoned with the slogan “Jock Around the Clock.” It was a promotional item for a company launching a 24-hour sports-talk network. I wore it constantly after returning from the conference, and it inspired a promotional idea for the college radio station, WSUP—but before I tell you that story, I have to tell you this one:

One of the media highlights of any radio/TV major’s year was the annual telethon for Wisconsin Badger Camp, a place that provided outdoor recreational opportunities for the developmentally disabled (although we wouldn’t have called them “developmentally disabled” back then). It was held each December and broadcast on the campus cable station, and it was all hands on deck for 24 hours—even those of us who didn’t work much TV found ourselves involved, although I tried to remain pure by handling the audio board. It was a rare opportunity to do live, long-form television—and it was usually capped off with an epic party involving the TV station staff, volunteers, and the fraternity that co-sponsored the telethon. One year, when the party was raging at 2:30 in the morning, we looked around and noticed that only the broadcasters were left standing—we’d outpartied the frat boys in their own house.

But anyway: In December 1980, we decided to get the radio station involved in the telethon with a promotion called—naturally—Jock Around the Clock. The plan was for me to do a 24-hour shift on the station, soliciting donations and doing who-knows-what to keep the audience (and myself) entertained. We promoted the hell out of it for a couple of weeks, only to have the station’s transmitter kick the bucket three days beforehand. We were off the air entirely during telethon week (which was also the week John Lennon was murdered), so Jock Around the Clock didn’t happen. There was talk of trying to do it again the next year, but I had lost interest by then. Whether somebody else did the show, I can’t remember.

There is absolutely no guarantee that I would have been able to complete the 24-hour radio show, of course. Thinking back on it now, it seems absurd to have believed I would. In those days, it would not have been out of character for me to bail on it partway through even after the station had spent weeks promoting it. I hadn’t planned anything special apart from staying on all that time—I hadn’t booked any guests, from Badger Camp, from the TV crew, or from anywhere else—and I suppose I assumed that the novelty of all-me, all-the-time was going to be sufficient. Such was the extent of my ego back in the day.

A few of the people who worked on the Badger Camp telethons read this blog, so if any of you have some stories, please share ‘em. Yours are probably better than mine anyhow.

And since I mentioned Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express yesterday, here’s an appropriate taste, from the album Closer to It, which is one of my favorite albums of all time.

“Voices of Other Times”/Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express (buy it here)

On the Road

I am having one of those weeks when actual remunerative labor gets in the way of blogging, so here’s a quick burst of randomness from the 11, 331 songs currently in the laptop music stash to get us both through the next day or two.

“Desperado”/Eagles. This version is from a bootleg called Second Night MTV Unplugged, recorded in April 1994 at the same Los Angeles stand that produced the Hell Freezes Over album. The recording is widely available on the Internet, and the sound quality is as good as an official album release.

“Falling Apart at the Seams”/Marmalade. In which the same band that recorded the exquisite “Reflections of My Life” in 1970 updates its sound for 1976. It should have sounded great in a season filled with the likes of “Silly Love Songs” and “Right Back Where We Started From,” but it reached only to Number 49 in Billboard.

“UFO”/Jimmy Caravan. Caravan is a Hammond B3 organ player, and “UFO”‘s approximate vintage is the late 60s. Beyond that, I know nothing.

“Schoolgirl”/Steve Forbert. From the Little Stevie Orbit album. It occurs to me that one reason I’ve never really embraced this album is that for every good song on it, there’s a throwaway like this one.

“George Bruno Money”/Brian Auger and the Trinity. If you haven’t explored the Brian Auger catalog much, start. His ’60s recordings with the Trinity and with Julie Driscoll are grossly underrated—how it is they didn’t become approximately as big as, say, Traffic, I dunno. Then move forward in time to . . . .

“On the Road”/Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express. From the first album billed to Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express, released in 1971, a fusion album heavy on Auger’s B3. In any contest to pick the coolest band name of all time “Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express” would have to be in the semi-finals. Someday I’ll tell the story about the first time I ever heard ‘em.

“Lost Hearts”/Cochise. From the extremely obscure Swallow Tales, about which I blogged earlier this year.

“Radio Operator”/Rosanne Cash. From Black Cadillac, the 2006 album Cash made in the wake of the deaths of her parents and stepmother. Johnny Cash had been a radio operator in the Air Force, which makes Rosanne’s lyric about signals from a distance particularly poignant. (Rosanne talks about the writing of the album and plays “Radio Operator” and “I Was Watching You” here).

“Jim Dandy”/Black Oak Arkansas. Made Top 40 radio in early 1974 mostly for its novelty value. (I blogged about it nearly four years ago.) It was the 1970s—we couldn’t help ourselves.

“Never Can Say Goodbye”/Cal Tjader. A tasty version of the Jackson Five hit, from a 1973 album called Last Bolero in Berkeley, on which the vibraphonist also covers “I Want You Back,” “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight,” and “Where Is the Love.”

Later in the week: Another installment of my 1976 daybook and the first part of a 1976 countdown, because sooner or later, we always come back to 1976.

“Desperado” (live)/Eagles (bootleg)

Top 5: Glory Days

When we look back on the summers we remember best, most of them come from when we were in school. That shouldn’t be news to anybody—once we enter the working world for good, we lose the sense of summer as a discrete season unlike the rest of the year. With little to separate it from spring or fall, it blurs. Now, might remember a weekend or a week, but we can rarely call back the season whole, like we could when summer was 12 precious weeks sandwiched between getting out and going back. So when I look at the Cash Box chart dated July 20, 1985, it doesn’t summon up specific moments, or even a whole summer. It brings back a phase of my life that lasted nearly a year, and the group of people I spent it with.

I was working my first commercial program director’s gig in Illinois, presiding over an FM Top 40 station and an AM news-talk station. We had an owner who believed in operating his stations in the public interest, convenience, and necessity, and he encouraged us to make ‘em sound good. Not good enough for where we were—a college town of 20,000 in the middle of nowhere—but just good, period. I hadn’t started as the morning show host on the FM yet—that would come during the winter of 1986—so I worked close to a “regular” day, in by 9:30, home around 6. Although I was officially program director and did some on-air work on the AM, the FM was my baby, and my passion. The record chart brings back memories of worrying about the minutest little things, which is what a good program director gets paid to do. I did a better job of managing people than I’d done as a college program director, although in a town of that size, even with a college population to draw from, the staff was going to be a somewhat motley crew.

During some of that time, The Mrs. worked at the station as a copywriter and traffic manager, although for part of 1985 she worked someplace else. We were extremely successful at keeping our working life and our personal life separate—a few of our co-workers didn’t know we were married, even though we shared a last name. Between the two of us, we made practically no money, but we didn’t need much, although we did buy our first-ever new car that year, an ’85 Plymouth Horizon, a boxy gray thing with a hatchback.

And blasting on the radio station’s air that summer, there was lots of big riffage, including. . . .

6. “Would I Lie to You?”/Eurythmics (up from 7). I never cared much for Eurythmics, but I loved the crashing guitars and horny horns on this record. Here‘s the video, featuring the little playlet that started every damn video on MTV at that time.

8. “Voices Carry”/’Til Tuesday (up from 9). You probably couldn’t have predicted Aimee Mann’s future career as cool-and-clever rock songstress based solely on this. Or maybe you could have. I couldn’t.

10. “Glory Days”/Bruce Springsteen (up from 11). Another video, another prefatory playlet. Confession: This record never did anything for me in 1985, and it still doesn’t. I’m not sure why it didn’t move me then, because I considered myself a big Springsteen fan. Now, maybe its putdown of reminiscing about the old days hits too close to home.

15. “Sentimental Street”/Night Ranger (up from 17). This is “Sister Christian” turned inside out, and it sounds really cool to me despite being complete gibberish. Conceptual video featuring several awesome clichés (girl picks up hitchhiking band member in antique pickup truck, band members’ hair as big as the female actresses’ hair, cutting back and forth from the concept to a live performance, guys making guitar-hero face, etc.) here.

20. “The Power of Love”/Huey Lewis and the News (up from 30). The song that signifies the summer, and the most completely satisfying record the band ever made. My station played it 10,000 times that summer, but I never got tired of it.

One night in early August 1985, we drove about 90 minutes to Peoria to see Huey Lewis and the News perform live with the Neville Brothers opening. After playing three encores to one of the most ecstatic audiences I’ve ever been part of, Lewis said, “We don’t know anything else!” As for The Mrs. and me, this wasn’t summer they way we’d lived it when we were in school, but if it was how summer was going to be from then on, it was fine with us.

The Year That Was (Part III)

In 1976, I kept a daybook, recording various bits of trivia along the trip through the year I turned 16. When I found it recently, I hoped it would help me figure out just why that year, more than any other year of my growing up, is the one I’ve never moved completely beyond. Parts 1 and 2 of the exploration are here and here.

In memory, July 1976 builds to a peak on July 31, which seems now like the hinge on which my whole life turns. On that day, my favorite summer slowly begins giving way to what will be the single most memorable season of my life.

I couldn’t possibly have perceived it that way back then, although in the daybook, it surely looks as if life is intensifying—each day’s entry is crowded with more and more stuff, most of it trivial now. I spent a few days at my grandparents’ house toward the end of July, and a few more days at the county fair, which ended on August 1. But the intensity I remember is something I have grafted on since. There’s nothing in the daybook that supports it. July ends, August begins, life simply continues. August 9 through 11 I spent with my cousin, which means that I am wrong to remember that my last vacation spent with him here in Madison was in 1975. Thursday of that week (August 12), our family went to Chicago; Friday we went to the State Fair in Milwaukee. After that, only one full week of summer remained—my note on Wednesday, August 25 says “school starts.” I would be a junior.

That year dawned with a shocker. My high school’s football team, which had won one and lost eight in each of my first two years, won its first two games of the season. We wouldn’t win again until the last game of the season, but that’s getting ahead of the story.

October 1976 began on Friday the 1st with the football team getting killed on homecoming, 28-to-6. I noted that American Top 40 had a special countdown that weekend, but didn’t say what it was. (Turns out it was the 40 biggest hits of the Beatle years.) But the rest of the month is, yet again, maddeningly unspecific about my own life. On Monday the 11th, the family went out for dinner to celebrate my parents’ 18th wedding anniversary, and the football team kept losing, but there’s precious little else recorded. On Friday the 22nd, I wrote down only the football score, even though what happened later that night was far more memorable. And as October turned to November turned to December, the daybook almost completely fails to note what was really important to me: I was in love, and nothing greater had ever happened to me.

Thursday November 11th: “Got letter jacket and 1st copy of Stereo Review.” Friday November 19th: “Bought WEKZ privilege for $6.25.” (I was determined to get on the radio even if I had to pay for it.) With the coming of the basketball and wrestling seasons, most of my notes become sports scores again. But not all. On Tuesday December 14, along with the trivia (which seems not merely pointless but incredibly stupid after looking at more than 11 months of it) is the single word “WOW.” Chivalry requires, even at a distance of 33 years, that the precise reason for the “WOW” be left to your imagination. (It works for me.)

And over the last two weeks of December, the year just sort of peters out. On New Year’s Eve I wrote, “Top 89, 6-Midnight” and “‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’ is #1.” I don’t remember where I listened to the countdown, but I know I did. And on Sunday January 2, 1977, I put the completed book aside. I had no such book for the new year that I can remember; if I ever did, it’s long gone.

Coming in the next installment: A favorite topic of mine, then and now: What It All Means.

From the WLS survey, October 23, 1976:

1. “Disco Duck”/Rick Dees (holding at 1) (the link is to a performance on The Midnight Special; how could we have believed this was funny?)
2. “Devil Woman”/Cliff Richard (holding at 2)
3. “I Only Want to Be With You”/Bay City Rollers (up from 4)
14. “Fernando”/ABBA (up from 15)
15. “Lowdown”/Boz Scaggs (down from 11) (the link is to a performance recorded on December 31, 1976)