10 Childhood favourite tracks!

[Zzzptm]

These guys were never played on the radio in the USA. I had no idea who they were until Live Aid and The Wall movie came out. I'll give 'em a listen after I'm done with this meeting I'm in...

[Zzzptm]

Those Boomtown Rats tunes remind me a lot of The Knack... but October 1978 was dominated by other forces on USA album-oriented rock (AOR) radio:

The Who - Who Are You
Boston - Don't Look Back
Foreigner - Double Vision, Hot Blooded, Blue Day
The Rolling Stones - Miss You, When the Whip Comes Down, Beast of Burden
Styx - Blue Collar
Heart - Straight On
The Cars - All I've Got, Bye Bye Love, Moving in Stereo, My Best Friend's Girl
Bob Seger - Hollywood Nights
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Listen to Her Heart
Joe Walsh - Life's Been Good
Cheap Trick - Surrender
Talking Heads - Take Me to the River
Gerry Rafferty - Baker Street, Down the Line

And for the albums on the charts that first week of October... Besides the ones spawning the singles above, there was also...

Steely Dan - Aja
Jackson Browne - Running on Empty
Van Halen I
Blue Oyster Cult - Some Enchanted Evening
Journey - Infinity
Blondie - Parallel Lines
The Kiss Solo Albums
Eric Clapton - Slowhand
David Gilmour
Kansas - Point of Know Return
AC/DC - Powerage
Todd Rundgren - Hermit of Mink Hollow
ELO - Out of the Blue
Eagles - Hotel California
Night Moves - Bob Seger

Source: 7 October 1978 Cashbox Magazine...

Typing out those lists really takes me back to when I was 10-and-a-half, listening to the Dallas AOR stations The Zoo and Q102.

[Vyn]

Neighbor was several years older than me and bought this record when it hit the stores. The whole thing is great, but I especially dug this tune from it when I was 12-ish.

[Charger]

Back to the world of games for my 6th one!


Dune 2 was my first contact with real time strategy games and I loved it, and the music of it was brilliant as well but in 1996 the world saw the arrival of THE GREATEST STRATEGY game of all time in Command & Conquer Red Alert and the music was off the charts good. And it had a jukebox feature in which you could choose which track plays and create your own playlists while playing. Brilliant.

And this song still after almost 30 years remains to be THE greatest piece of gaming music ever created.

Frank Klepacki and HELL MARCH!

The whole soundtrack of Red Alert is pure gold though and Klepacki has since done some amazing music but this remains the top dog!

[Zzzptm]

^ When I first heard that Heep track, I though, COOL! Dude is traveling in, like TIME!!! Now I listen and I imagine a person trapped by memories of the past. I think I might be older than I was when I was a kid and heard that for the first time!

***
HELL YES RED ALERT!!!
When I was working at Microsoft, supporting Windows 95, they had us contractors do weekend shifts, when call volume was looooooooooooooooow. Managers would look the other way when we started LAN parties and Red Alert was the game of choice as we hoped we'd finish the game before getting taken out with a customer call. The rule was no games when with a customer, so it was sudden death if the phone rang.

HELL
YES
RED
ALERT

***

Back to the kid in Richardson, Texas with a second-floor bedroom, looking out to the north at the rows of suburban houses, marching to the horizon. It's 1979, August, and sixth grade has just kicked off. I'm home from school and this track comes on the radio...

(Carouselambra by Led Zeppelin)

I'm 11, and I don't know nothing about musical influences and references. At the time, I'd have no way of saying that it's proto-EDM in the use of synths or that it's a cousin of Kashmir in its use of drones and melodies or that its tripartite structure is reminiscent of sonata form... but I did notice the orchestral bit was kinda like the Ode to Joy theme from Beethoven's 9th Symphony. That part I knew.

But it's not what drew me into the song. Whatever got the Album Rock DJ to like this, got me as well. "Fool in the Rain" was the single from the album, and it got played on the radio plenty enough. But this one... it teased out things in my mental fabrics and let me dwell on them for what seemed like hours in just 10 minutes.

First album I bought the next year, when I started buying albums, was Led Zeppelin's fourth album, Atlantic SD 19129. I bought it for "Stairway to Heaven", which I liked. But I wanted *THIS TRACK* and had no idea what the name of it was. I stumbled into it when I got In Through the Out Door as my second album I bought and played the hell out of it.

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

6th pick is:

Ian Dury and the Blockheads - Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll

The more well known song is Hit Me With Your Rythm Stick which got to No. 1 in 1979. But this earlier track encapsulates more what Ian Dury was about.

[Vyn]

Loved this tune. Still do! It was such a departure from the Damned (my first punk love affair) and to me that made it more punk than anything else.

Talking Heads - "Psycho Killer":

[Charger]

For my #7 gotta go with an absolute classic!


Hey yo CAPTAIN JACK!

I still kind of remember when this came out in 1996. It was quite the radio hit....and MTV hit as well.

This was a whole lot of fun back then and an old buddy of mine still even has the cd and we do listen to it time to time. Now more for the humor factor but back in the day it was the ace!

[Zzzptm]

Had not heard the Ian Dury or Captain Black, fun tunes each in its own way. Psycho Killer is a classic Talking Heads track that I do also enjoy.

***

In 7th Grade, I started buying albums, got all the Led Zeppelin. Then I tried ZZ Top and got their El Loco and it was... about half good, disappointing. I wanted to be more discerning as I planned my next album purchase.

Now, I'd heard Smoke on the Water, Highway Star, Space Truckin', and Woman from Tokyo on the radio. I knew Deep Purple were a good band, so I was ready to set sail and give them a proper go. I figured a greatest hits collection would be a good way to start, even if it meant buying those songs again on later albums.

I got Deepest Purple, the awesome-looking purple guitar explosion cover one.

Side one had 5 tracks I didn't know and Woman from Tokyo. Side two had the hits from Machine Head and three others. All righty then...

Black Night was fun, Speed King crushed it, Fireball got my heart racing, Strange Kind of Woman was OK, and then...

dun dun dun

CHILD IN TIME

I was 12 years old and this is where my heavy rock itch truly and well got scratched. I was already planning on checking out more of DP's stuff before this one, but Child in Time made me have to go out and Get. Them. All. 44 years later, I plan to get one more, albeit with a different lineup.

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

Pick 7 today...

Sky - Toccata

The classic / electronic crossover group included such notables as John Williams and Herbie Flowers. This and the associated album were big hits in 1980. This still impresses me!

[Vyn]

That Sky tune - haven't heard it in, well, probably since it came out. I didn't know it was by Sky (in fact didn't know who they were), but then I played the video and it unlocked a hidden memory and I exclaimed, "I've heard that!".

Over the years, many musicians have pointed out that watching the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show made them realize that if those four regular looking dudes could play rock music, then they could too.

This tune by the Buzzcocks made me feel the same way. I never saw the video - first time was just now when I looked for it - but when I heard the song I thought, "If that whiny mess of a song can garner success, hell I can too!" And I set about learning to play the guitar. Here I am 46 years later, still learning to play the guitar lol.

[KiloDeltaCharlie]

^^^
I quite liked them, their flame burned bright but fast.

That's not a bad choice, Ever Fallen In Love and Harmony in My Head are my favourites. Pete Shelley died too young (early 60s I think).

[Charger]

Had not heard the Ian Dury or Captain Black

My number 8 is a big one.

As kid I was a huuuuuuge James Bond fan! Had all of the movies on VHS (recorded from tv!) and watched them quite often.
Some of the theme songs I liked but non as much as I liked the original theme! Just a brilliant piece of music. I even forced my mom to buy a CD of all the bond themes just to get this one! And I think I played it to death! But funnily enough I still love it and it hasn't gotten old one damn bit! That's how you know you have a real classic in your hands!

[Zzzptm]

I blame Jack Black for my confusion. Also a good deal of sleepiness yesterday morning.


JAMES BOND THEME TOTALLY ROCKS


I muted my mic for the meeting I wasn't saying anything in and played that theme.

[Zzzptm]

The year is now 1982 and I've almost finished buying up all the Deep Purple released product, time to start on the next part of the collection.

Now, I've heard Paranoid, Iron Man, and Heaven and Hell on the radio and saw a video just once of Die Young that blew my mind. I knew I was gonna get into Black Sabbath. But where to start?

Rather than do a greatest hits collection, I decided to buy an album I knew NOTHING about. The only thing going for it was that it was on sale and I could get that and something else later on instead of blowing all my lawnmowing money on one platter.

Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.

Ye gods, it's electrifying to my system even in my wintry years! 

That riff had me from the get-go and I knew if I liked that, previously unheard, I'd like most of everything else they've done to that point in time. Glad I didn't start out with Technical Ecstasy, because I might have come to a different conclusion about the band if that was my first one.