1979 Songs on Pop! The Beat Bubble Burst

Rich Circa '79

I do a show that features sixties music. Not all sixties music though, I tend to lean toward the British Invasion stuff. I’ve taken that sound and tried to follow the musical branches to the present. Not all the music I play on Pop! The Beat Bubble Burst reflects the sounds of The Fab Four, Stones, Kinks and Who…unless you’re talking about Power Pop. I play lots of Power Pop. I also have noticed that I play a lot of Power Pop from 1979. In fact 1979 music in general gets played an inordinate amount. 

I started to wonder why so much from that year? I thought back to the days of 1979. I was a fifteen year old freshman in Peoria, Illinois. I was listening to an WWCT 106, an FM station which I would liken to KSHE. They played classic rock (“Rockin’ With The Best” was their tag line) and played songs that weren’t always the hits. They played deep album tracks and they played bands that I had never heard of before. Bands like Off Broadway, The Shoes, The Records, The Hounds, Pretenders, The Jam and  Donny Iris. That’s also when I discovered Steve Forbert. But they never played them for long before moving on. They eventually succumbed to the pressure of the masses and added more and more Foreigner, Journey, Styx, REO and the like. What this did was it whetted my appetite for “that sound” that was 1979. Those songs and bands took on mythical powers as I struggled over the years to track them all down; many times not knowing song titles or correct spelling of the names. I discovered that most of those bands were Power Pop. That made sense once I analyzed it. Power Pop was the first music I liked that wasn’t handed down to me from my 6 older siblings. It distilled much of what I loved from those great British Invasion bands 15 years earlier and it wasn’t played to death. Add that to the fact that I was transitioning from a boy to a man who was dealing with so many new experiences – I can’t imagine it wouldn’t have left such an indelible stamp on my memory.

Not too long ago Sound Salvation‘s Steve Pick did a wonderful month of shows  where he  played nothing but songs from 1973…A month with five Fridays I recall correctly. I don’t know if Steve chose that year just because it was filled with such magnificent music or if there were other links. Maybe he was about fifteen in 1973…I’ll have to ask him. 

Listening to Steve’s shows that month gave me the idea to do some 1979 shows. Maybe just one every year or so; we’ll see how the first one goes. I’ll be doing that first one this coming Thursday, September 9, 5:00AM- 7:00AM and I hope you’ll be able to listen. If you can’t listen, you have two weeks to catch the archived stream. Skinny ties and those large  horn-rimmed glasses are optional!

Posted by | September 5, 2010 | Culture, Music | Comment 

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