I'm almost 59 years old. I've been online for 33 years - starting with my own dial-up bulletin board system in 1993 - and continuing with AOL, my own dot.com web site, Myspace, WordPress, Twitter / X, Flickr, and Facebook.
It’s a short edition of the ‘Retro’ for this Saturday night, as I just returned home late tonight from a one-day trip down to Key West and back with a buddy. It was a total blast. I got to spend a couple of hours out on the big island, but have no fret for I shall return to see it all again in just 38 days as the first of two ports-of-call on my upcoming Carnival cruise vacation.
Having absolutely nothing to do with Key West or Carnival cruises it’s the originally-scheduled ‘Saturday Night Retro’ concept and music video for tonight:
Back during the latter portion of 1988 Miami Top 40 radio station Y-100 was the station to listen to at the workplace. They dayparted their music back then in that they were essentially a ‘work-friendly’ hot adult contemporary station during the work day. But then at precisely 3 PM right after the top-of-the-hour station identification they went totally ballistic, loosened their tie, untucked their shirt, and suddenly rocked hard. We all knew that it was 3 PM and nearly time to call it a work day – when this hard rocker was cranked up as loud as can be:
While growing up as a kid of the 1970s and 1980s we had an ENORMOUS stereo system downstairs in our family room. I think that my Dad bought it while he was stationed in the Philippines during the mid-1960s. I think that it may have actually been custom-made. I do know this. It was HEAVY – several hundred pounds. If the insides of it had been gutted out and made hollow an adult version of me would have been able to lay down inside of it rather comfortably, and you could have stacked another 9 of me on top of me inside of it.
I don’t know how it got there (because of its MASSIVE size and weight), but it was there in our 1969-1972 apartment in Greenbelt Maryland, our 1972-1975 house in Bowie Maryland, our 1975-1980 house in Lanham Maryland, and our 1980-1996 house in McLean Virginia. It did NOT make the move to Jacksonville Florida when my family moved out of the Washington D.C. area.
The ENORMOUS stereo system had a really bad AM / FM radio with no antenna and no reception, but it had a rather decent record player. Down below it all were compartments that were chock-full (a couple hundred) of vinyl records from two distinct time-periods. Half of the albums were from the mid-to-late-1960s, and they were bought by my Dad overseas and stateside. The other half were albums from the late-1970s to early-1980s that I bought via the mail from the old Columbia Record Club.
Since Disco was King back then a large majority of these albums bought by me were from the genre. It was mainstream back when it was the hottest thing going in the entire free nation. Nowadays it’s looked upon in mostly negative ways, but it’s just so very easy to criticize something that’s past its prime, or run its course, or faded out into oblivion. You can’t deny that it’s a vital part of Americana.
The Village People – currently LIVE on tour here in South Florida – released a half a dozen albums during a short period of time from 1977 to 1980, and they were one of the hottest Disco groups around. I think that I had all of their biggest albums of the time. One of them – “Go West” – included this 1979 Disco smash:
The music video was shot aboard the USS Reasoner (FF-1063) which was owned and operated by the U.S. Navy from 1971 to 1993. It is now a Turkish ship.
– It’s time to get spontaneous here.
– I’m not even thinking before I begin typing.
– I’m just typing whatever flashes across my mind in the given moment.
– I think faster than I type.
– Once upon a time I could type faster than 60 words per minute.
– Then I got old.
– How old am I ?
– Kids getting their driver’s license today were born in 1993 when I was 26.
– If I were in charge then kids wouldn’t be getting driver’s licenses.
– I just got off of the telephone with one of my favourite people on this journey.
– Her name is Ela, and we’ve been walking together for the past 30 months.
– Ela keeps track of me and ensures that I don’t stray from this journey.
– I think that God gave her that as a task to do while she’s here on Earth.
– Ela will be here with us for awhile.
– She’s on ‘God’s Kingdom Expansion Crew’.
– I went to Publix today during my Lunch break.
– It’s my favourite and most-visited store in the entire universe.
– Dude I have a weakness for these morsels of delightfulness:
Entenmann's Glazed Pop'ems
– Publix has them as ‘Buy 1 Get 1 Free’.
– That’s 2 boxes for the price of 1 – a $3.99 value !
– That’s about 72 Pop’ems for $3.99 – or barely more than a nickel per pop.
– I may have to nab a couple more boxes before the promotion ends next week.
– Incidentally I ate Lunch at Beef ‘O’ Brady’s this past Wednesday.
– I think I found the tastiest buffalo chicken wings in all of Homestead.
– Those wings were outrageously scrumptious !
– It was shocking how big and juicy and tasty they were indeed.
– I coulda sat there all afternoon eating them there wings.
– I know that’s right ‘G’ !
– I second that emotion !
– OK we’re goin’ to the Disco tomorrow night here on the groovy blog.
– The Village People are in town, so we’ll cruise back to 1979 to join the Navy.
– Until then keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars !
– Oh yeah – and keep your web browser tuned – right where it is.
– You won’t regret it pal.
CountUp 