Category: History

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Saturday Night Retro

This month of August 2009 marks several notable anniversaries for me. It’s the 3RD anniversary of my new Life courtesy of my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. It’s the 8TH anniversary of me being a homeowner after renting this same home for 6 years prior to that. Further back into the 1990s it’s the 16TH anniversary of me working for my current employer – the 482ND Fighter Wing. That was an indirect result of what happened 17 years ago this month – Hurricane Andrew’s destruction of Homestead. And going way back 25 years ago this month it’s my silver anniversary with the USAF. I actually joined the Delayed Enlistment Program a month prior to my Senior year in High School in August of 1984. 10 months later I was getting yelled at in Basic Military Training.

Here’s a U.K. TOP 25 hit from 25 years ago from one of my favourite electronic pop groups of all-time – Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (OMD). It’s from their critically-acclaimed 1984 album “Junk Culture”. It’s a virtually unknown song here stateside, so this ‘Saturday Night Retro’ pick-hit of the week is for all of my European readers who enjoyed the OMD pop phenomenon back in its day. Here – my friends – is that song all about those “Tesla Girls”:

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Blogging History Life Music Radio Television

The Major’s Friday Night Disco Party

It started as an experiment 5 weeks ago to replace the now defunct ‘Friday Night Blogroll Review’, and now it’s a runaway smash hit that’s become the fastest-growing weekly blog series of the summer.

Back during the Autumn of 1976 I was a 9-year-old kid attending the 4TH grade at Magnolia Elementary School right in the middle of my Lanham Maryland neighbourhood. My little brother was just learning how to walk on his own as he approached 18-months-old. WPGC ‘AM & FM Morningside’ was the TOP 40 radio station to dance to as the disco beat went on and on.

Here’s a classic track that took its sweet time to reach the top of the Billboard Hot 100 – over 4 months – but it finally got there in October of 1976. It’s 23-year-old (at the time) Walter Murphy with his modern (at the time) disco remake of Ludwig Van Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 5” from 170 years earlier !  It’s “A Fifth Of Beethoven”, and here’s how Walter Murphy & The Big Apple Band performed it LIVE on the legendary “Midnight Special” on NBC-TV on Friday August 20TH 1976: 

‘The Major’s Friday Night Disco Party’ is a joint MASSIVESMASH.COM / The Major’s Life Blog production.

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History Music Radio Travel

Saturday Night Retro

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:

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History Home Life Music

The Major’s Friday Night Disco Party

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.