Category: History

Saturday Night Retro

The month of November is chock-full of anniversaries for me. 28 years ago in 1980 me and my family moved from one side of Washington D.C. (Maryland) to the other side (Virginia). Our lives changed for the better on the opposite side of the Potomac River. 23 years ago in 1985 I moved out of the country for the first time ever courtesy of the USAF. That anniversary was actually last weekend. I flew from D.C. to London England, and then I took British Rail westward from London to Swindon. I took a taxi from Swindon to my new home at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire. I did all of that just 5 months removed from my 18TH birthday.

I lived in the U.K. for some 105 fun-filled weeks. In fact this weekend is the 21ST anniversary of my departure from the U.K. – and U.S. homecoming. I would eventually arrive at – Homestead Florida !

I haven’t been back to the U.K. ever since I left, but you can bet that I will return some day for a visit. I enjoyed the time of my young life for two years over there, and I surely did ‘Live It Up’.

Here’s Australian super group Mental As Anything. They’ve been together for the past 32 years, and in 1985, 1986, and 1987 they scored the biggest worldwide pop smash of their entire career with this uplifting track that you may just remember from the ‘Crocodile Dundee’ movie. Check it out:

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Veterans Day – Honoring All Who Served

Post author By Chris M. Day
Post date November 10, 2008
2 Comments on Veterans Day – Honoring All Who Served

History Music

Saturday Night Retro

Post author By Chris M. Day
Post date November 1, 2008

Exactly 22 years ago in October and November of 1986 I was a young and crazy 19-year-old USAF Airman serving my country overseas in a foreign country. I was in the United Kingdom, and I was having the time of my life back then – livin’ it up in the London and Oxford pop music concert scene. During one particular 3-month time-span from October 1986 through January 1987 I attended 7 LIVE concerts featuring such diverse acts as Huey Lewis And The News, Bruce Hornsby And The Range, Ultravox, The Communards, The Eurythmics, The Human League, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, and Berlin.

Oh yeah – I missed one – Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (OMD). They are one of my all-time favourite music acts in history, and their 1986 album “The Pacific Age” is one of the greatest ever made as far as I’m concerned.

"The Pacific Age" - OMD (1986)

I saw OMD LIVE in concert at the Oxford Apollo on the night of the 28TH of October in 1986. Check out their big hit below – “We Love You” – from the album above from exactly 22 years ago in November of 1986. The concert that I attended – it looked just like this:

See if you can find me. I’m the one that’s dancing new wave style like a zombie.

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Saturday Night Retro

Flashback with me – won’t you ? – to 1984. Some of you weren’t even born back then, and the rest of us were 24 years younger. I was 16-years-old coming in to 1984, and 17-years-old at the halfway point. This Junior became a Senior in ’84 !

I was the only one in the family that knew how to program our Sony Betamax VCR. I recorded Johnny Carson, David Letterman, and “Saturday Night Live !” on a regular basis, and we watched those shows together as a family. My ‘home computer’ at the time consisted of a giant keyboard, a cassette tape drive, and as a monitor – our living den’s television set tuned in to VHF Channel 3. My favourite hour of television occurred on Sunday nights from 9 PM to 10 PM on CBS-TV when it was “The Jeffersons” followed by “Alice”. Both shows were nearing the end of their respective long runs, and they just got better and better as they got older and older. I also enjoyed watching “TV’s Bloopers & Practical Jokes” on Monday nights at 8 PM on NBC-TV with Dick Clark and Ed McMahon.

In 1984 I had two jobs – both as a newspaper carrier. I delivered the world-famous “Washington Post” early every morning in the dark, and then in the afternoon during the week I delivered the newer “Washington Times“. I made lots of money on my own doing this, and I had plenty of it to buy my very first car – a beige 1980 Chevy Citation. I didn’t own that car for very long because I eventually moved overseas to the U.K. courtesy of the United States Air Force.

1984 was a cool year in my young life. I looked cool like this: