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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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Animals Home Humor

Saturday Morning Shenanigans

Who’s sleepy ?

Cat On LaptopDog In Couch

Zzzzzzzzzzzz …

Girl On BookcaseBoy On Toilet

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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.

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Driving History Home Life Movies Music Radio Television Travel

Saturday Night Retro

Back during the Spring of 1996 I visited my Mom, Dad, Brother, and two cats in the Washington D.C. area for the final time. (About 6 months later that year they all moved southward to Jacksonville Florida.) It marked the end of a 27-year  homestead (1969-1996) within the D.C. area for my family (55 years for my Dad going back to his birth).

During that final visit my Brother and I drove down I-95 early one chilly foggy drizzly morning to spend the day at Kings Dominion. We had free tickets to the amusement park because my brother won a prize package on DC-101 (heritage rock radio station) related to the world premiere of the first “Mission: Impossible” movie that was a week or two away.

This song in history – although it reminds my brother of a particularly bad relationship with a former girlfriend at the time – reminds me of those good times that we shared when we went on that short road trip for a day to have some fun.

Here’s the MTV award-winning music video for “Glycerine” from Bush. It’s one of my favourite songs of all-time: