Tag: Lanham Maryland

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History Holidays Life Music Radio

Saturday Night Retro

We’re kicking off Halloween here on the big blue blog as ‘Retro’ brings back two treats over the next two Saturday nights.

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Halloween was a fun event back in the day. I remember a bunch of them all around my Lanham Maryland neighbourhood from 1975 to 1980. Trick-or-treating in our favourite costumes was the in thing to do back then, as we cruised from door-to-door and from street-to-street up and down Red Wing Lane, Wren Lane, Wood Thrush Drive, and Nightingale Drive. I probably dressed up as Batman more than any other costume. Into the early-1980s I outgrew the whole dressing-up part of Halloween, but my little brother was just getting into it as a grade school student. I walked him all around our McLean Virginia neighbourhood and also into the adjoining Madison Of McLean and King’s Manor neighbourhoods in search of globs and globs of candy. 

Back in 1986 while I was living in the U.K. Bronx New York rapper (and former disco deejay) Kevin Smith – better known as his stage name – Lovebug Starski – scored an ENORMOUS radio and club chart smash with this amazing hard-hitting track. It’s “Amittyville (The House On The Hill)” y’all !

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History Home Life Music People Radio

The Major’s Friday Night Disco Party

Flashback to the Spring of 1977. I’m 9-years-old – getting ready to turn 10-years-old, and I’m hangin’ out with my friends down by the creek at the bottom end of Red Wing Lane in Lanham Maryland. One side of the creek I ruled. I was in charge. The territory was known as ‘Chris Day Valley’, and it stretched for as far as my imagination would allow. On the other side of the creek my friends ruled, and their territory was known as ‘Wolf Pack State’. Our two territories neighboured each other, and we were friendly nations. See – even back then I was mastering geographic boundaries !

As I was compiling the paragraph above (and wandering around on the web) I believe that I may have discovered two friends of mine (simultaneously) from that neighbourhood and that time period. I’m gonna try to connect with both of them. I see their pictures (avatars) online, and they look very much as I remember them from over 30 years ago. One of them lived in the last house on the street right before the creek and the two ‘territories’. The other lived in a house just behind mine, and he was one of my first good buddy friends.

Playing on the radio back in the old neighbourhood up and down Red Wing Lane was a lot of Disco music. ABBA (from Sweden) weren’t really a Disco act, but they got with the times when they had to. The result was their only # 1 smash stateside and perhaps their most memorable anthem of the era. It’s “Dancing Queen” !  RE-LIVE !

Categories
History Life Music

The Major’s Friday Night Disco Party

During the Spring of 1979 I was in the 6TH grade at Magnolia Elementary School right in the middle of my Lanham Maryland neighbourhood.

Magnolia Elementary School, Lanham Maryland
Magnolia Elementary School, Lanham Maryland

The school day began at precisely 9:08 AM, and it ended at precisely 3:08 PM. Magnolia was my school for Kindergarten (1972-1973) and 3RD through 6TH grades (1975-1979). Those last 4 years at Magnolia were perhaps the happiest four years of all of my school years. It would just get miserable for me after that in Junior High and Senior High School (although I do remember occasional pockets of fun and good times during those advanced school years).

In 1979 I was a trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent Boy Scout:

On my honor I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country, and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.

It’s hard to believe that I’m 30 years removed from that part of my life. Some songs remind me of the bad times, but whenever I hear this song play it reminds me of some of those good times that I lived back then during my active preteen years.

Here’s Amii Stewart with her ‘pay all of the bills’ # 1 Platinum Disco SMASH !

Categories
History Life Music Radio Television

Saturday Night Retro

In 1979 I was an 11-year-old that became a 12-year-old in June. I graduated from Magnolia Elementary School in Lanham Maryland (right in my own neighbourhood):

Magnolia Elementary School, Lanham Maryland
Magnolia Elementary School, Lanham Maryland

That was my school for Kindergarten from 1972 to 1973, and then again for 3RD, 4TH, 5TH, and 6TH grades from 1975 to 1979. The street that I lived on (Red Wing Lane) was located directly in front of the school by a couple hundred yards, but that was not the proper way to walk to and from school because you had to climb the fence and walk in other people’s yards to do so. The proper way to walk to and from school was up / down the hill and over to the left-side main entrance.

Incidentally the more things change the more things stay the same. That school looks exactly the way it used to look 30 to 35 years ago – right up to the facade of the building, the spray paint residue on the left-hand side, the breezeway out front, and the lightposts. A lot has changed since the mid-1970s. The outside of that school is not one of those changes.

If you walk through the front entrance, take an immediate right at the first hallway, and take that hallway down all the way to the very end you should come across a big painted map of the U.S.A. directly on the surface of the wall (if it’s still there). My class painted that as a special project way back then. I specifically painted Hawaii. It was a masterpiece !

It’s amazing the things that I remember from back in the day.

And now for your ultimate ‘Saturday Night Retro’ review I present to you this # 1 gold pop smash that everyone was singing and dancing to in their living rooms and in their cars just before 1979 morphed into 1980. This my friends is English musician Robin Scott – better known at the time as simply ‘M’. Here’s the official music video for “Pop Muzik” – one of the first videos ever made for television – more than two years before MTV even went on-the-air. This video was sleek, stylish, solid, and state-of-the-art for its time. Check it out:

Until next Saturday night my friends – keep on makin’ history !