For me 1979 is a shoulder year, as popular music climbs out of the pit that was the late '70s.
So I wasn't expecting much, and I wasn't disappointed. It was very rock-centric, ignoring
then-current musical trends like punk, funk, and disco. I'm not sure how to rate 10@10 sets
these days. Should I grade on a curve, or stick to strict standards of excellence?
Here is my pseudo 1979 10@10:
1. Wings - Goodnight Tonight
(TV: WKRP In Cincinnati - Mama Carlson asks about format change.)
2. The Sports - Who Listens To The Radio?
3. Daryl Hall & John Oates - Portable Radio
(TV: WKRP In Cincinnati - Judge not the behavior of the employees but the profits.)
4. The Nervebreakers - Hijack The Radio
5. Joe Jackson - On Your Radio
(News: Disco Demolition Greg Gumbel news report)
6. Chicago - Street Player
(News: Disco Demolition Steve Dahl interview)
7. George Harrison - Not Guilty
(Movie: The Muppet Movie - Kermit and Fozzie meet The Electric Mayhem)
8. Kermit (Jim Henson) - Rainbow Connection
9. Olivia Newton-John - Deeper Than The Night
10. Marvin Gaye - A Funky Space Reincarnation
I attempted to cover as many different genres as possible for this one. This one comes close to 1 hour in length!
https://soundcloud.com/capnjack-1/06-10-10-1979
Enjoy!
Slow-ish day at work, so I listened again and did a stream-of consciousness commentary as it played.
1. This song illustrates what I was talking about in the other thread--a song I remember but haven't heard in ages. Not something I'd put on myself, and Wings had definitely gone downhill by this time (London Town, anyone?) but definitely a song of its time.
2. Again, a song I haven't heard in a long while, and illustrative of the new wavish singles that were one of the best things about '79, imo. (I thought this was Joe Jackson on first listen--very derivative of his sound/vocal inflection). Nice segue from the WKRP bit, too.
3. Can't say I remember this one at all, but it works with the "radio" theme of this sequence of songs. Not one of H&O's best, imo.
Love the second WKRP clip. The Red Wigglers jingle kills me.
4. Another song I have minimal memory of, but boy does it work in the context of this set. Also, a nice not-so-subtle dig at DC/RR.
5. The *real* JJ. My earlier comment about song #2 applies to 3, 4, and 5, too.
Disco demolition clip #1: Great segue, and a great moment in 79 music history. I seem to remember that the charge they used to blow up the disco records also took a big chunk out of the turf in center field.
6. If you wanted to pick an appropriate song to show how bad disco could be, you did a fine job. Slick, cheezy, and far longer than it needed to be.
Disco demolition clip #2: Boy, was Steve Dahl a jerk.
7. The segues just keep on coming--it really works out of that last clip. Wish George had done a better job with this song however. Not much beat, not much melody; I give it a 65, Dick.
8. Rainbow Connection is a nice flashback for anyone who was a kid in the late 70s or has a fondness for the Muppet Movie, but otherwise kind of sappy.
9. ONJ isn't doing it for me with this one. No recollection of it at all, but looking at the tracklisting for this album I don't recognize anything else either. Not sure what I would have substituted here--maybe a post SNF BeeGees tune?
10. Still another song I have no memory of, but I kinda like it. Midtempo, but funky.
None of the last four songs were very upbeat. Another dip in the new wave pop genre would have been great--perhaps the Fabulous Poodles or something else of that ilk?
Four of the 10 songs did not ring any bells in my memory. Good that you're digging deep for these, but almost too much so. A big part of 10@10's appeal is to trigger a bit of nostalgia. I could have used just a little bit less obscurity.
Production values again were stellar. Very nicely put together. Are you using ProTools or some other audio editing software to assemble these, or doing it old-school, with a turntable and a cassette recorder?
No wonder this set ran so long. Between the Wings and Chicago tunes, that's about 17 minutes right there, and if you add the Marvin Gaye, we're up around 26 minutes. And this was before CDs, when 22 minutes or so was about the most you could cram onto one side of an album.
All in all, some nice work. My hat is off to you for the effort you're obviously putting into this, digging up songs and finding appropriate clips to go with them, or vice versa. How much time does it take to pull everything together?