Redartz: Quick, jump on board! You're just in time for another trip baaaaaack.......aboard the Retro Metro! Today we return to those fabulous 80's, specifically the year 1983. The US and the USSR (and President Ronald Reagan and Premier Yuri Andropov) remain at odds, but many folks are talking about the recent premiere of "Return of the Jedi". Your humble host has just completed another year at college, and is driving a delivery route. Working Sundays, I always tune in "American Top 40"; and this week they are playing:
Tops on the Billboard Hot 100: Irene Cara, "Flashdance...What a Feeling"
And rounding out the top five:
2. David Bowie, "Let's Dance"
3. Men at Work, "Overkill"
4. Culture Club, "Time (Clock of the Heart)"
5. Thomas Dolby, "She Blinded Me With Science"
The phenomenally popular Michael Jackson still has two songs in the top 40, "Beat It" and "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'". Listening to AT40 lately is most rewarding,with so many cool tunes popping up. One of the coolest, currently rising the chart: Eddy Grant with "Electric Avenue":
And I am nuts for that Thomas Dolby song at number 5. "Hit me with technology", indeed.
Tops in the UK: The Police, "Every Breath You Take"
Of course, no matter how fascinating the pop music world is currently, there is much more out there to explore. Tonight's tv offerings, for example...
American television schedule:
ABC: Benson, Condo, Too Close for Comfort, It Takes Two, 20/20
CBS: Magnum, P.I., Simon and Simon, Tucker's Witch
NBC: Fame, Gimme a Break!, Cheers, Hill Street Blues
BBC1: Tomorrow's World, Top of the Pops, Fame, Nine O Clock News, Jury
BBC2: Party Election Broadcast, Norman Mailer at Sixty, Behind the Scenes With..., Food and Drink, The Young Ones, Nobody Minded the Rain, Newsnight featuring Campaign 83
Robert Guillaume is great on Benson. I've been following him since his appearances on Soap. Every now and then I'll catch Fame , and Hill Street Blues is never to be missed. But Condo and Tucker's Witch? Not a clue. Not on my radar, apparently.
What is on the radar, every week, is whatever is to be found on the spinner racks. Or more frequently, found on the shelves at the local comic book shop. The selection there is extensive, and you can pick up some of the new Independent comics sprouting up all over. First's "E-Man" is terrific; Joe Staton is having all kinds of fun with the book. Additionally, I'll grab Amazing Spider-Man (rather enjoying the current Hobgoblin storyline). Of course, John Byrne's FF Annual is on my list. On yours? Oh, and Marvel Fanfare- interesting book. Not all great, but many nice stories and some unusual art choices (Barry Windsor-Smith on the Thing!).
Ah well, time to tuck our comic purchases into the backpack, climb on and make the return trip back to the future (say, that sounds like a good title). Be sure to keep your ticket stub for free admission next time when we take the Retro Metro!
18 comments:
Was, "Condo," that mini-series that starred the bloke from "Grizzly Addams?" If so, I vaguely remember it. It also starred an actor who looked just like him as his dad. I think their characters might have been called something like Gus and Hank Garvey or something. I think there was a female marine biologist in it too. I don't have a clue what happened in it, other than there was a brand new apartment complex by the sea, and warnings of impending disaster because of its existence. I remember it as being one of those things you watched purely because it was easy to ridicule.
For me, the TV highlights were:
BBC One showing, "Heidi," another of those strange European children's shows they liked to inflict upon us.
The legendary children's show, "Blue Peter," featuring an interview with the great nephew ten times removed of the man the world came to know as, "Robinson Crusoe."
The UK singles chart was positively stuffed with things I liked. We had:
4 - Yazoo - "Nobody's Diary."
10 - Spandau Ballet - "True."
14 - The Fun Boy Three's version of, "Our Lips Are Sealed," which I always preferred to the Go-Go's take on it.
18 - Big Country - "In a Big Country."
23 - Human League - "Fascination."
29 - Altered Images - "Bring Me Closer." Apparently, lead singer Clare Grogan was the person being sung about in Spandau Ballet's, "True," so it was appropriate that both tracks were on the chart at the same time.
42 - Robert Wyatt's cover of Elvis Costello's, "Shipbuilding."
53 - Mike Oldfied - "Moonlight Shadow."
63 - Culture Club - "Church of the Poison Mind."
70 - The Creatures - "Miss the Girl."
88 - Patti Smith - "Because the Night." I'm not totally sure why it was on the chart so many years after it was originally released but, for whatever reason, it was.
Colin, in that, "Tomorrow's World," demonstration of the CD, didn't they smear jam all over it, shove it in a microwave oven and then bash it with a hammer, in order to demonstrate that it still played perfectly afterwards? I'd love to know where they got their CDs from because none of mine were ever that robust. One speck of dust on mine and they'd have a nervous breakdown.
I don't think I read a single comic book in 1983 or watched a single TV show.
But.. I sure did listen to the music as it was my last year in college. The 2nd British Music Invasion was in full assault upon our shores and I loved every minute of it! Steve DC has a choice sampling just above!
(Some of our boys, like Prince, put up a pretty good fight!)
But, I agree with Steve's Fun Boy Three version of Our Lips are Sealed. And thanks for throwing in a reference to Culture Club. Clearly they were at, or nearly at, the tip of the spear of that UK attack! But they seem all but forgotten today.
OK - I take it back about TV. Living in a fraternity house, my roommate would watch the soap General Hospital at 2 PM daily. Neither he, nor I, gave two winks about it. But the girls... like bees to pollen. The sacrifices we made... LOL.
1983, the year we got cable. It was a wired box that had a slider to choose channels and lovely woodgrain top! We watched MTV for 2 days straight. That Eddy Grant video seemed to play every 1/2 hour along with the Tubes "she's a Beauty". MTV, steak-ums and a pile of comics was a perfect summer afternoon.
LOVED the Young Ones..!!! One of the best, funniest Britcoms ever.
Wasn't quite back to comic collecting as of yet (that would come in '84..), but I agree with Charlie, the coeds...? Like bees to pollen indeed.
As gentlemen here, I will say no more. (Yes, feel free to add the obligatory Python responses...)
I don't think I watched any of those shows, but now I do have that Irene Cara song stuck in my head.
I picked up that FF Annual and Hawkeye at the time and I remember being underwhelmed by both. I may have also bought that Marvel Fanfare which was has some nice Perez art, but I can't recall. Anyway, I do have it now. And I bought that Batman, "Thief of Night" recently. It's interesting to see how Bruce Wayne emotes over Jason Todd in a way he never did with Dick Grayson.
As for the politics, I remember I think they were called the "Iron Triangle," Reagan, Thatcher and Mitterand. What a distance from Trump, May and Macron!
Great era for Spider-Man, that ASM issue featured his second battle with Hobgoblin. Script by Roger Stern, pencils by John Romita Jr., some of the best Spider-Man stories of all time.
I also enjoyed the FF "Skrull Milk" annual.
Steve, I remember how CDs were called "indestructible" when they first appeared which wasn't true but I must admit they were quite robust on the whole. I used to borrow CDs from the local library and they were always covered in scratches but they always played OK. But I never smeared jam on my CDs or put them in a microwave oven :)
I was still in the thick of reading comics at this point, and of those pictured, I have particularly fond memories of that FF Annual and the beginning of the Hawkeye mini-series (which I believe Mark Gruenwald not only wrote but also drew).
As for TV memories, while I agree with David that the Young Ones is all kinds of awesome, back in 1983 it was not even on my radar (I actually first saw that as reruns here in Croatia in the 1990s). Back then, I watched Magnum P.I. (and Simon & Simon right after it) with an almost religious devotion.
On the music front, I was loving Bowie's entire "Let's Dance" album, and I thought those songs by Mssrs. Dolby and Grant were really cool. At that point I had also become quite a big fan of the Police. And since Steve posted some picks from the UK charts, I recalled how much I loved Big Country and Altered Images back then as well.
I'm with all of you "Young Ones" aficionados. Although I never saw them until years later...
Steve and Charlie- yes, the UK chart back then was a gold mine. We would scour the chart to get a preview of the new sounds that would hit the States in 6 months.
J.A.- the Stern ASM run was fine indeed. The Omnibus that collects those ( and his Spectacular Spiderman issues) would be a great purchase...
Wow, Electric Avenue ... I haven't heard that song in years. I was eleven at this point, and not yet into my headbanger phase, so I listened to Top 40 stuff mostly.
I had that Spidey comic (as J.A. mentioned, a great story with Lefty Donovan as the ersatz Hobgoblin) and I think I had the DD, JLA, and All-Star Squadron as well. I may have had others (like that Batman with Night Thief/Nocturna--I think that was during Moench's long run), but those are the ones I remember.
For those who don't remember "Condo", see below.
I never watched it. I only remember it because it was the show that replaced "The Greatest American Hero" on Thursdays at 8:00.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78kW3zoxNww
Meanwhile, how can you talk about 1983 and not mention these guys?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txC114_moMI
My birthday is June 3rd, so I turned 20 in 1983. This was around the time that I stopped reading comics. I was going off for my last couple of years of college to study engineering and I eventually got to the point that I didn't have time to read them because I was too busy studying every available minute (well, not EVERY minute). I had a lot of the comics pictured in the post.
I actually don't remember much about TV from that time. I watched a lot of sports, but not much in the way of series TV. On the music front, though, "Electric Avenue" was one of my favorites and I followed Eddy Grant's career for several years afterward.
J-Man- thanks for the links! I completely draw a blank on "Condo". But "A-Team"- now that I remember...
Graham- Eddy Grant followed up "Electric Avenue" with a theme for the movie "Romancing the Stone". That was pretty catchy too. Oh, and Happy Birthday!
A happy time for my comic collecting.
Based on those Marvel covers you show, that looks like the last month before Marvel switched its cover format to put MARVEL up in the corner box instead of having a Marvel Comics Group banner across the tops of their covers. That's a pretty geeky thing to know, but I just remember specifically the amazing batch of Marvel comics two months later: Daredevil #200, X-Men #175, some real fun Avengers, Fantastic Four and Alpha Flight issues, plus Walt Simonson's debut on Thor.
Speaking of Alpha Flight, the month you're highlighting was, I believe, when Alpha Flight #1 came out, one of my favourite #1 issues ever.
A happy time indeed...
-david p.
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