Various Artists
Fast Times at Ridgemont High Soundtrack
Elektra Records
1982
Aloha, Mr Hand. Aloha, Spicoli.
New Wave. Power Pop. Hard Rock. 4 of the 5 Eagles. That’s what 1982 was all about. This film set the trend for soundtracks for many years…and the brand of shoes I still buy today.
Gnarly.
Asia
Asia
Geffen Records
1982
Asia is one of my favorite records. And apparently I purchased this one on September 20, 1982 at Woolco in DeKalb, IL at 8:09 pm according to the receipt I found inside the album jacket.
Man, our brother Carl Palmer could rock the #cowbell like no other.
“And now you find yourself in ’82. The disco hotspots hold no charm for you.”
Billy Joel
The Nylon Curtain
Columbia Records
1982
Billy Joel‘s best album – skip the hits and check out Beatle-esque “Laura” and Christmas song (kind of) “She’s Right on Time.” Liberty DeVito never sounded better on the drums!
Men At Work
Business As Usual
Columbia Records
1982
In June of 1982, I came home from camp and our town had it: MTV. The first video I saw was “Who Can It Be Now” by Men At Work. I was hooked ever since…
Van Halen
Diver Down
Warner Bros Records
1982
The last VH album before Eddie discovered the synthesizer. This album is 99% guitar and 1% clarinet.
Chess Is Back
Various Artists
Chess Records / Sugar Hill Records
Compiled 1982
This promo-only LP for in-store play compiled 50’s and 60’s tracks from Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Chuck Berry, and other Chess artists.
Any pop band from the 80s or 90s could have achieved immortality by doing one thing that most of the others didn’t:
Write and record a Christmas song.
30 years after a one-hit-wonder’s success faded, their one-hit would be relegated to some lunar rotation on a niche genre satellite radio station. It will rarely, if ever, get downloaded, streamed, or even remembered fondly.
But their holiday song will still be a staple for 6 weeks per year for all eternity. It will have people who didn’t even like the band back in the day singing along. And more importantly, people who weren’t even born yet will make this part of their annual must-hear oldies.
Case in point: The Waitresses
The Waitresses hit the New Wave scene in 1980 and eeked-out a minor hit, “I Know What Boys Like,” upon its re-release in 1982. Though it was in heavy rotation on MTV in ’82, it only reached #62 on the Billboard charts.
They also recorded the TV theme to Square Pegs thought it wasn’t a hit at all. (“It was a totally different head. Totally.”)
But how often are either of these songs heard? Not much compared to The Waitresses’ one holiday tune, “Christmas Wrapping.” It was not a hit record, never even entering the charts in the US. But 35 years later, the song has somehow scored a top spot in everyone’s holiday song rotation. In the first week of this year’s Sirius XM’s annual Holly station, I heard it 3 times in 3 days. Or at least the first 30 seconds of it, which is usually juuuuuust enough for me.
Look at the one-hit download wonders of today. Who will still be heard 30 years from now? The ones with a Christmas song…
Rush
Signals
Mercury Records
1982
Rush meets MTV!
Coda was Led Zepp’s final studio album and included unused tracks from the vault including “Bonzo’s Montreux.”
David Bowie and Bing Crosby
Peace on Earth / Little Drummer Boy
1977, released 1982
RCA Records
Surreal television. Weird team-up in entertainment. Perfect musical moment.
In 1977 glam rocker David Bowie appeared as a guest on Bing’s long-running annual Christmas TV special, and they sang a duet after an awkward scripted setup. The song was a medley of “Peace On Earth” with the standard “Little Drummer Boy”.
Bing died a month after this was recorded, and a month prior to the airing of the TV special. The song was finally released as a single in 1982. Also that year, MTV added the clip to its rotation as a stand-alone video.
After decades of forgettable holiday TV specials and variety shows with uninspired duets with artists from different genres, this performance stands out. At first you may think it’s due to the shock factor of the pairing: it’s the tiny point on the Venn Diagram where The Golden Age of Hollywood overlaps with Modern Rock. But shock value alone doesn’t hold it up this long. Two great voices do.
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