21 – Video Killed the Radio Star – 1979

Video Killed the Radio Star - The Buggles

            I really can’t explain it, but his is one of my all time favorite pop songs. It’s one of the two or three songs that, when it comes up in my Zune, I have to play it 2, 3, or 4 times. It’s just a perfect, pick me up kind of song. It reminds me of the video (the first one played on MTV back in August 1981), which is cheesy, goofy, and everything I liked about early MTV, back when they actually played videos.

            What the song reminds me of is how I used to drive around the Northwest suburbs of Chicago back in the 70’s and early 80’s, in search of record stores with bargain and import bins that might contain an album from the band or individual I was currently listening to.

            I was living in Cary/Crystal Lake/Fox River Grove during that time period and I would drive to Skipper’s Music in Carpentersville, Apple Tree Records in Elgin, EJ Korvette’s in Des Plaines, Woodfield Mall with 2 or 3 record stores, FlipSide in Hoffman Estates, and Randhurst Mall in Mount Prospect

It reminds me of graduate school in Macomb, Illiinois, at Western Illinois University, when I drove up to Galesburg to go to Knox College to look in their library for information about a Medal of Honor winner in the Civil War from the 59^th Illinois (I can’t recall what info they had there to see, I guess a song can only bring back so much).

There was also a mall whose name escapes me now, with a record store with two albums that I could not afford at the time (I was making $210/month as a grad assistant, and $130 went to the rent). One was Circle Round the Sun by Leo Kottke, which I found 20 years later on Ebay, and the other was a Cat Stevens live album, an import from Japan, that I have not seen since.

It reminds me of a time when I got my music from the radio or MTV. That whole market is gone today. Radio, FM radio, is either oldies or classic rock, dominated. MTV/VH1 barely play videos, just dreck like Jersey Shore and Mafia Wives. I guess that’s why I don’t buy much music anymore. The last CD of music I bought was from Amazon.com, it was Roadsinger, by Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) and that was three years ago.

As I’ve noted before, I commute 2-3 hours a day now, but I only listen to the podcasts on the Steve Dahl Network, and I fall behind on some of them because there’s so much good stuff there. Steve does 5 shows a week, plus a Saturday “Blast from the Past”, best of Steve and Garry (Meier), which I listen to first. Then I listen to Matt Dahl and Brendan Greely’s weekly show, Dino Stamatopolous’ weekly show, James Van Osdol’s weekly show, and if I’ve caught up on all of them, I listen to the twice weekly Kevin Matthews podcast, fast forwarding through his political rants, which I find tiresome and intelligence-free. (I was a huge Kevin fan when he was on WLUP in Chicago, and was funny, but he’s turned into a faux libertarian, ain’t Ted Nugent a great guy, let’s get rid of all the politicians, sort of crank)

My music listening is rarely done in the car. During the summer I hook up the Zune to an amplifier in our garage that drives some outdoor speakers that we listen to when we’re out in the yard or at the community pool that abuts our property. (The pool was part of our property when the house was built in 1955, but the homeowners sold it to the Pool Club members in the mid-60s. Back then the pool had a diving board and underwater lighting, now pulled for liability’s sake in the litigious age. And parties were a weekly occurrence, to hear the folks who lived her back then talk.)

Why do things have to change so much, and not necessarily for the good?