Look at The Person on Your Left...

     Bishop Eustace Prep sat on RT 70 in Pennsauken, NJ right by the Cooper River.  It was a small prep school with a good reputation for both academics and sports.  There were about 160 kids in my graduating class, about half the size of other Catholic schools in the area like Holy Cross (where my wife went) or Camden Catholic (where my three siblings went).  So much great literature and film has been dedicated to the high school experience, I’m not sure how much insight I can add.  But if you want to learn more about High School life, in general, I suggest you check out the excellent documentary Fast Times at Ridgemont High. So let’s lay the groundwork, shall we?

First of all, the main players for the next 4 years:

Don “The Master of Disaster” – Best friend and partner in crime  

Janet – A Beatles fanatic 

DeCosmo – Biggest Led Zeppelin Fan ever.

Baxter – In tune with new music and hater of all things Zeppelin

Dolan – Friend and classic rock music nut.  Drive a 69 Charger.

Anne – Socialite.  Anne hosted the best parties and ran the social scene.

Sean – Guitar player, songwriter, sometime boyfriend of Anne

Romasco – The Underground music source

Buzz Henry – Knew who Bootsy Collins was

Toal – The mystic: authority on The Dead, Tolkien, Zen 

Limanni – Guitar player and musical partner

Ken – Fantastic artist and avid reader.  Had great Halloween parties

        Fr Angleo (RIP) – Cigar chomping Principal and Don Corleone incarnation

Of course these little fragmentary sentence bites don’t begin to describe how great it was to know these people and the wonderful influence they had on my life.  But it was high school and although it wasn’t always wonderful, it would all be memorable. 

The cool and scary thing about high school is how instantaneously my world expanded.  In grade school, all my friends were a bike ride away.  At the Prep, the universe expanded like the big bang.  My friends were from Medford Lakes, Deptford, Runnemede, and yes even Pennsauken and I would spend a lot more time on the phone talking to everyone, until I finally had my license.  There were only a handful of kids from my grade school that went to Eustace.  The others went to Camden Catholic or to Pennsauken HS and I would never see most of them again.  Even at the Prep, friends would come and go.  With a high price tag, the pressure was on to keep up the grades.  From that first day, I doubt there’s anyone who doesn’t remember Father Angelo’s “Prep Talk”:

“Look at the person on your left, look to your right.  Look at the person in front of you and behind you.  By the end of this year, one of you will be gone.”  Oh yeah – those were happy times.

With so few friends around, how do you connect with new people?  Through popular culture of course!  Music, books and movies provide fertile ground for discovering about people, what thy like and don’t like and maybe a little insight into who they are.  I met one of my best friends, Ken, thanks to Tolkien.  Early in freshman year, He saw I was reading The Lord of the Rings and struck up a conversation with me.  Other friendships were a matter of classroom geography.  Randy sat next to me in homeroom and he was from Deptford and I believe that lead to meeting my friend Don and a whole Deptford contingent.  

One, of my earliest memories of the Prep, apart from the less-than-subtle opening day threat, was the first dance.  A Freshman only mixer in the cafeteria, the event was heavy on the dance tunes, of course.  But I think it was they first time I ever heard Funky Town.

The End is In Sight

Funky Town was a nameless, faceless, paint by numbers hit capitalizing on a popular genre.  Was it any wonder that the disco backlash couldn’t be far behind?  The end of disco loomed on the horizon like a blazing fireball exploding in the heartland. But before it did, it would take down some of the biggest names in rock’s pantheon.  It seemed like everyone wanted to get in on the act.  The Rolling Stones release Some Girls in 1978.  Blech.  I never cared for Miss You and I was more of a Beatles fan anyway.   Kiss’ foray in to disco, I Was Made for Loving You, tried to bring a harder edge to disco, but that wasn’t working either and it started Kiss on a downward spiral that would take them years to recover from.  

I think ELO’s Discovery (Disco? Very!) in 1979 was a big disappointment for me, although it does include a few of my favorite ELO SO songs, like Last Train to London, Confusion and Midnight Blue - but Shine A Little Love is as pure a dance tune as you’re going to find.  I’m sure Jeff Lynne would like everyone to forget the dreadful movie Xanadu - But thanks to my Blog, now everyone can remember that they wrote some of the songs about a magical night club that, in the end, turned out to be a Roller Disco.  The movie put a taint on one of my favorite bands - an uncharacteristic misstep for the savvy Jeff Lynne.

It’s no surprise that Barry Manilow would latch on tot disco to score one of his biggest hits ever with Copacabana - but even Bruce Springsteen couldn’t escape the fever unscathed.  He penned Protection for Donna Summer.  But the worst and I mean WORST offender was Rod Stewart.  I hated Do Ya think I’m Sexy so much that flames would shoot out of the side of my ears whenever that song came on.  I think it was # 1 on the charts for 2 months.  

One of my clearest memories from this time was an ongoing argument with Dolan about whether or not Pink Floyd’s Another Brink in the Wall was a disco song or not.  He insisted that the drum beat was pure disco.  I argued in the negative, but I don’t think we ever resolved that one.  Even the fledgling New Wave Movement took its hits. Blondie’s Heart of Glass was their break through hit, but the original version was more of a Ska/Reggae number before the record producer’s got a hold of it.

But in July 1979 there was a sweet revenge when The Chicago White Sox promoted Disco Demolition Night between games.  The ill-thought out stunt had fans bringing their disco albums to the stadium to be tossed onto a pile in centerfield, where there would be detonated with a charge of explosive.  Well, the explosion tore hole in the outfield, the vinyl shrapnel flew every where and the soon to be drunk fans were tossing their razor-edged discs all over the stadium.  The White Sox ended up forfeiting the game, which I believe is the last time a game had to be forfeited in the American League.  And out of those ashes, A phoenix was ready to rise....

Power Pop Returns!

But there was one song and one album that kicked it all off.  Live at Budokan was released in October 1978.  The version of Surrender off of this album hit me like a wall of sound.  I think I remember doing a double take and thinking “Whoa! What was that?!”  I immediately got the album, too.  Cheap Trick was more popular in Japan than they were in the US and this album wasn’t originally intended distribution in the US.  I had never even heard of Budokan! Somehow, bootleg copies made their way to the US and hit college radio stations and the record company ended releasing a US version and Cheap Trick became a household name! The second side of this album was on my turntable for a long time:

Ain’t That a Shame kicked it off with a rumbling Bun E Carlos drum lead-in that always had me playing some serious air drums.  I Want You to Want Me, was next.  You could hear the Japanese kids screaming in the background, nearly drowning out the band, like when the Beatles played Shea Stadium. I still crank up this song whenever it comes on the radio, especially when Rick Nielsen bends those strings on the main riff.  Surrender was next, a crunchy, totally catchy, subtly political and entirely angsty power pop anthem for a new generation of disaffected youth!  I loved the Kiss reference, too!

When I woke up mom and dad

Were rolling on the couch

Rolling numbers, rock and rolling

Got my Kiss records out!

Besides Cheap Trick, there were two other landmark songs that marked the changing tide in the Fall of 1978.  First was a one-hit wonder from Canada. – Okay, I know that doesn’t really narrow it down for you, but there was no mistaking this high voiced sensation from the great white north.  Nick Gilder (did you think I meant someone else??) brought a little glam and androgyny to his 1978 # 1 hit Hot Child in the City.  Hot Child, was a song that, even though it made it # 1, no one really admitted to liking.  Between subject matter – teenage runaways and prostitution and Nick’s gender-bending delivery, this was a song that you generally didn’t want your parents to catch you listening to.  

On the other hand, My Best Friend’s Girl, from the Car’s self-titled debut was as radio friendly as New Wave got in 1978.  Elliot Easton’s guitar work was both reminiscent of rock-a-billy twangers like Eddie Cochrane and still modern enough to fit the times.  Rick Ocasek’s quirky voice gave the band a great original sound that helped them find a niche that would keep them on the charts for nearly the next 10 years.  The debut also had the great power pop hit Just What I Needed and was a more typically sounding Cars song.  

Novelty Act or the Real Deal?

Okay, one last mention from 1978.  Now that I was in high school, I got to do all kinds of grown up stuff.  Like staying up late and watching Saturday Night Live!  There were great skits back then, especially the Mr. Bill sketches.  “Oh No! It’s Sluggo!!”  A sketch that spilled over into the main stream in a big way was the alter egos created by Belushi and Ackroyd as The Blues Brothers.  I remember when they crossed the SNL stage, dressed in black suits, Ray Bans and pork pie hats, and launched into a great cover of Sam and Dave’s Soul Man.  To me, Belushi & Ackroyd really became Joliet Jake and Elwood Blues, soul brothers on a mission to save the Blues from being swept aside by the soulless tide of “preprogrammed electronic Disco”.  The duo hit the road for a tour and brought along some of the giants of the Blues and soul era.  And here’s the key to their success, apart from the driven personality of John Belushi – their band was the real deal.  Guitarist Steve Cropper was part of the blues outfit Book T and the MGs who scored with Green Onions and Hip Hug Her.  He also wrote songs like In the Midnight Hour and (Sitting on) the Dock of the Bay.  He defined the Soul style of guitar playing.  The bass player, Donald “Duck” Dunn, was also part of Booker T and the MGs and layed the soul groove down for a generation’s worth of music.  Booker T also served as the house band for Stax Records which produced unforgettable soul music through most of the 60s.  When these guys joined the Blues Brothers, they weren’t just part of a novelty cover band – They were playing the music they created and reintroducing it to a new generation of fans, like me.  

When I first heard Soul Man on the radio – It opened up whole new world for me.  At first I didn’t realize that this was a cover song, a remake. I just wasn’t familiar with soul music from the 1960s.  But when I got the album, I immediately wanted to know more about the performers and the songs.  Belushi did a good job given a shout out to the original performers, like Delbert McClenton, Junior Wells or King Floyd (which I misheard as Pink Floyd!)  and the band members.  Briefcase Full of Blues was an important album for me, because it changed the way I approached music.  I took more of an interest in the sources and influences of music and who was playing it.  I've enjoyed introducing this album to my kids (Rubber Biscuit, anyone?)  It was one of my favorites remains so to this day. 

Next: Next Phase, New Wave