Hello, my name is Post-Punk Monk and I’m an ex-Prog fan. [group welcomes and acknowledges Post-Punk Monk] As a kid who grew up in the 70s listening to AM/Top 40 radio from 1971-1978, I went off Pop radio in that year owing to the overabundance of Disco getting me down. I switched to FM Rock/AOR/”Progressive Rock” for a couple of years as there was not a viable college radio option in Orlando…yet.
These years of album rock exposed me to a lot of new bands I had not heard on Top 40 growing up. As a liked synthesizers, it didn’t take long before Emerson, Lake + Palmer were my favorite band for what seemed much longer then, but was probably a year and a half ranging from 1979 to the summer of 1980. As I’d gotten burned by the Disco trend taking over our culture, I initially cast a wary eye on New Wave [!] as the next trend I’d get sick of and was initially cold to hit New Wave records like M’s “Pop Muzik.”
By 1980 I’d gotten over that notion as I began gravitating to this upstart sound and saw that bands like ELP, Yes, and Pink Floyd were of a piece and that I was moving elsewhere. And yet, there were residual lingering echoes of the Prog fan within me still resonating with some things. In 198o I actually started buying albums by the proto-Prog band The Nice from whence came Keith Emerson. And more to the point, I actually liked them then…and now!
So when I’d spent much of 1981 hearing the hype on a new band being signed to the “maverick” new label Geffen Records, I was curious as to that sort of “supergroup” that the band Asia would be. It was made up of members of bands I either had liked a few years back, or maybe I still liked them in 1982!
- John Wetton – [ex-King Crimson] vocals, bass
- Geoff Downes – [ex-Buggles, Yes – 1980] keys
- Carl Palmer – [ex-ELP] drums
- Steve Howe – [ex-Yes]
John Wetton’s brilliant middle period with King Crimson is a three album arc for the ages… still! I loved that first Buggles album as well as the 1980 Yes album where Trevor Horn and Goeff Downes joined Yes to replace an absent Rick Wakeman and Jon Anderson. The “Drama” album was divisive to many Yes fans, but I had no problem with it at all! In fact, I bought it on CD when it finally came out in 1987 and still love it to this day! I have the DLX RM CD with plenty of bonus tracks, as well. I wasn’t carrying much water for ELP in 1982, but the other players had possibilities. Or so I thought at the time!
In the summer of 1982 the album finally came out after talk about it for over a year. The US record industry was then in a slump period after Peak Disco coincided with the rise of video games to siphon money out of teenage pockets as the kids of the day abandoned Rock music as a way to entertain themselves. Sales were in the basement after albums of the late 70s had shipped “double platinum.”
I bought the disc which had a typically elaborate Roger Dean airbrush fantasy painting like so many Yes albums covers had done. And I should have known then by its coloration, that this was no longer in my wheelhouse. I’d moved on. So I put the record on the turntable and played it.
Once.
I was very offended not by these titans of Prog [and maybe New Wave, in Downes’ case] playing elaborate, baroque Prog Rock in fussy time-signatures. No, instead I was very offended by these players, who were all capable of such shenanigans, dumbing down their capabilities to aim directly for the meathead Rock music target that the worthless, yet inexplicably popular band Journey were then hitting full force in the marketplace.
In the late 70s, Journey had made a similar paradigm shift after starting out as an instrumental American Prog [almost an oxymoron] band that no one listened to, they added singer Steve Perry. Who for some reason wanted to sing like Ronnie Spector, even though he was a guy, And then they watched their records sell in gold and platinum numbers. Titans of Nerf Rock™! You’ll notice that both of the covers in this post are airbrushed fantasy art where spheres figure prominently! That wasn’t the only similarity between Asia and Journey.
When I look at the credits in Discogs, the reasons why Asia was no more than Prog in Journey drag… the worst band possible in 1982, becomes readily apparent, though back then I didn’t have a clue. Both Asia and High Journey albums were produced by Mike Stone; a name unknown to me until I just looked the info up in Discogs. So if Asia sounded like Journey, it was highly intentional. That’s why they bagged the same producer.
And by the time that Asia videos were plastered all over MTV, I had already bought the album, completely unheard, and have given it away in disgust to the first person I saw who I thought would like it. I watched in dismay as “Asia” became the top selling album of 1982 in America. So obviously my tastes were incongruent with the larger masses. What stymies me now was how I even given it a single chance in the late date of the summer of 1982! As I had already lived through the most transcendent year I’d ever experience in music, 1981. My world had been already rocked by the Kraftwerks, Ultravoxes, Human Leagues, ABCs★★★, and Peter Gabriels of the time.
What had I been thinking to even try this?!
-30-
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Post-Punk Monk 
Thriller was the best selling album of 1982.
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jsd – Best selling album released in 1982, but I used to religiously read Billboard in college and in the 1982 calendar year I swear I read the best seller was “Asia” with 2M copies in a down market. I remember “Thriller” exploding in calendar year 1983. It wasn’t released until Thanksgiving of ‘82.
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Didn’t we all? I still like Journey, the early stuff. But then the USA was a synth pop desert for most cities. I have told my UK friends we had to go find the British popular music. Midge Ure said MTV gave a big jump to UK and synth pop because there were almost *no* US bands with videos, so MTV with its 24×7 mantra had to play all the UK videos. I remember Romeo and Juliet by Dire Straits being played *a lot* back then. It’s amazing how different it was for us back then and where you lived mattered. I think my earliest exposure was staying up late and watching the Midnight Special and seeing the Cars and Blondie. I loved Rio by Duran Duran. We relied on DJs and clubs as mast radio stations did not play the synth stuff. I then dated a guy who had moved from Germany to USA so he influenced me with some of the Euro and UK music from back then.
In any case Asia was a quasi ok substitute in the desert ( in my case, literally, AZ). Moved to LA, CA, after college and KROQ and XERA made me very happy…..
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Deserat – Midge Ure was right! It was down to arty UK New Wave acts to provide the backbone for the first 18 months of MTV. Without that copious volume of material, and of such high visual quality, I seriously doubt that the vaunted “Second British Invasion” would have ever happened. Once Bruce Springsteen started making videos the party was all over. So you actually got to hear Mexican Radio back then?! I’d love to hear the tales! Everyone knows about KROQ but XERA flies below the radar.
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This is absolutely correct. As a kid growing up in Detroit, it was 100% AOR rock (specifically WRIF) until MTV arrived in 1982 (I know it started in ’81, but that’s when we got cable). My memory of it is Duran, The Fixx, Talk Talk, Berlin, ABC, Missing Persons, Wall of Voodoo, etc. It sort of changed my life and had a lot to do with ending up a professional musician. In retrospect, I wish they would’ve gone a little deeper – it took me years to discover Bauhaus, Kraftwerk, Japan, Suicide, etc.
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Mitchell D Sigman – Welcome to the comments! We also got cable in the fall of ’82 and I remember the channel in my cable system having the MTV audio feed active for a few weeks prior to the channel debuting! So I’d go to channel 52 or whatever on the cable box and be hearing what was obviously MTV [with no video – possibly static onscreen or either black…I can’t recall now] and being very excited. I vividly recall hearing the audio to Midge Ure’s “No Regrets” being played at a time when I didn’t know about that single at all, but I was aware that Ultravox had a new single just out in England called “Reap The Wild Wind” which I had not yet bought in the Central Florida import bins. So for a few weeks, I was imagining that it might have been “Reap The Wild Wind” that I’d heard but not seen!
MTV could have gone a lot deeper as you say, but it was great for what it was for about 18-24 months. I actually did see Bauhaus with the “Spirit” video around that initial late ’82 time and rushed out to buy “The Sky’s Gone Out” only to get very surprised when the much more ponderous album version confronted me! Elvira, Mistress of the Dark® on her first [great!] guest VJ stint on Halloween played the intense clip of “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” from the film “The Hunger” that rocked a lot of fresh young minds, I’m sure! I saw “Visions Of China” a few times. It was famously played when Nick Rhodes was Guest VJ. Sometimes those were must-watch events.
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It was easily another decade before discovered any of that stuff. I don’t remember ever seeing Bauhaus on MTV (maybe their not-so-great cover of “Ziggy Stardust”), and definitely never saw Japan. Finding out about them in a band I played in was a huge revelation (as in, “holy crap, Duran Duran stole their thing completely!,” and, “holy crap, Mick Karn is amazing.”) I didn’t see the Elvira bit, but I remember them doing the Weird Al AL TV thing for hours and looking back on it, it’s pretty hysterical to think about the crazy stuff they’d let him get up to (I remember him screaming over the godawful Starship “Sarah” video and endlessly zooming into some other really awful vid or superimposing himself).
MTV aired some pretty awesome stuff back then – some of the concerts were great (Flock of Seagulls, even the Billy Squier one was pretty cool)
Oh, and I definitely heard “Reap The Wild Wind” on MTV, I still have “The Collection” on vinyl that I bought back then.
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You are definitely not alone in your prog to new wave, post punk and indie music journey (pun slightly intended), Monk. Though I am loath to admit it now, in the mid-70s some of my collection included ELP, Caravan, Kayak and a few other prog bands that kind of make me cringe now. In my defense, I had not found my musical footing just yet and wasn’t super clear on my taste, so all that stuff was heavily influenced by friends. I thought I should like it just because they did, but it never really clicked.
1977 was the pivotal moment for me when I heard Nick Lowe’s, Elvis Costello’s and The Cars’ first albums. That was it! I had found my footing and never looked back. A whole new, amazing world was opened which quickly led to Ultravox (including John Foxx, of course), Magazine, Wire, etc. – all the good and meaningful post punk stuff!
That isn’t to say that I don’t on occasion maybe, possibly sneak a listen to a couple ELP songs from Brain Salad Surgery (probably the progiest and most pretentious album name ever!) and even – dare I say it – Asia.
No doubt we all have some skeletons in our music journey closets we would rather not recall. But think of them as springboards to finding what you truly love.
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drskridlow – Though I largely gag on ELP now, I still have three of their CDs in my Record Cell [sorry, Echorich]. I am not ashamed to admit that I willingly bought a copy of “Trilogy” when it came out on CD in 1987. It’s an album that I can live with even today. I loved the Gershwin-Goes-Moog freakout of the amazing title track that spanned a wide range of vibe. BSS only has one track I like, but it’s a doozy; their go-for-the-throat cover of Ginastera’s “Piano Concerto no. 1 [4th movement]” known by ELP as”Tocatta.” A performance with full Crimson intensity that I need to hear about once a year. Loudly. I was astonished to once attend a piano recital where the pianist played another Ginastera piece and I was floored to hear exactly the same intensity that ELP brought to the game. Leading me to the conclusion that Alberto Ginastera had baked the vigor into his score, and that it was not a case of ELP “jazzing up” the composition. Then my late friend Ron was aghast that I’d never heard “Tarkus” so he sent me an extra copy of the JPN CD. “Side one” is the closest thing that ELP came to maintaining the Crimson-like vibe over an album side. Not bad. Side two was missable, but I’m on the fence as to whether I should eject it or not. I will probably rip “Tocatta” and gladly sell off “Brain Salad Surgery” as the rest of the album is indigestible to me now.
We are quite willing to discuss the skeletons in our Record Cell here at PPM. After all, the truth will set us free.
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Back in the late 70s, I picked up on Talking Heads, The Cars, Devo, Magazine, The Stranglers, etc, and was a regular at the import bins of hip record stores looking for the new singles by all the cool new English bands.
However, I never stopped loving the prog that had been my meat ‘n potatoes. Genesis, Yes, Kayak, Pink Floyd, etc never stopped being at the top of my musical heirarchy. I’ve never grokked why that was an either/or equation for some.
But then, I never stopped liking the straight pop records I grew up with before prog took hold of me. I will proudly admit that I still own records by the Carpenters, Tony Orlando & Dawn, and the Partridge Family! I am the proud owner of a copy of “The Partridge Family Shopping Bag” still containing the shopping bag.
I still wonder who it is that’s in the strawberry patch with Sally now that she’s not sitting there with me.
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Big Mark – I was undergoing a profound sea change musically in the late 70s as I was crafting my persona at the time, and the building blocks available on the licorice pizzas did nudge me towards an either/or position. I came to view most of the 70s Rock Hegemony as the enemy who were hogging up the charts/airwaves that absolutely didn’t have room for what I felt was much more artistically relevant and exciting material… New Wave. So I threw most of the Prog I had out of the airlock and moved onward. But crucially not all of it. The very first LP I bought when my dad got me a stereo in 1978 was Canadian Proggers FM’s “Black Noise” and I’ve never been without a copy in the ensuing 46 years. I still listen to it with a sense of wonder, in spite of the cruddy sci-fi lyrics! And there was always room for Prog that actually progressed like King Crimson! The whole Art Rock vs. Prog issue with me was very real. There was something fundamentally different to me in the approaches that Bill Nelson or Peter Gabriel brought to the tops of their respective games. I would never typify Bowie Prog, but by gar, he was definitely an Art Rocker!
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drskridlow – Points for recognizing that we were all still baking in the oven at the ages in question and there were no recipes for our development. We were all trying different ingredients to see what tasted good.
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We all had our own musical struggles through the 70s and found our paths out of the wasteland. Living in the same town as The Monk we shared some of the same challenges. Being a keyboard guy I naturally gravitated to early ELP along with Yes and King Crimson, but also rode the Steely Dan train hard. Never giving up my pop sensibilities, artists like Alan Parsons were sorta “Prog Lite” and along with Al Stewart, helped make the transition to the Cars, Cheap Trick, and Blondie which smoothed the way. But I didn’t get all of it at first. Devo and Talking Heads on SNL left me very confused. But I finally came around…
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I was and am a hardcore prog guy (among many other things) and I saw Asia on their first tour, tix purchased before the album came out. I was always into commercial music as well, and while there was a level of disappointment that it didn’t go to places one might have imagined from the members’ CVs, I always thought it was quite good for what it was if one removed such expectations. By 1982, I found that to be a much easier task than might have been the case a few years earlier.
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Mr. Ware – From my first childhood memories of popular music it was the keyboards for me too. My first favorite song was probably “96 Tears” for that cheesy organ riffage. Then, any bands with prominent organ [Steppenwolf, Three Dog Night] in the pop charts caught my young ears. Records like Apollo 100’s now-forgotten “Joy” were a crack in the door. “Autobahn” was the musical equivalent of an atomic bomb.
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I rreally enjoyed reading this, as I too have a fascination with what you’ve previously called the prog/wave hybrid.
I love new wave unabashedly, and I don’t like the idea of prog rock. That said, I do have a poorly articulated, most likely contradictory sense that art rock is different, and that’s okay.
But semantics aside, I think some of my favourite pop phenomena happen when prog musicians go pop (Trevor Horn most notably but I guess Phil Collins and arguably Peter Gabriel too, and maybe also 80s Rush) and when pop (new wave) musicians go prog: Talk Talk, Japan, Tears for Fears, etc.
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Andrew Albert F. Ty – Welcome to the comments! I think you hit the nail on the head from every angle with your comments! Ivan Doroschuk of Men Without Hats typifies New Wave as a mixture of Prog and Disco. Martyn Ware of Heaven 17/Human League goes on and on in his podcast about how Prog is a valid thread of DNA in so much music he enjoys. And he also tells of gritting his teeth listening to ELP records just for the two minutes of amazing Moog riffage they proffered among their more specious merits. In the mixing of two or more disparate genres, hybrid vigor is likely to result.
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Asia (the band) was a somewhat uniting force in our household. My brother was all AC/DC and Iron Maiden, while I was Bowie and ABC. Yet, Asia seemed to be the middle ground we both enjoyed whenever the the videos came on MTV. Years later, my brother has jumped over in his appreciation of my faves, and me of his, and have since ‘burned’ healthy libraries to each other. For me, John Wetton’s voice is still something I ‘practice’ to in the car – a beacon of excellence, in my opinion. My 16-year-old daughter has inherited her love of the eighties from me, albeit, my eighties, but Asia is included.
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René – That’s a fascinating perspective you proffer. Having no siblings, I didn’t run into such musical turf wars growing up. I can see that any opportunity for common ground was valuable…but the question still arises… “¿Quien Es Mas Macho…Bon Scott o Brian Johnson?”
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¡Tendría que ser Brian Johnson! He’s tough and has lasted singing his range for over 40 years! Bon was whinier but probably had more swagger that Brian! :)
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René – oooh! For me AC/DC ended in 1979. For my ears Johnson has zero dynamic range and I cannot tolerate his voice. We’ll have to agree to disagree.
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I knew Brian Johnson from when he was lead singer of the band Geordie, who had their hits while I was living in England 1972-73, and their UK Top 10 hit “All Because of You” has always been a favorite. I never liked Bon Scott, so when Brian took over the vocalist slot in AC/DC, it was a significant improvement in my book!
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I still like the Asia albums but probably because I was wholly unfamiliar with the players when it came out – I was 14 in 1982 and had mostly listened to AM radio before then. A good parallel: I adore Bowie, but I’m the Bowie fan that Bowie fans can’t stand because I like ALL of his stuff. I’d heard a few of his singles and liked them enough (Changes, Rebel Rebel, Young Americans) but then Let’s Dance came out… bitchen! It was only after devouring that album and his two other 80s albums that I went back and dove into his early stuff. If I’d cut my teeth on Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust I’d probably have despised his 80s output as many do (Never Let Me Down is widely considered his worst album ever – God save me, I love it). So sure, King Crimson et al. are far superior to Asia musically but I enjoy them both for entirely different reasons.
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JayOnDemand – Welcome to the comments! You bring your own perspective to the discussion! There aren’t two sides to any story but an infinite series of sides. Let’s just say that you were luckier in your Bowie fandom than I was at five years older. To me “Let’s Dance” is the biggest drop in quality that any artist [much less an icon like Bowie] I like has ever slapped me in the face with. Though Ultravox came close with “U-VOX” and “Brilliant.” And that you’re capable of enjoying King Crimson and Asia puts you in an exclusive club. But here’s my offering on this topic. I am a Duran Duran fan from day one and I actually love Duran Duran’s “Red Carpet Massacre” album. And that may be the loneliest club of all.
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Thanks for having me, PPM! Yes it must’ve been quite the kick in the jewels to go from the Berlin Trilogy and Scary Monsters to “put on your red shoes and dance the blues”. Absolutely nobody will be able to relate to this, but Men Without Hats put out an album called Sideways in 1991 – I shelled out $20 (a fortune!) for a special order of the import CD from Poo-Bah Records in Pasadena CA, got home, popped it in the player… to find that MWH had gone grunge. One listen to that gawdawful disc and my earballs were bleeding for weeks. (But they did crush it at the Totally Tubular Festival, non?)
You’ve given me a homework assignment: I’m currently spinning Red Carpet Massacre as I confess I didn’t give it much of a chance on its release (it might’ve been due to Falling Down, as in “they collaborated with who now?” – though that track is playing as I type this and if I didn’t know Timberlake was on it I’d have never guessed). The album’s much better than I remember, which is not surprising. BTW I’m with you on U-VOX though I think Brilliant had some great moments, even if it sounds more like Ure’s solo stuff.
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Hello JayOnDemand! Count me in as another fan of “Never Let me Down”, and I had picked up on Bowie while living in England in 1972 when Ziggy first hit big. I generally agree that Let’s Dance and Tonight are low points in his catalog, and those are the only studio albums that I don’t currently possess (though I do have the 80s anthology that covers the highlights thereof), but for me “Never Let Me Down” was a strong return to form, even if it’s one with commercial intentions. I’m also in the both-Crimson-and-Asia club!
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Hey Mark! Glad to see I’m not alone on the NLMD album. Now the next question is if you own the original version of the album that included the track Too Dizzy – a song Bowie apparently hated so much he insisted it be removed from future pressings (it wasn’t even on the Loving The Alien box set of his 80’s output, and there were three full discs of extra tracks). It’s not a terrible song! Side note: Tonight is probably my second-least favorite LP of his (I could never really get into Black Tie White Noise) but I absolutely love Loving The Alien. A top-10 Bowie track IMHO.
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JayOnDemand – You captured my sense of dismay with Bowie in 1983 down vividly with that second sentence! “Too Dizzy” is far from the worst track I could name on NLMD! What strains my credulity with that album is that for every [labored] glimmer that Bowie was actually trying again to “be Bowie” on NLMD, there was a 10:1 ratio of “WTF?” ideas present that showed that his head was just not up to the task. In that aspect, the nearest analog I can name to its level of profound disappointment cheek-by-jowl with brief signs of life
would be “Brilliant” by Ultravox. So I ask myself, which Bowie/Ultravox album do I think is the worst? “Let’s Dance/Tonight/Never Let Me Down” and “U-VOX/Brilliant?” With the final records in those respective sequences of suck being the ones that annoy me the most for having the occasional flickers of merit mired in the morass of “they just did WHAT??!” that raise my ire on every listen.
I’ve heard tales of “Sideways,” but I’ve never had the “pleasure.” Fortunately, Ivan apparently came to his senses, though I’ve still not heard a note from the post-“Pop Goes The World” era. I’m certainly willing to try after their pulse-pounding performance this summer! That was the most viscerally exciting live performance I’ve seen since Simple Minds in 2013 on their scanty US tour. Which is to say, hell to the yeah!
As for “Red Carpet Massacre,” the big name guests [none of whom I’d ever heard before – my pop culture firewall is impervious] were meaningless to my enjoyment. Though I thought that those more contrived tracks were a balance with the straightforward songcraft elsewhere on the album that worked for me. What I did enjoy was the relative spectacle of Simon singing in his range for possibly the only consistent time ever in decades. Either that or the Pro Tools tech who provided the Autotune® chops deserved a Grammy award! “Box Full O’Honey” and “She’s Too Much” are still top Duran Duran tunes in my book. Simon LeBon doing what he can best do…when he bothers to do it.
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I wouldn’t own a copy that didn’t include Too Dizzy! One of my favorites, but I had heard that there was a publishing issue related to Tommy Roe’s 60s hit “Dizzy” that led to it being excised. Well, all I care about is that I have it!
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Never owned the album but pretty sure I have a couple of singles. I was drawn to them via Downes and my love of all things Buggles. Of course I was let down (just a little) when I heard what 1/2 of the Buggles had come up with, but I certianly liked Asia better than the “real” hard rock stuff of the time. Their first 3-4 singles are decent early 80s rock pop – no shame
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Dave Richards – Well, it’s true that they were a darn sight better than Loverboy. OR the Specious American Prog of Stynx [sic]!
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Like JayOnDemand, I turned 14 the year this came out. I had already been listening to AOR FM radio, so I was familiar with at least Yes and ELP, but my town already had MTV so I’d been inundated with Video Killed The Radio Star.
The first album is still one of my guiltier pleasures, mostly because it gets funnier every year. The second… well, read more below.
https://everybodysdummy.blogspot.com/search/label/asia
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wardo68 – Welcome to the comments! The funniest thing about Asia that always made me laff was thinking “who was the genius who named their second album “Alpha!!?” A dunderheaded move if ever there were one! I’d almost forgotten how in spite of Asia being the closest thing to a license to print money back then, the obvious enmities between the participants insured that the parts of the plane that was Asia would fly apart in the air in record time. I recall that Asia was far from an organic phenomenon. The band was assembled by A+R maestro John Kalodner with no doubt thoughts of filthy lucre coursing through many heads at the time.
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Fresh reply to PPM’s reply to my reply to his… oh never mind. First off, I love how the blog post was all about Asia but evolved primarily into a discussion of Bowie, Ultravox, DD, Men Without Hats and AC/DC – this is the way. (For the band the Aussies pronounce “Acka-Decka”, all I have to add is that Bon Scott es un poquito mas macho.)
I read once that Bowie regretted Never Let Me Down mostly because he “always felt there was a really good album in there somewhere” (not an exact quote). The 2018 “remake” on the Loving The Alien box set is great but I’m glad the box includes both versions for all to enjoy instead of saying “nope, this is the official version now, all prior issues of this album are now memory-holed” (I’m looking at you, George Lucas – this is most assuredly NOT the way).
I’m now doing the reverse of what I did for Red Carpet Massacre. I listened to that LP again trying to figure out why I didn’t like it the first time; now I’m listening to Brilliant and trying to hear why I did like it the first time (though I haven’t heard it for several years). Nope – still kinda like it! I wouldn’t bring it with me to the desert island (like many bands, I’d take their ’80-’84 output and abandon the rest) but I don’t find it awful. Now I’m off to listen to all 7 glorious discs of the Lament box set, after which I’m sure I’ll come over to PPM’s way of thinking re Brilliant!!
Finally – “Sideways” is on Spotify if you’re feeling brave (I use Spotify as a listening station before inevitably buying whatever I like). The first :15 seconds of the title track, which sounds suspiciously similar to the song that kicked off the grunge craze, is all you should need to make a judgment. It’s a naive (non)melody, and the less we say about it the better.
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I feel left out!
I cannot name a single record by Asia and have never heard them to my knowledge,even though I appreciate a lot of the artists and records referenced here.
A lot of those big US acts like Asia and Journey were names I knew but here in the UK in my adolescence during the 80s I was not exposed to them either by friends or the media at the time. I do consider myself reasonable well educated in music generally but this area has obviously passed me by-I will endeavour to listen to some shortly!
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Gavin – Are you CRAZY??! Revel in your sweet innocence!! NOT recommended! That would be akin to me saying, “I’ve never heard Showaddywaddy, I’d better hear some!”
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I will take your sage advice Sir!
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When I was a kid I was all over the map musically, influenced by my parents’ love of folk and mainstream acts like the Beach Boys.
As a teen, I discovered Bowie and from that moment on I strove to be androgynous and sensual (did pretty well on the former, at least). Punk and New Wave came along while I was in high school so I hopped on that train and never got off, adding a caboose of Ska appreciation as we rolled along.
Musically, I was a very cool kid. Artistically, I was into theatre and radio. Socially, you will always find me in the kitchen at parties.
Those were some really great years to be young and adventurous.
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chasinvictoria – I wouldn’t call myself a “kid” when the Asia album came out. I was nineteen! It was a lapse in judgment!
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Yeah, “teen” covers a lot of ground in my first post. Because I got into Bowie so young (13 — that rebellion phase kicked in REAL early with me), I was very guarded when people asked me what music I liked, especially as a new high-schooler in a new town, as my previous middle and high school colleagues were … rather unreceptive to my real tastes in music and style.
As I recall, our very first conversation ever revolved around what kind of music I liked, and I hedged it for something safe (but true). Thank the stars I got to know you and the rest of the “Oak Ridge Boys” (ha!!) very quickly!
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“Punk and New Wave came along while I was in high school so I hopped on that train and never got off, adding a caboose of Ska appreciation as we rolled along.”
@chasinvictoria – that is some A Grade-quality metaphor right there and I salute you!
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drskridlow – And don’t forget… chicks dig-dig, d-I-g, dig-dig metaphor!
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Hahahaha! That is one million percent my favorite Sparks song!
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drskridlow – Definitely top ten for me, at least!
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By the way, I just revisited this comment thread and it absolutely lifted my heart to review all of the wonderful commentary! There are some fantastic commenters here and if it took an examination of my musical gaffes to spark this discussion, it was worth it ten times over!
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Agree! Great thread, Monk. My music therapist thanks you for enabling me to finally be unburdened of my early and naive proggy missteps. ;-) All the best for the holidays. Looking forward to more great posts next year and beyond!
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drskridlow – You’ve just made Echorich’s day with your unburdening!
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