Tuesday 10 August 2021

Transitions to another place

It's my birthday today - and, as is my wont, I'm taking another trip down memory lane to the year I turned eighteen [and a year I have been featuring at irregular intervals throughout 2021], 1981!

Forty years ago, the media were still rammed full of Royal stories and features and souvenir pull-outs in the wake of the wedding of Charles and Diana at the end of July. In the headlines: IRA hunger strikes, the second escape from Broadmoor maximum security hospital in a matter of weeks, escalating tensions between the West and Gadaffi's Libya, the trial and conviction of John Lennon's murderer Mark Chapman, Moira Stewart became the UK's first black newsreader; and a small local cable station called MTV was launched in the US, prompting the massive rise of the music video [we had to wait a further six years before the station arrived in Britain, however]. In our cinemas: Raiders of the Lost Ark; Herbie Goes Bananas; Time Bandits. On telly: That Beryl Marston!; Three of a Kind; Miss Morrison's Ghosts.

My eighteenth birthday chart was not the greatest line-up of that year of faboo music, however... Shakin'-bloody-Stevens was at #1 with Green Door, holding off the equally dreadful Happy Birthday by Stevie Wonder, and there were not one, not two, but three of the then-ubiquitous "dance-medley" records clogging up the charts, in the form of Stars on 45, Tight Fit and the Royal Philhamonic Orchestra's Hooked on Classics. There was some redemption in the presence of Spandau Ballet and the Specials in the Top Ten, with Bad Manners, The Jacksons and Sheena Easton making up the numbers.

However, just outside the Top Ten a group of fresh-faced youngsters from Basildon in Essex were [like me] just embarking on their eventual world-conquering journey...

I stand still stepping on the shady street
And I watched that man to a stranger
You think you only know me when you turn on the light
Now the room is lit, red danger

Complicating, circulating
New life, new life
Operating, generating
New life, new life

Transitions to another place
So the time will pass more slowly
Your features fuse and your shadow's red
Like a film I see, now show me

Complicating, circulating
New life, new life
Operating, generating
New life, new life

Your face is hidden and we're out of sight
And the road just leads to nowhere
The stranger in the door is the same as before
So the question answers nowhere

I stand still stepping on the shady street
And I watched that man to a stranger
You think you only know me when you turn on the light
Now the room is lit, red danger

Complicating, circulating
New life, new life
Operating, generating
New life, new life

It seems like yesterday.

Where did all those years go?

16 comments:

  1. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!! And great tune choice!
    Christ, Stars on 45 were so annoying - just as you got into a tune it switched into something else. And the Classical one was just as bad. I'd forgotten about those!
    I lived in Basildon for a bit - on and off.
    Sx

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    1. Merci, Ms Scarlet!

      Yes, some 40-year-old musical "treasures" are definitely best forgotten...

      Basildon's a - ahem - lovely place, I hear.

      Jx

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    2. Yep, I wasn't there long! And Pitsea was even worse than Basildon.
      Sx

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    3. Lovely views of the mud flats - and adjacent to somewhere called "Vange". No wonder you moved! Jx

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  2. Oh my goodness...how young they were. Now I feel old.

    And a Happy Birthday to you again on this blog! 🎉✨✨🎂🎈🎉🍸

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    Replies
    1. They're all 60 years old now! Sob... Jx

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  3. Forgive me for forgetting your special day. I've made amends by offering you cake over at mine.

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  4. Many Happy Returns! Moira Stewart, I've heard rumours about her and Pat Butcher having fanny fun!

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    Replies
    1. That rumour's been around for years, much like the one about Joan Armatrading and Valerie Singleton... Jx

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  5. We're all of a muddle Chez Dinahmow, but I did hear a rumour somewhere about a birthday so I shall have a sip (or two!) in your honour.Cheers!

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  6. 1981 is one of my favorite years. Bette Davis Eyes by Kim Carnes. In The Air Tonight - Phil Collins. Love On A Two Way Street - Staci Lattisaw. Stevie Nicks first solo single w/ Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. - All this week in August of that year. I was a chain smoking theatre major doing summer stock and dying a little inside every day. So dramatic, that one (roll eyes, here). Enjoy your special day. Kizzes.

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    Replies
    1. It was a fab year for music - although here in the UK Bette Davis Eyes had already been huge here in May, and In The Air Tonight had been and gone by February (and Mr Collins had had two further minor hits since). Miss Lattisaw, on the other hand, remains very much a "one=hit-wonder" in the UK, for Jump To The Beat in 1980; and neither Stevie Nicks (on her own) nor Tom Petty ever made a huge dent on the charts here at all... Jx

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  7. Queen of Fu@cking Every thing.
    Happy Birthday Darling
    xxx

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