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1978

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I guess it was my Year Zero. The previous summer, I had turned 14 and thus was able to work in the school holidays, earning some money for the first time…

…Money burning a whole in my pocket, in advance of buying records – mostly 7″ singles.

John Peel was a major influence in what to acquire, of course, but not only was I devouring Post-Punk tunes, but also (still) loving songs of a less ‘cool’ nature, such as Sylvester, Bob Seger, Jeff Wayne, E.L.O. etc.

So – after featuring a particular year in a recent programme, and having some listeners think repeaing(ish) with a different one was a good idea – Songs From Under The Floorboards will focus exclusively for the next two shows on 1978. All songs from that year, mostly that I bought back then with my hard-earned holiday wages.

Suggestions/requests/demands for songs gratefully received, especially for inclusion in the second show.

You can also listen live to the programme at 7:00 p.m. UK time on Thursday 11 August here:

https://gnetradio.com Listen Now

I shall also post a link to Mixcloud after broadcast, in case of interest.

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Comments

  3. If you’re open to Less Cool, then I suggest you go the whole way and have something from the Least Cool of All. Spread Your Wings is that relative rarity, a Queen single that flopped, only reaching No. 34 in February 1978. Because of that, it means it’s not nearly as overplayed as their bigger hits, and it sounds quite fresh. If you like this sort of thing. I think it’s great, and Brian May’s guitar solo on the outro is fantastic. If you like this sort of thing.

    Otherwise, 1978 was the year of the Leotard: four Kate Bush singles, and two albums. Why not play the one that wasn’t a hit: Hammer Horror. It was the lead single for her second album, and when it stiffed at No. 44, everyone at the record company must have crapped themselves. Luckily, the follow-up, Wow, went into the Top 20.

    • Thank you.

      Part 2 will include Kate Bush (I have gone with the single version [an extra 10 seconds] of The Man With The Child In His Eyes.

      Also there will indeed be Spread Your Wings. Originally, no Queen, as the only 1978 single from Jazz I don’t like any more, and News Of The World was 1977. But SYW was released in February 1978, as I am sure you know!

  6. Looking at the NME picks of’78 I see they’ve chosen Darkness On The Edge Of Town as their number one album. I’m not sure I heard it that year, I was more likely listening to Outlandos D’Amour and The Cars, but in retrospect I’d agree with their choice. As for singles, so many great ones to choose from. The 12″ versions of the Stones’ ‘Miss You’ and Lou Reed’s ‘Street Hassle’ both definitely got played to death at the time. As did Public Image and Roxanne. But I’m going to pick Joe Walsh ‘Life’s Been Good’. I always loved the witty lyrics. I recently came across an article about them:

    Walsh confirms that the reggae beat for the song’s verses were inspired by Bob Marley, and also confirmed that the line “I have a mansion, forget the price / Ain’t never been there, they tell me it’s nice” was true to life. “Between Hotel California and The Long Run, we were full-on,” Walsh explained about the Eagles’ massive late-1970s success. “We were either recording or touring and sometimes both. We didn’t take a break or nothing, and I was home maybe two months one of the years. We all were – we just lived wherever we woke up.”

    The guitarist also confirmed that “I live in hotels, tear out the walls / I have accountants pay for it all” applied to him, but it was only because Keith Moon was his accomplice. “The James Gang was opening for The Who when they premiered Tommy in Europe, and Keith decided that he and I were going to stay up until the tour was over,” Walsh said. “And during those days he taught me a lot about the finer arts of anarchy, chaos, damage, destruction, all of that.” Walsh even explains how Moon was able to make a homemade cherry bomb out of a hardware store equipped to blow up toilets at hotels.

    Walsh recalled that Eagles manager Irving Azoff once bought Walsh a chainsaw for his birthday, which led to Walsh tearing out the walls described in the song. He also confirmed that he owned a Mazarati that did indeed go 185, but he was never busted for going too fast: Walsh simply lost his wallet. Walsh shared that an anonymous friend had crashed two Lotus Cars in ten days, which served as the impetus for Walsh to write the line “My Mazarati does 185 / I lost my license, now I don’t drive.”

    Finally, Walsh noted an anecdote about leaving a party that helped flesh out one final line. “Did you ever look at your watch and say, ‘Holy shit, I’m dead! I am dead!’ And you get up and you say, ‘OK everybody, I am leaving again! Fuck you, goodbye!’ And you walk into a closet?” Walsh’s inability to find the exit led to the line, “I go to parties, sometimes until 4 / It’s hard to leave when you can’t find the door.”

    https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/joe-walsh-reveals-the-truth-about-lifes-been-good/

    • Hold on, go back a bit, I completely retract everything ever said in the above comment. I’ve just realised that Dancing In The City was a hit in 1978. It was my favourite song in 1978 and is still one of them to this day. I even play an acoustic version on acoustic guitar. No mention of anything 1978 can fail to include this sultry gem.

    • Two more: Noel Edmonds. He played City To City and Year Of The Cat a lot that year and alerted young me to the pleasures of both. I am thankful to him. I am thankful to Noel Edmonds. Yes.

    • I have a friend and former colleague called Paul Gordon who, having been about 15 when it came out, detests that song and came to detest ir even more after working with me

  11. With a nod to Bob’s Grease post above and the recent sad news this is peak Olivia from 1978. I was 13 and loved her and planned how we’d meet and marry one day. The 15 year age gap completely inconsequential

    A Little More Love ❤

  12. I was eight and staying with my cool, three-year-older, cousin in a village outside Falmouth for the summer. Laying on the varnished floorboards in his mum’s dining room, playing More Songs About Buildings And Food on his Pioneer turntable with a parallel-tracking arm.

    And – repeatedly – Teenage Kicks.

    I repeated the experience in summer 1979, when he played Fear Of Music – a record that still gives me the willies.

  16. The Only Ones – Another Girl Another Planet
    Undertones – Teenage Kicks
    Siouxsie and the Banshees – Hong Kong Garden
    public Image – Public Image
    Elvis Costello – Radio Radio
    Ku Klux Klan – steel Pulse
    Is This Love – Bob Marley
    Anything from All Mod Cons or Parallel Lines (both of which I would have put into 1979 but in fact were 1978, as was Plastic Letters. Things moved fast then).

  17. Thank you for all of the comments and suggestions so far…

    …Many/most of the artists mentioned above (if not necessarily the same tracks) will be featured over the two programmes, but it now seems that there may have to be a Part 3!

    Not sure the original link worked properly, so here it is again:

    https://gnetradio.com/ Listen Now

  22. Sylvester was cool, you can’t put him in the same bracket as ELO. You Make Me Feel Mighty Real is a classic. Another classic disco track from 1978 you might consider playing is Shme by Evelyn Champagne King.

  23. A few not mentioned yet…

    Chuck E’s In Love – Rickie Lee Jones
    Davy’s On The Road Again – Manfred Mann’s Earth Band
    You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth – Meatloaf
    Lotta Love – Nicolette Larsen (though according to Wikipedia this didn’t chart in the UK at all)

  24. That Summer may not be a great film, but it’s 1978-centric soundtrack is one of the best
    Ian Dury And The Blockheads – Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll
    Mink DeVille – Spanish Stroll
    Elvis Costello – (I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea
    Boomtown Rats – She’s So Modern
    Zones – New Life
    Only Ones – Another Girl, Another Planet
    Wreckless Eric – Whole Wide World
    Patti Smith Group – Because The Night
    Boomtown Rats – Kicks
    Ramones – Rockaway Beach
    Undertones – Teenage Kicks
    Eddie And The Hot Rods – Do Anything You Wanna Do
    Ian Dury And The Blockheads – What A Waste
    Nick Lowe – I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass
    Elvis Costello – Watching The Detectives
    Richard Hell & The Voidoids – Blank Generation

    Mink De Ville – Spanish Stroll

  26. A few more good ‘uns…..

    Magazine – The Light Pours out of Me
    Anything from the first Only Ones album
    Elvis Costello – This Year’s Girl
    Dr Alimantado – Best Dressed Chicken in Town
    Poet & the Roots (i.e. Linton Kwesi Johnson) – It Dread Inna Inglan
    Skids – The Saints are Coming
    The Clash – (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais
    John Cooper Clarke – Majorca
    Dire Straits – Sultans of Swing
    Talking Heads – Stay Hungry
    The Jam – Down in the Tube Station at Midnight

    • Didn’t The Afterword vote (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais the best single of all time?

      And Shame just be the best 12″ single of all time with Devo’s Satisfaction in with a shout of being the best cover of all time. 🙂

      • Some of us didn’t…

        …and for the record (arf!) Shame by Evelyn “Champagne” King knocks anything by The Clash into a cocked hat, any day of the week (and I’m not even Deramdaze!).

        • It might have been 1978, Maybe a bit later, when I saw The Clash with Mickey Dread supporting. The members of the band came out on the dance floor to skank to his set, still dressed in their great coats and biker boots (they weren’t stoppin’).

          Afterwards, we went to a posh disco and danced to Shame and lots of other fabulous songs until dawn. Dressing for the evening was tricky.

  27. Funkadelic – One Nation Under A Groove

    .
    Also:
    Chic “Le Freak”
    Chaka Khan “I’m Every Woman”
    Earth, Wind & Fire – “Got To Get You Into My Life”
    Earth, Wind & Fire – “Fantasy”
    A Taste Of Honey “Boogie Oogie Oogie”
    Commodores – “Three Times A Lady”
    Village People – “YMCA”
    Gloria Gaynor – “I Will Survive”
    Quincy Jones – “Stuff Like That”

  37. Judging by listener comments, and all of the suggestions above, Part 2 will be broadcast at 5:00 p.m. UK time on Thursday 25 August.

    The may even have to be a Part 3!

  38. In the 1976 thread I wrote about my dawning of something approaching motivation to get on with life and redid my A levels. Happy to say I passed them and went to poly to do business studies. Summer of 1978 found me approaching year 1 exams. Much as I was on the righteous path, study-wise, I was far from properly focussed and had had a brilliant time. When I settled down to revise I quickly realised I’d left it too late. Just too much to get through in the time left. “Never mind”, I thought – you were allowed one fail. So I decided to fail maths and stats.

    Come the exam, I realised what a good plan this was, as the paper was basically impossible and I left after an hour.

    Weeks pass. The results are posted. I’ve passed everything I set out to – but where a few other people had FAIL where it should have said PASS, mine said RESIT. Grabbing a passing lecturer, I quickly learned that if you get below 30% you had a mandatory resit which had to be passed otherwise it was au revoir.

    Now rubber really met road. The thought of being turfed out and returning home was unbearable. So for the first time ever I really cracked the books. Hours and hours of revision ensued, focussing on stats rather than maths which I found a bit easier, but I put in weeks and weeks of solid study. Quite a novelty actually – worked examples, past papers…I did ’em all.

    Come the day of the resit, in mid August, I felt better prepared than I’d ever been for any exam. I was there the full three hours and thankfully passed the bugger.

    Come the first maths and stats lecture in year 2, the lecturer caught me on the way in.

    “You have set two course records” she told me. “Worst fail…and highest ever resit score”.

    “How bad and good are we talking,” I asked.

    “Single digit fail to borderline first in the resit. How did you manage it?” She asked.

    “I worked really hard” I explained.

    “Mmm, maybe there’s a lesson there” she observed. She was right.

    Anyway, result in hand I got a job in a revolting local factory who made those foam sanding blocks for the remainder of the summer. The air was noxious with chemicals and smoking was strictly banished as one naked flame and the whole place would explode, was the rumour. Paid well though and the foreman was a top bloke so we had a laugh. The radio was on constantly and every time I hear this song I can smell that smell…

  42. I promise this is (almost) the last time that I shall bother you with this topic…

    The third and final The 1978 show will be broadcast today at 5:00 p.m. UK time, and is available here:

    https://gnetradio.com Listen Now

    Mixcloud version will follow in due course.

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