Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Robin Scott, of the Scottish band M, whose song “Pop Muzik” was #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on November 3, 1979:
“I was looking to make a fusion of various styles which somehow would summarize the last 25 years of pop music. It was a deliberate point I was trying to make. Whereas rock and roll had created a generation gap, disco was bringing people together on an enormous scale. That’s why I really wanted to make a simple, bland statement, which was, ‘All we’re talking about basically [is] pop music.’”
That’s a very late-1970s sentiment, the touchingly naive and idealistic concept that people might be coming together on some global scale to fulfill, in some way, the promises of the 1960s (by dancing, I guess). I suppose that particular party came to a pretty abrpupt end almost exactly one year later with the election of Ronald Reagan on November 4, 1980. Morning in America! No more of this gay cosmopolitan utopian bullshit!
This optimistic, internationalist pop anthem that positions itself with one foot in the past and one foot in the future is thirty years old today.
And actually, so am I! I am also a relic of a forgotten time!
Also, uh, since it’s my birthday and all, it seems like it’d be OK to point out this hilarious and utterly terrifying photo — my friends Allen and Pamela went costumed as your correspondent for Halloween last weekend, right down to the red socks, vintage campaign lapel buttons and furry Russian hats. If people didn’t know who I was, they just said they were “Amish rabbis,” which works, too.
There is also a photo of them making out, but I have sworn to never look at it. The metaphysical implications are too terrible.
