Tagged as “Mindless anniversaries”
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!
Other Scorpios. »
That handsome devil and Louisiana gadabout Mills marks his 29th birthday today — stop by one of his online homes and pass on your best wishes.
When I first made the decision to use Tumblr as a blogging platform a year ago, I had some misgivings. Everything seemed so short and so ephemeral! Mills’s tumblelog was the only one that I knew of in those early days that seemed to think it was OK to write longer, more complicated posts. Moreoever, people seemed to enjoy reading them! “Huh,” I thought. “I guess this means I can write longer pieces if I want to. I guess I can even” — dare I even utter this aloud — “take it kind of seriously if the occasion warrants.”
Without his example, I might have given up on Tumblr and I’d be thanklessly toiling away on Wordpress! Maybe I’d even be dead. Who can say with any certainty? To paraphrase Lionel Hutz: “hero” is not a word I use very often, but Mills is the greatest hero in American history.
On October 12, 2008, I posted the above photo of a JFK cutout in my uncle’s foyer in Cincinnati — the same house my dad grew up in. This was the first posting to southtwelfth.tumblr.com. One year old today!
What an auspicious beginning, too. That photo summarizes so many of the recurrent themes here at S. 12th:
- the enduring influence of extended family
- the triumphs and limitations of 20th Century American liberalism
- discussions of artifice and visual representation
- handsome men wearing neckties and pocket squares
- walking in and out of front doors
- interior decorating issues
Probably more, too, but I’m so gut-wrenched with utter excitmement that my critical thinking skills are failing me.
That is why, on this most exciting and mindless of anniversaries, I am flinging the brass-beknobb’d front door of S. 12th wide open to you, the reader. Come root around in my foyer and mess with my uncle’s JFK paraphenelia. I have activated the “submit” feature, meaning you may click here and post your thoughts to this very tumblelog about the many ways S. 12th has inappopriately touched you in the past year. Happy first year, reader!
