Max Picks …songs from 1982

1982

Kinks – Come Dancing – I saw the Kinks on this tour. It remains one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to…if not the best. They were in their early forties at this point and all over the stage. This song got heavy play on MTV at a time when I watched it. The Kinks are one of the four walls that make up modern rock including The Beatles, Who, and Stones.

Dexys Midnight Runners – Come On Eileen – It was very different than what was on the radio at the time. It was a refreshing song to hear in the early eighties.

I really thought this band would score another hit but they ended up a one-hit wonder in America…one thing that didn’t help was when they were opening up for David Bowie in France, Kevin Rowland called Bowie a bad copy of Bryan Ferry and later he told the British press: “We only agreed to the show because France is an important market for us – not because I have any respect for Bowie”… Not a smart thing to do.

Billy Joel – Allentown – A great single by Billy Joel with a song off of the Nylon Curtain album.

Allentown is a town in Northeast Pennsylvania about 45 minutes away from the Pocono mountains. An industrial town, many of the once-thriving factories and mills had fallen on hard times when Joel wrote the song, and unemployment in the area was at an all-time high of 12%.

Also mentioned in the song is nearby Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, whose main employer, Bethlehem Steel, had been closing operations. Joel sings about the unemployed workers in the line, “Out in Bethlehem they’re killing time, filling out forms, standing in line.”

Judas Priest – Living After Midnight -I liked this one the first time I heard it. I never really cared what a band was…as long as they sounded good…and this does.

John Lennon has a distant connection to this song. Judas Priest was renting Tittenhurst Park (John Lennon’s former home) in 1980 to record their album British Steel. As they were watching television…guitarist Glenn Tipton said they saw John Lennon’s Imagine video and were in the very same room where it was filmed… he said they could imagine the piano and the white walls…and how surreal it was…

Rob Halford actually got the inspiration for the lyrics for Living After Midnight as his bandmates kept him awake by blasting out riffs and drum beats in the studio below.

He came downstairs to complain and said, Hey, guys, come on. It’s gone midnight…and they wrote the song.

Madness – Our House – At the start of MTV the small town I lived in had yet to get cable…but it wouldn’t take too long. At that time I had to travel to relatives in Nashville before I got a chance to see it. I would spend the weekend and we would watch MTV for hours at a time. Binge-watching before binge-watching was a saying. We would wake up bleary-eyed the next day and turn on more MTV.

I did find some music I never heard before. This band and song caught my attention. The song was on the The Rise & Fall album. They were different…they have been described as a British ska and pop band.

This was Madness only top-10 hit in the US. Much of the song’s success in America was helped out by the clever music video that was in heavy rotation in the early days of MTV.

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

58 thoughts on “Max Picks …songs from 1982”

    1. lol… that was one of his best singles to me…my favorite by him is Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.
      I thought it was a good mixture .

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  3. Another great year for music! When it came to British bands, I always liked the Kinks and the Who over the Beatles and the Stones (which made me an outcast amongst my peers) but the New Wave bands from the UK? So many greats from this era! I got to see Madness in the Summer of ’83 touring this record (with Oingo Boingo, Thompson Twins and the Police!!) and they were simply amazing! So much energy, so much fun! After 4+ decades and literally hundreds of shows, that one still stands out as one of the best. Thanks for the memories!!

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    1. I see why you did…they didn’t get half of the attention that they should have got. My two favorite concerts were The Kinks and The Who…
      I would have loved to see Madness!

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  4. Aw, the ’80s, the decade where we grew up. I like all of your picks. And, man, even Priest! Deke is turning as all into heavy rock fans! 🙂

    Interestingly, or perhaps it’s because I haven’t had enough caffeine yet, I actually could picture the Kinks perform “Living After Midnight”.

    If I had to pick only one of your selections, I’d go with Billy Joel’s “Allentown”, one of my all-time favorites by the piano man. It also kind of was cool to learn about this former steel town decades before I visited. Allentown and Bethlehem, which is in the same area, are only about a 1.5-hour drive from my house.

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    1. I liked Come On Eileen a lot because it was so different.
      Living After Midnight was a good rock single…not really heavy metal but a great rock single.
      Allentown is a favorite of mine by him.

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      2. I will say…I put that concert over the Stones and McCartney…the reason? Christian unlike those concerts I was in like the 10th row for the Kinks…it was awesome. They were very loud and powerful…a good comparison would be The Who…

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  5. I had such a crush on my friends’ “new wave” sister. She was much older than us (high school) and would listen to “Our House.” I still think about her to this day when I hear that song although her name and face are a total mystery now.

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  7. I must have been getting old by 1982. Other than “Come Dancing” none of these made a big impression on me. (Though “Our House” seemed to be everywhere.) Prince released “1999” and it seems like a long time ago (it is) that we were thinking of the millennium as a future party (or looming disaster). I admire your restraint in avoiding Michael Jackson. “Thriller” was dominant, with seven top-10 singles. Laurie Anderson burst on the scene with “O Superman”, introducing the masses to the concept of Performance Art. Grandmaster Flash (who turned 66 on New Year’s Day) and the Furious Five introduced white people to hip-hop with “The Message”. King Sunny Adé became known in the US with “Juju Music” and the single “Ja Funmi”. Richard and Linda Thompson released their last joint album “Shoot Out the Lights”, often seen as their best work. Bruce Springsteen was the big hit with critics when he switched gears with “Nebraska”.

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    1. I almost did Little Red Corvette but replaced it with Our House.
      I was thinking I was the lone person on earth who just didn’t get Thriller like everyone else did. I toyed with Atlantic City by Springsteen off of Nebraska but Springsteen and Prince are coming soon so that is why I skpped those two. With the Kinks… they did have one more huge hit and it’s coming.
      I was talking to my friend and former blogger Ron the other day…I was telling him I need to explore Linda and Richard Thompson more…I know some about that album and I like it.

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  8. A fine selection and I also envy your Kinks experience! “Come Dancing” is a great song with lots of nostalgia attached for sure. Low Budget in 79 got me back into them so I was picking up every album but actually stopped with State of Confusion.

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    1. My favorite of the bunch was Give The People What They Want…that was my first real time Kinks album…but yea I liked State of Confusion as well… like Come On Eileen…they both had an old sound to them…I’m surprised they hit so big.

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      2. Oh cool…I never heard the album but I did hear a hit song they had in the UK called Geno…it was really good as well…not sure if it was on the same album?

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  9. I bet those Kinks were great in concert. Very underrated group to me. Billy Joel’s Allentown (of course) was an especially big hit for those of us in Pennsylvania. It definitely was a timely song to be sure, summing up the mood of a lot of us.

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  10. Excellent set from a really good year! I would’ve guessed ‘Come Dancing’ was from ’83 but I guess it hit the shelves earlier – either way it was a just-about perfect pop song and the entire album (‘State of Confusion’) really impressed me. And yep, ‘Allentown’ is right there among his best songs … wasn’t a huge hit back then but I think it’s now considered one of his real classics. The mayor of Allentown gave him the Key to the City when he went to play there not long after it came out… the people there appreciated being put on the map and having some of the ‘Rust Belt’ problems brought to wider attention.

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    1. This was a really good year. The Kinks single was released late in 82…that is the reason it’s remembered in 83…83 is when I saw them.
      Allentown is almost a perfect song…and it has a great meaning.

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      1. that would probablyhave been as good a time to see them as any – they were really on a good comeback with their ’79-82 records. ‘State of Confusion’ I really liked, and it sure showcased both their rock – almost punkish – side and the smooth pop craftsmanship side well.

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      2. Yes…the Give The People What They Want…was pure punk almost….and they made this one a little more commercial.

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  11. Jim mentioned the Judas Priest one – yeah, another reason the ’80swere so good … it was a time when Judas Priest and Iron Maiden (‘Run to the Hills’) were being played on mainstream radio… along with A Flock of Seagulls, Madness, Eddie Rabbitt … something for everyone!

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  14. Come Dancing may have been the first tune I heard by the Kinks as there name was on my radar because of VH.
    Local radio still plays Dexy a ton so I hope someone in the band is getting the royalty from it! Love me the Priest especially the period from 78-87. So good!

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    1. One of them was wrong…I got the Judas Priest one completely wrong…I was thinking of the British Steel album but that was in 80. I can’t believe I did that. It should have been…You Got Another Thing Coming.

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  17. Allentown is a great choice, and I like seeing the British choices, particularly Judas Priest.

    It’s weird calling Bowie a Ferry imitator. Space Odyssey predates Roxy Music’s debut by three years.

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      3. Did you remove your post? I’m trying to go there again but it’s not there. I tried in the reader and it would not send a comment…then I went to your page and it’s gone.

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  18. The first Kid Creole and the Coconuts album was released this year. I don’t say I heard it when it was first released, I don’t remember when I first heard them. I did like the one Dr. Buzzard song that got some airplay. These guys were spotty, to say the least. When they hit the target, they were great. I love “Endicott” and “Lifeboat Party,” to name but two. But I admit I skip over a lot of their stuff.

    Okay, what does Kid Creole have to do with this blog? Not much, except it was good music that I enjoyed. And, honestly, that’s enough for me.

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