1979: Forty Years Ago, in Life and Music

40 tracks, 40 years ago

Forty years, amazingly, goes by pretty fast. This October, I got together with a few former classmates from the Class of ’79 at Aptos High School, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of our high-school graduation.

This informal reunion, and some recent life events, led me to reflect on some of the significant life events I experienced forty years ago, as well as on the music of 1979.

·      In February of 1979, I returned to the United States after living for one year in the upper Amazon of Bolivia. Trinidad, Beni, was so remote that I only spoke with my parents once during that year, via ham radio. I traveled throughout Bolivia as well as elsewhere in South America. Trinidad was also where I fell in love for the first time. Living in Trinidad, Bolivia, transformed my life, my perspectives, and my career, instilling a love for Latin America, fluency in Spanish, and an appreciation for diverse cultures and people.

·      That Spring, after returning to the U.S., I started working at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. Working at the Boardwalk is almost de rigueur for teens growing up in Santa Cruz. It introduced me to working life (though I’d had a few part-time jobs previously), got me enough money to buy an electric guitar, and led to joining a blues band.

·      In June, I graduated from Aptos High School, and gave a valedictorian speech in which I talked about the value of different cultures and experiences.

·      In July, my friend Jim Brumfield and I hiked the entire John Muir Trail, a total of 270 miles including side trips, over 32 days. That was, and still is, my longest backpacking trip. We’d planned it for a few years, and although we didn’t fight during the trip, we were so different politically and otherwise that we didn’t speak to each other again for the next 25 years. It was a spectacular trip.

·      In September, I started attending Cabrillo College, where I had some of my favorite college classes, including one course devoted solely to analysis of Dostoevsky’s “Brothers Karamazov,” continued my study of Spanish, and began my study of Portuguese. Many of the friendships I developed at Cabrillo have lasted throughout my life and continue to be important to me.

·      Also, in the Fall of ’79, I started working at a record store in downtown Santa Cruz, selling used and new albums. I worked at a string of record stores over the next few years, amassing a huge collection of vinyl (CDs had not been invented yet). I also began DJing, mostly at parties but also a few other venues. I also started making mix tapes for friends; the Sony Walkman was introduced that year and transformed how we listen to music.

The original Sony Walkman was released in 1979.

Music has always been fundamental in my life. I recall, at the youngest age, my father coming home with new Beatles records, as well as Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, Johnny Cash, and so many others (yes, my dad was cool). The “unwrapping” party for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the White Album are indelible memories. I started studying and playing classical guitar at the age of six or seven, and started performing soon afterwards. The guitar remains as important to my life as ever, and I feel fortunate to be able to play and perform frequently for appreciative audiences.

Music can always make an impact on our lives, but perhaps never more so in those crucial teen years, 17- and 18-years old, when we are beginning that transition into adulthood. Our adult selves are being molded, perhaps not yet hardened, and the potential of our lives seems limitless. Music accompanies us in our gatherings, our early driving experiences, and, most crucially, our first loves.

Few artists have harnessed the power of Joe Strummer and the Clash.

A lot was going on in music in 1979. It was arguably not the most important year in music history; it’s hard to argue what year that might be, perhaps 1968. Nevertheless, in ’79 there were new sounds emanating from our FM radios: New Wave, punk and post-punk, soul and funk, rock and roll. A couple of Chicago DJs declared the death of disco by blowing up a bunch of 12” dance disks, while other critics and fans bemoaned the death of rock and roll. Rock in particular, like the novel, seems inexorably to reinvent itself in order to forestall an untimely death, while the impact of disco still echoes in today’s dance music and R&B. Meanwhile, the very beginnings of rap and hip hop emerged in 1979.

I’ve compiled a Spotify playlist with 40 tracks from 40 years ago. Except for the first two tracks—“London Calling” by the Clash, and “Life During Wartime” by the Talking Heads—these are not in any particular order, but they are songs that had an impact on me in 1979 or shortly afterwards, and many of these songs (and artists) still impact me today.

“Fear of Music” by the Talking Heads began the band’s exploration of African rhythms and featured an eclectic mix of disco and New Wave.

A couple of notes: this playlist only includes tracks from albums (or in a couple of cases singles) released in 1979. There were certainly many great songs that continued to influence the musical landscape in 1979 that may have been released a few years earlier. Some of my favorite artists—like Kate Bush or Peter Gabriel—didn’t release an album in ’79 and are not included.

Another important aspect of note: we were still many years from the rise of female artists and singer-songwriters that have so transformed music in the past several decades. Sinéad O’Connor and Tori Amos, among others, were still years from their debuts. Today’s best contemporary music is dominated by female artists, but that was not the case in the 60s and 70s. The same can be said by artists of color and other diverse voices. One of the pleasures of record store shopping in 1979 and years to follow was digging through crates to discover wonderful international artists, such as Baden Powell or Fela Kuti; now, the world of music is discoverable on Spotify and other streaming services.

I’ve been fortunate to attend hundreds, perhaps thousands, of concerts during my lifetime, and have been lucky to see many of these artists perform live. The Eagles and Santana were among my very first teen concert experiences. Somehow I missed Bob Marley’s two 12/2/79 shows at the Santa Cruz Civic, and never had the chance to see him live. But live shows by the Clash, the Talking Heads, and Michael Jackson & the Jackson Five remain among the most incredible live concerts of my life, not to mention Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, Roxy Music, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Tom Petty, etc., etc.

I’m not one to only or predominately listen to music from the past—the compelling and intriguing music of today, whenever that today is, is what I tend to gravitate toward. But it has been fun to listen to and reflect on the music of forty years ago, that distant time of 1979.