Category: Music

Culture Club: Colour By Numbers (1983)

Elton John: Blue Moves (1976)

Quarterflash: Quarterflash (1981)

Madonna: Erotica (1992)

26 years!? I own shirts older than this album!

Alec R. Costandinos: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1978)

Donna Summer: On The Radio (1979)

https://youtu.be/InjF8xj93LU

Fleetwood Mac: Tusk (1979)

Giorgio Moroder: Midnight Express (1978)

Feeling old yet?

Elton John: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (1973)

For years I thought he was singing, "She's got electric boobs."

Madonna: Bedtime Story (1994)

For the surrealism alone, quite possibly one of my favorite Madonna videos ever.

…gotten this at Streetlight Records when we were in L.A. this past July. I would've saved about ten bucks, but it popped up in my Discogs email a couple weeks ago and the price was reasonable, so I grabbed it.

…for once again showing me something I never knew existed and then making it so easy for me to spend money I really don't have.

I've known of Just Blue—and have owned a copy of the Casablanca pressing on black vinyl since it came out in '79 (one of those that survived the purge)—but I never knew there was also a blue vinyl pressing available on the Vogue label for the European market until a couple weeks ago. Damn you, discogs.com!

And if anyone cares, the music itself is early electronic Euro-disco…

Certain things burn into your memory. This is an ad that appeared in the February 25th, 1978 issue of Billboard magazine. At the time I had just recently purchased Romeo & Juliet and had no idea who Alec R. Costandinos was beyond that and his work with Love and Kisses. But I loved those records, so I was determined to "collect the entire set."

Even 40 years later I often found myself wondering if I had indeed succeeded in that endeavor. Finding this online I can confirm that yes, I have all of them in my collection—and then some—although when The Hunchback was finally released, it arrived with totally different artwork on the sleeve:

https://youtu.be/q6vOY8QLbK4

Pink Floyd: Wish You Were Here (1975)

I'm not a huge Pink Floyd fan, but this is one of a half dozen or so I have in my collection and enjoy quite a bit.

Candy Girls feat. Sweet Pussy Pauline: Wham Bam (1996)

Candy Girls feat. Sweet Pussy Pauline: Fee Fi Fo Fum (1995)

Pet Shop Boys: Actually (1987)

Grace Jones: Muse (1979)

https://youtu.be/ati-mO2AAcE

Donna Summer: Live and More (1978)

Giorgio Moroder: E=mc² (1979)

Supposedly the first live electronic-to-digital recording.

https://youtu.be/dsaif2nA4Yg

Boston: Boston (1976)

I could've sworn this came out my senior year in high school, but I guess if the interwebs are to be believed, it actually came out after I'd graduated. Like so many others, I played the hell out of it.

I discovered The Acid by way of HBO's Sharp Objects and its use of some of their music in the soundtrack. Ambient, moody…it seems to be a perfect soundtrack for my life—and the entire country's for that matter—these days.

Madonna: Madonna (1983)

Gawd…she/we were so young.

https://youtu.be/30hr7DyAuAY

Giorgio Moroder: From Here To Eternity (1977)

22 years old…

Hooverphonic: 2 Wicky (1996)

No doubt before a lot of my readers were even born, but there was a lot of really good dance music that came out that year, and specifically that summer. Ironically it also marked the death of the genre called disco, only to have it go underground for a bit and be reborn even stronger as "dance music" in the 80s, defining the sound of the entire decade.

At least that's the way I remember it.

Sylvester: Step II (1978)

Of course I had to pull it out and give it a spin tonight! (One of the few pieces of my original vinyl collection to miraculously survive the purge in the late 80s.)

Madonna: True Blue (1986)

Along with Pet Shop Boys' Please, this was the soundtrack for our initial move to San Francisco that summer.

Chicago: Chicago X (1976)

This was the go-to soundtrack for my first semester of college. Of course, it didn't help that you couldn't go anywhere without hearing If You Leave Me Now.

Carpenters: A Song For You (1972)