Last night Bill Larsen and I and a few others were sharing some musical memories from the late ’70s, and it struck me that I really can’t underestimate the cumulative effect that several records from roughly 1979 or so had on me — “Starry Eyes” (The Records), “Girl of My Dreams” (Bram Tchaikovsky), “Too Late” (The Shoes), and “A Million Miles Away” (The Plimsouls). None was a huge hit, by any means, but after a decade of almost-too-mellow country rock, riff-oriented hard rock that largely abandoned melody/harmony, we’re-smarter-than-you-are progressive rock, and unwavering dance-to-144 bpm disco — all of which were often bogged down by obsessively perfect production that left little spontaneity — the above-noted records captured the unrestrained guitar abandon of punk and combined it with the youthful melodic joy of the Sixties British Invasion. Suddenly, Rock could be fun again, and these records helped set the tone for the birth of a pop music underground in the Eighties and Nineties that still has a devoted cult following.
