It’s 1983…
Having decided to set the first half of my NaNoWriMo novel in 1983, I’ve been recalling things to mind. It was a big year for me, anyway, and I remember the soundtrack to the office Christmas party very well (Karma Chameleon, Let’s Dance, Every Breath You Take, Uptown Girl… I could go on), but I didn’t like any of that stuff myself. In fact, I was a little bit buried under a rock at the time, and wasn’t aware of what was happening in what turned out to be my kind of music… yet.
It was a few years later that a friend introduced me to what was then being called New Country (christ knows how he found out about it) by lending me a tape with The Judds, Dwight Yoakam, and Randy Travis on it). But I wondered, what if my lead character is (even) hipper than me, and is into country music in 1983 — what would there be? No Steve Earle, no Dwight, no Randy, no Mary Chapin Carpenter, but what would there be?
So I looked into things, and came up with a 90-minute mix-tape, of stuff released in ‘82, ‘83, and a couple of years before that. There would be more interesting stuff, but (criminally) it’s really hard to get hold of – for example – early 80s John Prine stuff, or the Pure Prairie League with Vince Gill (you can get them without Vince Gill easily enough), so it’s a bit like stepping back in time in itself when you try to find these things.
I’ve compiled at as two iMixes – approx 45 mins each. Interestingly, none of it sounds terribly dated. I’ve always loved that timeless feeling you get with country music. Surprisingly, I think, the most lively and up-to-date songs on the 1983 Country Mix Tape are the Nanci Griffith songs, which come from her album Poet in My Window. Sounds to me like it could have been released yesterday.
It all sounds very much like it sounded three years later, the so-called “break-through” year of 1986, and yet a lot of this stuff was blown away by the likes of Guitar Town, Storms of Life, and Guitars, Cadillacs Etc. Etc. Which seems unfair, when you listen to this. I know that for a lot of people these artists (particularly Emmylou Harris) never really went away, and a lot of people never got into the 1990s wave of new stuff, which in its turn blew Randy Travis (for one) away. Funnily enough, George Strait (who I never warmed to) just went on doing his thing, and picking up CMA awards, while the world was pulled down and reconstructed around him again and again. That’s what wearing the hat is all about, I think. It’s probably a hard hat.
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