This one was particularly tricky to call.
1. Ultravox – Vienna – 02-1981
2. The Jacksons – Can You Feel It – 04-1981
3. Rainbow – I Surrender – 02-1981
4. Kim Carnes – Bette Davies Eyes – 05-1981
5. The Police – Every Little Thing She Does is Magic – 10-1981
6. Randy Crawford – You Might Need Somebody – 07-1981
7. Elvis Costello – A Good Year For The Roses – 10-1981
8. Godley & Creme – Under Your Thumb – 10-1981
9. The Look – I Am The Beat – 01-1981
10. Queen & David Bowie – Under Pressure – 11-1981
11. Phil Collins – In The Air Tonight – 01-1981
12. REO Speedwagon – Keep On Loving You – 05-1981
13. Squeeze – Labelled With Love – 11-1981
And the bubbling unders: Kiki Dee – Star – 03-1981 Dire Straits – Romeo And Juliet – 02-1981 Quincy Jones – Razzamatazz – 07-1981 Madness – It Must Be Love – 12-1981 John Lennon – Imagine – 01-1981 Diana Ross & Lionel Richie – Endless Love – 09-1981 Bob Marley & The Wailers – No Woman No Cry – 07-1981 Sugar Minott – Good Thing Going (We’ve Got A Good Thing Going) – 04-1981 Julio Iglesias – Begin The Beguine (Volver A Empezar) – 11-1981 Imagination – Body Talk – 07-1981 The Pointer Sisters – Slow Hand – 09-1981 Cliff Richard – Wired For Sound – 09-1981
I’ve always maintained the 80s was one of the busiest decades of my life, chock-a-bloc full of major events every two years. These are some highlights:
1982 – Graduated from what is now Coventry University with a degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering – the first local female to do so. Although it was a hardware degree, my first job writing telecoms software showed me how much more I preferred this. I spent a total of 23 years working for GEC Telecoms, which eventually became Marconi.
1984 – Having returned to my childhood town, Warwick, the terraced house I bought last year for £21K, went up for sale. It sold quickly for 22K, but the real kicker was six months later, the identical house next door sold for 65k. Bummer!
1986 – A magical year when my man and I travelled to Crete in May where he proposed. Four months later, we got married and honeymooned in Corfu. Something about a Greek island …
1988 – I’ll never forget 23/7/88, sending my hubby in to work the Saturday morning overtime at 8am, then spending most of the morning howling like a dog as the contractions grew stronger. By 11am, I’d had enough and called him back. We got to the hospital with minutes to spare as I was 10cm dilated, and out firstborn, Chris, popped out half an hour later at 12:30 on his due date. Utterly charmed, and he definitely lived up to the adage “Saturday’s child works hard for a living.”
1989 – In theory, the “every 2 years” thing should have meant 1990, but Joanna didn’t quite go the distance, popping out a month early on November 30th. As I remember, she took her time, waiting to make her grand appearance while Mike Baldwin did the dirty on Deidre Barlow. Being born on a Thursday (and being a Sagi) gave a bit of a clue to her wanderlust – she spent several years in France and has moved four times since returning to the UK.
These are some of my iconic memories of the 80s – what are yours? I’d love to hear what this era of big shoulderpads, even bigger hair and legwarmers meant to you.
Here’s the first one in a new decade when disco and funk are replaced with rock and punk: 1. Styx – Babe – 01-1980 2. Randy Crawford – One Day I’ll Fly Away – 09-1980 3. Martha & The Muffins – Echo Beach – 04-1980 4. Police – Don’t Stand So Close To Me – 09-1980 5. Billy Joel – It’s Still Rock And Roll To Me – 09-1980 6. David Bowie – Ashes To Ashes – 08-1980 7. Billy Preston & Syreeta – With You I’m Born Again – 01-1980 8. The Pretenders – Talk Of The Town – 04-1980 9. Queen – Another One Bites The Dust – 09-1980 10. Rainbow – All Night Long – 03-1980 11. Cliff Richard – Carrie – 02-1980 12. Dennis Waterman – I Could Be So Good For You – 11-1980 13. Marti Webb – Take That Look Off Your Face – 03-1980
And a few which deserve an honorary mention: Sheena Easton – 9 to 5 (Morning Train) – 08-1980 Michael Jackson – She’s Out Of My Life – 05-1980 Judas Priest – Breaking The Law – 06-1980 Liquid Gold – Dance Yourself Dizzy – 03-1980 Don McLean – Crying – 06-1980 New Muzik – Living By Numbers – 02-1980 Olivia Newton-John/The Electric Light Orchestra – Xanadu – 07-1980 The Nolans – I’m In The Mood For Dancing – 01-1980 Odyssey – Use It Up And Wear It Out – 07-1980 Saxon – 747 (Strangers In The Night) – 07-1980 Barbra Streisand – Woman In Love – 10-1980 Jona Lewie – Stop The Cavalry – 12-1980 John & Yoko & The Plastic Ono Band – Happy Xmas (War Is Over) – 12-1980
Last Saturday, my son Chris married his fabulous fiancee, Sophia. Here’s a flavour of the day:
All week, my hubby and I had scoured various weather forecasts which predicted torrential rain all weekend, and they were almost right – it poured down all day Friday as we travelled down to West Sussex and shared an excellent Italian dinner. But the Saturday dawned with glorious sunshine which lasted right up until the disco finished. Strangely, Sunday morning’s cloudburst felt as though the heavens had been keeping their legs crossed to give us a perfect day.
It certainly seems like this is the time of year for nuptials – Bri and I celebrated our 36th anniversary on the preceeding Tuesday, my nephew and neice celebrated their 5th anniversary on the 5th, and the 6th would have been my parents’ 66th anniversary. You couldn’t write it.
Except I kinda did – to celebrate the 1st book in the hengist saga, 3 Handfastings and a Burial, I wrote a series of blog posts all about wedding traditions through the centuries – you can find them here: https://hengistpeoplehorse.blogspot.com/2019/
So, having considered every year in the 70s, I did a quick analysis of how often each artist had a record in the top 20 during the decade – this (number) may not be absolutely accurate, but it certainly stacks up with what I remember.
My top thirteen 70s artists were:
Slade (17)
Queen (12)
David Bowie (16)
Thin Lizzy (10)
Stevie Wonder (10)
Earth, Wind & Fire (7)
Bee Gees (9)
Sweet (12)
ELO (15)
Jacksons (Including Michael) (18)
Fleetwood Mac (10)
Eagles (8)
Status Quo (14)
As ever, there’s a few names bubbling under who didn’t quite make it
Leo Sayer (9) Gilbert O’Sullivan (8) ABBA (17) Police (7) Roxy Music (11) Mud (13) Darts (8)
And a special mention to these guys who never brought out a track I didn’t like
Billy Joel (3) Labi Siffre (2) Alice Cooper (5) Manfred Mann (4) Mott the Hoople (4) Suzi Quatro (6) Santana (4)
To put it into perspective, here are some of the biggest names of the decade
Elton John (13) Diana Ross (14) Cliff Richard (9) Elvis Presley (19)
Home VCR, 1970 Big bulky plastic tapes that held our favorite movies and cartoons. A step behind the CD but, still truly a great invention in it’s time. Family movies were brought from the reels and stored onto VCR tapes. These tapes were more durable and took up less space than the reels of film.
Liquid Crystal Display (LCD), 1971 LCD used for Televisions, Computers, Calculators, Video Game Monitors, Cockpit Displays, Digital Signs, Clocks and Telephones. Invented by James Fergason
Scientific Calculator, 1971 Initially designed for internal use by HP employees, co-founder Bill Hewlett issues a challenge to his engineers in 1971: fit all of the features of their desktop scientific calculator into a package small enough for his shirt pocket. They did. Marketed as “a fast, extremely accurate electronic slide rule” with a solid-state memory similar to that of a computer, the HP-35 distinguished itself from its competitors by its ability to perform a broad variety of logarithmic and trigonometric functions, to store more intermediate solutions for later use, and to accept and display entries in a form similar to standard scientific notation. The HP-35 helped HP become one of the most dominant companies in the handheld calculator market for more than two decades.
Floppy disk, 1971 Before the days of cloud storage, thumb drives and even CDs, floppy disks were the best solution for storing electronic data. Unsurprisingly, IBM was at the forefront of this. A team of engineers began developing this early method of data storage in 1967, but it wasn’t until 1971 that IBM put the floppy disks on the market, and 1972 when it received patents for the floppy disk and the drive. In 1977, Apple released its first mass-produced computer, the Apple II, which came with two floppy disk drives.
Email, 1971 Ray Tomlinson, a computer programmer at research and design company Bolt Beranek and Newman (today BBN Technologies), created text-based messaging between company computers through the network ARPANET In 1971 by using the “@” symbol to route messages.
Digital Watch, 1972 In 1966, Stanley Kubrick hired Hamilton Watch Company in Lancaster, Pennsylvania to make a futuristic clock for his upcoming movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey. The resulting clock was shaped like a squashed sphere and displayed time using digits from small Nixie tubes. The clock never made it into the movie but it inspired its makers, John M. Bergey and Richard S. Walton, to work on a digital watch. They’d also worked together in Hamilton’s Military Division on an electronically timed fuse, technology which they’d thought about applying to watches and clocks. The watch they’d come up with was called Pulsar, named for the type of star which sweeps a beam of electromagnetic radiation across space at a precise rate of rotation. By April 4th, 1972 they had a limited edition of 400 18-carat gold Pulsar watches selling for $2,100 — $12,500 in 2018 dollars. The watch used a quartz crystal for counting time and red LED’s for the display. To save power, the time was not always displayed. Instead, you’d press a button which would show the time for just over a second.
Pong, 1972 California entrepreneur Nolan Bushnell hires young engineer Al Alcorn to design a car-driving game, but when it becomes apparent that this is too ambitious for the time, he has Alcorn design a version of Ping Pong instead. The game was tested in bars in Grass Valley and Sunnyvale, California, where it proved very popular. Pong would revolutionize the arcade industry and launch the modern video game era.
Mobile phone, 1973 Although it sure didn’t look mobile, the first cell phone was invented in 1973 by Motorola. How exactly was this day marked? Martin Cooper, a senior engineer at the company, called rival telecommunications company Bell Laboratories to tell them he was speaking through a mobile phone. The phone, which was a prototype of the Motorola DynaTAC 8000x, is nothing like the smartphone you own today. It weighed nearly two and a half pounds, was over a foot in length, offered 30 minutes of talk-time and took 10 hours to charge. Worst of all, it didn’t even connect to wifi.
Bar code, 1974 While sitting on a Miami beach in 1949, a spurt of inspiration hit inventor Norman Joseph Woodland. He drew in the sand an outline of what would today become one of the most effective retail inventions of all time — the UPC, otherwise known as the barcode. Inspired by Morse Code, which he learned in the Boy Scouts, Woodland patented his idea in 1952. After numerous designs, awareness of Woodland’s idea grew and eventually the retail and tech industries got involved in trying to create a successful UPC. However, it wasn’t until decades later that Woodland’s idea finally came to fruition. On the night of June 25, 1974, a team from the National Cash Register installed new scanners and computers at the Marsh Supermarket in the small town of Troy, Ohio. Finally, at 8 a.m. on June 26, 1974, the first item with a UPC was scanned — a pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum (now preserved at the Smithsonian Museum).
Post-It Note, 1974 One of the simplest-yet-most-ingenius invention was actually invented by accident. 3M research scientist Dr. Spencer Silver created a strange adhesive in 1968, which he found different and interesting, but for the most part, useless. However, six years later, another 3M researcher named Arthur Fry tried using the adhesive material to hold his papers together after he got frustrated when the bookmarks in his hymn book started flying around.
Toasted Sandwich maker, 1974 Thomas Edison invented lots of stuff, including an early sandwich grill, but it didn’t get much attention from home cooks and was discontinued in the early 1930s. It was entirely forgotten by the time Breville — which claims to have invented the world’s first toasted sandwich machine — came out with its panini press in 1974.
Digital camera, 1975 The first digital camera was invented by Kodak engineer Steven Sasson in December 1975, even though it wasn’t the type of camera you’d take to document a family vacation. It weighed eight pounds, took 0.01 megapixel black-and-white photographs that were recorded onto a cassette tape. One image took nearly 23 seconds to take and could only be seen when the camera was connected to a television set.
Queen’s first email, 1976 Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom sends out an e-mail on March 26 from the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment (RSRE) in Malvern as a part of a demonstration of networking technology.
Inkjet Printer, 1976 A type of computer printer that creates a digital image by propelling droplets of ink onto paper. Inkjet printers are the most commonly used type of printer and range from small inexpensive consumer models to very large professional machines that can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Commodore Pet, 1977 In 1977, Commodore introduced the PET (Personal Electronic Transactor) home/personal computer. Appearing before either the Apple II or the Radio Shack TRS80, it was among the first personal computers. The PET 2001, Commodore’s first model, included 4 kilobytes of memory, cost $495, and was fully functional out the box.
Apple II, 1977 Sold complete with a main logic board, switching power supply, keyboard, case, manual, game paddles, and cassette tape containing the game Breakout, the Apple-II finds popularity far beyond the hobbyist community which made up Apple’s user community until then. When connected to a color television set, the Apple II produced brilliant color graphics for the time. Millions of Apple IIs were sold between 1977 and 1993, making it one of the longest-lived lines of personal computers. Apple gave away thousands of Apple IIs to school, giving a new generation their first access to personal computers.
Atari Games Console, 1977 Atari releases its Video Computer System (VCS) later renamed the Atari 2600. The VCS was the first widely successful video game system, selling more than twenty million units throughout the 1980s. The VCS used the 8-bit MOS 6507 microprocessor and was designed to be connected to a home television set. When the last of Atari’s 8-bit game consoles were made in 1990, more than 900 game titles had been released.
Commodore 1530 Datasette, 1977 The built-in Commodore 1530 Datasette (data+cassette) is the primary storage device for the newly released Commodore PET. The device converted digital information from the computer into analog sound signals which were stored on compact cassettes. The method was cost-effective and reliable, but also very slow.
Tandy Radio Shack TRS-80, 1977 Performing far better than the company projections of 3,000 units for the first year, in the first month after its release Tandy Radio Shack´s first desktop computer — the TRS-80 — sells 10,000 units. The TRS-80 was priced at $599.95, included a Z80 microprocessor, video display, 4 KB of memory, a built-in BASIC programming language interpreter, cassette storage, and easy-to-understand manuals that assumed no prior knowledge on the part of the user. The TRS-80 proved popular with schools, as well as for home use.
Laser Disc, 1978 The LaserDisc is introduced as “Discovision” by MCA and Philips. The first LaserDisc sold in North America was the film Jaws. It offered better audio and video quality than its competitors, but LaserDisc players were prohibitively expensive for many consumers. Now obsolete, it was the direct forerunner of the CD and DVD.
Atari 400/800 microcomputers, 1979 Shortly after delivery of the Atari VCS game console, Atari designs two microcomputers with game capabilities: the Model 400 and Model 800. The 400 served primarily as a game console, while the 800 was more of a home computer. Both faced strong competition from the Apple II, Commodore PET, and TRS-80 computers. Atari’s 8-bit computers were influential in the arts, especially in the emerging DemoScene culture of the 1980s and ’90s.
Multi-User Domain, 1979 The first Multi-User Domain (or Dungeon), MUD1, goes on-line. Richard Bartle and Roy Trubshaw, two students at the University of Essex, write a program that allows many people to play against each other on-line. MUDs become popular with college students as a means of adventure gaming and for socializing. By 1984, there will be more than 100 active MUDs and variants around the world.
Texas Instruments TI99/4, 1979 Based around the Texas Instruments TMS 9900 microprocessor running at 3 MHz, the TI 99/4 has one of the fastest CPUs available in a home computer. The TI99/4 had a wide variety of expansion boards, with an especially popular speech synthesis system that could also be used with TI’s Speak & Spell educational game. The TI 99/4 sold well and led to a series of TI follow-on machines.
Sony Walkman, 1979 Before your smartphone, the Sony Walkman was the most popular personal music device on the market. Sony introduced the Walkman TPS-L2 on July 1, 1979. It was a blue and silver, 14-ounce cassette player that ran off two AA batteries. Initially released in Japan, Sony predicted only 5,000 would sell. Instead, its popularity skyrocketed and within the first two months, Sony sold more than 50,000 Walkmans.
Portable Cell Phones, 1979 Portable phone using radio links to make and receive calls, most commonly used today, with many alterations.
1) Billy Joel – My Life – 02-1979
2) Sad Café – Every Day Hurts – 10-1979
3) The Crusaders – Street Life – 09-1979
4) Dire Straits – Sultans Of Swing – 04-1979
5) Sister Sledge – We Are Family – 06-1979
6) Earth, Wind & Fire With The Emotions – Boogie Wonderland – 06-1979
7) The Boomtown Rats – I Don’t Like Mondays – 07-1979
8) Gloria Gaynor – I Will Survive – 02-1979
9) Nick Lowe – Cruel To Be Kind – 10-1979
10) The Police – Roxanne – 05-1979
11) The Pretenders – Brass In Pocket – 12-1979
12) Queen – Don’t Stop Me Now – 03-1979
13) Supertramp – Breakfast In America – 07-1979
The Bee Gees – Tragedy – 02-1979 Earth, Wind & Fire – September – 01-1979 Dave Edmunds – Girls Talk – 07-1979 Michael Jackson – Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough – 10-1979 Gary Moore – Parisienne Walkways – 05-1979 Barry White – Just The Way You Are – 02-1979 Chaka Khan – I’m Every Woman – 01-1979 Rainbow – Since You’ve Been Gone – 10-1979 Squeeze – Up The Junction – 06-1979 Thin Lizzy – Waiting For An Alibi – 03-1979 Toto – Hold The Line – 02-1979
Holidays as a child in England invariably meant the seaside. Actually, it was more clearly defined than that – for those of us lucky enough to be living in the very centre of England (a couple of hours’ drive to the sea in any direction), a day-trip to the beach invariably meant either Skegness, or Western-Super-Mud – where no matter what time you got there, the sea was at its most distant, leaving a trek through filthy, muddy sand.
Week-long holidays meant you could go a wee bit further afield: north to Blackpool or the magnificent, moody Northumbrian coast (where me Da was born, so it was a favourite). East was Great Yarmouth, and we went as far as Dorset to the south, but for some reason never went west to my beloved Wet, Windy Wales (there’s a clue there somewhere!) Been making up for it in the last couple of decades as a static caravan in mid-Wales (ten minutes from the foot of my favourite mountain, Cadair Idris) has allowed us to explore our Celtic heritage.
Several changes occurred in the leisure industry during the early twentieth century, when holidays and travel were no longer an exclusive prerogative of the rich. Thanks to the likes of Harry Warner and funfair entrepreneur Billy Butlin, there were around 200 holiday camps at different seaside locations in the UK by the outbreak of war in 1939. Post-war and into the affluent 1950s and early 1960s the holiday camp industry thrived with knobbly knees contests, human pyramids, tombola and three-legged races at the top of the agenda – inexpensive, harmless fun for a more innocent age.
This was further helped by the introduction of two weeks paid holiday and a level of prosperity that gave the young, free and single spare cash for clothes, luxuries and holidays. Where trains made travel within land masses easy, the aeroplane put foreign holidays within the reach of the general public.
Thomas Cook promoted foreign holidays from the UK in the early 1950s with charter flights marking the first mass holiday packages to the likes of Corsica, Palma, Sardinia and of course the Costa Brava. Foreign travel for the masses was still rare in the mid-60s when Britannia Airways focussed on flying holiday-makers to destinations like Spain, the Canary Islands, Malta and North Africa, and Freddie Laker set up his cut-price tours business in 1966. Global travel took off in 1970 when the first Pan Am Boeing 747 jet landed at London’s Heathrow Airport – complete with a restaurant in the upstairs lounge for those who could afford first class. By then, holiday camps were deemed a relic of the past and were shunned in favour of the package holiday – new, exciting and above all, cheap, with the promise of strong lager, wine at nine pence a bottle and “meat-filled meals” tempting people to save up for their fortnight in the Mediterranean sun.
What started out as trips to idyllic fishing villages with half a dozen tiny hotels and a couple of bars turned into a full-blown industry in its own right. Whole new cities emerged across the Spanish mainland, complete with skyscrapers, swimming pools, tennis courts and endless bars and nightclubs. Not to mention the en-suite bathroom, shower and bidet.
By 1972 Spain had established itself as the favourite destination of the British abroad, and the once beautiful Benidorm was named the “Manhattan of Spain,” with the highest number of skyscrapers per capita in the world. Over the next decade or so these package holidays began attracting more specific audiences – from honeymooners and families to the fun-loving Club 18-30 crowd. But the high demand inevitably led to band-wagon jumping and cut corners, with Clarkson’s package tours collapsing in 1974, leaving hundreds of British holidaymakers stranded. Skytrain undercut the big airlines from 1977 but collapsed in 1982.
Crete in the 1970s Photo: Pam Bailey
My first foreign summer holiday involved a ferry crossing to France and a week in Brittany – like Cornwall with even more sun. My family were completely enamoured with Crepe Suzettes – our standard order always began with deux bananes for my brother and I. We were genuinely shocked to meet a couple on the ferry back who hated them, calling them “creepies.” Nowt as queer as folk!
1) Kate Bush – Man With The Child In His Eyes – 07-1978
2) Billy Joel – Just The Way You Are – 03-1978
3) The Electric Light Orchestra – Mr. Blue Sky 02-1978
4) Earth, Wind & Fire – Fantasy – 03-1978
5) The Patti Smith Group – Because The Night – 05-1978
6) Manfred Mann’s Earth Band – Davy’s On The Road Again – 06-1978
7) Abba – Take A Chance On Me – 02-1978
8) The Bee Gees – Stayin’ Alive – 03-1978
9) Blue Oyster Cult – (Don’t Fear) The Reaper – 07-1978
10) City Boy – 5-7-0-5 – 08-1978
11) Andrew Gold – Never Let Her Slip Away – 04-1978
12) The Motors – Airport – 06-1978
13) Gerry Rafferty – Baker Street – 03-1978
And the nearly made its: Joe Walsh – Life’s Been Good – 08-1978 Julie Covington – Only Women Bleed – 01-1978 Dean Friedman – Lucky Stars – 10-1978 Elkie Brooks – Lilac Wine – 03-1978 The Commodores – Three Times A Lady – 08-1978 The Jacksons – Blame It On The Boogie – 10-1978 The Buzzcocks – Ever Fallen In Love – 10-1978 Raydio – Jack And Jill – 05-1978 John Travolta & Olivia Newton-John – You’re The One That I Want – 06-1978 Rose Royce – Love Don’t Live Here Anymore – 10-1978 Donna Summer – MacArthur Park – 10-1978 The Boomtown Rats – Rat Trap – 10-1978 Crystal Gayle – Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue – 01-1978 Chic – Le Freak – 12-1978 Clout – Substitute – 07-1978 Yvonne Elliman – If I can’t Have You -05-1978 Eruption – I Can’t Stand The Rain – 03-1978 Exile – Kiss You All Over – 09-1978 Genesis – Follow You Follow Me – 04-1978 Marshall Hain – Dancin’ In The City – 06-1978 Heatwave – Mind Blowing Decisions – 07-1978 Nick Lowe & His Cowboy Outfit – I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass – 03-1978 Odyssey – Native New Yorker – 01-1978 Frankie Valli – Grease – 09-1978 Bill Withers – Lovely Day – 01-1978 John Paul Young – Love Is In The Air – 05-1978
JRo Author 