Songs from Under Floorboards: The Summer of 1980

In the summer of 1980 I was 8 years old and, though my earliest movie-going memories date back to the summer of 1978 (more on that at another time), I don’t remember my parents taking me to see anything. I’m sure that I saw The Empire Strikes Back at least once (it came out on May 21) but they certainly won’t going to bring me to The Shining or The Blues Brothers. In fact, I’m 90% positive that neither of my parents has ever seen either film to this day. Nevertheless, that won’t stop me from including music from both iconic soundtracks on this mix.

The music of the summer of 1980 is impossibly good. Another great year where – if you were savvy enough – you’d be listening to future classics all the time. Most of these albums don’t even need band names for you to know them: Closer, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, Wild Planet, Songs the Lord Taught Us, Crocodiles, I Just Can’t Stop It, Back in Black, Heartattack and Vine, etc… If you were in the U.K. you even got to listen to the Roky Erickson and the Aliens LP a full year before it was released in the US as The Evil One. Subsequently, the rules of this whole project are being broken again! This playlist is almost two hours long – too long to realistically fit on any cassette tape – but who cares!

Now, obviously, I was not so cool at 9 that I was listening to all of these at the time. Pretty sure my pop music awareness didn’t come along for a few years yet when the oldies station that I used to listen to became WHTT – HIT RADIO! Alright, I probably couldn’t have avoided hearing “Kiss On My List” or “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” but I wouldn’t have known where or how to find them if I wanted to choose to listen to them.