Old Sunday Showcase Review

The Nashville newspaper The Tennessean had a Sunday supplement called Showcase. I guess it still does, but I haven't purchased a newspaper in over a decade. This section of the paper was my second favorite with only the Sunday funny pages beating it out. My family never subscribed to the paper and didn't buy it every Sunday, so it was a big treat when my father would buy it. I'd go straight to the funnies and then hit Showcase next. During the Seventies I would go to the very end of the section just to see what song lyrics had been printed. I was mad about music from a very early age. I was given a little kids record player when I was 4 and would get to buy 45 records every now and then.

Showcase was all about entertainment and since I was into television, movies, and music, after seeing what the song in the back was I would go back to the beginning and read the whole thing. Ads, upcoming club shows, articles on artists I didn't know or care about, every television listing; I would actually read it all. When you're an only child you've generally got lots of free time. It didn't hurt that I loved to read and still do.

When I got to college I goofed my first semester up. I quite going to most of my classes. I got thrown out of English class for talking too much. So I spent several years just working. My mother finally talked me into going back and during my first semester I had no transportation into school. My father would take me. Since I then had lots of free time I ended up looking through old Showcases on microfilm just to see what rock acts had been through Nashville in the past. I wrote a post about this way back in 2005.

Here it is 31 or so years later and I have little free time at all. I commute an hour and a half to work, spend 9-10 hours there, and then an hour and about 40 minutes home. I barely have a moment to relax. When I do though, one of the things I like to do is look at old newspapers. I suppose it's nostalgia as a placebo for the frantic pace. Things seemed slower then. That is probably not true, but faulty old memories are sometimes all one has. Hence, most of what I post is trips to the past. I hope to make this a weekly stop just like Friday's Movie Flashback.

This Old Showcase Review will be on the top songs in Nashville in the Sunday, September 23, 1979 issue. What were we listening to 40 years ago? Here is what was hot.

I liked Dionne Warwick, but I loved "My Sharona" by The Knack. I can still remember riding with my mom and hearing it come over KX104 for the first time. The beat! The rocking guitar and that incredible bridge along with lyrics that seemed to my 7th grade ears to be on the naughty side just couldn't be topped. The inclusion of the song in the film Reality Bites was right on the money. It was, perhaps, the first pop anthem of Generation X.

"Sad Eyes" was a swooning song that made for a good change of pace when skating at the roller rink. CDB's "The Devil Went Down To Georgia" was a favorite that had been on the charts for 3 months! I felt like quite the sinner though, because I always liked the devil's music section better. Local Murfreesboro radio station WGNS 1450 (hard to believe it was once a music station) probably really hated me as the summer of 1979 was when I started incessantly calling them up to request songs. "Lonesome Loser" was one of my many requests. I really liked that tune when I was 12, but nowadays not so much. Sorry Little River Band.

"Don't Bring Me Down" was ELO at their rocking best. I can still remember hearing that tune coming out of car radios that year. I wasn't too keen on Herb Alpert back then, but I have the "Rise" album now. The Commodores and Supertramp could do no wrong. "Sail On" is an especially good song since it flips the breakup song on its head. I don't remember the Bonnie Pointer song at all, but I bet it's good. In case you are wondering the song at the end of the Showcase this week was "Different Worlds" which was the theme song to the television show Angie.