This Week In The 80’s: Swaying Room As The Music Starts

This Week In The 80’s: Swaying Room As The Music Starts

Freshman year of high school, 1985. Man, there’s so much GREAT music sitting in the Top 40 this week. Lots of great songs with great videos (like the wonderfully weird “Some Like It Hot” from The Power Station) but the greatest video on the countdown this week is “California Girls” from David Lee Roth. I’ve been told there are girls in this video but, honestly, I just watched it for the music. It’s also full of odd characters that end up making appearances in some of Roth’s later videos.

Back to my freshman year. In my home town, we had two junior high schools (7th and 8th grade) that funneled into the high school. East side, west side. There’s a girl from the other side of town that I develop the biggest crush on from the first day of school when I meet her for the first time. We have two classes together – English and French I (and honestly, she’ll be the only reason I enroll in French II my sophomore year). It’s around this time of year that our school has a Spring dance. Because of the household I grew up in, I wasn’t allow to dance or attend dances. But when I find out my crush is going to the dance…I mean I have to go, right? The night of the dance I conveniently spend the night with a friend and we attend the dance with my parents none the wiser. At first, this looks like the dance from the end of Footloose where barely anyone is dancing. Most people are just milling around while the music plays. Snore. But the “Kevin Bacon” moment of our little event is when “Relax” from Frankie Goes To Hollywood plays. By the end of that song, EVERYONE is dancing. Or “dancing”. Depending on what your definition of that word is. Regardless of what the song is about (winky wink), “Relax” has one of THE BEST grooves to come out of the 80’s.

Anywho, I spend the entire evening watching my crush. We “bump” into each other several times but she’s hanging out with her friends, I’m hanging out with mine…and trust me, they decidedly do NOT mix. Finally, towards the end of the night, I work up the courage to ask her to dance with me. I’ve never danced with a girl before, I have no idea what I’m doing. But you know as well as I do that there’s not much to two fifteen year old kids slow dancing. The song we danced to is also in the countdown this week. It’s “Crazy For You” by Madonna. By the way, I was the only one of my friends that slow danced with a girl that night. I was a king.

This Week In The 80’s is a weekly look at the Top 40 charts with Eric Vardeman. His Twitter handle is @ericvardeman.