Third Grade Soundtrack. Urgent.
Posted on September 28, 2007
Filed Under kids, parenting, suburban joys, snark, milestones |
O’s teacher gave us parents a little homework the other night at Open House. He asked that we jot down some of our own memories about being 8 years old, a third grader. His suggestions to get us started were: favorite song, best friend, teacher, favorite sport. This proved harder for me than I would have liked. I have a rather shoddy long term memory, probably because I’m using so much brain capacity remembering that we need toilet paper and that G’s soccer practice is on Tuesdays at 5:15 while O’s is on Wednesdays at 6 p.m. There’s not much left upstairs to devote to ancient history, but, when I began to brainstorm the favorite song assignment, I got excited. All kinds of beats began coursing through the old noggin. Owner of the Lonely Heart by Yes; Purple Rain and Thriller and all songs Synchronicity and Phil Collins’ No jacket Required. This soundtrack to my younger years conjuring afternoons of wiffle ball and kick the can and choreographing dance moves in the front yard.
But, upon arriving home and doing a little Google research, I discovered that all that memorable music I had recalled in class was part of my childhood, but post third grade.
Purple Rain was released in 1984 and I wasn’t old enough to see the movie until, like, last year. MJ’s Thriller was 1982; Duran Duran’s Hungry Like the Wolf from Rio, also 1982; Synchronicity wasn’t released until 1983 and No Jacket Required wasn’t on the scene until 1985. Having been unable to conjure 1981 myself, I bopped on over to the American Top 40 website and re familiarized myself with my third grade year and, it turns out I was right on with the dancing-in-the-front-yard memory. Me and my two best friends were certainly doing forward rolls and cart wheels and keeping great time to the Go Go’s who had a hit single with We Got the Beat, followed by Our Lips Are Sealed.
But there’s one Top Forty result from 1981 that has great resonance with me - Foreigner’s Urgent. This was more my brothers’ favorite than my own but I can distinctly remember the tune and have recall for most of the words since there are only a few. I think it went something along the lines of Urgent, so urgent. Emergency/ Urgent, Urgent, urgent, urgenttttt. Emergency. You remember, right? This was the brilliant follow up to their previous Top-Forty hit, Cold as Ice which was also lyrically challenged, as I recall.
Anyway, sifting through the old reviews of Foreigner 4, I stumbled across Timothy White’s Rolling Stone write up calling Urgent a “metallic, predatory confessional about sexual obsession, steeped in steamy nocturnal craving.” Somehow, at eight year’s old I missed all that implication and innuendo. I’m not sure what I thought they were feeling so pressed but I probably thought it had something to do with my brother driving Mom crazy by playing the song over and over from his “boom box”, volume dial cranked to 10. It was guaranteed that her response to such Urgency was, in itself, quite immediate.
I’m betting that when O thinks back on the music of his third grade year he will remember the lyric “I’m telling you to loosen up my buttons, babe/ But you keep fronting me/Saying what you’re gonna do to me/But I ain’t seen nothing yet…” as some sort of reference to removing winter clothing or that dress shirt he had to wear to his grandmother’s wedding last year.
I’ll share a few other gems that were playing from my clock radio, covered in those little fuzzy, round creatures with the googly eyes and big sticky feet, on Saturdays in 1981. Casey Kasem was ticking off the Top Forty with Blondie’s Tide is High, Kool and the Gang’s Celebration, REO Speedwagon’s Keep on Loving You, Kim Carnes and Bette Davis Eyes(whatever happened to Kim Carnes?), J. Geils Band with Centerfold, I Love Rock n’ Roll by Joan Jett, Eye of the Tiger by God Knows Who and Physical by Olivia Newton John. Good times, people. Good times.
What was playing on your clock radio in third grade?
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16 Responses to “Third Grade Soundtrack. Urgent.”
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The fact that you can remember 3rd grade is awesome in itself!!!!!!! I don’t. I mean I recall the teacher, my classmates and the school - but nothing substantial. Maybe is was a rather dull period for me?
All the songs you described came out while I was in college. It’s been so long since I was in 3rd Grade I would just be guessing what was on the radio.
I remember my sisters being crazy for all of that stuff. I was only 4 in 1981, but the music stayed around on their mixed tapes FOREVER.
And Eye of the Tiger is the *cough* genius work of Survivor. A group that one of my sisters loved, for some reason.
Excellent…Survivor. Of course, how Rocky Balboa of you, Deborah.
M&Co. and Fenicle, you must have some glimmer, some trace of musical memory lurking within. Google the year of third grade and Top Forty and see what pops up. You’ll be amazed when it all comes gushing back.
When I was in 3rd grade, we didn’t have clock radios. (By me, I mean us 3rd graders - I think my parents may have had one but I don’t remember.) I remember lots about the music from 1968-69. It was a fascinating time even for a munchkin like me. I remember the fact that there wasn’t a rock or country or pop station - one station played everything from Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison Blues to Simon & Garfunkle’s Mrs. Robinson to Aretha’s Chain of Fools to (even) Tiny Tim’s Tiptoe through the Tulips. (I had to look up all these song titles, but I do distinctly remember them playing on the radio. Wait. Maybe that was the oldies station I was listening to last week.) It was an amazing year for music: I remember not being able to get enough of Hey Jude - one of the first singles I bought. We didn’t do dance moves - we used badminton rackets to play air guitar. I’m old, cce. By 1981 I was at UC Santa Cruz.
Love it, Ron. Thanks for playing along. I’m no stranger to Simon and Garfunkle and Tiny Tim, having parents who bought LP’s before birthing three children and nothing since. So they’ve played the same tunes for the past forty years. Thankfully, a lot of it is pretty good stuff!
And I just adore badminton. It’s so retro.
Damn, I’m old.
Here goes: Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street, Donna Summer (soundtrack from the movie TGIF), The Bee Gees.
And, after doing my research, I found that those are actually from the year I was in fifth grade.
The closest I can come is James Taylor’s JT, which came out when I was in fourth grade.
I excitedly share my memories and then hear my childhood called, “retro.”
I was a huge Grease fan. I slicked my hair back, wore white t-shirts and kept a comb in my jean pocket.
I also listened to my sister’s Styx: Pieces of Eight. Amusingly, I thought the words “Beware of the queen of spades” were “beware of the green nosed thing.” My sister reminds me still.
Grease, Donna Summer, The Bee Gees, Styx, Don’t know why but all this has resonance with me but it does. I do have two older brothers.
Ron, sorry to call your childhood ‘retro’ but I meant it in a good way, some of my favorite people and things are decidedly ‘retro’, like croquet and cardigan sweaters and Captain Kangaroo.
I was in 3rd grade in 1976- My teacher was Sister Christina and she was a very serious Irish nun. She was my favorite. I remember memorizing multiplication tables and doing those math t’s on the blackboard, racing my other catholic school students to see who could finish the fastest. I too, had to do the same exercise at my son’s school’s Open House, and I too, could only think of songs from 1982. So, I wanted to also get a glipse in my musical past and for me, 1976 was a cornicopia of artists. Check out some of my fav’s- Afernoon Delight, the starland vocal band (I thought they were talking about ice cream), All by myself- Eric Carmen, the song still makes me cry. Blinded by the Light- manfred mann’s earth band. Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen. Carry on my wayward son, Kansas, and Free Bird, Lynyrd Skynyrd. We too, made of dances and memorized all the words. If you like, I would be happy to perform them for you?
Excellent, Kristen. Now I know what the entertainment for the Halloween Class Party will be…Mrs. A performing her own interpretive dance to Blinded By the Light.(Can we play a song with the word ‘douche’ in it during school hours, or was it deuce? I never could tell.)
Oh, God, All By Myself! That’s right!
And here’s another one — don’t know what it’s called — “My baby takes the morning train…”
Nope, wrong again, that was 1981. Sigh.
OK, here’s an artist — Karen Carpenter.
Slouching Mom,
“My baby takes the morning train…He works from nine to five and then…”
Can’t remember the rest but definitely have the tune in my head now.
And The Carpenters were wonderful until she starved herself to death…what an awful end to such a beautiful voice.