Almost chomped by Pac-Man.

Stephen's comments on T-Clog's mix.

Where the heck have I been? Oh, doesn't matter. Let's do this thing!

1. Cheers: The show was a staple of the times (I try to avoid using the word "zeitgeist"). I echo Dan's sentiment that the song is very, very hard to separate from the show. I more or less enjoyed the show. I remember watching the first show at the time of the first broadcast. NBC had some monkey show called "Mr. Smith" that came out the same year, and they were promoting both heavily... I think NBC was trying to re-create itself after taking a beating for some time. I remember thinking how cool it was going to be as an adult, if only one had such a retreat each day. Alas, bars don't resemble "Cheers" in the slightest, and I've read the reports of how many such establishments are meant specifically to promote anonymity. Yeah, shock. Anyway, nice ditty, but tied to the time and purpose as to never be considered as a song by itself.

2. You Make Loving Fun: I remember reading Rolling Stone and other music magazines in the early '80s. It was oft-written that Fleetwood Mac was one of the greatest groups in the world. Lindsay Buckingham was a sex symbol at the time, Mick Fleetwood was a genius, Stevie Nicks was also a sex symbol... none of this clicked with me as a 12-year-old, and I struggle to look back and figure it out in retrospect. I do admire "Tusk" for its sheer weirdness, all rhythm and marching bands, and I dig this song, more now than then. Catchy, sort-of sexy, I-like-you-let's-do-in-again-now vibe. Of course, I've seen Robert Towne's "Personal Best", so now I assume it's about two women, one being Muriel Hemingway.

3. Bette Davis Eyes: Swimming pool, swimming pool, break, swimming pool, break, swimming pool, ham sandwich. Hey, it was Billboard's Number One pop single of 1981, I think. Was there no escaping it? My daily summer school-break routine was soundtracked by this song. The female Rod Stewart, singing about making crows blush (I thought). Again, like "Cheers", no amount of re-learning will help me hear this song anew. We didn't have MTV in my small town (see Mellencamp), so I have no idea what Carnes looked like; I don't have any latent little-boy thing for the singer. Just thought I'd share that.

4. 99 Luft Balloons: My mom loved, loved, loved this song. She bought the whole LP. She also bought Asia's first and second albums. She was into the pop-music thing at the time. I, on the other hand, have no love lost or nostalgia for this song. Perhaps out of automatic protest against my mom's attempts at coolness. That said, it was a different kind-of song at the time, and not just because of the German lyrics. It has a pop-tune event feel, which may explain the massive popularity. It pre-dates the late Falco's success in the states, who had a similarly bombastic approach with his Amadeus tribute. I think both songs became hits because they were in frustratingly catchy and unavoidable. Falco would have been at home on this mix, but more for the "Der Kommisar" re-make that was a hit at the same time "Balloons" was. A political song, I'm told. I don't know. I still don't speak German.

5. Walk of Life: My better conscious knows that this is a perfectly acceptable pop song, and that I should like it, but I cannot, and still do not. Knofler was singing about the hard-knock life of busking, I understand. I get that. But the song is so damn happy and child-like. It passess through me like a chilly wind, and by then I've clicked past or changed the station. The chugging guitar should win me over, I love that kind of simple musicality, but the keyboards are too intrusive and annoying. A miss for me. I'm amused at Dan's observation, I'm sure accurate, of all the hair-metal dudes learning of this new Dire Straits group, only to discover an album full of really great songs that I'm sure they hated: "Latest Trick", "Brothers in Arms", "The Man's Too Strong"... any of those tunes are much more meaningful to me than this one. In fact, I may download a few of them later. Side note: Why did we yanks get a video for this song full of professional football players and cheerlearders bouncing around? Well, I can guess, I suppose. Was it hoped this would be the next Gary Glitter or Queen fan rally? Hmmm.

6. Magic. Let me say: I loved the Cars. Had all their stuff. Forgave their weak tunes and worshipped their great ones. Mix: Candy-O is not a great album, but it's got a racy cover, and it's a little more of the "odd" Cars that I think fans claim to like more. And I submit that I was a fan before "Heartbeat City". Although in disclosure, it helps to have an older sister with boyfriends who lent me some albums. From there, it only takes one Columbia Record Club application to catch up on certain groups, and start of life of wasteful credit spending. By Heartbeat City, the album, I started to get a little elitist, what with everyone seeing the cheesy videos and buying the record en masse. I began to dismiss the Cars. "Heartbeat City" was positioned as a summer anthem, for the obvious lyrical reasons. I only sort-of dug it then, but like the declarative guitar chords just as much as ever. I remember Stereo Review magazine commenting that the Cars somehow managed to appear avant-garde but sound one-hundred-percent mainstream. Makes sense. Looking back at this song and the album it came from, I stil love "Drive" from that album the best. It captured popular '80s radio for me in the most positive way for me, in the way groups like Poison represent the '80s at it's mainstream worst. Thanks, T-Clog, for not including Poison on this disk in any way.

Alas, the bassist died, the guitarist went on to play in a CCR-tribute group, and the New Cars eventually showed up with Todd Rundgren. I guess my love rests with the Cars of that time.

7. Small Town: John Mellencamp did something great here. A simple song that conveys what the song was about. This song sounds so live, so loud, and pretty much is my favorite song on this record. JM had, at the time, a great drummer, and it's that part of his music I notice a lot. I happened to live in a small town until just before this song came out. I admit I'm not as fond of that environment as Mellencamp was, so at first, I dismissed this song out of hand. (It's not as if moving to big-city Waterloo rescued me or anything; it was just different, with a record-store and movie theater, for a change). I've not been a close JM admirer, so I can't get into where this fits into the pantheon, although I was a litle dissapointed to here a recent song being used in a GM commercial. It certainly wasn't cool to like JM at the time, but I listened to the Scarecrow tape a lot, partly because of the steps he'd taken to raise awareness for Farm Aid helped focus some attention on his music. His follow-up, The Lonesome Jubilee, pretty much drowned in political rightousness (although it, too, had some decent stuff on it); by that time, I'd been run over by the so-called political consiousness of "We Are the World", that momentum heading to what seemed like countless benefit songs leading up to "Sun City", and I'd set JM aside to seek out something, oh, more punk, I guess. But "Small Town" is a song I can hear all over again, and enjoy it more now than then.

8. Every Breath You Take: My much-younger ears didn't immediately hear the fear and loathing this track was communicating. I remember Sting doing an interview, saying how shocked he was that people were playing this song at their weddings. I think that's kind of awesome, and at the time it taught me to get my head out of ass and hear the whole song. I suppose it's the price the Police had to pay for immense success. Anyway, I enjoy the song, but personally, I'd go with "Don't Stand so Close to Me" for early '80s popularity. That dirty bastard Sting, being all academic. Something to strive for, I thought at the time. Oh, I like it. But I've got a master tape burned into my frontal lobe, the ultimate iPod.

9. Against the Wind: Interesting song choice for this mix. "Like a Rock"... I know I'm gonna get it for this, but pre-truck ad, I sort of liked that song. That was five minutes, twenty years ago. Seger is not, shall we say, prolific. The constant rotation of "Night Moves" seemed to be filling the gap for Seger; maybe he just made all his money on that one damn song. I'm glad I'm not hearing that song here. This is not my favorite Seger song. For sheer childhood nostaglia, that'd have to be the song where Seger is telling his lady that someday, she'll be accompanying him. It fit well, dynamically, while I swung around in circles on a small-town carny ride at age 10. (Sauerkraut Days, Ackley, Iowa. Mmmmm, kraut.) I'm sorry to say that only echo the sentiments of others here. Seger's okay and all, I don't hate the man or his music, but this is not how I reflect on my life. For all it includes, my life has not been against anyone's wind. And if we are talking the system here, then I suspect some of the fans of this song are the ones that put into office the very entity that is now creating a lot of blowback. Now there could be song.

10: I Won't Back Down: A song so direct and simple. I remember this one just Pissed. People. Off. As in, how dare Tom Petty get away with a song I could have done? Sorry, but you couldn't have. Or, to put another perspective on it, I wish, I WISH I could have done this. At the time. I hadn't been Jeff Lynned to death; that stops with the Wilburys. Perhaps Tom Petty, who had (after all) risen from the alternative radio early days, was peaking here for the massess. I understand he's since been a huge tour draw. I had this CD and played it a lot in the fall of '89 and early '90. So did a lot of people on the U of I campus. It was the "Thriller" of the season, in a good way.

11: Take On Me: Hmmmm.. T-Clog saves the best for last? It terms of summing up the times, I'd say, yes. This song is significant in that the video is the song, the song is the video, and the young love-longing-despair vibes sits accurately with the (let me do the math again) 14-year-old who heard and saw this song. The keyboards, plotting the rhythm throughout and then trailing off intergalactically at the end, just works for me, and that's all I'd really expect or want from that time. Sometimes I wished the "me" of that time would just fly off like that synth.

12. Cheers, redux. See original comments. Boy, life sucks at the moment. I hear you, sort of. Perhaps.

Summing up: Pac-Man. My niece, who is seven, knows what Pac-Man is and explained to me the other day. She was dead on, although her knowledge has more to do with the beautiful T-Clog cover than the static birds-eye view of the '80s experience. This was a good mix, and to make clear, I like all the stuff here, to some degree. I am opposed to false nostalgia, so this was an exercise on what I thought I believed then and where I am now. I rarely "forgive" songs despite their crappiness, just because those songs were from "that time". It helps to remember a miserable childhood experience. Life aint so bad, though, not for this white, middle-class white male. So while I cannot reconcile with Kim Carnes, it's still a welcome experience to go there again.

Favorite song here: Take on Me. Suck it, Sting! These guys weren't around to get too full of it, to their betterment.

Song I'd included had I made this mix: "I'm on Fire", Bruce Springsteen. My favorite song from the radio, from that time, period.