If I Could Hold You Again
When it comes to nostalgia, at that place are those things that are true memories and those which are false memories. No decade has more of this going for information technology than the 1980s. Eighties nostalgia is a juggernaut that began when I was in high schoolhouse back in the early 1990s and really hasn't stopped since, peculiarly since I've had students who say they're cornball for the 1980s, something I find hilarious considering they weren't actually old plenty to call up it (And no, they don't, because that would be like me maxim I remember the 1970s when I was born in 1977 and my simply retentiveness of anything world events before 1981 is seeing Jimmy Carter on a television screen. That might be a 1970s retentiveness only information technology doesn't exactly put me within Studio 54).
If yous are truly a Child of the Eighties, you are fully aware of these two sides of nostalgia considering for every movie, television show, compilation album, or Glee medley that says, "Call up Eighties? Here it is! No, don't think about anything that really happened. This is Eighties. Enjoy these memories." You're not supposed to remember that Wang Chung had three proficient songs, only that they recorded "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" and made a seizure-inducing video to go forth with it. Y'all're not supposed to recollect Fresh Horses, the piece-of-crap other Molly Ringwald/Andrew McCarthy flick, just Pretty In Pink. And you're not supposed to remember the Cloris Leachman years of The Facts of Life.
Okay, sorry about that last ane.
Anyway, I'm i of those people who will listen to a flashback station on Sirius and be happy that Alan Hunter has decided to play "Stone in Love" instead of "Don't Stop Believin'" for the hour's dose of Journey. Maybe it's because I'thou a nostalgia dork, or perchance it'due south considering I've been exposed to and then much Eighties nostalgia for the past ii decades that I need more than something that scratches the surface. I call back that everyone reaches that point in his life, where he wants more just some other playing of "Hungry Like the Wolf," and commonly in that location is one piece of work that serves as a trigger for the truthful memories that lie beneath the VH-1-produced surface. For me, it was "At This Moment" by Billy Vera and the Beaters.
Start recorded in 1981 when the band was playing live shows at the Roxy, "At This Moment" is ane of those songs that took its sweet time to hit number one. In fact, it didn't hit that position until January 1987 later on it had been featured on a at present-famous Family Ties storyline and Rhino Records had the sense to rerelease it. I wasn't a big fan of Family Ties at the fourth dimension (and honestly oasis't watched much of the show in reruns, although I have seen the one where Alex forgets to take his examination because he'due south thinking virtually Ellen and they're playing this song), merely in 1987 I was becoming a adequately regular radio listener and this was ane of the songs that got constant airplay not just during the beginning of the year, just during the whole yr, at least on the station that my sis and I preferrered, WBLI.
Now, nearly people my historic period who grew up on Long Isle volition quickly point to Z-100 or possibly even Power 95 (WPLJ) every bit where they got their pop music education, if they didn't have the luxury of MTV, which I did not; or an older sibling/cousin who would slip them tapes of bands that nobody merely nobody played on the radio, which I also did non. But I had a rather weak radio signal in my room that merely really picked upwards a couple of stations strongly: the adult contemporary WALK and the "adult Tiptop 40" WBLI. I say "developed Top forty" considering at the time WBLI seemed to have a playlist of the lighter side of the Top 40, which meant that when Madonna decided to go completely risque with stuff like "Justify My Love" they would stick to playing "Holiday" and when Celine Dion and Michael Bolton rose to stardom, well … then it was over. I have lost count of the number of times I had to endure "How Tin can Nosotros Exist Lovers If We Can't Be Friends" or "The Power Of Love" while sitting in the passenger's seat of my mom's Honda Prelude.
The fact that we could get all of the awesome New York-area radio stations (and even one or ii out of Connecticut) on the radio in my mom's motorcar only made the fact that my parents liked to heed to either the oldies station or Calorie-free FM worse than it should have been and whenever we had to take a long car trip, Nancy and I spent most of the ride badgering them with "Can you put on WBLI? Can yous put on WBLI? Tin you put on WBLI? Can you put on WBLI?" Nosotros knew that asking for Z-100 would exist automatically denied but they would put upward with WBLI until the start twinge of static when my dad would claim that we were "losing the station" and immediately put on Calorie-free FM.
The cover of "By Asking: The Best of Billy Vera & The Beaters," which I spotted at my friend's graduation political party in 1995, causing me to remember the vocal.
The station didn't necessarily play smashing music and probably led me down the wrong path in that I did not have an extensive collection of Van Halen tapes earlier I left elementary school, nor was I passing Expressionless Kennedys tapes around and wearing Circle Jerks T-shirts in my eighth grade study hall. In fact, the one mix tape I did have in the eighth grade featured Roxette, Jesus Jones, Def Leppard, and EMF.
Unbelievable, correct?
Sorry. Had to.
I blame WBLI for that. Sure, they aired Casey Kasem's Weekly Summit forty every Sun, so I did become at least some passing cognition of what was charting, only I also institute myself listening to the station in January of 1987 and thinking about how much I liked "Mandolin Rain," a vocal that I still dearest merely would never cop to loving during my formative years lest I be laughed at by my Biohazard-loving friends.
Anyway, how was I going to know in the first place? Bated from some basic knowledge of Van Halen from my cousin Kelly, who I hope even so owns that "Van Halen Kicks Ass '87" tour T-shirt she came home with from the Nassau Coliseum that summer, I knew trivial to nothing about music when I was 10. I think I owned 4 tapes: Thriller, Born in the U.s.a.A., Sports, and the Top Gun soundtrack. The side by side tape I would get would be the soundtrack to Footloose. It wouldn't be Billy Vera and the Beaters, unfortunately, because for all of my Bruce Hornsby dearest at the time, I actually didn't like "At This Moment" very much when I kickoff heard it because I didn't know what a live recording sounded similar vs. a studio recording, and so I got really turned off by hearing the audience at the vocal's terminate.
I can still moving-picture show myself, in the fourth grade, with my radio on in the basement during a rainy Sabbatum, playing Nintendo and getting bellyaching that I could hear people go "Woo!" when Vera sings "If I-I-I-I-I could just ho-0-o-o-ld y'all," as if the people who were at his concert were there to personally offend me or something. The first xx or thirty times I heard the song (and WBLI, like so many other stations, was in the habit of playing every single to death), I didn't even know what it was chosen or who sang it.
I found that out on New Year'southward Eve when WBLI played its Tiptop 106 songs of 1987 and appear the title and artist before each one. New Year's Eve was always pretty special to me, not because of whatsoever huge political party or anything simply considering of the unproblematic fact that it was the only dark of the year when I was allowed to stay up until midnight instead of dragging myself upward to bed at eight:00 (9:00 or perchance 10:00 on a weekend night), long earlier whatsoever of my friends even started to feel tired.
Of course I watched the ball driblet in Times Square to count into 1988 that year but for about of the dark I sat in my parents' basement with some toys and a pencil and paper, playing Grand.I. Joe vs. Stuffed Animals while listening to the 106-song countdown and writing down who sang what and where they placed. The number 1 song of the year was Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer," a song that had been popular back in the fourth grade when my friends were walking around with Bon Jovi's Glace When Wet cassette before it was replaced with Licensed to Ill. I tin can sort of understand that, although considering that 1987 was the year of The Joshua Tree and Ambition for Destruction, WBLI'due south choice was a little suspect to me then and still is.
"At This Moment" was in the top 10 of the inaugural–iv or five, IIRC–and on the paper where I was keeping track, I wrote "Baton Bera and the Beaters." Sure, I'd misheard the proper noun of the band simply at to the lowest degree I sort of knew, and if my years of watching G.I. Joe after schoolhouse had taught me anything, it was that knowing was half the battle. And I would win that battle because I wouldn't encounter or hear annihilation related to "At This Moment" until 1995 when I spotted a copy of By Request: The Best of Billy Vera and the Beaters in the CD pile of my friend Andy at his graduation party. At commencement, I idea this was epic because some of my friends were known to ridicule others' music tastes (or maybe that was me and my love of Queen and Springsteen? Considering that I got shit for just about everything, it probably was just me); then I thought of when I wrote "Baton Bera" down and remembered "At This Moment."
Had 1995 been the age of the iPod, I probably would accept gone home that night and downloaded the song and enjoyed it. However, in order to become it on a record I would accept had to come upon it past run a risk on the radio, enquire Andy to borrow his CD or hunt the CD down on my ain. I did none of those and instead waited another twelvemonth for Billboard'due south Hits of 1987 to land in my lap courtesy of someone in college. I tin can't remember if it was my roommate Dave, our friend Kristy, or one of the girls in the dorm room next to us, to be honest, all I know is that on one of the many mix tapes I called "Tom's Crap" was "At This Moment" (and "Lady in Ruby-red," which is a whole other story), except this time I really listened to information technology and really enjoyed it.
" data-medium-file="https://popcultureaffidavit.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/billboard-top-hits.jpg?w=131" data-large-file="https://popcultureaffidavit.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/billboard-top-hits.jpg?w=131" class="size-full wp-image-344" title="Billboard Top hits" src="https://popcultureaffidavit.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/billboard-top-hits.jpg?w=620" alt="">
Billboard Superlative Hits of 1987, from which I taped "At This Moment" and several other songs.
A combination of the song itself and Vera and the band's performance makes it one of the Top 5 breakup songs of all fourth dimension, easy. I might be a little prejudiced hither because I played the piano for and so many years and this is a piano-driven song, but the way that Vera sings honestly without going for flatulent glory notes (I tin can simply picture show someone on American Idol butchering this song while getting a ton of adulation because he'southward loud) and lets the music and lyrics practice the work makes his heartache audio incredibly existent. I hateful, I'll even excuse the rather cheesy Eighties-mode saxaphone solo because when he comes dorsum for the finale and puts those pauses in betwixt "If I could merely agree you …" he's definitely got me. And y'all really feel those 4 guitar notes after "Once again" before the saxaphone plays out. If I'd experienced any heartache in junior high or the kickoff couple of years of loftier school, this would definitely be the soundtrack.
Instead, what it did back in 1996 was remind me that at that place was more to the decade I grew up in than what was featured on a compilation CD, and that while I was making some sort of endeavor to listen to music that was popular amongst my peers (fifty-fifty if that music included Ameliorate Than Ezra), I needed to make sure I endemic up to everything I'd listened to or loved.
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Source: https://popcultureaffidavit.com/2010/12/29/if-i-could-just-hold-you-again/
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