Back in 1980, Dog.

In November of 1980, I was busy with farm chores and school during the day and by night I was playing in the school musical. It was the role that I born to play. When the director cast me in the role of Snoopy in, you’re a Good Man Charlie Brown, I was able to channel my inner dog. Many of the elementary students thought Snoopy was my real name. It was 15 seconds of fame for me and the glare of the flood lights quickly cooled. For a moment though, I was a rock star in the eyes of the first through sixth graders.

The end of 1980 featured lots of great songs on the radio. As I cruised the countryside on the way to play practice, there were many that I cranked through my Realistic under dash FM convertor with cassette player. Queen had one of its many anthems in regular rotation as Another One Bites the Dust was in the top five. Artists such as Pat Benatar, Devo, the Police, Donna Summer, AC/DC, Billy Joel, and ABBA were having home run hits. Diana Ross had three songs in the Top Forty and John Lennon was having his biggest hit in five years. On November 4th Republican challenger and former Governor Ronald Reagon defeated incumbent President Jimmy Carter and was elected the 40th President of the United States.

On this Saturday night’s Those Were the Days radio show, I will be taking your song suggestions between six and midnight on WRCO FM 100.9, WRCO.com, and on the Civic Media app. Last week’s theme, train songs, was a smashing success. We had great feedback and lots of listeners put in a lot of thought to come up with songs that I had not thought of. I can’t wait to take those old records off the shelf this weekend.

Phil