Just move your feet and you'll feel fine.

There was a time during the early 1980s when all these pop stars who had been around for a short while (as rock music had itself only been around a short while) but were still being promoted by the major labels (remember those) and their records were still bought in unconscionable number by their devoted Baby Boomer followers, that they began feeling ... old.

Or if not exactly old, then wistful, which in popular music, is worse. This was just prior to the advent of so-called "classic" rock stations, which gave eternal life to their back-catalog (and for a time generated interest in "Best Of" collections which are no longer necessary due to iTunes making it possible to get that one song you suddenly must have instead of all of them) when they still had to create new music that people would buy out of sheer habit.

So they searched their souls and realized life was better when they were young and poor instead of in their mid-30s and horribly rich. Hell, the Beatles started that when they recorded Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane and they were barely out of their mid-20s.

In 1983 Billy Joel released an entire fucking album dedicated to his long-dead childhood years. It was a trend which soft-rock porn stars like Phil Collins had already been moving into (You Can't Hurry Love, 1982) as well as Ray Davies and the Kinks with Come Dancing, which leads off this playlist.

Early 80s radio was pretty pretty schizophrenic, with stations like WMMS, which were used to playing popular rock music, confounded as to what that actually is. I think most well-adjusted people agree that, like pornography, you know good rock music when you see it.

Temperature: 72°
Climate: humid!
Distance: 5.6 miles

1983 Playlist
Come Dancing - The Kinks
Everyday People - Joan Jett and the Blackhearts
The Walk - The Cure
No More Lies - Neil Schon and Jan Hammer
Owner of a Lonely Heart - Yes
Temptation - New Order
Church of the Poison Mind - Culture Club
Whenever You're On My Mind - Marshall Crenshaw
Don't Let Go - Wang Chung
Blue Monday - New Order
Major Tom (Coming Home) (161 bpm) - Peter Schilling
Don't Change (164 bpm) - INXS

However, Nineteen Eighty-Three? The year I turned fifteen? BEST. YEAR. EVER.