A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

#80sChristmasList The 1980s coincided with my high school and college years. They also coincided with the last decade of the Cold War, the advent of new technologies, and the emergence of Tom Clancy and the technothriller genre of popular fiction. The following is a sampling of various Christmastime lists from across the decade, although the default year is 1985, which was my freshman year at Miami-Dade Community College. I eventually ended up owning all of them; if I didn't receive them during the holidays, I'd get them later as birthday presents or, as in the case of my first personal computer, an out-of-the-blue gift from a relative. And, of course, once I got a few jobs, I'd buy things on my own. Personal computer (I was given one in 1987, an Apple IIe that cost approximately $2,100, or $4,774.56 in 2019) New-release VHS tapes of feature films (average cost in 1985: $79.99, or $190.85 in 2019) Novels by Stephen King Novels by Tom Clancy Music albums on...

On October 26, 1987, Columbia Records released Billy Joel's second live album,  Концерt, which is Russian for "Concert." Recorded during his six-performance gigs in Moscow and Leningrad (now called St. Petersburg), Концерт was the first American rock-and-roll album ever recorded in the then-Soviet Union.  In its original 1987 version - Columbia re-released it in 2014 as an expanded album titled A Matter of Trust: The Bridge to Russia - Концерt is a 16-track recording released as a double-LP vinyl set, a double-length cassette, and on compact disc. It presents one Russian song ( Odoya ), 13 songs from various Billy Joel albums, including 52nd Street, An Innocent Man, and his then-current The Bridge, which Joel was promoting in his "The Bridge Tour." Концерт also includes two covers: The Beatles' Back to the USSR , and Bob Dylan's The Times They Are A-Changin' .  Track List: 1. Odoya : Performer – Zhournalist: 1:17 2. Angry ...

Well we all have a face That we hide away forever And we take them out and show ourselves When everyone has gone  - Billy Joel,  The Stranger   When Columbia Records (now part of Sony Music) first released Billy Joel's fifth album, I was 14 years old and still having to cope with the aftermath of my first serious breakup, the stresses of what was then called junior high, and my mom's decision to sell our house and move to the condominium where we still live. To my teenager's world-view, all of these "issues" seemed to loom over my life like an army of avenging demons, and I was lost in a fugue of sadness, anger, and confusion.  I mention this seemingly irrelevant bit of autobiographical detail because at the time my older sister Vicky was on a pop music kick, and though she had moved out of the house, she had not, thank the Force, taken the family's huge Zenith stereo cabinet, which had a turntable for LP records, an AM-FM radio receiver, and a state of the ...

I got to admit it...I almost didn't buy this album. When "Billy Joel Greatest Hits: Volume III" was released in 1997, I wasn't sure if I wanted to purchase it. I hadn't bought many of Joel's post-"An Innocent Man" albums (although a few good friends had given me "The Bridge," "Kohcept," and the "Greatest Hits: Vols. I & II" as presents); I'd heard the quality of the songs had veered from great to good to mediocre, and because I was building up my classical music CD collection, I wasn't about to spend my limited music-buying bucks on albums that would disappoint me. So when I read a review in my local newspaper that stated, in short, that Volume III wasn't exactly the most fitting "adieu" to pop/rock recording by "the Piano Man," I said to myself, "Nah, I better not waste my money on this CD; let's get Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of Saint Martin-in-the-Fields' A...