#0084 The Anthropological Series, 1978-1984: The Legend of Gray Ghost

[Kevin] The idea behind the Anthropological Series is to capture what the DJ and those around her/him were listening to at the time, perhaps in a particular location or phase in life. The focus is early 80s metal and hard rock.

gray-ghost

[Kevin] The idea behind the Anthropological Series is to capture what the DJ and those around her/him were listening to at the time, perhaps in a particular location or phase in life. I made a play list like this last year but lost it in a drive crash, so then when I saw by accident that Anvil had a movie coming out, I threw the mix back together, and here it is. The focus is early 80s metal and hard rock.

The Gray Ghost was the over-dramatic name given to my family’s 1978 Chevy Impala, a V8, flat-gray rocket with bench seats that my dad purchased after its life as a sales company car for Continental Can Company. This photo of it is from my high school photography class. The car’s standard FM/AM radio was limiting to my musical tastes so I would seat-belt my boom box in the back seat and blast mix tapes that I made at my buddy Todd’s house, because he had a nice stereo and I didn’t. These were songs I heard in my car and at high school parties, or that I would drum to in my basement or band.

Metal and hard rock “back then” were really limited to a few good bands, nothing like the huge spectrum of today. Most of these bands I listened to extensively and nearly exclusively. One of them was Anvil, a band that was good in the early 80s but never made it. Robb Reiner’s drumming was inconceivable to me and ahead of his time, and as a teenage drummer it blew me away. I’ve included two Anvil songs in this mix, because yesterday they released a movie about Anvil, the story of why they never made it big. You’d think with sex-obsessed lyrics and songs like “Motormount,” “Heatsink,” “Backwaxed,” and “Bushpig,” they would have shot threw the charts, but not so! I stopped listening to new releases from Anvil after 1984, so I have no idea what their later stuff is like.

So, if you like this kind of music, enjoy this ode to a 15-year old’s daily life metal soundtrack, back in nineteen hundred and eighty-ish. As Twisted Sister used to print on their releases…”PLAY IT LOUD MUTHA!”

  1. Saxon – Princess of the Night
  2. Rose Tattoo – Scarred for Life
  3. Accept – Fight it Back
  4. Anvil – Mothra
  5. Black Sabbath – Children of the Sea
  6. Scorpions – Another Piece of Meat
  7. Motorhead – (We Are) The Road Crew (Live)
  8. Judas Priest – Rock Forever
  9. Ozzy Osbourne – S.A.T.O
  10. Twisted Sister – The Kids are Back/Like a Knife in the Back
  11. AC/DC – Bad Boy Boogie
  12. Riot – Swords and Tequila
  13. Iron Maiden – The Prisoner
  14. Anvil – Motormount

No samples or audio. And I pomise to take a Motorhead break for a while.

4 thoughts on “#0084 The Anthropological Series, 1978-1984: The Legend of Gray Ghost”

  1. There have been several episodes in heavy rotation on this road trip. If you haven’t been able to tell from my last.fm activity, these have included the Soothed Commuter episode, There and Back Again, The Road Most Traveled (originals), The Weightless Mix, Canis Lupus Familiaris, No Let’s Just Be Enemies, The Mix That Was Forced to Go Undercover and (predictably) Strong on His Mountain.

    Thank you, Kevin, for this bonus metal mix to keep me headbanging on my ride home to Chicago tonight, brother!

  2. Thanks man.

    All, I posted the mix again because I noticed a chunk of a song I needed to remove, so I did that and it should be good now. I posted before I had a chance to listen to it, so missed the edit.

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