The 500 - #92 - 20 Golden Greats - Buddy Holly & The Crickets

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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Album: #92

Album Title: 20 Golden Greats (aka) Buddy Holly Lives

Artist: Buddy Holly & The Crickets

Genre: Rock and Roll

Recorded: Between 1956 - 1958

Released: February, 1978

My age at release: 12

How familiar was I with it before this week: Quite well

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #166 - dropping 74 spots

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: Everyday

In the late 1970s, something strange was happening. Pop culture had fully embraced a revival of the 1950s. From fashion to music to slang expressions, North America was fully embracing an idealized version of Eisenhower-America.

Now, to a 12-year old kid growing up in the small farming and fishing town of Kingsville, Ontario, this seemed entirely normal.  When you are that young, everything is your "normal". You don't have enough life experience to know that the world could be any other way. A child who grows up wealthy assumes everybody takes vacations, flies on airplanes and has a family cottage somewhere. A child raised during the Second World War came to accept blackouts, ration books, bomb shelters, and fathers away in uniform as part of everyday life. The remarkable becomes ordinary when it is all you have ever known.

A young boy wears a ‘Mickey Mouse’ gas mask produced for children
between two and five. The facepiece was red, and the breathing
section was blue and green to make them more friendly.

So, in 1978, I found myself surrounded by a pop-culture filled with greasers, jukeboxes, sock hops, leather jackets, and the ever-present influence of Arthur "Fonzie" Fonzarelli. Somewhere between the  successes of American Graffiti, Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, and Grease, popular culture of the time collectively decided to take a 20-year step backward.

American Graffiti film (1973), Happy Days
debut (1974), Laverne & Shirley (1976)
Grease (1978).

In the late‘70s, Tuesday nights belonged to Happy Days. If you had any hope of participating in school discussions the next morning, watching was mandatory. Missing an episode meant standing on the sidelines while everyone else debated the latest exploits of Richie Cunningham, his family, friends -- Ralph Malph, Potsie Webber --and, of course, the king of cool, Arthur "The Fonz" Fonzarelli.

Scene from Happy Days, (l) Richie Cunningham (Ron Howard)
with The Fonz (Henry Winkler), outside Arnold's Restaurant.

The '50s nostalgia craze spread everywhere in the '70s. American Graffiti had planted the seed first by introducing audiences to a romanticized vision of the time and the music that accompanied it. By 1978, television had fully embraced the post-war Eisenhower era. Happy Days became a new phenomenon which continued with its first spin-off series, Laverne & Shirley. Looking back, it is remarkable how thoroughly a generation of children became fascinated by a time period we had never actually experienced. From Jukeboxes to Fats Domino, to saddle shoes and poodle skirts -- I think I knew as much about America in the '50s than I did about Canada in 1978.

For elementary school kids in 1978, a Happy Days lunch box 

was practically standard issue.

One of the more baffling examples of 70s nostalgia for the 50s was the emergence of the rock and roll and doo-wop revival group Sha Na Na. The ten piece musical ensemble performed a song-dance and comedy repertoire that featured, and parodied, the music of the 1950s and the era’s New York gang culture. The group’s syndicated television series (1978 - 1981) somehow became appointment viewing, despite being (objectively speaking) generally unfunny.

Sha Na Na - musical group and television show cast.

The humour relied heavily on exaggerated characters, corny catchphrases, slapstick antics and broad mugging for the camera. Even as kids, my friend circle understood the jokes were pretty thin. Still, we watched every week, happily offering our own terrible Bowzer impressions on the playground the next day. The appeal was never really the comedy. It was the energy, the music, and the simple fact that, with only a few TV channels to choose from, a bunch of greasers singing old rock-and-roll hits seemed like perfectly reasonable entertainment.

Jon "Bowzer" Bauman was the 'breakout' character
on the Sha Na Na television series.

Then came the summer of 1978, when Grease seemed to take over the world. The soundtrack was everywhere and songs from the movie dominated the charts. Even if you had not seen the film, you knew the music.

Album cover for the soundtrack to Grease.

1978 also brought the film The Buddy Holly Story starring Gary Busey to audiences. For many people of my generation, this became our introduction to the music of Buddy Holly. Coincidentally, 1978 was also around the time I began spending more time digging through record bins and developing my own musical tastes. I distinctly remember seeing the 20 Golden Greats record with the hastily scrawled Buddy Holly Lives on the cover. I didn’t buy it, but I picked it up more than once, turning it over in my hands and wondering what all the fuss was about. Like so many kids my age, I was beginning to discover older music just as the rest of popular culture seemed determined to rediscover it.

Movie poster for The Buddy Holly Story.

I've written about Buddy Holly before. Back in June, 2020, I wrote about his record, The Chirping Crickets, (#420 on The 500). Four songs from that album appear again on 20 Golden Greats. They are among my favourites, particularly, That'll Be the Day, Not Fade Away, Oh, Boy! and Maybe Baby. If you are looking for Holly's biography and the story of his untimely death, that article covers the details.

Album cover for The Chirping Crickets (#420 on The 500).

This time, I am interested in something different. Why did Buddy Holly become popular again in 1978?

Part of the answer lies in nostalgia, movies, and television. Another part lies in the music itself. Holly's songs are short, direct, energetic, and built around unforgettable hooks. Listening today, they almost feel proto-punk...maybe even proto-proto-punk (if there is such a thing). At the exact moment when punk was exploding and progressive rock's sprawling concept albums and marathon guitar solos were beginning to fade from fashion, Buddy Holly's catalogue suddenly sounded modern again. A teenager starting a garage band in 1978 could find plenty of inspiration in those records.

The similarities between Buddy Holly and The Ramones are striking. Songs including Peggy Sue rely on three basic chords, relentless backbeats, and short track lengths, matching the exact formula of the Ramones' 1976 self-titled debut album (#33 on The 500). Additionally, London punk legends The Clash and 70's San Francisco hardcore punkers The Dead Kennedys famously covered I Fought The Law, a song written by Sonny Curtis of The Crickets. 

Album cover for the single release of I Fought The Law, by The Clash.

So, in 1978, nearly twenty years after his death, Buddy Holly was back in the record bins, back on the airwaves, and back in popular culture and even permeating the brain of an impressionable Canadian adolescent who was starting his search for a musical identity. Perhaps the title Buddy Holly Lives was not seem quite so far-fetched.

The 500 - #94 - 40 Greatest Hits - Hank Williams

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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Album: #94

Album Title: 40 Greatest Hits

Artist: Hank Williams

Genre: Country, Honky-Tonk, Blues

Recorded: 1947-1952

Released: March, 1978

My age at release: 12

How familiar was I with it before this week: Several songs

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #132 - dropping 38 spots

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: I Saw The Light

When I was in my twenties, Hank Williams was a punchline. Actually, it was his son, Hank Williams Jr., who earned that distinction. The senior Williams was merely collateral damage, swept up in the barrage of juvenile jokes my friend Paul Dawson and I traded whenever we were trying to crack each other up.

Hank Williams (1950)

In 1989, There's a Tear in My Beer was re-recorded by Hank Williams Jr., built around a vocal his father had recorded nearly 40 years earlier. It was, in effect, a duet across generations. Hank Williams Sr. had died in 1953 at the age of 29, leaving behind a three-year-old son and a catalogue that would help define country music for the next 50 years. In hindsight, the idea behind the song is quite moving: A grown man sharing a record with the father he never had the chance to know. At the time, however, that sentiment was lost on us. We were young, cynical, and eager to find the joke in everything, and Hank Jr. had already given us plenty of reasons to target him.

Hank Jr. re-recorded many of this father's songs.

When There's a Tear in My Beer popped up on our radios or on television, we would mock the simplistic lyrics. We'd make up increasingly ridiculous and vulgar alternative versions because we figured the songs were old-fashioned and unsophisticated. To us, Hank Williams Jr. represented a kind of country music that seemed completely disconnected from our lives. To a bunch of suburban Canadian kids trying to figure out our own political identities, he seemed to embody every Southern stereotype we disliked. We weren't particularly left-wing or right-wing at that point. We were still sorting out all that. What we did know was that we were decidedly anti-racist and uncomfortable with anything that looked like a celebration of Confederate nostalgia and slavery. Fairly or unfairly, we transferred the resentment we had to the son onto the father and never really gave the music a chance.

In 1988, Hank Jr. released a song called If The South Would've Won,
in which he imagines the South wining the Civil War. Critics
have made the logical connection that it is a tacit endorsement of slavery.

As you may have realized during this journey through The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, I'm open to changing my mind, even if I'm a little reluctant at first. Sure enough, about a decade after Paul and I were trading puerile jokes and mangling Hank Williams’ lyrics for our own amusement, I found myself becoming a fan...of the Senior, not the Junior. The credit for that transformation belonged largely to a new friend, a legendary London musician and vocalist named "The Reverend" Freddie Johnston.

London musician, "Reverend" Freddie Johnston.

Like many people involved in London's music scene, I knew of Freddie long before I actually met him. He was hard to miss, looking more like a road-tested bluesman from Texas, or a hippie biker from California, than a young man raised in Ontario’s Southwest.

His large frame and trademark bandana, or a wide-brimmed hat, made him easy to spot from blocks away. His wardrobe was a glorious mix of styles that became uniquely him. His turquoise rings, boldly patterned shirts and jangly bracelets captured one’s attention whether he was walking down the street or performing on a tavern stage. His large arms were canvases of colourful tattoos that hinted at a lifetime of music, friendship and adventure.

Reverend Freddie on stage at The Brunswick Hotel - drummer
(and former guest blogger) Steve Crew on the kit behind him.

Freddie had played in local bands for years, including Thundershack and Green Apple Splash, two band names that leaned delightfully into his love of "potty humour". However, I got to know him well in the late ‘90s when he formed a four- piece band dubbed Reverend Freddie and The Distillers. What stood out wasn't the musician or local legend. It was the person. He was one of the warmest, funniest, most genuinely kind people I've ever met. He welcomed everyone, loved a good conversation, and smelled fantastic. I have no idea what cologne he splashed on, but the man was consistently the best-smelling musician in the London region.

The Distillers were (l-r) Jeff Bialkowski, Freddie, Crew,
 and Oscar "Porchee" Macedo.

Reverend Freddie and the Distillers mixed multiple genres in their sets. From Hard and Southern rock, to blues, and honky-tonk country, they entertained in a way that felt completely natural. For several years, they became part of my weekly routine. I was in a Monday night hockey league, with games ending between 11:00 and 12:30.  After a quick shower, I'd head over to the Brunswick Hotel to catch a set, have a couple of beers and unwind before heading home.

The Distillers at The Brunswick Hotel.

Those Monday nights also became my introduction to new music and, in particular, the Hank Williams songs I had spent years dismissing. Freddie and the Distillers often performed Williams’ classics, including Jambalaya (On The Bayou), Hey Good Lookin', Move It On Over, and Cold, Cold Heart.  What surprised me was how much I enjoyed them, and I began re-evaluating my view of their kind of music.

I eventually came to appreciate Hank Williams’ simplicity. What I had once mocked was actually his greatest strength. His songs don't hide behind complicated language or clever wordplay. He said what he meant, directly and honestly. Songs like Cold, Cold Heart and I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry endure because they capture emotions that most of us have experienced. The older I get, the more I realize that writing something simple can be just as challenging as writing something complicated. I can choose a clever word or phrase to make my writing more impressive; but will they resonate with succeeding generations.

Outside of music, Freddie and I shared another interest: professional wrestling. For about a decade, WrestleMania meant gathering at the home of Freddie's close friend -- bass player Oscar Macedo. Along with Oscar's friend Claudio Sossi (another former guest blogger) we'd spend the evening laughing, watching matches, sharing stories, drinking beers and eating pizza.

Oscar, Freddie and Claudio meeting Olympic gold medalist
and Pro-Wrestling legend Kurt Angle at an event in Windsor.

As I aged, my bar visits diminished. Late nights were harder and life just got busier. I saw Freddie, and all my other music acquaintances and friends far less frequently. The Brunswick Hotel was demolished in 2008 and the music scene in London continued to shrink, a victim of changing economics and a new generation who were less interested in the music of my generation, let alone honky-tonk country from 1950.

Freddie performing at The Brunswick "The Wick" Hotel.

The last time I saw Freddie was on Saturday, September 25, 2021. He was playing at a charity event that my friend Jeff Lewis was hosting and I helped him unload some music gear.. He was gracious and funny, as always, and he still smelled great. I remember the date well because I needed to leave before he hit the stage in order to visit  my friend Art who was losing his battle with cancer. It was, painfully, the same day we had to put our lovely, but old and diabetic, cat, Manny, to sleep.

On April 6, 2001, Freddie and his band performed for the students
at my school (free of charge). I am still appreciative of them
for volunteering their time and talent when I was a fledgling music teacher.

Freddie passed away on November 18, 2021, just two months later. His death sent shockwaves through London's music community. We were still emerging from the long shadow of the Covid pandemic and its lockdowns, so much of the collective grieving happened online. As I read the countless tributes and memories people shared, I was reminded of just how many lives Freddie had touched through his music, his humour, and his generosity of spirit.

Freddie's hat and vest on display at the London Music
Hall of Fame in 2022.

Listening to Hank Williams' 40 Greatest Hits recently brought many of those memories rushing back. I could almost hear Freddie's enthusiastic cries of "Testify!" between songs, or see him raising a glass and declaring, "Let the good spirits enter your body," before launching into I Saw The Light or one of the many Hank Williams tunes I now love.

Somewhere along the way, Freddie taught me that great songs don't have to be complicated to be profound. Hank Williams' lyrics, which I once dismissed as simplistic, turned out to be honest, direct, and enduring. Every time I hear Jambalaya, Hey, Good Lookin', or Cold, Cold Heart, I don't just think of Hank Williams. I think about Monday nights and long conversations at the Brunswick; watching WrestleMania's with friends; and specifically a larger-than-life musician in a wide-brimmed hat who helped me hear those songs with new ears.

The 500 - #98 - This Year's Model - Elvis Costello & The Attractions

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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Album: #98

Album Title: This Year's Model

Artist: Elvis Costello and The Attractions

Genre: Pop Punk, New Wave, Power Pop, Garage Punk

Recorded: Eden Studios, London, England

Released: March, 1978

My age at release: 12

How familiar was I with it before this week: Somewhat

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #121 - dropping 23 spots

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: This Year's Girl

"I want you." Three simple words. Depending on who's saying them, "I want you" can sound romantic, desperate, manipulative, or terrifying. 

Yet, the words "I want you" echo through the history of popular music. From The Beatles' I Want You (She's So Heavy) in 1969 to Cody Johnson's I Want You in 2026, artists across genres and generations have built entire songs around that declaration. A quick search reveals a surprisingly long list of titles that either use the phrase directly or place it at the heart of the song's message, including four records on The 500

Every week as I work my way through a different record on Rolling Stone Magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Albums, I discover an album with lyrics that feel surprisingly current. This week that album is Elvis Costello's This Year's Model. Released in 1978, it arrived at a fascinating moment in popular music when the anger and urgency of punk began rubbing shoulders with the bright, buoyant pop energy of new wave. As I found out, the debate surrounding its lyrics feels right at home in 2026.

The Attractions (l-r) Steve Nieve, Costello, Bruce Thomas, Pete
Thomas (no relation).

Some critics have argued that Costello's lyrics portray women as little more than prizes, possessions, or objects of male desire. Costello has long pushed back against this premise. Discussing the second album track, This Year's Girl, he argued that the song's real subject is not women themselves but the way men look at them. As he put it: "Everything in the song is about the way men see women and what they desire from them." In Costello's view, the song is less an expression of misogyny than a critique of the unrealistic fantasies and expectations that shape attraction in the first place.

This Year's Girl single release.

Part of the debate may stem from a common assumption that the narrator of a song speaks directly for the songwriter. Yet, as I often share with my middle school students, poets and songwriters, like novelists and playwrights, often write from the perspective of characters whose beliefs and actions they do not personally endorse. Many of the men who populate This Year's Model are insecure, jealous, judgmental, and obsessive. The question listeners have wrestled with for nearly 50 years is whether Costello is giving voice to those attitudes or exposing them. His answer has consistently been the latter.

Poring over the lyrics of This Year's Model, immersed in the album's long history, it was this debate, and Costello's thoughtful response to it, that resonated the most. Modern audiences are still wrestling with many of the same issues from half a century ago. Whether in a 1978 new wave album or the 2025 thriller Obsession, which my wife and I recently watched, we're often drawn to stories that ask uncomfortable questions: Where does affection end and obsession begin? At what point does attraction stop being about another person and start becoming a projection of our own wants, needs, and desires?

Poster for Obsession.

Commentators, such as New York University professor and podcaster Scott Galloway, have pointed to a growing crisis of connection among young men. He has argued that many are dating less, socializing less, and increasingly turning to screens rather than real-world relationships. At the same time, dating apps can create the perception that a small number of highly desirable people receive the majority of attention, leaving others feeling invisible or rejected.  

The Lost Boys Podcast, on which hosts Galloway and Scaramucci
explore practical ways for young men to eschew the rhetoric 
of toxic masculine / Manosphere influencers to build resilience
purpose and success.

Most young men do not respond to the manosphere frustrations in unhealthy ways, of course. But together with the rise of online "incel" communities, force-fed negativism directed at males can, and sometimes does, result in loneliness hardening into resentment, and resentment into distorted views of relationships. In that light, both This Year's Model and Obsession are important cultural commentaries. They remind us that the danger isn't desire itself; it's what happens when another person stops being a person and becomes an object onto which fantasies, expectations and disappointments are projected.

Earlier, I mentioned how three simple words, "I Want You", can mean so many different things. Eight years after This Year's Model,  Costello challenged his listeners to confront toxic romantic fixations with the song I Want You. The track, from his 1986 album Blood and Chocolate dives even deeper, turning a familiar expression of affection into a haunting study of obsession and possessiveness.

Album cover for Blood and Chocolate (1986)

I believe that we need to be mindful of these dark poetic portrayals of obsession, jealousy and misguided desire to illustrate that love is not supposed to consume us. By showing relationships at their most unhealthy and destructive, songs, films and stories can help us appreciate the qualities that make love worth pursuing in the first place: trust, respect, honesty, and genuine connection.

Perhaps the ultimate value of Costello's darkest songs is not that they celebrate undesirable impulses, but that they illuminate them, allowing us to choose something better.

The 500 - #140 - Parallel Lines - Blondie

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by New York-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

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Album: #140
Album Title: Parallel Lines
Artist: Blondie
Genre: New Wave, Power Pop, Pop Punk
Recorded: Record Plant Studios, New York City
Released: September, 1978
My age at release: 13
How familiar was I with it before this week: Quite
Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #146, dropping 5 spots
Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist: One Way Or Another

The arrival of Heart of Glass, Blondie’s fourth single, hit like a seismic wave in my circle of friends during the winter of 1978. It quickly entered regular radio rotation in January, 1979, but what truly set it apart was its accompanying music video -- a groundbreaking concept at the time. Long before music videos became the dominant promotional tool of the 1980s, their appearance on late-night television felt revolutionary. Until then, our only glimpses of rock bands performing came from shows like American Bandstand (often featuring lip-synced performances), Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert, The Midnight Special, and, later, CBC’s Wolfman Jack Show.

Heart of Glass wasn’t just a song, it was a glimpse into the future of music and media. However, perhaps more importantly to my teenaged friend circle, the video prominently featured a stunning lead singer who stole our adolescent hearts.

The logo for Don Kirshner's Rock Concert which aired (1978-1981).

The opening of Blondie’s Heart of Glass music video was a snapshot of late 1970s New York City, and for a kid growing up in rural, southwestern Ontario it was mesmerizing. It was equal parts gritty, glamorous, exciting and dangerous. The opening featured a sweeping aerial shot of the city skyline, capturing the iconic towers and the urban sprawl below. The atmosphere created by the pulsing disco beat that opened the song was both electrifying and raw, reflecting the tension and creativity of a city teetering between decay and artistic renaissance.

New York Skyline - Late '70s.

In the late 1970s, New York City was a paradox; economically strained, riddled with crime, yet bursting with cultural energy. At 12 e, I was already tuned in to the news, thanks to my parents’ devotion to CBC Radio. I was aware of the city’s darker side, especially the fear sparked when the Son of Sam killings gripped The Big Apple in summer, 1977.

Nevertheless, I was equally captivated by the city’s artistic pulse. Late-night shows, especially Saturday Night Live, offered insight into a world where rock, punk, disco, and new wave collided in legendary clubs such as CBGBs, The Bitter End, and Studio 54.

When Blondie’s Heart of Glass video aired, it brought that vibrant, chaotic cityscape into my living room. The graffiti-splashed streets and neon-lit nightlife felt thrilling and a little dangerous. In retrospect, I realize it was my first invitation to a city I would fall in love with and visit many times as an adult.

Legendary Manhattan Nightclub Studio 54.

Then there was the lead singer, Deborah Harry, with her shaggy pixie-cut, platinum blonde hair, slinky, shimming dress, and disco-glossy lips. I was smitten by her beauty, cool detachment and effortless charisma, as were my friends. In the parlance of the day, "she was a fox".

Deborah (or Debbie) Harry was born Angela Trimble in Miami, Florida, on July 1, 1945. Adopted as an infant, she was raised in Hawthorn, New Jersey, only 35 kilometres from Manhattan. After attending Centenary College, she worked as a secretary, dancer and Playboy Bunny. She had also been the vocalist for a New York-based psych-folk band called The Wind In The Willows in the late sixties. With her boyfriend Christ Stein, she was also part of a glam-rock, proto-punk band called The Stilettoes.

Harry as a Playboy Bunny in the late 60s/early 70s.

In 1974, she and Stein co-founded a group they dubbed Angel and The Snake. However, that hefty moniker only lasted two shows and by October, 1974, they were Blondie, comprising Harry (vocals); Stein (guitars); Fred Smith (bass); and Billy O'Connor (drums). O'Connor was soon replaced by Clem Burke, who remained their drummer until his death last April. Their Parallel Lines record, which was Blondie’s commercial breakthrough, featured their classic line-up of Harry, Stein and Burke, joined by keyboardist Jimmy Destri; bassist Nigel Harrison; and guitarist/vocalist Frank Infante.

Blondie - preparing for the Parallel Lines cover shoot (1978).

Parallel Lines captivated more than me and my friends. It met universal acclaim from music critics and was quickly certified as a platinum seller in multiple countries, including Canada, where it sold 400,000 copies. To date, the album has surpassed 12 million sales worldwide. Heart Of Glass, the fourth of six singles from the record, was the group's first number one hit. Three additional number one songs followed over the next four years -- Call Me, from the soundtrack to American Gigolo, in April, 1980; The Tide Is High, from their fifth album, Autoamerican, in January, 1981; and Rapture, from the same record two months later.

Autoamerican album cover (1981).

Blondie’s arrival on the mainstream stage wasn’t just a musical milestone, it was a cultural shift. The group fearlessly embraced the New York music scene of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, blending everything from rock, punk, reggae, disco and hip-hop into their genre-defying pop sound. For me, the band provided a glimpse into a world far beyond my rural Ontario surroundings and Heart Of Glass became a shimmering piece of a larger media mosaic – one that  eventually shaped my lifelong fascination with New York City,  which became my wedding venue decades later.

Me and my bride Angela on our wedding day as the sun sets  over Battery Park, Manhattan, 2006.