This is 102.9 MGK’s Thursday Top 10 Countdown and, this week, it’s the top 10 rock albums from September 21, 1979.
September, 1979 was a crazy time in and out of the music world. For the first time, women were deployed overseas in the U.S. Navy. The price of gold hit $400 an ounce for the first time (it’s almost $2000 today). The “No Nukes” concert protesting nuclear energy was held at the Garden in New York. It featured Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Crosby Still and Nash and Bonnie Raitt, just to name a few. In sports, 16 year old Tracy Austin became the youngest U.S. player to win a U.S. Open singles final.
1979 in Music
In the music world, disco was peaking and punk/new wave was on the rise. A slew of exciting new bands from England and the U.S. were putting out some really clever albums. it would also be the last time we’d get a studio album by Led Zeppelin, which will figure prominently in this week’s Countdown. That year, we also lost Lowell George and Sid Vicious.
18 Year Old Kid Plays Disco Music on AM
I was doing 10pm-2am at WZZD (990 AM) in Philadelphia in September, 1979. Originally the legendary WIBG, and then known as “Wizzard 100,” the station played disco/dance music..on AM. Even though we had a killer lineup of DJs like Glen Kalina and Bill O’Brien, it was not exactly a ratings success. This was because WCAU-FM (98.1) was ALSO playing dance music, but on FM. I had fun, even though I wasn’t 100% into the music, but I definitely saw the writing on the wall. Word started getting out that Fairbanks Broadcasting, the owners of WZZD, were going to sell the radio station to a religious broadcasting company. That meant that it wouldn’t be long before the on air staff would be shown the door and the format changed. I resigned, and stayed at WPST/Trenton doing weekends until a full time gig opened up.
Save The Vinyl!
Soon after, it was confirmed that the station was sold and would be changing their format. In their infitie wisdom, they were going to throw away the entire WIBG/WZZD vinyl library. There thousands of records, many going back to the WIBBAGE days of the 50s. An engineer pal of mine who worked there, and I, sprung into action. We pulled up in our cars to the front steps of WZZD while I was on the air, opened our trunks and proceeded to dispose of the vinyl ourselves…into our collections! We brought dozens of trash bags to fill with 45s and LPs. It was glorious!! I am so glad we snagged that stuff. I still have a lot of those 45s and many LPs in my collection.
Andre Gardner on the air at WZZD, Philadelphia, 1978.
But I digress. Here are MGK’s Top 10 rock albums from September 21, 1979:
