"Dancing In The City" by Marshall Hain

1978 / #43

Rate Your Music score: 3.15 out of 5!

At the age of 12 or 13, around 1985-86, one of my goals was to see the inner workings of a radio station. Not the big stations where the studio was occasionally seen on the news if there was some story involving them. I'm talking about the smaller stations like WCLU.

I wanted to figure out why their records skipped so damn much - when their turntables worked at all. I was listening one day when one of their turntables actually broke. Until "turntable #2" was fixed, they had to pipe in music from a mobile studio they had. It was an amazing listen!

The closest I ever got to the station was just before signoff one evening when we drove back behind Latonia Plaza and saw their building resting forlornly in a field. Many years later, I actually saw photos of the inside of the studio posted online - complete with format clock and David Lee Roth poster.

But when I was 12, I could only imagine what the studio looked like. Phil Collins's "Don't Lose My Number" and Sade's "The Sweetest Taboo" filled the den as the signal creepily braved our gray sky, but I had to paint a mental image of the studio.

My image of WCLU fumbling with its equipment dredged up an incident I had in the back of my mind. It might not have even taken place. It might have just been the power of suggestion. I recalled that I had a record that my parents confiscated because I listened to it too much. According to this narrative, they hid it atop the kitchen cabinet. But by the time I was 12, there was no record there.

Years later, I recalled that the record may have been "Dancing In The City" by the English duo Marshall Hain. But - even if a record was indeed confiscated - I'm not even sure it was this. Again, this could be the power of suggestion. This song didn't get that much play locally - in fact, it got very little - so why would anyone in the family think to buy it?

Let me reiterate that it's possible that the seized record was something else - or that the incident didn't take place at all, and no record was ever confiscated. If so, I don't know why I recalled such an episode. I have clear memories of some real events that others deny, but this recollection is fuzzy.

It may be the power of suggestion manifest!