TEEN YOUR ENTHUSIASM (8)
By:
April 23, 2023
One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of heartthrobs from our adolescences). Series edited by Heather Quinlan.
KIM WILDE
Top of the Pops was a show that was broadcast weekly by the BBC in the UK during my teen years, and was picked up live by a TV station in Ireland, where I grew up. Every Thursday night, we content-deprived kids in the West of Ireland got to witness the height of advanced culture, coming to us through the prism of our next-door neighbor. Back then, England stood for everything glamorous and progressive, from punk to pop to big infrastructure, e.g. multi-lane expressways!, to football (the flavor Messi plays). America was at the top of the heap, for sure, but for us, prior to the days of the great disintermediation that is the Internet, everything global was filtered first through London, and subsequently through Dublin. For the youngsters along the Wild Atlantic Way — which in those days was nothing more than a miserable rocky shoreline pounded constantly by a heartless dour Atlantic — this was unfortunate.
This was in the early ’80s. Before that, the forgotten children of the province of Connacht had it even worse. Until the late ’70s, we only had one (1) TV channel to watch, RTÉ, which aired for only a few hours each day. The choice of what to view was “take it or leave it.” Unlike Ireland’s East Coast, we were too distant to receive the signal of England’s broadcast stations. Dublin was our content lord and master, and made Scrooge look like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Our region was mockingly called Single Channel Land by the rest of Ireland.
Then a new age of enlightenment dawned. Along came a second channel, RTÉ2, and with it, Top Of The Pops.
And one Thursday night in 1981, out of nowhere, amidst the beautiful people of the show’s live dancing London audience, up popped a vision for my adolescent, deprived eyes. Kim Wilde, singing “Kids In America.”
Beyond the thrall visited upon my potent imagination by the blond hair and the blue eyes and the perfectly symmetrical features, Kim instantly became America, the ultimate place to aspire to be, even though the announcer had described her as British. It was so easy to live with the cognitive dissonance of it.
The end of Single Channel Land. “Kids In America.” Kim Wilde. Mine was an expanding world.
I’m not sure the young have that today, with instant access to everything on their phones (their phones!). Their world must seem like it is contracting as they grow towards adulthood, as they begin to feel its reality and harshness. Overall, there are fewer rites of passage to be proud of. Is this a root cause of skyrocketing levels of depression among the young, I wonder?
TEEN YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Heather Quinlan | Adam McGovern on ANDY GIBB | Crockett Doob on DREW BARRYMORE | Kathy Biehl on THE MONKEES | Josh Glenn on SHAUN CASSIDY | Catherine Christman on ELI WALLACH | Carlo Rotella on VALERIE BERTINELLI | Miranda Mellis on EDDIE VAN HALEN | Paul Finnegan on KIM WILDE | Heather Quinlan on MIKE PATTON | Mariane Cara on NKOTB | Mimi Lipson on ARLO GUTHRIE | Gabriela Pedranti on GUSTAVO CERATI | Michele Carlo on MICHAEL JACKSON | Ingrid Schorr on PAUL McCARTNEY | Carolyn Campbell on ROBERT REDFORD | Erin M. Routson on JOHNNY KNOXVILLE | Amy Keyishian on JIM MORRISON | Fran Pado on TONY DEFRANCO | Krista Margies Kunkle on LUKE PERRY | Lucy Sante on FRANÇOISE HARDY | Lynn Peril on DANNY BONADUCE | Jack Silbert on CHERYL TIEGS | Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons on CHRISTIAN SLATER | Cynthia Scott on LEONARD WHITING | Elizabeth Foy Larsen on OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!