colour by numbers (10. 521)

Lead single off the group’s title album which began a three-week run on the top of the charts in the US on this day in 1983, Culture Club was initially resistant to record frontman’s Boy George’s composition—originally called “Cameo Chameleon,” about cosmic retribution and being true to oneself as it sounded a bit too country. Hitting number one in Australia, Canada, the UK, Norway and Belgium as well, the accompanying music video directed by Peter Sinclair, set in 1870s Mississippi, was filmed at Weybridge-on-Thames, aboard a riverboat. Enduringly popular and a perennial political campaign favourite, inveighing against one’s opponent as “a man without conviction,” Culture Club also performed this number on an episode of The A-Team, “Cowboy George.”

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he just smiled and gave me a vegemite sandwich (10. 418)

Originally released three years prior as the B-side, local single “Keypunch Operator” before signing with a major record label, Men at Work’s hit song began topping the US charts on this day in 1983 for a run of four weeks. Relating the narrative of an Australian travelling the world only to meet people interested in hearing about his home country with slang, drug references (chunder means to vomit) and remorse about overdevelopment and American cultural hegemony peppering the lyrics. The opening musical flourish from the children’s song “Kookabura (Sits in the Old Gum Tree)”—already in the public domain—was inserted ironically but was still the subject of a copyright lawsuit after the sampling was pointed out in a quiz show in 2007.

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01-811-8055 (10. 341)

Airing on BBC1 from for five seasons from 1982 to 1987—with a format matching its predecessor hosted by presenter Noel Edmonds, Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, the children’s call-in programme featuring talent shows (more clips here) had many memorable moments, including the appearance of Margaret Thatcher taking questions ahead of a re-election campaign and being berated by a small girl who demanded to know the prime minister’s whereabouts in the event of a nuclear war and numerous musical guests, like Wham!, The Pet Shop Boys and Kate Bush or as on this Saturday morning in 1983, when Culture Club, Duran Duran and The Police all performed and were jury members judging the entrants’ talents. The episode is split into several clips but should play sequentially.

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able archer (10. 279)

The third of the annual NATO command post exercise to train Western Europe units for escalating nuclear conflict and prompted by intelligence that suggested under code-name Operation RYaN (РЯН, “Nuclear Missile Attack,” Ракетно Ядерное Нападение) a coordinated campaign to monitor decision-makers in government and military hierarchies for the intent to launch a first strike against the Soviet Union and a string of infiltration maneuvers on both sides to see to what extent that spies could penetrate the opposing sides’ defences before detection, the war game, began on this day in 1983. The added sense of realism to the execution with coded communiques and radio black-outs in light of increased rhetoric from Ronald Reagan (sabre-rattling that was taken with dread earnestness) and the scheduled delivery of additional missiles for staging in the theatre, reportedly caused some in Soviet leadership to believe that Able Archer 83 was a ruse de guerre to distract from actual preparations and placed units in Poland and East Germany on high alert and began priming their fuses. Tensions as high as during the Cuban Missile Crisis two decades earlier, the Chief of Staff for the US Air Force in Europe convinced Washington not to respond in kind, de-escalating the situation by the end of the simulation.

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7x7 (10. 276)

aeiou—red, green, yellow, purple, blue: the virtuosity of polymath Francis Galton and his 1883 work on synaesthesia—see previously  

toots, blorts and kerflunks: alternate social media network Mastodon grows a pace—via Language Log

wwjd: struggling corporations should look to the Jesuits as models of stability and longevity  

tragedy of the commons: a look ahead to COP27—more here  

momentum i: a 1983 synth compilation for runners by Matt Sullivan—see also  

kant generator: programmer Giacomo Miceli’s Infinite Conversation between interlocutors Werner Herzog and Slavoj Žižek   

sensory world: crossed-wires result in great art

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turn around, bright eyes (10. 188)

The first and only thus far Welsh solo act to top the singles charts in the US, Bonnie Tyler with her signature song “Total Eclipse of the Heart” (previously) from her fifth studio album Faster than the Speed of Night was at Number One beginning on this day in 1983 and remains an enduring, international hit. Written and produced by Jim Steinman, originally it was to be called “Vampires in Love” building off of an abandoned effort to make a musical version of Nosferatu. The below music video was directed by Russell Mulcahy (“Turning Japanese,” “Video Killed the Radio Star,” “Hungry Like the Wolf”) and was shot at the Holloway Sanatorium, a Gothic hospital in Surrey.

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na-na, na-na, na-na, na-na-na-na now (10. 056)

Probably better known for “(That’s the Way) I Like It” and “(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty”—but this is a fun one too—the band hailing from Hialeah, Florida—the Sunshine State registered at the top of UK singles charts, the band’s first and only number one in Britain (where it became a popular sporting chant) a decade after the group formed, with “Give It Up” this day in 1983, the lead track from their ninth studio album All in a Night’s Work. Released internationally just earlier in the month and facing quite a cultural backlash against disco at the beginning of the decade, the song was regarded as a comeback hit for KC and the Sunshine Band and one of the last first-wave reverberations of the genre.

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7x7 (10. 050)

smokin’: Bill McClintock remixes Clarence Carter’s “Strokin’” (That’s What I Be Doing) with Boston’s “More Than A Feeling”  

s morgenstern’s classic tale of true love and high adventure, the ‘good parts’ version: wildly divergent book covers for The Princess Bride, via Super Punch  

we’re walking in the air: author and illustrator Raymond Briggs (previously) has passed away, aged 88  

development purgatory: more titles and properties never released by movie studios—see also—via Things Magazine   

scarborough faire: housing developer agrees to rebury unique Roman villa for future conservation a year after it was discovered  

the seventh seal: AI designs movie posters  

seona dancing: Ricky Gervais’ synth-pop group from 1983

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dear mister andropov

For what would have been her fiftieth birthday had not her life been tragically cut short by a plane crash at the age of thirteen, Deutsche Welle has a retrospective appreciation on the ten-year old Cold War peace ambassador and avid letter-writer Samantha Reed Smith of Holton, Maine who at a very tense point in Soviet-US relations—the nuclear superpowers having abandoned their recent policy of détente, a race on to militarise space, widespread peace protests, the Afghan conflict and The Day After all had people whipped into a frenzy—reached out to the new Russian leader late in 1982, the successor to the post of Leonid Brezhnev characterised in the press as the architect of the suppression of the Prague Spring and for suppression of dissidents, congratulating him and expressing her fears about nuclear escalation and asked him to write in return. Failing to get a timely reply (despite its publication in Pravda), Smith also reached out to the embassy in Washington, DC before in April of 1983 the General Secretary responded himself, with a personal invitation to visit the Soviet Union. More on Smith’s tour and brief but impactful legacy at the link up top.

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you gotta to say yes to another success

On this day in 1983 the Zürich electronic music duo Yello, a collaboration between Boris Blank and Dieter Meier with contributions from Carlos Perón—probably most recognised for their 1985 single “Oh Yeah” whose whump-whump has featured in several film and television soundtracks, notably Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or their 1988 “The Race,” released singles from their titular third studio album as three-dimensional picture discs complete with 3D glasses (see also), leading with the opening track below.

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episode vi

Released in cinemas in the US on this day in 1983, the date coinciding with the 1977 premiere of the original Star Wars, the epic space opera, which was thought to be the conclusion of the franchise, the saga continues a year after the abduction of Han Solo at the conclusion of The Empire Strikes Back and the Rebel Alliance discover that the Emperor has ordered the construction of a new Death Star, intend on finally exterminating any nonaligned elements. Thirteen days before it was screened in theatres, the novelisation by James Kahn was published—I’m sure with a lot of spoilers. I remember not being very good about keeping the plot twists to myself at the time. Watching the reactions (see also) of first time viewers to revelations about the Skywalker family from the previous instalment is pretty delightful. “So what I told you was true—from a certain point of view.”

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why do i find it hard to write the next line?

Reaching the top spot of the UK charts on this day in 1983, the song by English New Wave, New Romantic group Spandau Ballet by member Gary Kemp attempting to write a tribute to his inspirations, Marvin Gaye and Al Green, narrating his difficulty with the creative process—called blue-eyed soul at the time before we had the more accurate conflict of cultural appropriation, reclaimed to a degree when sampled by PM Dawn for “Set A-Drift on Memory Bliss” in 1991, from setting out for such a standard to hit all the same notes. Nonetheless the number, despite and because of its intentions, was hugely popular and enduring.

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space music

Begun a decade earlier as a three-hour-long radio programme featuring contemplative, ambient music with a selection of classical, Celtic, electronic and experimental genres airing late nights in the Berkley-area hosted by “Timotheo” (Stephen Hill) and “Annamystic” (Anna Turner), Hearts of Space entered syndication of National Public Radio on this day in 1983 and is still going strong, with over thirteen hundred transmissions (episodes) in their archives. The longest-running show of its type, each instalment signs-off with “Safe journeys, space fans—wherever you are.”

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say, say, say

On this day in 1983, the duet between Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson, first released in October of that year, rose to top the US singles charts, holding the number one spot for six weeks—enjoying comparable success in Canada, Norway, Australia, Switzerland and the UK. The narrative of the music video profiles a team of con-artists, patent medicine sellers called Mac and Jack.

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prairie fire organizing committee

Making a forceful statement against armed US overtures in Lebanon and Grenada, a bomb-blast tore through the virtually empty senate-side of the Capitol building on this day in 1983. The day’s session had adjourned nearly two hours prior to the explosion and an anonymous caller representing the “Armed Resistance Unit” of the Resistance Conspiracy—the American-based branch of the broader organisation called the Nineteenth of May Communist Order (also known as M19 and a splinter-group of the above committed to fighting imperialism, racism and sexism)—called the switchboard and issued a warning minutes before detonation. No one was present to be injured—though the suspected targets included Senator Robert C. Byrd, an ardent proponent for both incursions, with a portrait of statesman and Massachusetts senator Daniel Webster (*1782 - †1852) hung near the chamber’s cloakroom damaged nearly beyond repair as the evening’s only casualty. Five years later, the accused parties were brought before a federal judicial trial for the Capitol bombing plus two related terror attacks on Washington area military installations.

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your experiment today is called pod people. it has nothing to do with pods, it has nothing to do with people. it has everything to do with hurting.

First airing on this day in 1991, the third episode of the third season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (see previously) lampoons the 1983 Franco-Spanish sci-fi movie with the original title Los nuevos extraterrestres, which was originally meant to be a horror film with a murderous alien rampage in the tradition of Beowulf but changed course during shooting to capitalise on the success of E.T. (changed to avoid confusion) with a bond forming between one of the aliens and a human kid. The MST3K cast especially enjoy mishearing the performance of “Burning Rubber Tyres”—singing “hear the engines roar now” as “idiot control now.” 

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general entertainment content division

Though first proposed as early as 1977 as a cable television conduit for studio-sourced content, the idea was sidelined in favour of developing the Epcot (see previously) and the brand’s other theme parks, the Disney Channel—as an independent venture—began its first programming day on this day in 1983 in US markets, garnering some six-hundred thousand subscribers within the first six months. The first shows included “Contraption” in which adolescents competed across a giant board game obstacle course, “Dreamfinders” meant to spur critical thinking skills in young people, “Mousterepiece Theatre” a cartoon show hosted by George Plimpton and “Mousercise,” a daily exercise routine hosted by Kellyn Plasschaert.

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show dna

Informed earlier by our faithful chronicler and now reprised for the cinematic adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s 1975 novel of the same name going into general release in US cinemas on this day in 1983, James L. Brooks directorial debut film (also writer and producer) has a throughline to the Simpsons. As a thank you gift for securing her and her production team an Academy Award (Terms of Endearment starring Shirley MacClaine, Danny DeVito, Debra Winger, Jeff Daniels, John Lithgow and Jack Nicholson did quite well at the Oscars) assistant Polly Platt had procured for her collaborator an original panel of the comic Life in Hell—a bleak strip about a depressed, neurotic rabbit called Bongo, specifically one from 1982 entitled “The Los Angeles Way of Death”—as imagined and illustrated by Matt Groening. A year later, with a new television project, a variety show with a series of sketches, Brooks reached out to Groening about developing a series of animated interstitial bumpers between segments. Fearing loss of creative control over his original characters, Groening created a wholly new cast based on his own family, giving the world the Simpsons as a regular part of The Tracey Ullmann Show.

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possibly in michigan

Vacillating between the cute and the grotesque and nicely framing the spirit of the contradictory and the absurd that America leans strongly into, we appreciate the referral to the filmmaker and educator Cecelia Condit through her 1983 eponymous and most viral piece.
Recently rediscovered and championed by a video clip platform that’s usually the reserve of brief lessons or lip-syncing, this musical short about a deranged cannibal who pursues a pair of women through an otherwise empty shopping mall has enjoyed cult-following for the past four decades and no stranger to the experience of memetic infection, having previously been drawn in as a poster child in the moral and Satanic Panic of mid-1980s America and the on-going culture wars—by dent mostly of the closing credits that prominently features the support and patronage of the National Endowment for the Arts. New audiences are sometimes the best audiences.

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how about a nice game of chess?

Undisclosed until well after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and at a time of severely deteriorated relations seeded with deep distrust and suspicion that a first-strike on the part of the United States was eminent, on this day in 1983 duty officer Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov (*1939 - †2017) correctly assessed that reports from the early warning satellite network were a false alarm and thus averted an accidental counter-attack.
Despite heightened tensions and hair-trigger attitudes, Petrov appreciated the gravity of his decision and questioned the reliability of the new system and judged that the five missile signatures detected not to be of the calibre of an offensive, which likely would have been comprised of hundreds of warheads launched simultaneously, in accordance with the policy of mutually assured destruction. Subsequent investigations showed that the system was detecting glints of sunlight reflected on high-altitude clouds.

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