1979

Interesting - 1979 is the year my love for music and prog in particular started and I started to distance myself from the stuff that was played day in day out on mainstream radio (I had loved Abba and Boney M. before, and the Beatles actually, but was giving up on these at the time - the Beatles came back later though).

One band that I really loved at the time and had picked up from the radio in 1979 were Dire Straits (although the amazing Sultans of Swing, the first I discovered, is from 1978 actually; in 1979 they had Once Upon a Time in the West and News). And then of course Another Brick in the Wall II, and I also liked Logical Song from the beginning, and, somewhat embarrassingly, Barclay James Harvest's Love on the Line. Looking around a bit, in 1979 I was starting consciously to look for earlier music and I didn't pick up a lot from the radio in that year, this started massively in 1980.   

Edit: I still listen in the car sometimes but nothing current, all classic rock and like '80's flashback.'

Funnily I what I recall best from radio is sitting in my room listening to the «European Top 100» while drawing. So there I heard songs that I didn’t get ane airplay elsewhere such as Flash and the Pan «Midnight Man», Orchestral Manouvers in the Dark «Secret» and well Falco "Amadeus" before everyone else lol. Random and not particularly amazing songs but I felt like I was the only one who had heard them. Before this I remember Bonnie Tyler «Total Eclipse of the Heart», F.R David «Words», Men at Work "Down Under", several Bowie songs from Let's Dance (maybe mostly because my big sister bought the album) and completely idiotic tunes such as «E.T, I Love You» and «Woodpecker From Space». I still enjoyed them all though. I also have a recollection of getting into the car with my family and Steve Miller Band "Abracadabra" filled the space when mom started the engine and thinking it was mysterious and magic compared to what we were usually force fed. I'm guessing that song must already had been a year old or so by then.

Yeah those great days of underground/pirate radio that I keep hearing about was long gone - and probably never existed where I grew up anyway. Fortunately my parents had a decent record collection for me discover some much better 60’s/70’s stuff that shaped & exited me way more than early-to mid-eighties radio.