I was on holiday in the regional coastal town Geelong with my family probably not long after 1984 one Christmas break. There's not a heap to do there unless you're a surfer and into the beach... I am not. Don't people know there are things in the water!! So many shark attacks lately here in Australia, but I digress...
The place we were staying at was walking distance to the library so one day we popped in and realized you could get a membership even though were "weren't from round here boy". I'm not a huge reader, but I found they had a music section, full of tapes you could borrow. "Modern" Top 40 tapes cost a butt load back then to buy and these suckers were lending them out for nothing!!! Unfortunately I could only borrow a couple at at time but we had a tape-to-tape recorder. wink wink!
I think I went every day. Some of the classics I remember are: Billy Idol - Rebel Yell, Bruce Springsteen - Born in the USA, Autograph - That's the stuff (If you like 80's OTT hair metal these guys are worth a listen to). But the one that blew my tiny mind was Van Halen's - 1984. It was the last album from Van Halen 1.0 and I'd go as far as saying one of, if not their best. Classics such as Jump, Hot for teacher, Top Jimmy, and of course possibly my favourite song of all time Panama.
To this day I can still put my Spotify Van Halen playlist on with Panama as the first song and it puts a smile on my face.
This is me playing Panama to the best of my abilities. The song itself is not too difficult for a VH song and the solo is quite short so I can bluff my way through. I cut the song off just after the solo because it goes into that weird bit with David Lee Roth talking in a creepy voice about him in a car, eeeeasing the seat back. Now in 1984 David Lee Roth in spandex could almost get away with this, but the backing track I have has some regular dude trying it out and it's just wrong, so very very wrong. So it had to go, but you'll get the gist of it.
Hope you all enjoy it!