1980's Greatest Guilty Pleasure and The Birth of R.E.M.

Ambrosia : Biggest Part of Me

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On April 5, 1980 Ambrosia's US#3 hit "Biggest Part Of Me" debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at #60. It is one of those inescapable songs from the summer of 1980 that strikes a nostalgic major seventh chord. At 16, I basically had my dad's apartment to myself, a refrigerator stocked with good beer and an internship at the local newspaper.

This smooth yacht rock classic was all over the radio. It has the funky beat, the requisite sax solo and excellent production. All it's missing is Michael McDonald but it turns out singer David Pack could hit all thise falsetto notes just fine. Pack tells the Huffington Post how he came up with the song:

4th of July 1979, morning...family was packing up car to drive to Malibu for private celebration. Car was running... I went back to my studio guesthouse to shut off the gear, sat at piano for a moment, and the chords appeared under my fingers. I turned on the portable cassette recorder and laid it down in a couple of minutes. Then ran back to the car and we took off. The next day I played it back, and wrote the bridge and lyrics...very quickly. It was early summer. That’s key. My favorite feeling of the year. I wanted Ambrosia to have a signature vocal group call and response song. So that had something to do with it as well. My previous hit “How Much I Feel” had that lead vocal and wall of group harmony thing happening. So I was in pursuit of a vocal sonic identity for us. This was back when radio and TV was all that we had. No internet, mobile phone, etc.

Moving on to a topic that is completely different...

This was also the date of the very first R.E.M. gig, a birthday party in which they played "Roadrunner", "I'm Not Your Stepping Stone", and "God Save the Queen" in front of 300 people. R.E.M. played for about two hours. Here's a great story about the gig.