Bands from Berkeley

I randomly caught a few bars of "Feelin' Blue" from their Willie and the Poor Boys album brought me back...I probably hadn't heard this since I lived in Berkeley in the mid '70s, but it took probably less than a second to recognize it.

Credence Clearwater Revival.  Technically, from El Cerrito, a town just north of Berkeley, but they made most of their records at Fantasy Records, on Parker Street, in Berkeley.  I lived on Parker myself during school year 74-5, although over a mile from the studio.

Country Joe and the Fish.  Joe McDonald's family didn't move to Berkeley until he was an adult, but his mother would be mayor while I lived there and the band would be formed there.   I saw them once, Country Joe without the rest of the band a couple of times.  Of course everybody saw them at Woodstock:  "Give me an F.  Give a U..."

Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen.   Their one big hit, Hot Rod Lincoln, was very out of character for them.   I saw them at Winterland, the Oakland Coleseum, several free shows in various parks.  They always put on a great show.

Joy of Cooking.  A short-lived but terrific band, led by two women.  One of them, Terry Garthwaite, sang in a style strongly resembling Mavis Staples and I was a fan of them before I'd ever heard of the Staples Singers.

Greg Kihn Band.  I first saw Greg Kihn, busking, solo, with his guitar in 1973 on the steps of the Student Union building on the Berkeley campus.  He played there several times, until he came back with a full band.  I wasn't really surprised when he had a hit on MTV in the early 80s.  His band was largely from another Berkeley band, the Earth Quake, which was pretty local.  One of their songs was called AC-DC and it enough resembled a different, later band called AC-DC that at first I thought it was the same band.

The Klezmorim were a Klezmer band that got its start playing in Sproul Plaza, where I saw them several times.  They had some success

Green Day and Counting Crows were both from Berkeley, and didn't get their start until after I'd left.

There are of course a bunch of other bay area bands that frequently played Berkeley.  I saw Jerry Garcia at the Keystone, and the Grateful Dead famously played the Greek Theater on campus several times.  I saw Merle Saunders a couple of times on campus.  Tower of Power didn't come to Berkeley much, but their home base was just south in Oakland.  Santana

Reagan Won in a Landslide?

 No, Reagan didn't win the election of 1980 in a landslide, or even close to it.  But he governed as if he had won the mandate conferred by a landslide.  

There were three main candidates in 1980:

Jimmy Carter, incumbent, got 35.5M votes and 49 electors.

Ronald Reagan got 43.9M votes and 489 electors

John Anderson got 5.7M votes and no electors.

Anderson was a moderate republican, a thing which no longer exists.  In hindsight, it's pretty clear that he ran as a spoiler, stealing votes from Carter.  In addition to the third party candidate, Reagan's team sabotaged the hostage negotiations with Iran, getting them to defer the release of the prisoners until shortly before the inauguration.  Reagan took credit for this, even though it was entirely the work of Carter's team.

Before this sabotage occurred, it looked like Carter had a solid path to re-election, being up by as much as 15 points over Reagan.

Carter won only 6 states: Hawaii, Maryland, Rhode Island, DC, and his home state of Georgia and his running mate's home of Minnesota.    But many of the states that Reagan won were flipped by Anderson's cut:

Reagan won Arkansas bu 5,000 votes.  Anderson got 22000.  6 electors.

Reagan won Connecticut by 135000 votes.  Anderson got 172000.  8 electors.

Reagan won Delaware by 5500 votes, Anderson got 16000.   3 electors.

Reagan won Kentucky by 19000 votes.  Anderson got 31000,  9 electors

Reagan won Maine by 17000 votes.  Anderson got 53000.   2 electors.

Reagan won Massachusetts by 4000 votes.  Anderson got 382,000.   14 electors.   (This is where I was living in 1980)

Reagan won New York by 170,000 votes.  Anderson got 468000.   41 electors

Reagan won North Carolina by 40,000 votes.  Anderson got 53000. 13 electors.

Reagan won Tennesee by 4500 votes.  Anderson got 36,000.  10 electors.

Reagan won Vermont by 12000 votes. Anderson got 32000.   3 electors.

Reagan won Wisconsin by 107000 votes.  Anderson got 160,000.  11 electors.

All together, Anderson took at least 120 electors from Carter.   this was not enough to overturn the election: 369 to 169 electors.  Reagan won.  but where the pundit class tells us it was a landslide, it was actually a fairly near thing.

Reagan proceeded to sabotage the income tax, unions, monopoly regulation, infrastructure construction and much more, and we have still not been able to recover to this day, more than 40 years later.