‘Good News!’

I got to thinking about 1977 this morning, and about this date specifically. In anyone’s life, there are – as I may have noted here before – days that stand out, that mark a clear division point, a definitive before and after. 

One of those dates in my life was November 28, 1977. It was my first day of work for the Monticello Times, a weekly paper in a small town about thirty miles from my hometown of St. Cloud. And thus, it was the first day of the career for which my college courses had prepared me. 

Except, as I think has happened to almost everyone, I hadn’t been prepared enough. One of the first things I learned that Monday forty-five years ago was that I had a lot to learn: about reporting, about being an employee, about life in a small town, and about myself. 

The day was a whirlwind of introductions, a couple of interviews, and generous – and useful – advice from my boss and colleagues. I covered a girls basketball game in the evening and then went home to my new place, half of a mobile home built as a duplex. 

And I no doubt went wearily to bed thrilled and exhausted, planning to get up in the morning for another day at the paper, as I would do for nearly six years. 

To mark the anniversary this morning, I dug into the stacks and found a 1977 single with an entirely appropriate title: “Good News” by a group called the Attitudes, who turned out to be a collection of some of the great West Coast studio musicians: David Foster on keyboards, Jim Keltner on drums and percussion, Danny Kortchmar on guitar and vocals, and Paul Stallworth on bass and vocals. 

The band released two albums and a cluster of singles on George Harrison’s Dark Horse label between 1975 and 1977. A self-titled album bubbled under the Billboard 200, the magazine’s main album chart, reaching No. 206, and one of the singles spent six weeks near the bottom of the Hot 100, reaching No. 94. 

“Good News” ended up as a B-side on one of the band’s singles that did not chart. How it came to me, I have no idea, but it’s pretty good forty-five years later.

– whiteray